Gentoo Linux 1.4 Installation Instructions

1.About the Install

This new boot CD will boot from nearly any modern IDE CD-ROM drive, as well as many SCSI CD-ROM, assuming that your CD-ROM and BIOS both support booting. Included on the CD-ROM is Linux support for IDE (and PCI IDE) (built-in to the kernel) as well as support for all SCSI devices (available as modules). In addition, we provide modules for literally every kind of network card that Linux supports, as well as tools to allow you to configure your network and establish outbound ssh connections and download files.

To install from the build CD, you will need to have a 486+ processor and ideally at least 64 Megabytes of RAM. (Gentoo linux has been successfully built with 64MB of RAM + 64MB of swap space, but the build process is awfully slow under those conditions.) To begin the install process, first grab the livecd ISO images from http://www.ibiblio.org/gentoo/releases/1.4_rc1/. The three stages make our life easy with Gentoo. The stage1 is for building the entire system from scratch. Stage2 is for building some of the system from scratch, and stage3 saves a lot of time because it is already optimized for you specific system. At the moment only the stage1 tarball is stored on the livecd, but you will be able to download a stage2 or stage3 tarball optimized for your system after booting the livecd.

Now, let's quickly review the install process. We'll create partitions, create our filesystems, and extract either a stage1, stage2 or stage3 tarball. If we are using a stage1 or stage2 tarball, we will take the appropriate steps to get our systems to stage3. Once our systems are at stage3, we can configure them (tweaking config files, installing a bootloader, etc) and boot them and have a fully-functional Gentoo Linux system. Depending on what stage of the build process you're starting from, here's what's required for installation:

2.Booting

Start by booting the livecd. You'll be greeted with a lot of text output followed by the normal Gentoo Linux boot sequence. Login as "root" (just hit <enter> for the password), and then use the passwd command to change the root password. (This root password is only for this installation session. The reason for changing the password is that you will have to connect to the net to complete the installation. Connecting to the internet with the default root password is a really bad idea!) You should have a root ("#") prompt on the current console, and can also open new consoles by typing alt-f2, alt-f3, etc and then hitting enter.

Next, you'll be greeted with a small list of commands available on the boot CD, including vi and nano, and instructions for setting up the network. Then, you'll be prompted to select your preferred keymap, followed by PCI autodetection. The PCI autodetection process will automatically load the appropriate kernel modules for many popular PCI SCSI and ethernet devices. After this, you can hit enter to enter the minimal boot CD Linux environment. You should have a root ("#") prompt on the current console, and can also open new consoles by typing Alt-F2, Alt-F3, etc and then hitting enter.

3.Load Kernel Modules

Hopefully you need only type pci-setup at the root prompt to autodetect the hardware on your system and to load the appropriate kernel modules.

If the PCI autodetection missed some of your hardware, you will have to load the appropriate modules manually. To view a list of all available network card modules, type ls /lib/modules/*/kernel/drivers/net/*. To load a particular module, type:

# modprobe pcnet32
	(replace pcnet32 with your NIC module)

Now, if you want to be able to access any SCSI hardware that wasn't detected during the PCI autodetection process, you'll need to load the appropriate modules from /lib/modules, again using modprobe:

# modprobe aic7xxx
# modprobe sd_mod

aic7xxx supports your SCSI controller and sd_mod supports SCSI hard disks.

Note: Support for a SCSI CD-ROMs in build-in in the kernel.

If you are using hardware RAID, you need to load the ATA-RAID modules for your RAID controller.

    
# insmod ataraid    
# insmod pdcraid            
      (Promise Raid Controller)    
# insmod hptraid            
      (Highpoint Raid Controller)    

The Gentoo LiveCD should have enabled DMA on your disks, but if it did not, hdparm can be used to set DMA on your drives.

Replace hdX with your disk device. 
# hdparm -d 1 /dev/hdX 
Enables DMA 
# hdparm -X66 /dev/hdX 
Enables Ultra-DMA 

4.Loading PCMCIA Kernel Modules

If you have a PCMCIA network card, you will need to do some additional trickery.

# insmod pcmcia_core
# insmod i82365
# insmod ds
# cardmgr -f

As cardmgr detects which hardware is present, your speaker should emit a few reassuring beeps, and your PCMCIA network card should hum to life. You can of course insert the PCMCIA card after loading cardmgr too, if that's preferable. (Technically, you need not run cardmgr if you know exactly which module your PCMCIA card requires. But if you don't, loading all PCMCIA modules and see which sticks won't work, as all PCMCIA modules load obligingly and hang around for a PCMCIA card to drop by. cardmgr will also unload the module(s) for any card when you remove it).

