Welcome to Jae’s Tech Tips.

As my first blog post, I decided to write a tutorial about installing Void Linux on an external SSD from another Linux distribution. This might be helpful for those like me who is forced to use Windows at work, but prefer using Linux at home.

Let’s get started by connecting your external SSD to your computer:

1# fdisk -l
2
3(...)
4
5Disk /dev/sdb: 29 GB, 30765219840 bytes, 60088320 sectors
629340 cylinders, 64 heads, 32 sectors/track
7Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
8
9Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table

Partitioning the device

Now that we know /dev/sdb refers to the external device, we can start partitioning it.

1# wipefs -a /dev/sdb
2# cfdisk /dev/sdb

• Label Type: gpt
  • /dev/sdb1 (128M): “EFI System”
  • /dev/sdb2 (2G): “Linux Swap”
  • /dev/sdb3 (26.5G): “Linux Filesystem”

Don’t forget to write the partition table before quitting cfdisk!

Syncing disks.

Making file systems

Next, we need to make a file system on each partition:

1# mkfs.vfat /dev/sdb1
2# mkswap /dev/sdb2
3# mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb3

Let’s mount each partition as follows:

# mount /dev/sdb3 /mnt/
# mkdir -p /mnt/boot/efi/
# mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /mnt/boot/efi/

Optionally, if you’re working in a virtual machine:

# mount -o rbind /dev /mnt/dev
# mount -o rbind /proc /mnt/proc
# mount -o rbind /sys /mnt/sys

Bootstrapping via chroot

We’re going to install Void Linux by unpacking the ‘rootfs’ tarball first, and then entering the chroot environment to configure the base system:

1# wget https://repo-default.voidlinux.org/live/current/void-x86_64-ROOTFS-20250202.tar.xz 
2# tar xvf void*.xz -C /mnt && cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/etc/resolv.conf
3# chroot /mnt/ /bin/bash
4
5bash-5.2# 

It’s time to install mandatory packages such as base-system and xtools:

1bash-5.2# xbps-install -Su xbps && xbps-install -u
2bash-5.2# xbps-install base-system xmirror xtools
3bash-5.2# xbps-remove base-container-full

Installing additional packages

Here’s the list of packages that I find necessary or very useful:

1bash-5.2# xbps-install acpi alsa-pipewire base-devel blueman bluez \
2    btop chezmoi chrony cmatrix curl dbus elogind eudev eudev-libudev \
3    fastfetch git grub-x86_64-efi libspa-bluetooth lynx NetworkManager \
4    pavucontrol pipewire ripgrep terminus-font tmux vim wget xorg

Setting up a bootloader, locale, timezone, etc.

Since we are installing Void Linux on a removable disk, we will have to install GRUB with the --removable option:

1bash-5.2# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi/ \
2    --bootloader-id="Void" --removable
3
4Installing for x86_64-efi platform.
5Installation finished. No error reported.

Then, we’re going to configure a console font, hostname, locale, timezone:

bash-5.2# ls /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts
bash-5.2# vim /etc/rc.conf && cat /etc/rc.conf

(...)

# Set RTC to UTC or localtime.
HARDWARECLOCK="localtime"

(...)

# Console font to load, see setfont(8).
FONT="ter-v16n"

(...)

bash-5.2# vim /etc/hostname && cat /etc/hostname
void

bash-5.2# vim /etc/locale.conf && cat /etc/locale.conf
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE=C

bash-5.2# vim /etc/default/libc-locales
bash-5.2# xbps-reconfigure -f glibc-locales

bash-5.2# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Seoul /etc/localtime

bash-5.2# passwd
New password:
Retype new password:
passwd: password updated successfully

bash-5.2# useradd -m -G bluetooth,wheel -s /bin/bash jdeokkim
bash-5.2# passwd jdeokkim
New password:
Retype new password:
passwd: password updated successfully

bash-5.2# EDITOR=vim visudo && cat /etc/sudoers

(...)

## Uncomment to allow members of group wheel to execute any command
%wheel ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

(...)

Finally, run xbps-reconfigure to complete the installation process:

bash-5.2# xbps-reconfigure -fa && exit
exit

# umount -l /mnt/dev && umount -l /mnt/proc && umount -l /mnt/sys
# umount /mnt/boot/efi && umount /mnt

# poweroff

Booting into Void Linux

The first thing we need to do after booting into our Void installation is enabling the NetworkManager service:

[jdeokkim@void ~]$ sudo ln -s /etc/sv/chronyd /var/service/
[jdeokkim@void ~]$ sudo ln -s /etc/sv/dbus /var/service/
[jdeokkim@void ~]$ sudo ln -s /etc/sv/NetworkManager /var/service/
[jdeokkim@void ~]$ sudo sv start NetworkManager

TODO: …