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Partitioning

This guide assumes an LVM + Btrfs setup. We are not going to create SWAP on disk but are rather going to employ Zram later on.

  1. List disks with fdisk -l
  2. Run cfdisk /dev/nvme0n1 (it's a little bit easier to use) Make sure that /dev/nvme0n1 is actually your desired device!
  3. Partition with the following scheme
    FS Type Size Mount Point Comment
    vfat 1G /boot EFI System
    LVM (remaining) Linux LVM
  4. Run cfdisk /dev/sda Make sure that /dev/sda is actually your desired device!
  5. Partition with the following scheme
    FS Type Size Mount Point Comment
    LVM (all) Linux LVM
  6. Create LVM physical volumes
    pvcreate /dev/nvme0n1p2   # SSD
pvcreate /dev/sda1        # HDD
  7. Create LVM volume group
    vgcreate VOL_GROUP_NAME /dev/nvme0n1p2 /dev/sda1
  8. Create LVM logical volumes
    lvcreate -l 100%FREE -n lv_root vg0 /dev/sda1
lvcreate --type cache-pool -n lv_cache -l 100%FREE vg0 /dev/nvme0n1p2

# Link cache devices
lvconvert --type cache --cachepool vg0/lv_cache vg0/lv_root
  9. Create partitions
    mkfs.fat -F 32 /dev/nvme0n1p1        # EFI System Partition
mkfs.btrfs /dev/mapper/vg0-lv_root   # Btrfs root volume
  10. Create Btrfs subvolumes
    # First, mount root file system
mount /dev/mapper/vg0-lv_root /mnt

# Create subvolumes
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@home
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@cache
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@pkg
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@log
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@kvmimg@var_log
  11. Mount Btrfs subvolumespartitions
    umount -R /mnt

mount /dev/mapper/vg0-lv_root -o noatime,compress-force=zstd,space_cache=v2,subvol=@ /mnt
mkdir -p /mnt/{boot,home,var/log}
mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot
mount /dev/mapper/vg0-lv_root -o noatime,compress-force=zstd,subvol=@ /mnt
mkdir -p /mnt/{home,var/cache,var/cache/pacman/pkg,var/log,var/lib/libvirt/images}
mount /dev/mapper/vg0-lv_root -o compress-force=zstd,space_cache=v2,subvol=@home /mnt/home
mount /dev/mapper/vg0-lv_root -o noatime,compress-force=zstd,space_cache=v2,subvol=@cache /mnt/var/cache
mount /dev/mapper/vg0-lv_root -o compress-force=zstd,subvol=@pkg /mnt/var/cache/pacman/pkg
mount /dev/mapper/vg0-lv_root -o compress-force=zstd,subvol=@log@var_log /mnt/var/log
mount /dev/mapper/vg0-lv_root -o nodatacow,subvol=@kvmimg /mnt/var/lib/libvirt/images
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