Disk Formatting

Three partitions for this example - EFI, swap and then a single BTRFS for everything else

One consequence is that you can’t snapshot /boot (as it’s formatted to FAT32)…

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Create GPT Partition Table disk
EFI partition, FAT32 format, 512M (will mount on /boot ) e.g. /dev/sda1
swap e.g. /dev/sda2
BTRFS filesystem for root,var,home etc e.g. /dev/sda3

Install Arch

mkswapfs / swapon etc

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mount /dev/sda3 /mnt
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@root
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@var
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@snapshots
umount /mnt
mount -o noatime,compress=lzo,space_cache,subvol=@root /dev/sda3 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/{boot,var,.snapshots}
mount -o noatime,compress=lzo,space_cache,subvol=@var /dev/sda3 /mnt/var
mount -o noatime,compress=lzo,space_cache,subvol=@snapshots /dev/sda3 /mnt/.snapshots
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
pacstrap /mnt base
genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
arch-chroot /mnt

then setup /etc/locale.gen locale-gen /etc/locale.conf hostname

UEFI Boot setup

/boot will hold the EFI boot files. This makes it easy to reference the kernel in the refind config, and keep it updated with no extra effort

refind.conf requires a manual entry, as we need to specify the root BTRFS subvolume to get the PARTUUID use

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blkid /dev/sda3
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pacman -S refind-efi
cp /usr/share/refind/refind_x64.efi /boot/EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi
cp -r /usr/share/refind/drivers_x64/ /boot/EFI/Boot/

/boot/EFI/Boot/refind.conf

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scanfor manual
timeout 1 # -1 for immediate
menuentry "Blah" {
  loader vmlinuz-linux
  initrd initramfs-linux.img
  options "root=PARTUUID=XX rw rootflags=subvol=@root add_efi_memmap"
}

exit