Arch on a MacBook
libinput, not X11 and Synaptics.
This is what I did to put Arch Linux on my MacBook Pro 12,1 (A1502, 2015) with dm-crypt (LVM on LUKS). Much of the start is taken from this blog post, but it’s reproduced here because of fear of link-rot.
Here’s my hardware (from lspci).
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Broadwell-U Host Bridge -OPI (rev 09) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Broadwell-U Integrated Graphics (rev 09) 00:03.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Broadwell-U Audio Controller (rev 09) 00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP USB xHCI Controller (rev 03) 00:15.0 DMA controller: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP Serial IO DMA Controller (rev 03) 00:15.4 Serial bus controller [0c80]: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP Serial IO GSPI Controller #1 (rev 03) 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP MEI Controller #1 (rev 03) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP High Definition Audio Controller (rev 03) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #1 (rev e3) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #2 (rev e3) 00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #3 (rev e3) 00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #5 (rev e3) 00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #6 (rev e3) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP LPC Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP SMBus Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Wildcat Point-LP Thermal Management Controller (rev 03) 02:00.0 Multimedia controller: Broadcom Corporation 720p FaceTime HD Camera 03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM43602 802.11ac Wireless LAN SoC (rev 01) 04:00.0 SATA controller: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device a801 (rev 01) 05:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation DSL5520 Thunderbolt 2 Bridge [Falcon Ridge 4C 2013] 06:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation DSL5520 Thunderbolt 2 Bridge [Falcon Ridge 4C 2013] 06:03.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation DSL5520 Thunderbolt 2 Bridge [Falcon Ridge 4C 2013] 06:04.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation DSL5520 Thunderbolt 2 Bridge [Falcon Ridge 4C 2013] 06:05.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation DSL5520 Thunderbolt 2 Bridge [Falcon Ridge 4C 2013] 06:06.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation DSL5520 Thunderbolt 2 Bridge [Falcon Ridge 4C 2013] 07:00.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation DSL5520 Thunderbolt 2 NHI [Falcon Ridge 4C 2013]
This is the partition scheme we’ll end up with (45 GiB for OS X, 10 GiB for a shared HFS+ partition and the rest (~177.8 GiB) for a LVM container).
sudo gdisk -l /dev/sda GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.1 Partition table scan: MBR: hybrid BSD: not present APM: not present GPT: present Found valid GPT with hybrid MBR; using GPT. Disk /dev/sda: 490234752 sectors, 233.8 GiB Logical sector size: 512 bytes Disk identifier (GUID): XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX Partition table holds up to 128 entries First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 490234718 Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries Total free space is 262150 sectors (128.0 MiB) Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name 1 40 409639 200.0 MiB EF00 EFI System Partition 2 409640 94865191 45.0 GiB AF05 Customer 3 94865192 96134727 619.9 MiB AB00 Recovery HD 4 96396872 117368391 10.0 GiB AF00 hfs 5 117368392 490234718 177.8 GiB 8E00 archlinux
It’s probably a good idea to make a backup first. I didn’t because I like to live on the edge. You can boot into recovery mode later if you need to with ⌘ + R.
OS X
Get an Arch image, verify it and burn it to a USB key with something like
dd if=archlinux-2016.05.01-dual.iso of=/dev/rdisk2 bs=4M && sync
where we use rdisk2 to write to the raw disk and skip some buffering. Use diskutil to figure out which disk to use.
Then resize the OS X partition and encrypt it with FileVault.
Arch Linux
Boot into Arch by holding the right alt key. To make the console font larger, use setfont sun12x22 (the biggest one on the system).
I had to set
echo 0 > /sys/module/hid_apple/parameters/iso_layout
to fix the keyboard layout, swapping ` and ~ with < and >. (See aw: Apple Keyboard.)
Then run timedatectl set-ntp true, connect to the internet and update.
Partitioning
Apple recommend leaving a 128 MiB gap between partitions.
We leave free space after each partition to make it easier for future system software to manipulate the partition map in ways that we can’t anticipate currently.
It’s debatable whether this is worthwhile.
With cgdisk:
- delete the empty Apple partition;
- make a small future HFS/HFS+ (
af00) partition starting with+128M; - make a large LVM (
8e00) partition for the rest of the disk; - write.
It should look like this in the end.
