A complement to the official Gentoo Install Handbook

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This is a step by step guide while installing Gentoo on a new box. Follow the instructions along with the official Installation Handbook from Gentoo.

Correctly choosing your hardware

Search the Internet before buying any hardware. Most hardware devices will work with Linux nowadays, but it is still better to buy hardware that has open-source drivers. You will also need to know which chipsets are on your hardware to correctly configure the kernel.

Choosing from which installation CD you will boot

Choosing an installation CD seems harder that it first seems. For example, an installation CD for an x86 architecture won't work, if you want to install an AMD64 Gentoo.

  • The installation CDs from Gentoo work fine, but they don't include X. You can still surf the web with links -g, and they contain relatively recent kernel, so it is not a bad choice.
  • Apparently, there are now Live CDs from Gentoo, but I have not tried them yet.
  • Knoppix Live CDs are good, but only for x86 (no amd64).
  • Ubuntu Live CDs are probably the best choice. You can order them free of charge, and there is an amd64 live CD.

Installation following Gentoo's instructions

At this point, boot from the CD, and launch links -g to point a browser to the Handbook. If the handbook is not on the CD, you must first configure the network and try to access the online version. Once you have the handbook opened in a browser, follow the instructions.

  • Partition your disk, format the partitions. Mount the root partition.
  • Setup the network. Install the stage 3, a Portage snapshot, configure /etc/make.conf. Don't forget to set:
    • correct CHOST;
    • correct CFLAGS;
    • your USE flags;
  • chroot into the new partition. emerge --sync. Configure the kernel. It is important to disable the nvidia framebuffer support; enable the VESA one though. For NLS, choose the default NLS as "utf8", not "utf-8".
  • Configure /etc/fstab, the network (don't forget to emerge dhcpcd if needed), /etc/rc.conf. If using DHCP, do not set "nodns" as an option on /etc/conf.d/net (even if it is the case on the handbook), or it will not setup DNS automatically.
  • Change the root password, add a normal user.
  • Install and configure GRUB. The important thing is to add support for the framebuffer; if we don't, we won't be able to correctly use links when we reboot.
  • Reboot! On the BIOS, setup the clock according to the correct parameters in etc/conf.d/clock (UTC, or local time).

Installing packages and configuring the system

At this point, the goal is to get a working web browser again. So the first emerge should be something like emerge links. Be aware that some packages (from Sun, for example), need to be manually downloaded... and you don't have a browser yet! So you should add USE="-doc -java" to the first emerge. Alternatively, check if the package needs to be downloaded before the emerge (a F will appear next to the package). I recommend to use the emerge option "fetchonly" to see if everything was fetched correctly, before actually building.

Once links is emerged and works, the remaining of the installation is easier, since we have access to the web and Google.

  • Install KDE and some web browsers: emerge kdebase-meta konqueror mozilla-firefox. This should again emerge a lot of packages. Don't forget to install the Flash plugin for Firefox, and the Java plugin as well.
  • Configure X (Xorg -configure), add xdm to the runlevels: rc-update add xdm default. At this point we may even already switch to the nvidia driver for X. Edit the file /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 to get it automatically loaded.
  • If you need to mount NFS shares, add the portmap and nfs scripts to the default runlevel.
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