5.Configuring Networking

PPPoE configurationá

Assuming you need PPPoE to connect to the internet, the livecd (any version) has made things easy for you by including rp-pppoe. Use the provided adsl-setup script to configure your connection. You will be prompted for the ethernet device that is connected to your adsl modem, your username and password, the IPs of your DNS servers, and if you need a basic firewall or not.

#  adsl-setup 
#  adsl-start 

If something goes wrong, double-check that you correctly typed your username and password by looking at /etc/ppp/pap-secrets or /etc/ppp/chap-secrets, and make sure you are using the right ethernet device.

Automatic Network Configuration á

The Gentoo Linux install lets you configure a working network, allowing you to use ssh, scp or wget as needed before even beginning the installation process. Even if you don't need to do these things now, you should go ahead and set up networking now. Once networking is up, Portage will be able to use your configured network once you are inside the chroot environment (required for installing Gentoo Linux). The simplest way to set up networking is to run our new net-setup script.

# net-setup eth0

Of course, if you prefer, you may still set up networking manually.

Manual DHCP Configurationá

Network configuration is simple with DHCP; If your ISP is not using DHCP, skip down to the static configuration section below.

# dhcpcd eth0 

If you receive dhcpConfig warnings, don't panic; the errors are most likely cosmetic. Skip down to Network testing below.

Manual Static Configurationá

We need to setup just enough networking so that we can download sources for the system build, as well as the required localhost interface. Type in the following commands, replacing $IFACE with your network interface (typically eth0), $IPNUM with your IP address, $BCAST with your broadcast address, and $NMASK with your network mask. For the route command, replace $GTWAY with your default gateway.

# ifconfig $IFACE $IPNUM broadcast $BCAST netmask $NMASK
# /sbin/route add -net default gw $GTWAY netmask 0.0.0.0 metric 1

Now it's time to create the /etc/resolv.conf file so that name resolution (finding Web/FTP sites by name, rather than just by IP address) will work.

Here's a template to follow for creating your /etc/resolv.conf file:

domain mydomain.com
nameserver 10.0.0.1
nameserver 10.0.0.2

Replace 10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.2 with the IP addresses of your primary and secondary DNS servers respectively.

Proxy Configurationá

If you are behind a proxy, it is necessary to configure your proxy before you continue. We will export some variables to set up the proxy accordingly.

# export http_proxy="machine.company.com:1234" 
# export ftp_proxy="$http_proxy" 
# export RSYNC_PROXY="$http_proxy" 

Network Testingá

Now that your network has been configured, the /sbin/ifconfig -a command should show that your network card is working (look for UP and RUNNING in the output).

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:50:BA:8F:61:7A
          inet addr:192.168.0.2  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::50:ba8f:617a/10 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:1498792 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1284980 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:1984 txqueuelen:100
          RX bytes:485691215 (463.1 Mb)  TX bytes:123951388 (118.2 Mb)
          Interrupt:11

Networking is go!á

Networking should now be configured and useable. You should be able to use the included ssh, scp and wget commands to connect to other machines on your LAN or the Internet.

6.Partition Configuration

Now that the kernel can see the network card and disk controllers, it's time to set up disk partitions for Gentoo Linux.

Here's a quick overview of the standard Gentoo Linux partition layout. We're going to create at least three partitions: a swap partition, a root partition (to hold the bulk of Gentoo Linux), and a special boot partition. The boot partition is designed to hold the GRUB or LILO boot loader information as well as your Linux kernel(s). The boot partition gives us a safe place to store everything related to booting Linux. During normal day-to-day Gentoo Linux use, your boot partition should remain unmounted. This prevents your kernel from being made unavailable to GRUB (due to filesystem corruption) in the event of a system crash, preventing the chicken-and-egg problem where GRUB can't read your kernel (since your filesystem isn't consistent) but you can't bring your filesystem back to a consistent state (since you can't boot!)

Now, on to filesystem types. Right now, you have four filesystem options: XFS, ext2, ext3 (journaling) and ReiserFS. ext2 is the tried and true Linux filesystem but doesn't have metadata journaling. ext3 is the new version of ext2 with both metadata journaling and ordered data writes, effectively providing data journaling as well. ReiserFS is a B*-tree based filesystem that has very good small file performance, and greatly outperforms both ext2 and ext3 when dealing with small files (files less than 4k), often by a factor of 10x-15x. ReiserFS also scales extremely well and has metadata journaling. As of kernel 2.4.18+, ReiserFS is finally rock-solid and highly recommended. XFS is a filesystem with metadata journaling that is fully supported under Gentoo Linux's xfs-sources kernel, but be warned that it is highly unstable at this time.

