archlinux/archinstall v2.5.0

on GitHub

(We jumped to 2.5.0 instead of 2.4.3 because of the amount of breaking changes to the API calls)

Breaking changes

• Partition().uuid now properly reports the UUID as reported by lsblk -o+UUID and not PARTUUID. A new Partition().part_uuid has been introduced where the PARTUUID is needed. This was required in order to get the FIDO2 support to work.
• archinstall/lib/disk/btrfs.py -> archinstall/lib/disk/btrfs/.* (functions should be exposed as previously, but some mistakes might exist)
• Where applicable, Partition() is not always returned anymore when working with partitions, instead BTRFSPartition might get returned in its place if it contains a BTRFS filesystem. This is so that certain functionality tied strongly to BTRFS can be delt with accordingly and not get mixed with the Partition code. BTRFSPartition extends Partition and will behave in the same way, just the type will be different and some features have moved to the BTRFSPartition class. Partition.subvolumes will get deprecated in the future but stays for now.
• mount_subvolume() have been removed, instead a instance called BtrfsSubvolume has been added and can be accessed through BTRFSSubvolume.subvolumes which in turn has a .mount() function.
• .mountpoint of different block device instances should now return pathlib.Path instead of str.
• archinstall.get_filesystem_type() no longer splits or expects paths with subvolume names in them.
• MapperDev.mountpoint now returns a pathlib.Path instead of a string
• Partition.mountpoint now returns a pathlib.Path instead of a string
• Partially fixed a bug in the menu system related to btrfs subvolumes
• luks2.unlock now returns BTRFSPartition if it detects btrfs inside the unlocked device, otherwise returns Partition as usual.
• genfstab() is no longer called automatically, instead installation.genfstab() has to be called in a appropriate time. This in order to fix the semi-urgent issue of #1276
  This will get improved in the next version with the logic described here #1133 but got pushed forward due to time limitation.

Known issues

The following issues are known and can cause some issues, but have workarounds such as editing the file passed to --config for instance and re-running archinstall with the flag

• ⚠️ If multiple partitions are encrypted, the password might bleed in to the install.log #1062 and passwords are still stored on /tmp #1111
• Some guided partitioning issues related to btrfs subvolumes - #1278
• Missing translations in some places depending on language (and in general)
• On some hardware, swap (zram) doesn't work #1230
• /etc/locale.gen (and possibly /etc/locale.conf) might get double entries set #1200

Deprecated API calls

• archinstall.get_mount_info() has been deprecated, archinstall.findmnt() has been added instead, and subsequent parsing is done where needed.

Profile changes

• awesome has been slimmed down to the absolute bare minimum. No file browser, picture viewer or screenshot utility will be installed. #1247
• qtile no longer gets dmenu installed for menu handling, instead the built-in run menu will have to be used #1243

New features:

• FIDO2 (HSM) support for systemd-boot when unlocking disk encryption has been added #1196 with a master password as backup during enrollment (This is in very early beta and have only been tested with an older blue Yubikey. Nitrokey and modern Yubikey's are en route for testing. PIN entry and different devices have not been thoroughly tested.)
• A new disk preview has been added to the main menu.
• A new disk layout preview has been added to the main menu, and general disk layout view improvements.
• A user preview has been added to the main menu.
• archinstall.general.JSON encoder now supports encoding pathlib.Path objects.
• --config, --disk-layout and --creds now all support remote loading thanks to the changes in json_stream_to_structure. A slight bug caused only --config to support this method of operation.
• Partition.format() now supports a retry=True call, that will attempt one retry of a format, in case there's a kernel delay while updating some internal cache, and simply sleeping and retrying will work.
• Improved user management and creates a new user-structure in --config thanks to #1220:

  {
  	"!root-password": "<root password>",
  	"!users": [
  		{
  			"username": "<USERNAME>",
  			"!password": "<PASSWORD>",
  			"sudo": false
  		},
  		{
  			"username": "<SUDO_USERNAME>",
  			"!password": "<PASSWORD>",
  			"sudo": true
  		}
  	]
  }

