Extremely terse installation guide
Objective: Get up to speed fast (i.e. by using Universal
LiveCD, starting with Stage2, and using a readily configured kernel)
and yet not sacrificing a lot of
performance.
Prerequisite: Have a working network connection, know how to use
fdisk.
Organization: Follows that of Gentoo
Linux x86 Handbook.
Choosing the Right Installation Medium
- Get the CD image install-x86-universal-<release>.iso
from one of these mirrors.
Configuring your network
- If DHCP doesn't just work, read this.
Preparing the disks
- Partition hard disk using
# fdisk /dev/hda
making sure to create a swap space that is as large as the
size of the RAM, and a Linux partition with possibly one of the
following filesystems: ext3, reiserfs etc. Details
are omitted here.
Installing the Gentoo Installation Files
- Install Stage3 from the LiveCD
# mount /dev/cdroms/cdrom0 /mnt/cdrom
# cd /mnt/gentoo
# tar -xvjpf /mnt/cdrom/stages/stage3-<subarch>-2004.3.tar.bz2
Note the -p option preserves permissions.
- Install Portage from the Internet
Download a Portage snapshot from one of the mirrors, using
the links2 browser or wget if you know the URL.
Unpack the portage snapshot:
# tar -xvjf /mnt/gentoo/portage-<date>.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/gentoo/usr
Note the -C option changes current directory to the specified
directory.
Installing the Gentoo Base System
- Select the mirrors
# mirrorselect -a -s4 -o | grep 'GENTOO_MIRRORS=' >> /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf
Note the -a prompts you with a GUI, -s4 saves 4 of
your selections, -o outputs to stdout.
- Copy DNS info
# cp -L /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/resolv.conf
- Mount the proc filesystem
# mount -t proc none /mnt/gentoo/proc
- Enter the new environment
# chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
# env-update
* Caching service dependencies...
# source /etc/profile
- Update the Portage tree
# emerge --sync
- Configure the USE variable
Set the USE variable to some of the flags described in /usr/portage/profiles/use.desc.
# echo USE=\"aac alsa avi cdr cjk gnome gpm gtk2 hardened \
mmx mysql nls nptl pam perl php posix python quicktime \
samba sse ssl tcltk tetex truetype yahoo zlib\" >> /etc/make.conf
Note -gtk means no GTK support. Note that if you are doing development work, you
are advised not to specify hardened, because you will have
trouble debugging your programs with GDB, despite the
tip here.
- Configure GLIBC locales
First activate userlocales USE flag:
# mkdir /etc/portage
# echo "sys-libs/glibc userlocales" >> /etc/portage/package.use
Then specify your intended locale in /etc/locales.build.
For example, my intended locale is:
zh_CN/UTF-8
- Progress from Stage2 to Stage3
Assuming you chose to start with Stage2, and you want to download all the sources first before building,
# emerge --fetchonly system
# emerge system
Configuring the Kernel
- Configure timezone
# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/<time-zone> /etc/localtime
For me, <time-zone> is Europe/Amsterdam.
- Install the sources
Assuming you want kernel 2.6,
# emerge gentoo-dev-sources
- Use genkernel
# emerge genkernel
# genkernel --menuconfig all
Note the --menuconfig switch allows you to manually configure the
kernel before building it! The following have to be selected,
although the handbook only mentions this for the manual configuration of
the kernel:
Code maturity level options --->
[*] Prompt for development and/or incomplete code/drivers
Processor type and features --->
(Change according to your system)
File systems --->
(Select one or more of the following options as needed by your system)
<*> Reiserfs support
<*> Ext3 journalling file system support
<*> JFS filesystem support
<*> Second extended fs support
<*> XFS filesystem support
Pseudo Filesystems --->
[*] /proc file system support
[*] /dev file system support (OBSOLETE)
[*] Automatically mount at boot
[*] Virtual memory file system support (former shm fs)
USB Support --->
<*> USB Human Interface Device (full HID) support
The other things that need attention are the
graphics card support, NLS support, DOS/Windows filesystem
support, netfilter etc.
After quite some time, the kernel would have been built, then check
that the kernel has been built:
# ls /boot/kernel* /boot/initrd*
and finally emerge coldplug and hotplug:
# emerge coldplug
# rc-update add coldplug boot
# emerge hotplug
# rc-update add hotplug default
Configuring your System
- Configure filesystem information
Edit /etc/fstab, e.g.
/dev/hda2 /windows/C ntfs ro,users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=utf8 0 0
/dev/hda5 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hda6 / reiserfs noatime,acl,user_xattr 0 1
/dev/cdroms/cdrom0 /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs defaults 0 0
For more information about /etc/fstab, read this.
