In this article, I will describe the steps I took to install Ubuntu from scratch. This will involve:
- Bootstrapping the base system
- Configuring networking
- Installing Gnome
I wanted to do this for a few reasons.
The primary reason was that Ubiquity (Ubuntu’s graphical installer) doesn’t support custom Btrfs subvolumes.
It will automatically use @ for / and @home for /home.
The other reasons were that I wanted as small of an install as I could manage, and I wanted to learn a thing or two.
Changelog
I’ll keep a list of changes made to this document here. The top most item in the list will be the most recent change.
- Fix command order when mounting FS. (The mkdir was before the mount.)
Step 1: Boot up Ubuntu
You’ll need a working system to bootstrap the new one. This is up to you, but the easiest way is to create an Ubuntu USB installer and using that as your base system. This can probably be any Debian-based system, but I’m using Ubuntu.
Step 2: Create & mount the filesystem
Using your preferred partitioning tools, (re)partition your hard drive as needed. In my setup, I’ll be dual booting with Windows and using a single Btrfs partition for Linux.
Here’s what my partition layout looks like.
# fdisk -l
...
Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1 2048 206847 204800 100M EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p2 206848 239615 32768 16M Microsoft reserved
/dev/nvme0n1p3 239616 3225421940 3225182325 1.5T Microsoft basic data
/dev/nvme0n1p4 3749711872 3750746111 1034240 505M Windows recovery environment
/dev/nvme0n1p5 3225423872 3749711871 524288000 250G Linux filesystem
Next format your partitions. If you don’t already have an EFI partition, you’ll need to make one of those too.
Here’s what I did to create a Btrfs root (named ubuntu) and home (named home) subvolumes.
# mkfs.btrfs /dev/nvme0n1p5
# mkdir /mnt/ubuntu
# mount /dev/nvme0n1p5 /mnt/ubuntu
# btrfs subvol create /mnt/ubuntu/ubuntu
# btrfs subvol create /mnt/ubuntu/home
# umount /mnt/ubuntu
Then mount them.
I’m using /mnt/ubuntu, but you can substitute anything you want.
# mount /dev/nvme0n1p5 /mnt/ubuntu -o defaults,noatime,compress=lzo,subvol=ubuntu
# mkdir -p /mnt/ubuntu/{home,boot/efi}
# mount /dev/nvme0n1p5 /mnt/ubuntu/home -o defaults,noatime,compress=lzo,subvol=home
# mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /boot/efi
The noatime and compress=lzo options are up to you.
noatime is recommended often with Btrfs.
It prevents writing an access timestamp to each file when it is read.
On the other hand, compress=lzo enables Btrf’s compression using the LZO algorithm.
Step 3: Bootstrapping the new system
In this step, you’ll use the debootstrap utility to set up a minimal functioning filesystem.
# apt install debootstrap
deboostrap is a utility that will download an archive from Ubuntu’s mirror and unpack it for you.
Substitute focal for the latest Ubuntu release codename.
# debootstrap --arch amd64 focal /mnt/ubuntu
At this point, you’ll need to mount all of the device files into your newly bootstrapped directory so the system can actually be used.
# mount -t proc proc /mnt/ubuntu/proc
# mount -t sysfs sysfs /mnt/ubuntu/sys
# mount --bind /dev /mnt/ubuntu/dev
Now enter the system using chroot.
This command will enter the new system as if you logged in.
# chroot /mnt/ubuntu /bin/bash
You now have a minimally functioning chroot environment.
Step 4: Install a text editor
You’ll need to edit some text files so you’ll need to install a text editor.
My choice is vim, but if you don’t know what that is, go with nano.
From this point forward I’ll simply refer to it as editor.
# apt install vim
Step 5: Configure /etc/fstab
The /etc/fstab file tells the OS what drives to mount where when booting up.
Normally the installer generates this for you.
You’ll need to know the UUID of each device, which you can retrieve using the blkid command.
