It's now time to start refering to the Gentoo Installation Handbook for AMD64. While I'm pretty sure that my install method works, it's worthwhile verifying against the handbook. Plus I'm using a minimal CD to do the installation, so things will be slightly different then normal.

(I use my own recipe for the initial configuration due to the mix of Software RAID + LVM2. It has served me well over the past few years and works well.)

This page starts with section 5 in the Gentoo handbook (Installing the Gentoo Installation Files).

livecd / # date
Fri Aug 25 21:23:52 UTC 2006
livecd / # cd /mnt/gentoo
livecd gentoo # links http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/mirrors.xml

Follow the directions on the Gentoo handbook page to download the correct stage3 tarball for your install. The steps are roughly thus:

1. Pick an HTTP mirror from the list (arrow up/down then press [Enter] on the link)
   
2. Go into the "releases/" folder
   
3. Go into the "amd64/" folder (note: Not all mirrors carry the AMD64 folder, you may need to pick another mirror)
   
4. Go into the "current/" folder
   
5. Go into the "stages/" folder
   
6. Find the stage3-amd64-NNNN.N-tar.bz2 tarball, highlight it and click [D] to download
   
7. Press [Q] to quit out of links
   

Now you should have the tarball in /mnt/gentoo:

livecd gentoo # ls -l
total 105797
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Aug 25 21:11 backup
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 1024 Aug 25 20:46 boot
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Aug 25 20:59 home
drwx------ 2 root root 16384 Aug 25 20:47 lost+found
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 108186115 Aug 25 22:05 stage3-amd64-2006.0.tar.bz2
drwxrwxrwt 3 root root 4096 Aug 25 20:59 tmp
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Aug 25 21:00 usr
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Aug 25 21:10 var
livecd gentoo #

Extract the tarball:

livecd gentoo # tar xvjpf stage3-*.tar.bz2

You'll follow similar steps for the portage tarball. In fact, we probably should've downloaded it at the same time to /mnt/gentoo.

livecd gentoo # tar xvjf /mnt/gentoo/portage-20060123.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/gentoo/usr

Setup your make flags. Since I have an X2 CPU, I'm using "-j3" for MAKEOPTS.

livecd gentoo # vi /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf
# These settings were set by the catalyst build script that automatically built this stage
# Please consult /etc/make.conf.example for a more detailed example
CFLAGS="-march=k8 -O2 -pipe"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
MAKEOPTS="-j3"

Now we start in on Section 6 (Installing the Gentoo Base System). Time to pick mirrors and other things.

livecd gentoo # mirrorselect -i -o >> /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf
livecd gentoo # mirrorselect -i -r -o >> /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf
livecd gentoo # cat /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf
# These settings were set by the catalyst build script that automatically built this stage
# Please consult /etc/make.conf.example for a more detailed example
CFLAGS="-march=k8 -O2 -pipe"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
MAKEOPTS="-j3"


GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.arcticnetwork.ca/ http://www.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/gentoo http://gentoo.chem.wisc.edu/gentoo/ http://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ "

SYNC="rsync://rsync.namerica.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
livecd gentoo #

Copy the resolv.conf file and mount /proc and /dev:

livecd gentoo # cp -L /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/resolv.conf
livecd gentoo # mount -t proc none /mnt/gentoo/proc
livecd gentoo # mount -o bind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev

We're ready to chroot and start the build.

livecd gentoo # chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
livecd / # env-update
>>> Regenerating /etc/ld.so.cache...
livecd / # source /etc/profile
livecd / # export PS1="(chroot) $PS1"
(chroot) livecd / #

Read the next section carefully! I use an extremely limited USE flag (that turns off all multimedia and graphical support).

(chroot) livecd / # emerge --sync

(chroot) livecd / # ls -FGg /etc/make.profile
lrwxrwxrwx 1 50 Aug 25 22:10 /etc/make.profile -> ../usr/portage/profiles/default-linux/amd64/2006.0/
(chroot) livecd / # nano -w /etc/make.conf
USE="-alsa -apm -arts -bitmap-fonts -gnome -gtk -gtk2 -kde -mad -mikmod -motif -opengl -oss -qt -quicktime -sdl -truetype -truetype-fonts -type1-fonts -X -xmms -xv"
(chroot) livecd / # ls /usr/share/zoneinfo
(chroot) livecd / # ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/EST5EDT /etc/localtime
(chroot) livecd / # date
(chroot) livecd / # zdump GMT
(chroot) livecd / # zdump EST5EDT

Read section 7 carefully. I'm using the default "gentoo-sources" kernel.

(chroot) livecd / # USE="-doc symlink" emerge gentoo-sources

I'll cover configuration of the kernel in the next post.

Labels: Gentoo