Part. # Size Partition Type Partition Name
----------------------------------------------------------------
3.0 KiB free space
1 200.0 MiB EFI System EFI System Partition
2 45.0 GiB Apple Core Storage Customer
3 619.9 MiB Recovery HD Recovery HD
128.0 MiB free space
4 10.0 GiB Apple HFS/HFS+ hfs
5 177.8 GiB Linux LVM archlinux
Encrypting
We’re going to encrypt /dev/sdc5 with LVM on LUKS. These are approximately the results I got from cryptsetup benchmark.
cryptsetup benchmark
# Tests are approximate using memory only (no storage IO).
PBKDF2-sha1 1213629 iterations per second for 256-bit key
PBKDF2-sha256 1354749 iterations per second for 256-bit key
PBKDF2-sha512 1100289 iterations per second for 256-bit key
PBKDF2-ripemd160 897753 iterations per second for 256-bit key
PBKDF2-whirlpool 666185 iterations per second for 256-bit key
# Algorithm | Key | Encryption | Decryption
aes-cbc 128b 601.2 MiB/s 2589.5 MiB/s
serpent-cbc 128b 78.5 MiB/s 511.4 MiB/s
twofish-cbc 128b 178.7 MiB/s 328.4 MiB/s
aes-cbc 256b 443.6 MiB/s 1964.6 MiB/s
serpent-cbc 256b 79.6 MiB/s 511.2 MiB/s
twofish-cbc 256b 180.1 MiB/s 328.4 MiB/s
aes-xts 256b 2194.5 MiB/s 2182.6 MiB/s
serpent-xts 256b 492.9 MiB/s 496.6 MiB/s
twofish-xts 256b 319.2 MiB/s 324.4 MiB/s
aes-xts 512b 1703.8 MiB/s 1689.3 MiB/s
serpent-xts 512b 513.7 MiB/s 496.8 MiB/s
twofish-xts 512b 285.3 MiB/s 324.8 MiB/s
First we must fill the partition with random-looking data. There is a clever way to do this with dm-crypt.
cryptsetup open --type plain /dev/sdc5 container --key-file /dev/random dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mapper/container bs=1M status=progress cryptsetup close container
This took about 700 seconds. Next, encrypt the partition and put a logical volume on it.
cryptsetup -v --cipher aes-xts-plain64 --key-size 256 --hash sha256 --iter-time 2000 --use-urandom --verify-password luksFormat /dev/sdc5 cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdc5 lvm pvcreate /dev/mapper/lvm vgcreate vgcrypt /dev/mapper/lvm lvcreate --extents 100%FREE -n root vgcrypt mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/vgcrypt-root
Now we can mount the volume with
mount /dev/mapper/vgcrypt-root /mnt mkdir /mnt/boot mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/boot
where /dev/sdc1 is the EFI system partition.
Chrooting
The rest follows the wiki quite closely.
pacstrap -i /mnt base base-devel genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
The -U flag tells genfstab to use UUIDs. Now would be a good time to edit the fstab to add the discard option for TRIM, but let’s hold off on that.
arch-chroot /mnt /bin/bash echo xyza > /etc/hostname
Edit /etc/locale.gen and uncomment #en_IE.UTF-8.
locale-gen echo "LANG=en_IE.UTF-8" > /etc/locale.conf ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Dublin /etc/localtime
Edit the /etc/mkinitcpio.conf MODULES and HOOKS
MODULES="i915" # for a smoother boot screen ⋮ HOOKS="base udev consolefont autodetect modconf block keymap keyboard encrypt lvm2 filesystems fsck"
and build the initial ramdisk with mkinitcpio -p linux.
Now set up the bootloader.
mkdir -p /boot/loader/entries vi /boot/loader/loader.conf
and add
default arch.conf timeout 3
Check that dev/sdc1 is mounted properly with findmnt /boot. Then make and edit /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf.
title Arch Linux linux /vmlinuz-linux initrd /initramfs-linux.img options cryptdevice=/dev/sda5:vgcrypt:allow-discards root=/dev/mapper/vgcrypt-root rw
Note that there are security implications with enabling TRIM/discards.
bootctl install pacman -S iw wpa_supplicant dialog passwd
Shutdown, remove the installation media and reboot.
Configuration
Let’s make some swap space.
fallocate -l 8G /swapfile chmod 600 /swapfile mkswap swapfile swapon /swapfile
Check that this worked with free -h or swapon --show and add
/swapfile none swap defaults 0 0
to the fstab.