# blkid
/dev/nvme0n1p1: UUID="9A67-1849" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="EFI system partition" PARTUUID="32708646-1e61-4d73-a62c-caf62533728b"
/dev/nvme0n1p3: UUID="3E8668118667C7CB" TYPE="ntfs" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="832360bf-4d02-4923-8e4e-ca42804cb734"
/dev/nvme0n1p4: UUID="F4D0515CD0512660" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="4d367d6d-e4e7-4664-bddf-7169ae8c3d04"
/dev/nvme0n1p5: UUID="0bedd677-56f0-4488-aafc-b00d6da7193f" UUID_SUB="ab7ec365-cb24-4a60-b342-95ef9cabf600" TYPE="btrfs" PARTUUID="791bff62-39d7-45d8-93b9-cd8e4128561e"
/dev/sda2: UUID="5438A9C738A9A886" TYPE="ntfs" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="476ef537-a062-47e1-933f-b3879b635583"
Open up /etc/fstab in your editor.
# editor /etc/fstab
Next, add a line for each of the drives you mounted earlier.
The dump column should always be 0, and the fsck column should have a 1 for your root drive and 2 for any others that need to be checked.
# <device> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <fsck>
UUID=0bedd677-56f0-4488-aafc-b00d6da7193f / btrfs defaults,noatime,compress=lzo,subvol=ubuntu 0 1
UUID=0bedd677-56f0-4488-aafc-b00d6da7193f /home btrfs defaults,noatime,compress=lzo,subvol=home 0 2
UUID=9A67-1849 /boot/efi vfat defaults,noatime 0 0
Step 6: Configure the timezone
If you’re dual-booting with Windows, configure Ubuntu to use local time instead of UTC for the system clock.
# editor /etc/adjtime
Here’s what it should look like.
0.0 0 0.0
0
LOCAL
If this file doesn’t exist, the system will default to UTC. You can also substitute LOCAL with UTC to configure it explicitly.
Use this command to configure your timezone.
# dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
Step 7: Install a kernel
To be able to boot the system, you’ll need a Linux kernel. If you’re not using 64-bit system, then you’ll probably need to do something different here.
# apt install linux-image-generic
Step 8: Setup the bootloader
To actually boot the system, you’ll need a boot loader. This will install and setup Grub to be your bootloader using UEFI.
# apt install grub-efi
# grub-install --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=ubuntu
This will install the necessary files into /boot/efi and set up a boot entry in your motherboard’s NVRAM.
Step 9: Create a user
You’ll need a user for normal user activity.
Substitute me for the username you want to use.
# adduser me
Then configure a way to gain root privileges.
You can either add an admin group or give the root account a password.
# addgroup --system admin
# adduser me admin
# AND/OR
# passwd root
By default, any user in the admin group can use sudo to become root.
You can verify this by using visudo.
It opens /etc/sudoers safely and it should contain the following somewhere:
# Members of the admin group may gain root privileges
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL
If this file is messed up, it can leave you unable to gain root access.
visudo helps prevents this by checking the file’s syntax.
At this point, the system is ready to be booted and further steps are not strictly required.
Step 10: Configure networking
First, install Network Manager. This service does exactly what its name suggests.
# apt install network-manager
Next create a Netplan config file. This is a utility by Canonical to configure networking. Without this networking will not be automatically configured.
# editor /etc/netplan/50-network-manager.yaml
Enter the following:
network:
version: 2
renderer: NetworkManager
This will make Network Manager bring any ethernet devices up using DHCP.
If you’re doing this on a live system, you’ll need to apply the changes using this:
# netplan apply
Step 11: Install a desktop environment
tasksel is a useful convenience utility for installing groups of applications.
You can use it to select Ubuntu minimal to get a minimal Gnome install.
You can choose any alternatives you want here like Kubuntu, Mate, etc.
# apt install tasksel
# tasksel
Alternatively you can install a few meta packages.
# apt install ubuntu-minimal ubuntu-standard
Step 12: Boot into the system
You can now boot into the system. You should be greeted by Ubuntu’s login screen just like you normally would.
From here, you can configure the system just like you would after exiting the installer.
If you’ve gotten this far congratulations. Hopefully you’ve learned a lot.
If you have any problems either leave a comment or shoot me an email. I’m not actively monitoring comments on the site at this time, so an email should get my attention sooner.