For directly installing Debian Sid not supported by the Debian installer, namely:

Single LUKS2 encrypted partition which contains the full installation
Single BTRFS filesystem (integrated home partition)
Encrypted swapfile in BTRFS subvolume (supports laptop suspend but not hibernate)
Uses systemd-boot bootloader (instead of Grub2, also optional rEFInd instructions)
Minimal Gnome install (plus instructions for any other DE you wish)
Proper user groups for common security tools like sudo-less Wireshark, etc...
Optional removal of crypto keys from RAM during laptop suspend
Optional configurations for laptops (including fingerprint readers)
Optional dualboot to Windows
Emergency recovery steps for failed bootloaders or other problems

Originally created in 2021-11, check GitHub Gist Revisions for last update

Debian installation (debootstrap)

Pre-installation setup

Boot from latested stable or testing release of Debian/Ubuntu LiveISO.

Installed needed packages

apt install debbootstrap cryptsetup arch-install-scripts

Partitions - Part 1

Creating partitions

Perform formatting and partitioning with Gnome Disks or parted.

Format drive using gpt partition table
Make partitions but do not create filesystems (If using Gnome Disks, choose filesystem other then No Filesystem)
Label your partitions

Suggested partitions on example drive /dev/nvme0n1:

/dev/nvme0n1p1 with label EFI for UEFI (suggested 1GB, systemd-boot stores kernel+initrd here)
/dev/nvme0n1p2 with label Debian install (will include /boot and swap)
optional extra unpartitioned free space for Windows

Verify partition names with lsblk and write down partion UUIDs from blkid before proceeding.

Open a terminal and sudo -s to root.

Install the needed packages:

apt install debootstrap

Preparing partitions

Format the first partition as EFI (boot) and set needed flags:

mkfs.fat -F 32 -n EFI /dev/nvme0n1p1
parted /dev/nvme0n1 set 1 esp on
parted /dev/nvme0n1 set 1 boot on

Prepare the main encrypted partition

cryptsetup -y -v --type luks2 luksFormat --label Debian_Sid /dev/nvme0n1p2

Respond with a "YES" and enter a passphrase twice (-y provides this).

Open the main partition with a name "cryptroot"

cryptsetup open /dev/nvme0n1p2 cryptroot
<passphrase>

Format the main partition as btrfs

mkfs.btrfs /dev/mapper/cryptroot

Partitions - Part 2

Creating BTRFS subvolumes

Mount main partition temporarily

mount /dev/mapper/cryptroot /mnt

Create subvolumes for rootfs, home, var and snapshots

btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@home
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@snapshots
btrfs subvolume create /mnt/@swap

Unmount the partition

umount /mnt

Re-mounting subvolumes as partitions to /mnt

mount -o noatime,compress=zstd:1,subvol=@ /dev/mapper/cryptroot /mnt
mkdir -p /mnt/{boot,home,.snapshots}
mkdir /mnt/boot/efi
mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot/efi
mount -o noatime,compress=zstd:1,subvol=@home /dev/mapper/cryptroot /mnt/home
mount -o noatime,compress=zstd:1,subvol=@snapshots /dev/mapper/cryptroot /mnt/.snapshots

Setup your swapfile, change the `count` value in the `dd` command to meet your needs

mkdir -p /mnt/swap
mount -o subvol=@swap /dev/mapper/cryptroot /mnt/swap
touch /mnt/swap/swapfile
chmod 600 /mnt/swap/swapfile
chattr +C /mnt/swap/swapfile
btrfs property set ./swapfile compression none
dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/swap/swapfile bs=1M count=16384
mkswap /mnt/swap/swapfile
swapon /mnt/swap/swapfile

Base installation

Bootstrapping a base-system

With all partitions mounted, run

debootstrap --arch amd64 sid /mnt

Create a child subvolme for /var/log contained inside of your @ subvolme. These will be auto-mounted with @ so there is no need to add it separately to /etc/fstab. This will keep our log files from being included in our snapshots so our log files remain untouched if we ever restore our rootfs from snapshot. WARNING: Do not do this for all of /var, as many subvolders in /var such as /var/lib need to stay sinked with applications installed in /usr. Creating a separate subvolume for /var is common in ZFS but ZFS handles snapshots and restorations differently than BTRFS. So do not blindly following ZFS subvolume suggestions for BTRFS.

btrfs subvolume create /mnt/var/log

Preparing the `chroot` environment

Copy the mounted file systems table

cp /etc/mtab /mnt/etc/mtab

Bind the pseudo-filesystems for chroot

mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount -o bind /dev/pts /mnt/dev/pts
mount -o bind /proc /mnt/proc
mount -o bind /sys /mnt/sys

Generating fstab

Run genfstab from arch-install-scripts we installed earlier to help setup fstab for us

genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab

Changing root to the new system

chroot /mnt

Configuration

Setting timezone

dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Choose an appropriate region.

