Update (2021)

Update (2021): After Dell didn’t update their Linux version for a while, I concluded it would be best to just install a standard Ubuntu Linux. All required drivers are upstreamed, and I never needed the Dell tools that come with their version.

Disclaimer

Warning: if you don’t understand one of the steps, don’t blindly follow them, but ask a friend for help instead! Be sure to have a known-working backup before messing with your system.

Motivation

I recently got a Dell XPS 13 9360 (2017), which of course I would like to use with Linux. I figured I’d give Dell’s Ubuntu version a try, as it is the closest I can get to a supported Linux offering on a modern laptop.

Unfortunately, Dell doesn’t sell the XPS 9360 in its shop anymore (and I don’t like its successor due to the lack of USB A ports), so I had to resort to buying a version that comes with Windows.

You can obtain the recovery image dell-bto-xenial-dino2-mlk-A00-iso-20161021-0.iso from http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/OSISO/W764, provided you have the system tag of an XPS 9360 that came with Linux — ask a friend if you accidentally purchased the Windows version. Tip: the service tag is the BIOS serial number, which is included in the output of lshw(1) and similar tools.

Making the image bootable

I don’t understand why this image is not bootable by default. The device it was generated for never had a CD/DVD drive, so what good is using an ISO 9660 image?

Anyway, to make the image bootable, I formatted a USB thumb drive with a FAT file system and installed GRUB in such a way that it will loopback-boot into the ISO image (this is option 2 from https://askubuntu.com/a/395880):

grub-mkimage -o bootx64.efi -p /efi/boot -O x86_64-efi \
 fat iso9660 part_gpt part_msdos \
 normal boot linux configfile loopback chain \
 efifwsetup efi_gop efi_uga \
 ls search search_label search_fs_uuid search_fs_file \
 gfxterm gfxterm_background gfxterm_menu test all_video loadenv \
 exfat ext2 ntfs btrfs hfsplus udf
cat >grub.cfg <<'EOT'
set timeout=3
set color_highlight=black/light-magenta

menuentry 'Ubuntu ISO' {
        set isofile="/efi/boot/dell-bto-xenial-dino2-mlk-A00-iso-20161021-0.iso"
        loopback loop $isofile
        linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz.efi boot=casper iso-scan/filename=$isofile noprompt noeject quiet splash persistent --
        initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz
}
EOT

sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/sdc
pmount /dev/sdc
mkdir -p /media/sdc/efi/boot
cp bootx64.efi *.iso grub.cfg /media/sdc/efi/boot
pumount sdc

Making the installer work

To get the installer to work, I had to comment out the self.genuine checks in /usr/lib/ubiquity/plugins/dell-{bootstrap,recovery}.py, then start ubiquity from the terminal.

Switch to LUKS full-disk encryption

Unfortunately, the recovery installation only offers you to encrypt your homedir, whereas I would like to encrypt my entire disk. Here are the steps I took to enable LUKS full-disk encryption.

First, I copied the root file system’s data to my backup storage. Pay attention to copying the files as root, otherwise setuid and setgid bits might get lost.

# mount /dev/mapper/nvme0n1p3 /mnt/root
# rsync -aXx --relative --numeric-ids /mnt/root/ root@storage:xps/
# umount /mnt/root

Then, I created a new boot partition, encrypted the root partition and re-created the file system:

# cat <<'EOT' | sfdisk /dev/nvme0n1
label: gpt
label-id: C64A87D1-CA61-4BF2-81E6-0216EE6BC4C0
device: /dev/nvme0n1
unit: sectors
first-lba: 34
last-lba: 2000409230

/dev/nvme0n1p1 : start=          34, size=      488248, type=C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B, name="EFI System Partition"
/dev/nvme0n1p2 : start=      488282, size=     5380681, type=EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7, name="fat32"
/dev/nvme0n1p3 : start=     5869568, size=     2097152, type=0FC63DAF-8483-4772-8E79-3D69D8477DE4
/dev/nvme0n1p4 : start=     7966720, size=  1992442511, type=0FC63DAF-8483-4772-8E79-3D69D8477DE4
EOT
# mkfs.ext2 /dev/nvme0n1p3
# cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/nvme0n1p4
# cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/nvme0n1p4 nvme0n1p3_crypt
# mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/nvme0n1p4_crypt

Next, I restored the data:

# mount /dev/mapper/nvme0n1p4_crypt /mnt/root
# mount /dev/nvme0n1p3 /mnt/root/boot
# mkdir /mnt/root/boot/efi
# mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/root/boot/efi
# rsync -aXx --numeric-ids storage:xps/ /mnt/root

And finally, I fixed the boot partition:

# mount -o bind /dev /mnt/root/dev
# mount -t sysfs sysfs /mnt/root/sys
# mount -t proc proc /mnt/root/proc
# chroot /mnt/root /bin/bash

# apt install cryptsetup
# echo nvme0n1p4_crypt UUID=$(blkid -o value -s UUID /dev/nvme0n1p4) none luks,discard > /etc/crypttab
# cat >/etc/fstab <<EOT
UUID=$(blkid -o value -s UUID /dev/mapper/nvme0n1p4_crypt) / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
UUID=$(blkid -o value -s UUID /dev/nvme0n1p3) /boot ext2 defaults 0 0
UUID=$(blkid -o value -s UUID /dev/nvme0n1p1) /boot/efi vfat umask=0077 0 1
EOT
# update-initramfs -u
# update-grub
# grub-install

# umount /mnt/root/{proc,sys,dev,boot/efi,boot,}