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Post-install configurator for Arch Linux — opinionated, interactive, and idempotent.

Hosted at post-install-arch.vercel.app

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Quick Start

bash <(curl -fsSL https://post-install-arch.vercel.app/post-install.sh)

Do not run as root. The script will prompt for sudo only when necessary.

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Overview

This script automates the most tedious parts of setting up an Arch Linux system after a fresh install. It uses gum for a polished, interactive TUI experience and handles everything from installing an AUR helper to configuring your bootloader theme.

All actions are logged, all critical steps are verified, and the script is safe to re-run — already-installed components are detected and skipped.

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Full Boot Rice Stack

Every layer of the boot sequence, themed.
From first pixel to desktop — a complete end-to-end rice of the Arch boot chain.

01 GRUB → 02 Plymouth → 03 SDDM → 04 Desktop

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01 — GRUB Star Trek Theme

Installs the startrek-blue GRUB theme and writes a clean, single-entry GRUB configuration.

Setting	Value
Theme path	/boot/grub/themes/startrek-blue/
Theme source	post-install-arch.vercel.app/startrek-blue.zip
Submenus	Disabled (GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU=y)
OS Prober	Disabled (GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=true)
Splash	quiet splash added to kernel cmdline

Partition and kernel detection are fully automatic. The script uses findmnt and blkid to detect:

• Your root partition UUID (root=UUID=… — stable across hardware changes)
• Your /boot partition UUID for the GRUB search command
• Your btrfs subvolume rootflags, if applicable
• Your microcode image (amd-ucode.img or intel-ucode.img)
• Your installed kernel by scanning /boot/vmlinuz-* at runtime

Kernel detection supports any kernel package — linux, linux-lts, linux-zen, linux-hardened, or any custom kernel. If multiple kernels are found you will be prompted to choose one. The matching initramfs-<kernel>.img is verified to exist before the GRUB entry is written.

It then writes a clean /etc/grub.d/40_custom entry and disables the auto-generated 10_linux and 30_os-prober scripts so only your named entry appears in the menu. You will be prompted to name the menu entry (defaults to Arch Linux).

Existing /etc/default/grub and /etc/grub.d/40_custom are backed up to .bak before any changes are made.

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02 — Plymouth Boot Splash

Sets up a smooth animated splash screen shown during boot. Installs the custom arch-glow theme:

Step	Action
Install	plymouth via pacman
Theme	arch-glow from post-install-arch.vercel.app/arch-glow.zip
Hook	Injects plymouth after udev or systemd in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
Rebuild	Runs mkinitcpio -P to apply the new initramfs

The theme is automatically detected and set as default via plymouth-set-default-theme -R.

The script detects whether your preset uses the udev or systemd initramfs hook and injects plymouth in the correct position. If neither hook is found the step fails with a clear error rather than silently doing nothing.

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03 — SDDM Display Manager

default.mp4

Installs and enables SDDM as the system display manager, and applies the SilentSDDM theme.

Step	Action
Install	sddm, qt6-declarative via pacman
Enable	systemctl enable sddm
Theme	Cloned from uiriansan/SilentSDDM
Fallback	If theme install fails, SDDM is still enabled with the default theme

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04 — Desktop — DMS + Quickshell

The final layer: a fully themed desktop environment built on two components installed in sequence.

DMS Linux — danklinux.com is a curated dotfile and configuration suite for a polished Material Shell desktop. Fetched and piped directly from the official installer:

Source: https://install.danklinux.com

Quickshell — quickshell.outfoxxed.me is a highly configurable Qt-based shell component toolkit installed from the AUR:

Package: quickshell-git
Source:  AUR (via yay)

quickshell-git is installed before DMS Linux runs. The AUR build is more upstream than the pacman repo package and is the version Dank targets — it has additional features enabled that the repo package ships without. Installing it first pre-satisfies the dependency so Dank's installer never touches it; if DMS runs first and pulls in the repo version instead, conflicts and hard-to-diagnose breakage can follow.

If quickshell (the pacman repo package) is already installed the AUR build is skipped and a warning is printed noting the repo version may lack features. If quickshell-git is already installed it is silently skipped.

The DMS installer is interactive — it runs directly in your terminal with no output redirection so its TUI renders normally. The script prints a notice before handing control over.

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Extra Packages

After the boot rice stack is applied, install anything else you need.

You will be prompted to enter additional packages one per line. Smart routing handles the rest:

• Packages found in the official repositories → installed via pacman
• Unknown packages or those prefixed with aur: → installed via yay

# Example input
firefox
neovim
aur:zen-browser-bin

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Pre-flight Checks

Eight checks run before a single package is touched.

Check	Requirement
User	Must not be run as root
Commands	curl, unzip, git, findmnt, blkid — auto-installed if missing
Internet	Must be reachable (curl to archlinux.org)
Disk space	At least 5 GB free on /
System	Arch or Arch-based (Manjaro, EndeavourOS, Garuda, CachyOS, Artix)
Compositor	Niri or Hyprland must be present (required by DMS Linux)
TUI tools	gum and fzf — auto-installed via pacman if missing
AUR helper	yay — auto-built and installed from AUR if missing

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Safety Features

• Re-entrant — already-installed packages are detected and skipped gracefully
• Automatic backups — GRUB config files get .bak copies before modification
• set -euo pipefail — the script exits immediately on any unexpected error
• trap cleanup EXIT — temp files are cleaned up even if the script is interrupted
• No root execution — the script refuses to run as root; sudo is invoked only for specific commands

Every action is written to a timestamped log file at /tmp/arch-post-install-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.log. The log persists after the script finishes. If any step fails, the log location is printed to the console.

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Configuration

You can override default settings by creating a config file at ~/.config/arch-post-install.conf:

# Example: point to a local or alternate mirror
BASE_URL="https://mirror.example.com/arch"

This file is sourced automatically at startup if it exists.

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Compatibility

Distro	Status
Arch Linux	✅ Fully supported
EndeavourOS	✅ Supported
Manjaro	✅ Supported
Garuda Linux	✅ Supported
CachyOS	✅ Supported
Artix Linux	✅ Supported
Other Arch-based	⚠️ Should work, not tested

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Files

File	Description
post-install.sh	The main post-install script
arch-glow.zip	Plymouth boot splash theme
startrek-blue.zip	GRUB bootloader theme

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License

This script is part of the danadavis.dev project and is provided as-is for personal use.