Setting locale

dpkg-reconfigure locales

Choose en_US.UTF-8 from the list of locales, or whatever is appropriate for you.

Setting `HOSTNAME` for your machine, this example uses `gtfo`

echo 'gtfo' > /etc/hostname
echo '127.0.1.1 gtfo.localdomain gtfo' >> /etc/hosts

Setting up `apt` sources

Update /etc/apt/sources.list to contain the following:

deb https://deb.debian.org/debian sid main contrib non-free

Install your your desktop environment

apt update
apt install linux-headers-amd64 firmware-iwlwifi firmware-linux firmware-linux-nonfree sudo vim bash-completion command-not-found plocate systemd-timesyncd usbutils hwinfo v4l-utils

Install whichever desktop environment you want, my prefernce is a basic, bare-bones install of Gnome:

apt install gnome-core

Other Desktop Environment (DE) options are:

# task-cinnamon-desktop
# task-gnome-desktop
# task-kde-desktop
# task-lxde-desktop
# task-lxqt-desktop
# task-mate-desktop
# task-xfce-desktop

If you are installing this on a laptop:

apt install task-laptop powertop gnome-power-manager linux-cpupower cpupower-gui

Creating users and groups

Setting root password

passwd

Creating a non-root user

Create your main user. Replace meeas with your username below.

useradd meeas -m -c "Justin Searle" -s /bin/bash

Set password for your user

passwd meeas

Add user to sudo group

usermod -aG sudo,adm,dialout,cdrom,floppy,audio,dip,video,plugdev,users,netdev,bluetooth,wireshark meeas

Setting up bootloader

Installing bootloader utils

apt install efibootmgr btrfs-progs cryptsetup-initramfs

Optional package for extra protection suspsended laptops

One attack vector for encrypted filesystems on laptops is to steal the crypto keys from RAM while the system is suspected. The keys are left in RAM to maintain access to the filesystem upon waking. Linux has LUKS2 support to remove the cypto keys from memory to close this vulnerability, but it does require you to type your LUKS2 passphrase when you wake it from suspend. If you want this extra protection:

apt install cryptsetup-suspend

Setting up encryption parameters

Use blkid to get the UUID of your encrypted partition, which is /dev/nvme0n1p2 in this example

Create an entry in the /etc/crypttab file

cryptroot <tab> UUID=uuid-of-encrypted-partition <tab> none <tab> luks

Setup systemd-boot (instead of Grub)

If you want to use rEFInd as your bootloader, you will still need to do these steps as rEFInd will need systemd-boot to access the LUKS2 encrypted root filesystem.

bootctl install
mkdir -p /boot/efi/`cat /etc/machine-id`
kernel-install add `uname -r` /boot/vmlinuz-`uname -r`

# Previous comamnds just in case someone needs them
bootctl install
V=`ls /boot/vmlinuz-* | cut -d - -f 2-`
kernel-install add $V /boot/vmlinuz-$V

Setup auto-updating of system-boot

Create and set permissions on the auto-install script

touch /etc/kernel/postinst.d/zz-update-systemd-boot
chmod +x /etc/kernel/postinst.d/zz-update-systemd-boot

Edit this file to contain the following text:

#!/bin/sh
set -e
/usr/bin/kernel-install add "$1" "$2"
exit 0

Create and set permissions on the auto-remove script

touch /etc/kernel/postrm.d/zz-update-systemd-boot
chmod +x /etc/kernel/postrm.d/zz-update-systemd-boot

Edit this file to contain the following text:

#!/bin/sh
set -e
/usr/bin/kernel-install remove "$1"
exit 0

Testing your new bootloader

Exit chroot

exit

Unmount all mounted partitions

umount -a

Reboot

reboot

If your bootloader fails and does not allow you to boot into your new system, follow the istructrions in the [Emergency Recovery] sections below to try this section again.

Post installation

Basic system configuration

Console setup

Assuming you are now logged into your newly created useraccount (and not root)

sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

Connecting to the internet

As long as you installed gnome-core as recommended in the previous steps, you can use the GUI to setup your Internet.

If you didn't install a DE like Gnome, you can use nmtui to setup your network at the command prompt.

