Aegis Installer

Aegis is a terminal-based installer, developed, tailored and optimized specifically for Athena OS.

To provide more accessible resources to the users, Aegis provides a terminal interface to configure and install your systems according to your preferences.

Aegis will improve over time in order to detect automatically your hardware. It means that the installer is able to detect your environment (baremetal or virtualized), your CPU and your GPU. According to this information, all the needed drivers are automatically installed with no any actions by your side.

Aegis can be run by running aegis command and requires a working Internet connection.

Its purpose is to generate JSON system and drive configuration files containing all the user choices, set during the installation. The JSON configuration files will be saved as hidden temporary files /tmp directory. Configurations have the following structure:

System Config

{
  "config": {
    "base": "Athena Arch",
    "design": "temple",
    "desktop_environment": "gnome",
    "display_manager": "cyberpunk",
    "hostname": "athenaos",
    "keyboard_layout": "us",
    "language": null,
    "locale": "en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8",
    "root_passwd_hash": "*REDACTED*",
    "timezone": "Europe/Rome",
    "users": [
      {
        "groups": [
          "wheel"
        ],
        "password_hash": "*REDACTED*",
        "shell": "fish",
        "username": "athena"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Drives Config

{
  "drives": {
    "content": {
      "partitions": [
        {
          "action": "delete",
          "blockdevice": "/dev/sdb1",
          "end": "1026047",
          "filesystem": "ext4",
          "flags": [],
          "label": null,
          "mountpoint": "/mnt/boot",
          "sectors": 1024000,
          "size": "524M",
          "start": "2048",
          "type": "filesystem"
        },
        {
          "action": "delete",
          "blockdevice": "/dev/sdb2",
          "end": "30711807",
          "filesystem": "ext4",
          "flags": [],
          "label": null,
          "mountpoint": "/mnt",
          "sectors": 29685760,
          "size": "15G",
          "start": "1026048",
          "type": "filesystem"
        },
        {
          "action": "create",
          "blockdevice": "/dev/sdb1",
          "end": "1026047",
          "filesystem": "ext4",
          "flags": [
            "boot"
          ],
          "label": "BOOT",
          "mountpoint": "/boot",
          "sectors": 1024000,
          "size": "524M",
          "start": "2048",
          "type": "filesystem"
        },
        {
          "action": "create",
          "blockdevice": "/dev/sdb2",
          "end": "28614655",
          "filesystem": "btrfs",
          "flags": [],
          "label": "ROOT",
          "mountpoint": "/",
          "sectors": 27588608,
          "size": "14G",
          "start": "1026048",
          "type": "filesystem"
        },
        {
          "action": "create",
          "blockdevice": "/dev/sdb3",
          "end": "30711807",
          "filesystem": "swap",
          "flags": [],
          "label": "SWAP",
          "mountpoint": null,
          "sectors": 2097152,
          "size": "1G",
          "start": "28614656",
          "type": "filesystem"
        }
      ],
      "type": "msdos"
    },
    "device": "/dev/sdb",
    "type": "disk"
  }
}

The installation logs will be saved to /tmp/aegis.log and copied to the installed system to /var/log/aegis.log.

Open the terminal and run:

sudo aegis

Choose your favourite base system

Note

Some options can vary according to the chosen base system.

Timezone

Select the timezone

Keyboard Layout

Select the keyboard layout

Note

In Wayland environments, you must manually set the keyboard layout on the installed system.

Locale

Select the locale

Partitioning

Select Use a best-effort default partition layout or Configure partitions manually according to your need:

Note

At this time, any choice done on partitioning does not affect your disks or partitions.

Use a best-effort default partition layout

By clicking on this mode, you are asked to select among the available disks or devices.

Once you select one, you are asked for a swap device.

Note

Zram will be automatically enabled, so for systems with 4GB+ RAM, you don’t actually need to create a Swap partition.

Next, you must choose the filesystem for your root partition where Athena OS will be installed.

Tip

btrfs is a good choice.

Once confirmed, it will automatically propose a partitioning layout for you.

Note

Aegis detects the type of Partition Table set on the selected disk. If it is msdos, it will create a BIOS/Legacy GRUB boot partition; if it is gpt, it will create a EFI boot partition.

Configure partitions manually

By clicking on this mode, you are asked to select among the available disks or devices.

Once you select one, you get the list of the current partition of the disk.

Create boot partition

Only for EFI partitions: if you are in dual boot with a Windows and/or Linux that use an existing EFI partition, it is not necessary to create a new one.

You can mainly create a partition by an available free space or by deleting a specific partition and use the derived free space, or by replacing an existing partition.