- Configure networking information
Set the host name:
# echo <name> > /etc/hostname
Edit /etc/conf.d/net, assuming you are using DHCP:
iface_eth0="dhcp"
# Some network admins require that you use the
# hostname and domainname provided by the DHCP server.
# In that case, add the following to let dhcpcd use them.
# That will override your own hostname and domainname definitions.
dhcpcd_eth0="-HD"
# If you intend on using NTP to keep your machine clock synchronized, use
# the -N option to prevent dhcpcd from overwriting your /etc/ntp.conf file
dhcpcd_eth0="-N"
To have your network interfaces activated at boot, you need to add
them to the default runlevel:
# rc-update add net.eth0 default
- Configure system information
Set root password:
# passwd
Edit general system-wide information:
# nano -w /etc/rc.conf
Installing Necessary System Tools
- System logger
# emerge syslog-ng
# rc-update add syslog-ng default
- Filesystem tools
# emerge reiserfsprogs
- Networking tools
# emerge dhcpcd
Configuring the Bootloader
- Emerge and configure GRUB
# emerge grub
# nano -w /boot/grub/grub.conf
Note that there's an example at
/boot/grub/grub.conf.sample. My grub.conf looks
like
default 0
timeout 8
title=Gentoo Linux 2.6.10-gentoo-r6
root (hd0,5)
kernel (hd0,5)/boot/kernel-2.6.10-gentoo-r6 root=/dev/ram0 real_root=/dev/hda6 init=/linuxrc ramdisk_size=8192
initrd (hd0,5)/boot/initrd-2.6.10-gentoo-r6
title=Windows XP Professional
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1
Note how the paths to kernel and initrd are
specified, the handbook got them wrong -- it took me a
while to figure out why my first installation failed to boot.
- Install GRUB in the MBR
First start GRUB:
# grub
then type the following commands:
grub> root (hd0,5) (Specify where your /boot partition resides)
grub> setup (hd0) (Install GRUB in the MBR)
grub> quit (Exit the GRUB shell)
- Reboot
Finalizing your Gentoo Installation
- User administration
# useradd -m -G users,audio,cdrom,floppy,usb,video,wheel -s /bin/bash john
# passwd john
Making it more complete
(The Gentoo Handbook doesn't have the rest starting
from here)
- Setting up firewall
I choose Shorewall
because (1) it is recommended by the Gentoo
Linux Security Guide,
and (2) it is easy to use.
# emerge shorewall
Then in /etc/shorewall, we have to modify a few files. For
my simple case, my Gentoo box is directly connected to the Internet.
In its default installation, Shorewall defines 3 zones: Internet,
local network and the demilitarized zone (DMZ). So only the Internet
zone makes sense to me, and in /etc/shorewall/zone, I have
#ZONE DISPLAY COMMENTS
net Net Internet
In /etc/shorewall/interfaces, I have
#ZONE INTERFACE BROADCAST OPTIONS
net eth0 detect dhcp
In /etc/shorewall/policy, I have
#SOURCE DEST POLICY LOG
# LEVEL
fw net ACCEPT
net all DROP info
# THE FOLLOWING POLICY MUST BE LAST
all all REJECT info
by changing the default "loc" zone to "fw" which stands for
firewall. In /etc/shorewall/rules, I have
#ACTION SOURCE DEST PROTO
AllowPing net:130.89.0.0/16 fw
AllowSSH net:130.89.0.0/16 fw
so that I can ping and and ssh to my Gentoo box from this subnet:
130.89.0.0/16. Note that when accessing an FTP server, you have to
use passive mode by
entering the "passive" command. Now make sure the
configuration works with
# shorewall check
Lastly, make sure
it starts up in the default runlevel.
# rc-update add shorewall default
- Synchronizing the
clock with a NTP server
First emerge the NTP package:
# emerge ntp
Then edit /etc/conf.d/ntp-client:
NTPDATE_CMD="ntpdate"
NTPDATE_OPTS="-b your.server.here"
And finally add ntp-client to the list of services started
at runlevel default:
# rc-update add ntp-client default
As a side note, the command "rdate -s server" sets the
system time with the time from server.
- Enable SSH access
Note SSH should have been installed by now.
# rc-update add sshd default
Package Management
The equery tool from the gentoolkit packages
allows you to query what packages have been installed, amongst other
things. Type the following command to check for broken dependencies:
revdep-rebuild -p
The -p option means "pretend" -- leave it out to fix the
dependencies, for real.
The source files downloaded by emerge are stored in
/usr/portage/distfiles. Delete the unwanted ones there to
make space.
runlevel
Detail is here.
In general, the numbering of runlevels maybe different from distribution to
distribution, but it is documented in /etc/inittab. For
example, the default runlevel is specified by the line with
initdefault. Usually the mapping is as follows:
- 0: shutdown
- 1: single-user
- 2: no network
- 3: with network, i.e. the default
- 4: not used
- 5: X11
- 6: reboot
X
Setting up
Full information available at The X Server Configuration HOWTO
As of Gentoo 2004.3, the stable xorg-x11 release 6.8.0-r4 has a "duplicate
symbol __i686.get_pc_thunk.bx" bug. This has been fixed in
release 6.8.2, but as of 21 Feb 2005, release 6.8.2 is masked,
meaning that if you want to emerge it, you'd have to use the following
command:
# ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge =x11-base/xorg-x11-6.8.2
# env-update
# source /etc/profile
Auto-generate and test a config file:
# Xorg -configure
# X -config /root/xorg.conf.new
The auto-detection works like magic for me, and I think it would for you too. So if the generated config works, then try startx for real:
# cp /root/xorg/conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf
# startx
Configuration info is available with this command:
# man 5 xorg.conf
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