blomarchy/docs/install.md

Install

./install.sh takes a machine with nothing but Arch on it to a running Blob desktop. Every step is idempotent, reports what it did, and can be previewed with --check.

Layout

Path	Role
install.sh	flags and the order the steps run in
install/helpers/lib.sh	reporting, file copies, unit queries
install/helpers/as-root.sh	as_root, a no-op when already root
install/steps/directories.sh	the directories the shell and scripts expect
install/steps/packages.sh	repo and AUR packages, and the yay bootstrap
install/steps/config.sh	the BLOB_PATH symlink, everything under ~/.config, and the login shell profile
install/steps/services.sh	system services, systemd drop-ins, user units
install/steps/theme.sh	the wallpaper link, the first theme, the first background
install/steps/login.sh	SDDM, the session entry, and the first launch

Steps

1. Directories are created first, because nothing below can write into a directory that is not there: ~/.config/blob, ~/.config/systemd/user/app.slice.d, ~/.local/state/blob, ~/.local/share and ~/.cache/blob. A fresh Arch install has none of them.

2. BLOB_PATH is symlinked to the checkout at ~/.local/share/blob. Nothing under bin/, shell/, themes/ or default/ is ever copied. ln does not create the parent of a link, so this step makes ~/.local/share itself rather than assuming step 1 ran.

3. Packages come from packages/blob.packages and packages/blob-aur.packages. A machine with no AUR helper gets yay-bin built once with makepkg. A failed batch refreshes the databases and retries, then falls back to one package at a time, so a single name that no longer resolves cannot cost you the other hundred and the config, service and login steps below. See packages.md.

4. Config is copied into ~/.config: hypr/, the themed app configs, blob/shell.json, the uwsm environment, fontconfig/fonts.conf, and the icon font, and the font cache is refreshed. The shell draws every icon as a Nerd Font glyph in the monospace family, and on a fresh Arch install fontconfig resolves that to a font with no such glyphs, so the bar and its panels come up full of blanks. fonts.conf binds monospace to JetBrainsMono Nerd Font; blob font set rewrites the same file, and the installer then reports it as a local change and keeps your choice. ~/.bashrc gets one line sourcing session/bashrc, which is what starts the starship prompt and puts blob on PATH in an interactive shell. The line is added once, a .bak is kept, and a ~/.bashrc that already has it is left alone. session/profile.sh also goes to /etc/profile.d/blob.sh, which sources session/env-bootstrap and is what puts blob on PATH in a login shell. Without it BLOB_PATH and $BLOB_PATH/bin are only set by ~/.config/uwsm/env.d/10-blob, which uwsm reads when the graphical session starts, so blob is not found from a TTY. A shell that was already open when the installer ran keeps its old PATH; open a new one, or source ~/.local/share/blob/session/env-bootstrap.

5. The first theme is applied. ~/wallpapers is symlinked to the checkout's wallpapers/, flats is applied with BLOB_THEME_HEADLESS=1 (no shell or session bus exists yet), and the background symlink is pointed at the first image in ~/wallpapers. Without this the first login has no palette and no wallpaper, which draws as a black desktop. It then links the per-app theme files the pipeline renders but no app would otherwise find: ~/.config/btop/themes/current.theme (btop's color_theme = "current") and, only when ~/.config/nvim/lua/plugins already exists, theme.lua there. Every step is skipped when a theme, a background, a wallpaper directory or a theme file of your own is already in place. A theme counts as in place only when the staged theme under ~/.local/state/blob/current/theme is there too, so a recorded theme name left without its palette is applied again rather than skipped.

6. User units land in ~/.config/systemd/user and are enabled, not started: they are all WantedBy=graphical-session.target, so they come up with the session. blob-speaker-tuning.service is left out, because blob-audio-tuning installs it only on machines with a tuning profile.

7. systemd drop-ins are written under /etc: the shutdown timeouts, the oomd pressure thresholds, the plocate prune paths, and the sleep hooks.

8. System services are enabled: NetworkManager, resolved, bluetooth, cups, avahi, docker, power-profiles-daemon, and oomd. NetworkManager-wait-online.service is masked so a slow DHCP lease cannot hold up the login screen, and plymouth-start.service and plymouth-quit-wait.service are masked because Blob configures no boot splash: an unconfigured plymouth holds the console and leaves the machine with neither a greeter nor a TTY. See packages.md.

9. The login screen is SDDM. It has to be installed first: if sddm.service is not there, the installer says whether the package is missing or whether systemd has simply not re-read its units yet, and carries on without enabling anything. A unit counts as present when systemctl cat finds it or when its file is under /etc/systemd/system, /run/systemd/system, /usr/local/lib/systemd/system or /usr/lib/systemd/system - systemctl goes through the service manager, so it reports a perfectly good unit as missing inside a chroot or right after pacman wrote it.