Install whatever other software you need or want. I'd suggest this at a minimum:

sudo apt install git curl wget wireshark

If you have a fingerprint reader:

sudo apt install libpam-fprintd
sudo pam-auth-update    ### Enable fingerprint authentication
fprintd-enroll
fprintd-verify

If you want to use rEFInd as your bootloader

Personally, I recommend just staying with systemd-boot in most scenarios since it supports multi-boot out of the box and rEFInd still needs it to boot into the encrypted rootfs. But the one scenario I personally use rEFInd is if you have dual hard drives, each with an EFI partition with separate bootloaders. In this instance, rEFInd will auto-detect all the bootloaders on both drives allowing an easy path to boot whatever OS is there. For me, this second drive is a 1TB USB module that I can insert into the removable USB modules of my Framework laptop, which contains several other Linux distro installs that I play with. rEFInd allows to me boot to any of them directly if it detects the drive is inserted. This also allows me to install anything I with to the USB module and and its EFI partition without modifying my main drive's EFI partition.

If you decide this is for you, then:

sudo apt install refind
sudo refind-install
sudo refind-mkdefault

Reboot and verify rEFInd comes up and that it can see/use your systemd-boot loader.

Working with BTRFS snapshots

When to create BTRFS subvolumes

BTRFS snapshots allow you to backup and restore all files in a BTRFS subvolume. Sometimes there are subdirectory trees that you do not want included in your backup/restore because they are variable data like logs, because they are backed up elsewhere, or because you want to have a different BTRFS backup scheme for that subdirectory tree.. I have found this to be the primariy reason for creating BTRFS subvolumes.

Subvolumes for the main OS

For our root filesystem, this guide has you create the following subvolumes for the following reasons:

Subvolume @, mounted to / for our root filesystem so we can back it up upon package installs/updates
Subvolume @home, mounted to /home/ for your main user so we can back it up on a fixed schedule, separate from our root filesystem. If your are installing this on a machine with mulitple different users, you could instead create a separate BTRFS subvolume for each user under home instead of /home/ itself.
Subvolume @/var/log so we don't loose log history of our root filesystem restorations. Unlike the other two, this is a child subvolme to @ so does not have its own entry in /etc/fstab.

If you use container technology such as Docker or LXC/LXD, these tools will probably create a few more child subvolumes under @ for each of your containers.

Subvolumes in home folders

For my home folder, I create a separate subvolume for ~/Downloads so keep thoes disposable files from being backedup. BTW, you do not need to use sudo when creating subvolumes in your user's home directory.

rm ~/Downloads
btrfs create subvolume ~/Downloads

If you use a product to sync files with Google Drive or some other cloud storage, I recommend keeping a separate subvolume to keep them from your home folder backups. I personally use Insync to sync certain files from Google Drive, so I create:

btrfs create subvolume ~/Google

If you do any software development, you are probably are saving your sourcecode elsewhere using tools like git. Therefore I usually exclude those folders from my home user backups with:

btrfs create subvolume ~/GitHub
btrfs create subvolume ~/go

If you use virtualization products, at a minimum you need to turn off CoW features of BTRFS to avoid their virtualdisk block writes from thrashing your BTRFS filesystem and SSD. I also like creating separate subvolumes so my home folder backups don't backup the VMs as I consider all of my VMs disposable. Here is what I do for the three virtualization products I use. This will automatically get Gnome Boxes saving VMs to the right place, but you will need to manually configure VMware and VirtualBox to create their VMs in the folders we create for them below.

btrfs create subvolume ~/VMs
mkdir ~/VMs/VirtualBox ~/VMs/VMware ~/VMs/Gnome-Boxes
chattr +C ~/VMs ~/VMs/*
ln -s ~/VMs/Gnome-Boxes ~/.local/share/gnome-boxes/images

Emergency Recovery

Boot from a Debian/Ubuntu Live CD, open a terminal, sudo -s to root, then:

sudo -i
cryptsetup open /dev/nvme0n1p2 cryptroot
mount -o noatime,compress=zstd:1,subvol=@ /dev/mapper/cryptroot /mnt
mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot/efi
mount -o noatime,compress=zstd:1,subvol=@home /dev/mapper/cryptroot /mnt/home
mount -o noatime,compress=zstd:1,subvol=@snapshots /dev/mapper/cryptroot /mnt/.snapshots
mount -o subvol=@swap /dev/mapper/cryptroot /mnt/swap
swapon /mnt/swap/swapfile
cp /etc/mtab /mnt/etc/mtab
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount -o bind /dev/pts /mnt/dev/pts
mount -o bind /proc /mnt/proc
mount -o bind /sys /mnt/sys
chroot /mnt

meeas/DebianSid_on_LUKS-BTRFS_with_systemd-boot.md