Create from free space

In case you need to create a new EFI or GRUB Legacy partition, and no free space is already available, select an existing partition to be deleted, and select Delete Partition. It will create a new free entry and press “Enter”.

It will ask for size. Type 512MiB.

UEFI Boot Partition

As filesystem, select fat32 and as mount point, type /boot/efi.

GRUB Legacy Boot Partition

As filesystem, select ext4 and as mount point, type /boot.

Finally, don’t select Encryption (LUKS) and press on Continue.

Create by replacing an existing partition

From the partition list, select an existing partition you want to replace and use all its space for your boot partition. Note that the partition must be 512MiB, don’t waste further space by replacing bigger partitions.

Select the interested partition.

Press on Mark For Modification entry.

Tip

If you don’t see all the entries in the image, expand your terminal.

UEFI Boot Partition

Enter on Set Mount Point and type /boot/efi. Successively, check on Mark as bootable partition and Mark as ESP partition flags. In this manner the installer will be aware you are creating an EFI boot partition.

Click on Change Filesystem and select fat32.

Finally, select Back.

GRUB Legacy Boot Partition

Enter on Set Mount Point and type /boot. Successively, check on Mark as bootable partition flag. In this manner the installer will be aware you are creating a GRUB Legacy boot partition.

Click on Change Filesystem and select ext4.

Finally, select Back.

If you are in a UEFI system, and you are going to encrypt the root partition, first you need to create an additional partition of “1024MiB” to store GRUB configuration file.

Create root partition

Create from free space

In case no free space is already available, select an existing partition to be deleted or more contiguous of them, and select Delete Partition. It will create a new free entry and press “Enter”.

It will ask for size. Type any value you wish. If you need to use all the space, you can insert 100%.

As filesystem, select any value you wish.

Tip

btrfs is a good choice.

As mount point, type /. Finally, evaluate if encrypt the root partition by checking on Encryption (LUKS) or not. At the end, press on Continue.

Create by replacing an existing partition

From the partition list, select an existing partition you want to replace and use all its space for your root partition.

Select the interested partition.

Press on Mark For Modification entry.

Tip

If you don’t see all the entries in the image, expand your terminal.

Enter on Set Mount Point and type /. If you want to encrypt the root partition, check on Encryption (LUKS) flag.

Click on Change Filesystem and select any value you wish.

Tip

btrfs is a good choice.

Finally, select Back.

Create swap partition

Creating a partition would be useful only on low-memory systems (less than 4GB of RAM).

If you want to create a Swap Partition, you can follow one of the two approaches used for root partition above, but as filesystem select swap.

Last steps

Once all partitions have been configured, just press on Confirm and Exit.

Hostname

Set the hostname

Root password

Set the password for root account

Users

Set your user account

By pressing on Add a new user you can setup your account.

Then, you can assign Linux groups to the account.

Tip

Assign the wheel group if your user account needs of sudo power.

Desktop

Select your favourite environment

Login Manager

The display manager will be SDDM. Select your favourite theme for login.

Design

Select your favourite design

Installation

Press on Done and review your JSON configuration.

Finally, if you are ready to install, proceed on Begin Installation.

During the installation, installation logs are saved in /tmp/aegis.log.

If the installation fails, you can generate a link with install logs that can be used for troubleshooting.

Communicate the link to Athena OS Team for getting support.

Tip

If the screen locks due to user inactivity, unlock the screen by using athena as password.

If no errors have been raised during the installation phase, you are ready to use Athena OS!

Before rebooting, if you installed Athena OS in dual boot with Windows, as explained in the related section, and you used the boot partition intended for Windows, restore Microsoft bootloader inside the boot partition (i.e., /dev/nvme0n1p1):

sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt
sudo cp -rf ~/Microsoft /mnt/EFI/
sudo umount /mnt

Once you reboot, and you land on the installed system, open the terminal and run:

sudo os-prober
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

In this manner, Windows entry should be added in GRUB.

Note

At the end of a successful installation in an EFI system, you could get a message like:

⚠ Mount point '/boot' which backs the random seed file is world accessible, which is a security hole! ⚠
⚠ Random seed file '/boot/loader/.#bootctlrandom-seedc5706ea22f8895b0' is world accessible, which is a security hole! ⚠
Random seed file /boot/loader/random-seed successfully written (32 bytes).

It is related to all Linux systems, but it should be mitigated by using encrypted partitions. To get more details about this warning, refer to this resource.

For Athena Nix installation, once reboot and land on the installed system, initialize Nix Channels by opening the terminal and running:

sudo nix-channel --update