   Three pieces have to be in place:

   File	Why
   /usr/local/share/wayland-sessions/blob.desktop	the session SDDM offers
   /etc/sddm.conf.d/zz-blob.conf	Wayland greeter, run on Hyprland, stock theme, remember the last session
   /etc/sddm/hyprland-greeter.lua	the greeter's own tiny Hyprland config
   /usr/local/bin/blob-hw-gpu-accelerated	the renderer check that config runs, where SDDM's user can read it
   /etc/pam.d/blob-lock-password	the PAM stack the lock screen authenticates against

   The greeter config matters more than it looks: SDDM's stock Wayland greeter runs on weston, which Blob does not install, so a default SDDM would fail to draw anything. The installer checks that the CompositorCommand named in zz-blob.conf is actually installed and warns when it is not, because SDDM with a compositor command it cannot run starts, fails, and leaves the machine sitting at a text console with no explanation. That greeter config has to be Lua: Hyprland dropped the old hyprlang format, and a config it cannot parse leaves the greeter with no compositor and the screen black. sddm.service is enabled and the default systemd target is set to graphical.target, which an Arch install without a display manager does not have.

   The zz- prefix is load-bearing. SDDM reads /etc/sddm.conf.d in alphabetical order and the last file wins, so a leftover 10-wayland.conf, 10-theme.conf or autologin.conf from another desktop would otherwise override Blob's. For the same reason zz-blob.conf blanks Theme and Autologin: a greeter pointed at an uninstalled theme, or an autologin pointed at a session entry that no longer exists, leaves SDDM on a black screen it never falls back from, and the only way in is a TTY.

   The Omarchy ISO wrote exactly such an autologin, owned by no package, so it outlives Omarchy. The installer reports it and overrides it; deleting it stops the warning:

   sudo rm /etc/sddm.conf.d/autologin.conf
   

   --autologin writes zzz-blob-autologin.conf, the only file that sorts after zz-blob.conf.

10. Launch. sddm, hyprland, quickshell and uwsm are checked one last time and any that are missing are named, because that is the whole difference between a desktop and a console. Then, when the installer was run from a console and nothing graphical is running, it starts sddm.service so the desktop appears without a reboot. --no-launch prints the command instead. --autologin writes /etc/sddm.conf.d/zzz-blob-autologin.conf for the current user.

Flags

Flag	Effect
--check	report every change, write nothing, exit 1 if anything differs
--force	overwrite files that differ from the repo copy
--skip-packages	directories, config and services only
--autologin	skip the SDDM prompt for this user
--no-launch	leave the login screen for the next reboot

The lock screen

The lock plugin watches /etc/pam.d/blob-lock-password and refuses to lock at all when it is not there - blob system lock returns missing-pam and nothing appears, which reads as a keybinding that does nothing. The installer writes it; it is one line including system-auth, the same stack every other Wayland locker on Arch authenticates against.

Fingerprint unlock is separate and opt-in: blob setup-security-fingerprint writes /etc/pam.d/blob-lock-fingerprint, and the lock only offers fingerprint when that file and a reader are both present.

Choosing a renderer

Hyprland renders through Mesa, and on an adapter Mesa has no driver for it exits with failed to create dri2 screen instead of drawing. The greeter is Hyprland too, so that is a black screen at boot and a second one after login, which is how a machine with no real GPU behind its display arrives.

blob-hw-gpu-accelerated decides which way to go. It reads the kernel driver of each /sys/class/drm/card* from sysfs, not from lspci, which reads PCI config space and resumes runtime-suspended GPUs. A card driven by amdgpu, i915, nouveau, nvidia, nvidia-drm, radeon or xe is a real integrated or dedicated GPU and hardware rendering is left alone. Everything else - vmwgfx, vboxvideo, qxl, bochs-drm, cirrus, simpledrm, vkms, virtio_gpu - is virtual or framebuffer-only, and two settings are applied:

Setting	Effect
LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1	Mesa uses llvmpipe, which renders on the CPU
WLR_NO_HARDWARE_CURSORS=1, cursor:no_hardware_cursors	the cursor is drawn by the compositor, since there is no plane to put it on

llvmpipe is slow and it draws. A machine with a real GPU never touches it.

Two places read the detector, because they run as different users:

Where	How
the session	default/hypr/renderer.lua, required from envs.lua beside nvidia.lua, through $BLOB_PATH/bin
the greeter	default/sddm/hyprland-greeter.lua, through /usr/local/bin/blob-hw-gpu-accelerated

The greeter runs as SDDM's own user, with no BLOB_PATH and no read access to your home directory, so install.sh copies the detector to /usr/local/bin. A detector that is not there yet reads as no acceleration, which is the fallback that always draws.

To add a driver to the accelerated list, edit accelerated_drivers in bin/blob-hw-gpu-accelerated and rerun ./install.sh so the greeter's copy follows. virtio_gpu is deliberately not on it: QEMU only accelerates it when the host enables virgl, and Mesa fails the same way when it does not.

To see the difference by hand, from a console:

Hyprland                          # fails with the dri2 error
LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 Hyprland  # starts

Uninstall

./uninstall.sh removes the config, the user units, the /etc drop-ins, the session entry, the wallpaper link and the symlink, restoring any .bak the installer left. --keep-session keeps the session entry and the SDDM config, --keep-state keeps ~/.local/state/blob. sddm.service is left enabled either way, so the machine still reaches a login screen.