This post has now been updated (slightly) 05/01/16.
For more in depth installation details visit Gentoo Wiki
Download the latest install CD from your local mirror for example,
Internode File Mirror
Create a bootable USB using Rufus or Unetbootin and boot your machine from the USB drive.
When booting from the USB the Keyboard and Mouse should be detected by default, if you have issues with them not working then try toggling USB Legacy support in the BIOS.
Now that you are booted into a Gentoo environment you are going to want to check that your networking device is enabled and has an address as we will need it during the install.
Some commands to help with this are
ifconfig
ifconfig | grep inet
dhclient -r ; dhclient
Once your network is up and running we can proceed to partitioning the disk, use lsblk to find which disk is correct in your case and replace sda below.
lsblk
parted -a optimal /dev/sda
mklabel gpt
unit MB
mkpart primary 1 20 name 1 grub set 1 bios_grub on # mkpart primary 21 500 name 2 boot # mkpart primary 501 1501 name 3 swap # mkpart primary 1502 -1 name 4 root # quit
Make the file systems on the new partitions, adjust the file system choices before hitting enter if needed.
mkfs.ext2 /dev/sda2 ; mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda4 ; mkswap /dev/sda3 ; swapon /dev/sda3
Mount the new partitions to /mnt/gentoo
mount /dev/sda4 /mnt/gentoo ; mkdir /mnt/gentoo/boot ; mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/gentoo/boot
Now make sure that the date is set correctly so that you will be able to download the required files, remembering that it will be in UTC time not local time.
date
Set the date (Just replace the MMDDhhmmYYYY with the correct date):
date MMDDhhmmYYYY
Example:
date 060410302015
Download the stage3 tar
cd /mnt/gentoo ; wget http://mirror.internode.on.net/pub/gentoo/releases/amd64/autobuilds/current-stage3-amd64/stage3-amd64-20151231.tar.bz2 ; tar -xvjpf stage3-*.tar.bz2 --xattrs
Now to create our make.conf
rm -f /mnt/gentoo/etc/portage/make.conf ; vi /mnt/gentoo/etc/portage/make.conf
Just change the number in MAKEOPTS to be one more than you have CPU cores in your system for example 8 cores = -j9
CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
MAKEOPTS="-j3"
USE="caps hardened -ipv6 -systemd"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://mirror.internode.on.net/pub/gentoo/"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
Now copy the resolv.conf from the live system.
cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/resolv.conf
Mount our new environment, for this example we are not using systemd but these mounts will work just fine
mount -t proc proc /mnt/gentoo/proc ; mount --rbind /sys /mnt/gentoo/sys ; mount --make-rslave /mnt/gentoo/sys ; mount --rbind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev ; mount --make-rslave /mnt/gentoo/dev
Now chroot into our new environment:
chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash source /etc/profile export PS1="(AGIX chroot) $PS1"
Now we need to pull in a snapshot of portage
emerge-webrsync
You can read the Gentoo news later run this for now,
eselect news read >> /root/news
Set the system profile
eselect profile set 1
Set the timezone and the locale for the system (obviously change to match you location etc.)
echo "Australia/South" >> /etc/timezone ; emerge --config sys-libs/timezone-data ; echo 'en_AU.UTF-8 UTF-8' >> /etc/locale.gen ; locale-gen ; eselect locale set 3
Now update the environment
env-update && source /etc/profile
Setup the package.use file
cat /etc/portage/package.use/iputils >> /root/package.use ; rm -rf /etc/portage/package.use ; mv /root/package.use /etc/portage/package.use
echo "sys-kernel/genkernel cryptsetup" >> /etc/portage/package.use
Now for the linux kernel
emerge --ask -jv sys-kernel/gentoo-sources sys-kernel/genkernel ; genkernel --menuconfig all ; ls /boot/kernel* >> /root/kernel_files ; ls /boot/initramfs* >> /root/initramfs_files
Install some useful applications,
emerge --ask -jv app-editors/vim app-admin/syslog-ng sys-process/cronie sys-apps/mlocate app-admin/sudo app-admin/logrotate app-misc/screen app-text/tree app-portage/gentoolkit app-portage/portage-utils net-misc/dhcpcd net-misc/netifrc
And start the important ones with the system,
rc-update add syslog-ng default ; rc-update add cronie default ; rc-update add sshd default
Setup the FStab, again adjust the file system choices if needed.
vi /etc/fstab
/dev/sda2 /boot ext2 defaults,noatime 0 2 /dev/sda3 none swap sw 0 0 /dev/sda4 / ext4 noatime 0 1 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom auto noauto,user 0 0
Set the hostname for the system
vi /etc/conf.d/hostname
Networking setup steps, you may need to repeat these if you adapter’s id changes
vi /etc/conf.d/net
dns_domain_lo="DOMAIN" config_eth0="dhcp"
Create the init script
cd /etc/init.d ln -s net.lo net.eth0 rc-update add net.eth0 default
Double check the keymap for the system and then set the password for root
cat /etc/conf.d/keymaps | grep -i "keymap="
passwd
Check the system clock settings, should be UTC by default but you can set it to local if that suits you
cat /etc/conf.d/hwclock | grep -i "clock="
Install Grub
emerge --ask -jv sys-boot/grub ; grub2-install /dev/sda grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Now we should be able to shutdown the system and the power back on into your working Gentoo installation. Please keep in mind that if you are using ssh to connect to the machine your installing on you will need to edit the sshd config to allow root login otherwise you will not be able to access your machine.
shutdown -h now
When the system comes backup login using the password that you set and run the following to make sure that your network device is working.
ifconfig -a
Sometimes when the machine is shutdown after installation it will change the name of the network device from say eth0 to enp2s0, if this happens just repeat the steps in the networking setup section above replacing eth0 with new adapter id and remove the old one.
If you do not see your networking device listed after running the below command then you will need to reconfigure the kernel with your device driver enabled.
ifconfig -a
Now update the system and you should be all set to start using it
emerge @world --update --deep --newuse -aqv --autounmask-write ; dispatch-conf
One final reboot
reboot
That is all there is to it, you now a have a basic Gentoo installation suitable for use with any of the other Gentoo projects mentioned on Agix Linux Blog.
If you have any questions or run into some issues while following this article please let me know in the comments section below.