For user management, make a new user and add them to the admin group.
useradd -m -G wheel -s /bin/bash fionn passwd fionn
Then run visudo, uncomment # %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL, log out and then back in again as a regular user.
sudo pacman -Syu bash-completion pkgfile
Now would be a good time to import .dotfiles.
To get netctl to automatically connect to networks, install wpa_actiond and enable netctl-auto@wlp3s0.service.
The console font is very small. Install terminus-font and add the line
FONT=ter-124n
to /etc/vconsole.conf.
X11
xf86-video-intel seems to be necessary to avoid screen tearing (xf86-video-modesetting doesn’t seem to help here). Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf.
Section "Device" Identifier "Intel Graphics" Driver "intel" Option "TearFree" "true" EndSection
There’s a lot of talk about xf86-input-mtrack, but I find synaptics to be just fine. Here’s my /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf. (1, 2 and 3 correspond to left, middle and right.)
# Example xorg.conf.d snippet that assigns the touchpad driver
# to all touchpads. See xorg.conf.d(5) for more information on
# InputClass.
# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE, your distribution will likely overwrite
# it when updating. Copy (and rename) this file into
# /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d first.
# Additional options may be added in the form of
# Option "OptionName" "value"
#
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "touchpad catchall"
Driver "synaptics"
MatchIsTouchpad "on"
Option "TapButton1" "0" # 1, 2, 3 for tapping
Option "TapButton2" "0"
Option "TapButton3" "0"
# Custom options
Option "ClickFinger2" "2"
Option "ClickFinger3" "3"
Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "1"
Option "VertEdgeScroll" "1"
Option "PalmDetect" "1"
Option "RBCornerButton" "3"
# This option is recommend on all Linux systems using evdev, but cannot be
# enabled by default. See the following link for details:
# https://who-t.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-to-ignore-configuration-errors.html
MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
EndSection
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "touchpad ignore duplicates"
MatchIsTouchpad "on"
MatchOS "Linux"
MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/mouse*"
Option "Ignore" "on"
EndSection
# This option enables the bottom right corner to be a right button on clickpads
# and the right and middle top areas to be right / middle buttons on clickpads
# with a top button area.
# This option is only interpreted by clickpads.
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "Default clickpad buttons"
MatchDriver "synaptics"
Option "SoftButtonAreas" "50% 0 82% 0 0 0 0 0"
Option "SecondarySoftButtonAreas" "58% 0 0 15% 42% 58% 0 15%"
EndSection
# This option disables software buttons on Apple touchpads.
# This option is only interpreted by clickpads.
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "Disable clickpad buttons on Apple touchpads"
MatchProduct "Apple|bcm5974"
MatchDriver "synaptics"
#Option "SoftButtonAreas" "0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0"
EndSection
To swap the function and media keys, edit /etc/modprobe.d/hid_apple.conf.
options hid_apple iso_layout=0 # for the key swap earlier options hid_apple fnmode=2
To map the media keys to the hardware, install xorg-xbacklight, alsa-utils and, from the AUR, kbdlight. Edit /etc/modprobe.d/snd_hda_intel.conf.
options snd_hda_intel index=1,0
Bind the keys in ~/.i3/config with something like this.
bindsym XF86KbdBrightnessUp exec --no-startup-id kbdlight up
Lid
Edit /etc/systemd/logind.conf and set HandleLidSwitch=Ignore to stop the laptop from suspending whenever the lid is closed.
Mirrors
Grab a new mirrorlist with
cd /etc/pacman.d sudo mv mirrorlist mirrorlist.bkup sudo wget https://www.archlinux.org/mirrorlist/?country=all -O mirrorlist
and uncomment a mirror.
TRIM
TRIM the filesystem.
sudo fstrim -v / /: 163.5 GiB (175549890560 bytes) trimmed
Then enable fstrim.timer to periodically issue discards.
DPP
Put xrandr --dpi 144 in ~/.xinitrc.
GTK3+ is supposed to pick up the system DPP settings, but it doesn’t for me. The solution is to set the font size to around 16 (using e.g. lxappearance-gtk3). For Firefox, set layout.css.devPixelsPerPixel=1.4 in about:config.
For QT to pick up on the GTK theme, install adwaita-qt5 from the AUR. Also export QT_STYLE_OVERRIDE=GTK+?