If you're looking for the most standard filesystem, use ext2. If you're looking for the most rugged journalled filesystem, use ext3. If you're looking for a high-performance filesystem with journaling support, use ReiserFS; both ext3 and ReiserFS are mature and refined. Please be careful with XFS; this filesystem has a tendency to fry lots of data if the system crashes or you lose power. Originally, it seemed like a promising filesystem but it now appears that this tendency to lose data is a major achilles' heel. Here are our basic recommended filesystem sizes and types:

Before creating your partitions, it is a very good idea to initialize the beginning of your HD using dd. Doing this will ensure that you have no issues with mounting previously fat32 partitions, like /boot for example. To do this you would do:

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdaBOOT bs=1024 count=1024 
BOOT is the partition that holds your /boot.

At this point, create your partitions using fdisk. Note that your partitions should be of type 82 if swap and 83 for regular filesystems (whether ReiserFS or ext2/3).

Once you've created your partitions, it's time to initialize the filesystems that will be used to house our data. Initialize swap as follows:

# mkswap /dev/hda2

You can use the mke2fs command to create ext2 filesystems.

# mke2fs /dev/hda1

To create an XFS filesystem, use the mkfs.xfs command.

# mkfs.xfs /dev/hda3

If you'd like to use ext3, you can create ext3 filesystems using mke2fs -j.

# mke2fs -j /dev/hda3

To create ReiserFS filesystems, use the mkreiserfs command.

# mkreiserfs /dev/hda3

7.Mount Partitions

Now, we'll activate our new swap, since we may need the additional virtual memory that provides later:

# swapon /dev/hda2

Next, we'll create the /mnt/gentoo and /mnt/gentoo/boot mountpoints, and we'll mount our filesystems to these mountpoints.

# mkdir /mnt/gentoo
# mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/gentoo
# mkdir /mnt/gentoo/boot
# mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/gentoo/boot

If you are setting up Gentoo Linux with a separate /usr or /var, these would get mounted to /mnt/gentoo/usr and /mnt/gentoo/var, respectively.

8.Obtaining the Desired 'stage-x' Tarball

If you want to start from a stage1 tarball, then you're already set to go; you can find the stage1 tarball in /cdroot/nocompress. On the other hand, if you would prefer to start from a stage2 or stage3 tarball that has been optimized for your architecture you can download it (into /mnt/gentoo would be the simplest) from one of the Gentoo mirror sites:

# cd /mnt/gentoo
# lynx http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo/releases/1.4_rc1/x86/

9.Unpacking the Stage Tarballs

Now it's time to extract the compressed stage tarball of your choice to /mnt/gentoo. Then, we'll chroot over to the new Gentoo Linux build installation.

If you are using the "from scratch, build everything" install method, you will want to use the stage1-ix86-1.4_beta.tbz2 image. If you're using one of our bigger CDs, you'll also have a choice of a stage2 and stage3 image. These images allow you to save time at the expense of configurability (we've already chosen compiler optimizations and default USE variables for you.) The stage3 image now also includes complete linux sources and a Portage tree snapshot, eliminating the need to do an emerge sync later, but it is highly recommended to do so anyway.

# cd /mnt/gentoo
# tar -xvjpf /path/to/stage?-*.tbz2
# mount -o bind /proc /mnt/gentoo/proc
# cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/resolv.conf

# chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
# env-update
Regenerating /etc/ld.so.cache...
# source /etc/profile

After you execute these commands, you'll be "inside" your new Gentoo Linux environment.

10.Getting the Current Portage Tree using Rsync

Now, you'll need to run emerge sync. This will make sure that you have the most current copy of the Portage tree.

# emerge sync

The Portage tree will be downloaded and stored in /usr/portage; it's about 90Mb in size without tarballs.

11.Progressing from stage1 to stage2

If you are a stage2 or stage3 tarball, then we've already bootstrapped for you. There is no reason for you to bootstrap again, unless you decided to do an emerge sync and want to ensure that you have an up-to-the-minute current Gentoo Linux system. Most people using stage2 or stage3 tarballs will not want to bootstrap again, since it can take over two hours even on very fast machines.

Now that you have a working copy of the Portage tree, people using stage1 to install will need to bootstrap their Gentoo Linux system as follows. First edit the file /etc/make.conf. In this file, you should set your USE flags, which specify optional functionality that you would like to be built into packages; generally, the defaults (an empty or unset USE variable) are fine. More information on USE flags can be found here.

You also should set appropriate CHOST, CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS settings for the kind of system that you are creating (commented examples can be found further down in the file.) Your best friend is man gcc to figure out what additional CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS are available. