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dodd.dev

ArcoLinux Customization for XFCE

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The scripts and config files presented here are intended solely for my personal use, but made available so that anyone stumbling across the repo should feel free to adapt them for their own use as well.

Scripts are intended to be executed in sequence with full reboots between executions.

Fixes are noted at the bottom.

You may need to make scripts executable …

sudo chmod +x arcomize-1.sh

Read the sections below to learn what is included in each script. Some of the modules have been commented out by default but may easily be enabled prior to execution.

Sections in this document:

arcomize-1.sh (Initial OS Config)

There is one variable you may wish to change near the top (~line 67) of this script: termPref. By default, the script will configure kitty as the default terminal emulator for the OS. At present, the only other supported option is alacritty.

The script will exit with an error if you do not run with sudo.

The following modules will be executed in the order listed:

  • vm_install (disabled by default)
    • open-vm-tools - comment out this module for bare metal installs.
  • required_apps
    • xmlstarlet - used throughout the script to make modifications to various XML config files
  • disable_power_mgmt
    • Sets Sleep-on-AC and Sleep-on-Batt to 0 then disables power management entirely. The purpose of setting the values to zero first is so that if power management is accidentally enabled later, there are no unexpected sleep events.
  • switch_to_lightdm (disabled by default)
    • SDDM is pretty and all, but meh. This will install LightDM if not already installed and activate it as the preferred login mechanism. Basic configuration settings are applied.
  • configure_sddm
    • Installs sddm-config-editor-git and arcolinux-sddm-sugar-candy-git from Arcolinux repositories, then downloads custom configuration files from this repository to configure SDDM.
  • xfce4_thunar_terminal
    • For XFCE’s Thunar file manager, change the “Run” and “Open Terminal Here” options to use the preferred terminal emulator (see above).
  • xfce4_helpers_terminal
    • Set XFCE’s “default applications” option for terminal emulator to the preferred selection (see above).
  • delete_variety_app
    • Get rid of Arco’s “Variety” desktop wallpaper selector tool.
  • revert_network_naming
  • fetch_kitty_config
    • Fetch my preferred kitty.conf file from this repo and use it.
  • switch_to_zsh
    • Bash is the system default - this changes the default to ZSH.
  • xfce4_panel_mod
    • Moves the panel to the top of the screen.
    • Whiskermenu button changed to icon only.
    • Repositions a few things in the panel … adds a “directory tree” for $HOME, quick launch buttons for Sublime, Firefox, and Chrome, and a quick launch selector for a standard terminal window or root terminal window. Move the workspace selector to the left side of the panel.
    • Changes date format to my preference and includes UTC time (ex: Sun - Sep 26 - 09:58 AM - 14:58 UTC)
    • Adds a “Network Monitor” to the panel to show upload/download speeds on eth0.
    • Adds a “Generic Monitor” to the panel that runs a custom script (also found in this repo). Scripts are stored in /home/$USER/.local/panel-scripts. This script simply displays the IP assigned to network interfaces. Supported interface names are wlan0, eth0, and tun0.
  • install_p10k_fonts
    • Installs the recommended fonts for the Powerlevel10k ZSH theme via paru.
      • ttf-meslo-nerd-font-powerlevel10k
      • awesome-terminal-fonts
      • powerline-fonts-git
      • nerd-fonts-jetbrains-mono
    • Note that conflicts will arise. You’ll have to decide how you want to handle them during script execution.

arcomize-2.sh (ZSH Config and Custom Apps)

The script will exit with an error if you do not run with sudo.

The following tools/applications will be installed in the order listed below. These are specific applications or tools that I use on a daily basis for work, so feel free to remove or add applications that are relevant or important to you.

  • zsh theme - powerlevel 10k
    • Non-essential, but a very nice facelift for terminal. See romkatv/powerlevel10k on GitHub for details. In addition to the theme itself, this script will download a pre-defined configuration file from the repo, along with my customized .aliases file.
  • python 2 and 3
    • Yes, I know Python 2 has been deprecated, but I need it for several important things that are either not yet fully ported to Python 3 or just flat out broken on Python 3. This script will NOT alter the default python or pip commands on your install… so this means that running either of those commands without specifying a version will run version 3. You can run version 2 by using python2 or pip2 after this is installed.
  • flameshot
    • A nice screenshot tool. See flameshot-org/flameshot on GitHub for details. This script will set the print key keyboard binding to launch flameshot gui.
  • microsoft vscode
    • Microsoft’s VSCode binary. This script will insert additional aliases into the .aliases file mentioned above. After install, typing hosts or profile from terminal will open the /etc/hosts/ or ~/.zshrc file (respectively) in VSCode. Script will also insert a line into the .zshrc file to set KUBE_EDITOR="code --wait" (this is specific to Kubernetes - see additional tools installed below).
  • microsoft teams
    • because work.
  • slack
    • also because work.
  • remmina
    • An essential tool if you work with remote desktops. Supports multiple protocols - rdp, spice, vnc, ssh, http/https. Check out the features list.
  • btop++
    • C++ rewrite of the popular bashtop and bpytop terminal-based resource monitors. See btop on GitHub.
  • stacer (disabled by default)
    • A GUI resource monitor / optimizer tool. Added as an option in the file, but disabled by default. See Stacer on GitHub.
  • exa
    • A modern ls replacement with some nice features. See ogham/exa on GitHub, or the.exa.website for details. This script will alter an alias in the .aliases file: ll='exa -lah --icons --group-directories-first --time-style long-iso --git'
  • bat
    • A nice cat replacement with syntax highlighting support. See sharkdp/bat on GitHub for details. This script will also download a copy of my pre-configured bat config file (/configs/bat/config) and add two aliases to the .aliases file:
      • cat='bat -P'
      • cat-page=bat
  • oath-toolkit
    • Very handy tool for generating OTP codes from the terminal. See the Oath Toolkit website or their GitLab site for details.
  • aws cli v2
    • Installs the AWS CLI v2. I chose to perform this install via a sub-script rather than using the AUR repository. This script will download two additional scripts - an install/update script (update-aws-cli.sh), as well as a delete script (remove-aws-cli.sh). These will be saved to ~/.local/helper-scripts. This script will launch the update-aws-cli.sh script to perform the initial install and you can come back to this script regularly to update the tools from AWS, or use the remove-aws-cli.sh script to remove the tools completely. See Amazon’s documentation for details.
  • kubectl
    • For Kubernetes. Installed from the community repository.
  • kubectx
    • For Kubernetes. Installed from the community repository.
  • aws iam authenticator
  • eksctl
    • For Kubernetes. Installed from the community repository.

arcomize-3.sh (Penetration Testing Tools)

The script will exit with an error if you do not run with sudo.

The following tools/applications will be installed in the order listed below. These apps are specific to network analysis and penetration testing. Because these applications may be of interest in only limited circumstances and non-essential in most cases, they are installed via separate script.

  • golang
    • Core compiler tools for the Go programming language.
  • samba / smb
    • Samba support, including customized smb.conf. Not started or enabled by default. Start or enable-on-startup using the appropriate systemctl commands.
  • impacket
    • Impacket version 0.9.19 and prerequisites. This is a collection of Python classes for working with network protocols. Installed via Python 2.
  • nmap
    • Network Mapper utility for network discovery and security auditing. Includes a tweaked version of the http-shellshock script.
  • jdk / jre
    • jdk11-openjdk - includes jre
  • burpsuite
    • Community Edition. Specifically, this is for web application penetration testing but has proven to be quite useful for web development and other tasks.
  • metasploit
    • Penetration testing framework. See https://www.metasploit.com/.
  • custom python script
    • leetgen.py
      • This is a custom python script I wrote that accepts a string and generates a wordlist of the many possible permutations of that string using “leetspeak.”
  • amass
    • OWASP Amass Project - performs network mapping of attack surfaces and external asset discovery using open source information gathering and active reconnaissance techniques.
  • whatweb
    • WhatWeb is a web scanner that tries to identify the various technologies used in the construction or hosting of websites. It can be stealthy or noisy, depending on the need.
  • nikto
    • Nikto is another web scanner that focuses on enumerating web servers and attempts to identify potentially dangerous or vulnerable files/applications residing on its target. Not very stealthy.
  • dirbuster
    • Web scanner which attempts to construct a site-map of a target website while looking for hidden or orphaned pages and directories. Graphical user interface.
  • gobuster
    • Very similar to DirBuster (above) but without a UI. Written in Go.
  • searchsploit
    • Command line search utility for ExploitDB. Operates offline.
  • nessus
  • powersploit
    • Collection of PowerShell modules useful in all phases of penetration testing. Includes modules for code execution, script modification, persistence, av evasion, exfiltration, privilege escalation, and reconnaissance. No longer actively maintained, but still useful.
  • hydra
    • THC-Hydra is a parallelized login cracker that supports several different protocols.
  • responder
    • Responder is an LLMNR, NBT-NS and MDNS poisoner. It will answer to specific NBT-NS (NetBIOS Name Service) queries based on their name suffix. By default, the tool will only answer to File Server Service request, which is for SMB.
  • mitm6
    • mitm6 is a pentesting tool that exploits the default configuration of Windows to take over the default DNS server. It does this by replying to DHCPv6 messages, providing victims with a link-local IPv6 address and setting the attackers host as default DNS server. As DNS server, mitm6 will selectively reply to DNS queries of the attackers choosing and redirect the victims traffic to the attacker machine instead of the legitimate server.

customized aliases

The .aliases file which will be copied by the script can be found in /configs/zsh/.aliases.

The majority fo the aliases in this file come straight from ArcoLinux, but several have been commented out for my own preferences. As mentioned above in arcomize-2.sh, some of the aliases will be modified by the second script. These include:

  • ll='exa -lah --icons --group-directories-first --time-style long-iso --git'
  • cat='bat -P'
  • cat-page=bat
  • alias open='thunar'
  • alias ip='ip -c'

A few additional helpers have been added to the .aliases file outside of those provided by ArcoLinux:

  • encode / decode
    • calls a base64encode or base64decode function to make reading and writing base64 strings easier
  • encodefile
    • accepts two parameters:
      • Param 1: an existing file on disk which you’d like to have encoded as base64
      • Param 2: an output filename to which the encoded file will be saved
  • ipinfo
    • if called without any parameters, will return your current public IP address.
    • if provided an IP address, will look up the available information about that IP from ipinfo.io.
  • expandurl
    • takes a Tiny-URL as a string and attempts to return back the ultimate destination of the URL
  • df
    • uses duf to present disk information in an easy to read format. See muesli/duf on GitHub for details.

fixes & updates

  • 2021-12-19 [v0.2.2]
    • add remmina to arcomize-2.sh
    • add btop++ to arcomize-2.sh
    • add Stacer to arcomize-2.sh as an option - disabled by default
  • 2021-12-05 [v0.2.1]
    • add module for sddm configuration in arcomize-1.sh
    • disabled switch_to_lightdm as default
  • 2021-11-28 [v0.2.0]
    • add arcomize-3.sh - pentesting tools
  • 2021-10-31 [v0.1.2]
    • a couple of the repo-hosted config files referenced my specific username in paths. Fixed so they’ll be updated to the current user correctly after download from repo
    • cleaned up old comments
    • several various bug fixes
    • add cpu detection and microcode install
    • fix for some apps that can’t be installed as root