• Installation.create_users() have been added to deal with the new layout structure, individual users can still be created through Installation.create_user().
• archinstall.Deprecated exception has been added, it can be logged and finally raised before completely removing a piece of code.
• archinstall.get_fido2_devices() returns a dict[/dev/path] = {"manufacturer" : ..., "product" : ...} of all available FIDO2 devices
• archinstall.fido2_enroll(hsm_device, partition, password) has been added to enroll FIDO2 devices as a unlocking mechanism to a partition. Password is required due to the workflow of archinstall who will enroll a master password first, this it to automate operations. Post configuration can remove this master password if needed.
• Different menu types have been added, such as MenuSelectionType.Selection, MenuSelectionType.Esc, MenuSelectionType.Ctrl_c. This in order to handle the different return types of menu selections.
• Ctrl+C now clears the current option, and Esc properly backs out without modifying changes - Thanks to @svartkanin
• Locale language and Locale encoding has been brought to the main menu as it should be ready for general use now.
• network-manager-applet will now be installed if a desktop profile was used, and NetworkManager was chosen as the network manager of choice. systemd-networkd will not for instance get this installed even under a desktop profile. Probably expected behavior but I felt like mentioning it anyway.
• Partition.uuid now uses global timeout values before giving up
• Profile() has gotten a .name and a .is_desktop_profile property, name returns the basename of the profile path, and is_desktop_profile returns a boolean whether the profile belongs to the desktop group.
• General improvements to translations and more languages have been added.
  • Polish - Thanks to @MedzikUser
  • Portuguese - Thanks to @lucaspcamargo
  • Russian - Thanks to @Alexmelman88
  • Urdu - Thanks to @mfgbhatti
  • Brazilian Portuguese - Thanks to @cain-dev
  • Turkish - Thanks to @wiseweb-works & @AlperShal
  • Italian - Thanks to @gdonisi
  • Czech - Thanks to @tajnymag and @walken11
  • Spanish - Thanks to @castillofrancodamian
• archinstall.udevadm_info(path) has been added to return udevadm info /path information in a dict like fashion
• archinstall.log() now supports the colod teal (as well as an alias called grey which translates to gray)
• archinstall.mount_ordered_layout() now uses a queue system for mounts, where mount calls are frozen using lambda calls and then sorted. In the future there might be a plugin opportunity here, as well as the option to inject mounts into this process without needing to go through the layout process.

Bug fixes / Tweaks

• Fixed a severe issue (#1197) where Mark as encrypted option in the guided partitioning tool would mark all partitions for encryption. This due to a function called select_encrypted_partitions() that was neglected and acted as a bit of a prototype function for future work, which would allow selecting which partitions to encrypt. This function is now developed as intended and an option to select one or more encrypted volumes will be presented - without additional partitions being encrypted.
• Fixed a bug where children wouldn't always exist in the lsblk report
• We hid the Arch ISO (and similar devices) from the disk selection #1275
• Menu.yes_no() was causing a bug, that has been fixed
• DISK_RETRY_ATTEMPTS has been lowered from 20 to 5 to improve overall experience in timing. This may result in some older hardware timing out - if so please do report it.
• BlockDevice properties are for the most part cached properties, meaning the information will not update between calls.
• BlockDevice.get_partition has been optimized
• Added a warning when the selected disk is too low on space to suggest a automatic layout
• SysCommandWorker now longer breaks when cmd is a string and it's trying to output to the cmd_log. It only worked with lists previously.
• SysCommand* now properly changes directory only for the child process, previously both the parent and the forked process would change directory to the specified working_directory, and both would change back immediately. This has been corrected so only the parent changes back immediately after forking.
• SysCommand now supports working_directory parameter, and passes it to SysCommandWorker as expected.
• archinstall.Boot() which boots an installation now has a bit better error handling in terms of exit code by having better debug output.
• json_stream_to_structure now supports loading resources remotely.
• The menu system now only takes into account the visible menu entries when structuring the layout. Previously hidden items would also account for the layout dimensions.
• Save configuration -> All now properly saves all configurations, including disk configurations. There is still a small discrepancy between the automated save of configuration during installation and this save option. It's a known issue and will be fixed in the next release.