Documentation / Install Handbook

Install Handbook

From a downloaded ISO to a logged-in SkyVision system. The guided path takes about ten minutes; the manual path takes thirty and teaches you what the installer does. Both end in the same place.

1 · Before you begin

Requirements and one warning

Minimum hardware
CPU	x86-64-v2 (Intel Nehalem / AMD Bulldozer or newer)
RAM	1 GB Base · 2 GB Desktop
Disk	10 GB Base · 25 GB Desktop
Firmware	UEFI (Secure Boot OK) or legacy BIOS

! Back up first

The installer can wipe a whole disk or use free space, but it cannot undo either. If the machine holds anything you'd miss, image it or copy it off before booting the USB stick. Not sure if your CPU is x86-64-v2? On any Linux host: /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 --help | grep v2 — look for “supported”.

2 · Media

Get, verify, and write the image

Full details (mirrors, GPG fingerprint, Windows tools) are on the download page; the short version:

$ curl -LO https://dl.longervision.us/skyvision/1.0/skyvision-1.0-x86_64-base.iso
$ curl -LO https://dl.longervision.us/skyvision/1.0/sha256sums.txt{,.sig}
$ gpg --verify sha256sums.txt.sig && sha256sum -c --ignore-missing sha256sums.txt
$ sudo dd if=skyvision-1.0-x86_64-base.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M conv=fsync status=progress  # sdX = your USB stick!

3 · Boot

Booting the installer

Plug in the stick, power on, and open the firmware boot menu — usually F12 (Dell/Lenovo), F11 (ASRock/MSI), F9 (HP) or Esc. Pick the USB entry; on UEFI machines prefer the entry labelled UEFI:. Secure Boot can stay on — the shim is signed. You'll land at a GRUB menu: Install SkyVision 1.0 (default), Live console, or Memtest. The desktop ISO adds Live Xfce session, where the installer sits on the desktop.

4 · Guided path

sky-install, screen by screen

Screen	What you decide
1 Keyboard & locale	Layout, language, timezone (UTC for the hardware clock is the default and the right answer)
2 Network	DHCP on detected interfaces, or static; can be skipped — the ISO installs offline
3 Disk	Use entire disk / use largest free space / manual (drops to cfdisk). GPT + ESP on UEFI, MBR on BIOS — chosen automatically
4 File system	ext4 (default) or xfs; optional separate /home; swap = RAM size up to 8 GB
5 Software	Base only, or Base + Xfce desktop (desktop ISO); OpenSSH server on/off
6 Users	Root password; first user (added to `wheel`); hostname
7 Boot loader	GRUB target — almost always the default; existing OSes are detected for dual boot
8 Review	A literal list of every command about to run. Nothing executes before you confirm here

tip Three things worth knowing

Screen 8 is the philosophy. The review screen shows the exact shell commands — the same ones documented in the manual path below. You can save them to a file (w) and run them yourself instead.

Logs: everything is recorded to /var/log/sky-install.log on the new system.

Unattended installs: sky-install --answer-file=sky.cfg replays a saved configuration — handy for labs and VMs.

5 · Manual path

Installing by hand

Exactly what sky-install does, with you at the keyboard. UEFI shown; BIOS differences noted.

# 5.1 partition — ESP + root (+ swap to taste)
# fdisk /dev/nvme0n1        # g (GPT) · n 1: +512M type 1 (EFI) · n 2: rest, type 23 (Linux root x86-64)
# mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/nvme0n1p1
# mkfs.ext4 -L skyroot /dev/nvme0n1p2

# 5.2 mount and extract the base system (~1.6 GB unpacked)
# mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt/sv
# mkdir -p /mnt/sv/boot/efi && mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/sv/boot/efi
# sv-extract /run/skyvision/base.sfs /mnt/sv          # unsquashfs + verity check

# 5.3 chroot and configure
# sv-chroot /mnt/sv          # binds /dev /proc /sys /run, then chroots
# echo skyvision > /etc/hostname
# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Vancouver /etc/localtime
# genfstab -U / >> /etc/fstab
# passwd                      # root password
# useradd -m -G wheel sky && passwd sky

# 5.4 boot loader — UEFI (for BIOS: grub-install /dev/nvme0n1)
# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=SkyVision
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

# 5.5 leave, unmount, reboot into your system
# exit && umount -R /mnt/sv && reboot

Want to go one level deeper and compile the system you just extracted? That's The SkyVision Book — the base.sfs image is literally the output of chapters 5–10.

6 · First boot

Post-install checklist

$ su -                       # or ssh in, if you enabled OpenSSH
# svpkg sync && svpkg up      # pull the repo index, apply 1.0.x updates
# svpkg add vim htop          # your first packages
# rc-status                   # see every running service — it's a short list
# cat /etc/sv-release
SkyVision GNU/Linux 1.0 (Firstborn)

Common next steps: add your user to audio,video,input groups for desktop use; subscribe to announce@lists.longervision.us for security advisories; and if anything looked wrong during boot, the wiki's troubleshooting pages and the Installation & hardware forum ↗ are the places to go.

7 · Special cases

Dual boot & encryption

dual Dual booting

Install SkyVision into free space (shrink the other OS's partition from its tools first). grub-mkconfig runs os-prober and adds Windows/other-Linux entries automatically. On UEFI both systems share the ESP peacefully; pick at the firmware boot menu or in GRUB.

luks Full-disk encryption

Supported manually in 1.0 (LUKS2 root: cryptsetup luksFormat, then add cryptdevice= to GRUB and rebuild the initrd with sv-mkinitrd --luks) — the wiki has the full recipe. A guided FDE option in sky-install lands in 1.1.