gentoo question

[Collins]

On Sunday 21 December 2003 20:05, Matthew Carpenter wrote:
> Perhaps you could tell me what to get to install Gentoo?  I'd like to
> try it but the last time I did I couldn't make heads or tails of the
> various ISO images and starting points, etc....
>

As the saying goes, it depends.  You can do it quickly by using the Stage3 
tarballs (start with a pre-compiled base system; there are versions for 
various CPUs) or more slowly by starting with the Stage1 tarballs (full 
compile of the base system from source).  You can do it from a running system 
or from a gentoo LiveCD.

Go to www.gentoo.org and read the install documentation (Current is called 
handbook, but the older install documentation is there as well).  I would 
recommend you read both.

If running from an existing system, the basics are (I'm providing a rough 
overview starting from Stage1:

1) Format yourself a new partition (gentoo always recommends a /boot partition 
as well, but I ignore that).

2) Download the tarball and untar it into the new partition.

3) Setup for communications and chroot to the new partition

4) Edit the /etc/make.conf to supply your CPU type, make options, and USE 
variables (Read up on this.  This is how you set optiional configuration 
values.  For example, if you include USE="X", any package that has an 
optional configuration for operation under X will be so configured, and if 
you haven't built X yet, that will be done first.

5) run the bootstrap script (1hr plus on my P4 2.4Gz/256M ). This builds a 
statically linked system to allow you to run the remainder of the install.  
These packages will be overlaid by the 'emerge system' below.

6) 'emerge sync' to load the current package lists.  This takes a while, since 
you have no package lists currently loaded.  Normally this is pretty quick, 
since rsync is used.

7) 'emerge system' to generate the basic system applications tailored for your 
CPU and USE choices. 2-4 hours on my machine.

8) complete the setup for a bootable system (time zone, kernel compile and 
install, system logger install, grub/lilo install and configure or edit your 
existing grub/lilo).

9) At this point you have a bootable system, but I usually install most of my 
favorite packages from the chroot environment - X and kde and mozilla and 
mail, etc. can take a l-o-n-g time, and why not keep the ability to surf and 
read email while you wait.

The documentation goes into this in a lot more detail, but that's the basic 
picture.

Select one of the download mirrors -> releases -> x86 -> 1.4

-> livecd    Get a LiveCD ISO image, if you want that route..
->stages -> x86  for the Stage1 tarball
->stages -> cpu-specific-folder  for the Stage2 or Stage3 tarballs

Stage2 saves you the bootstrap time.

Stage3 saves you the bootstrap time and the 'emerge system' time.

Note the release 1.4 really only applies to the LiveCD.  Any system starting 
from Stage1 or Stage2 will be at current stable maintenance level.  Stage3 
systems will be at current maintenance for the date of the tarball, and you 
can bring this up to current stable maintenance level with a simple 'emerge 
sync' and 'emerge world'.  This won't take extremely long, since not every 
Stage3 package will have stable maintenance waiting.

Also note that there's a nasty little Portage (the package control system) bug 
waiting for you if starting from Stage1.  A shell metachar has worked its way 
into one of the pkg directory names.  There's a fairly simple fix:

	rm -r /var/db/pkg/sys-fs/devfsd..... (use current version name)
        /usr/lib/portage/bin/fix-db.py
	emerge devfsd

Enjoy,

-- 
Collins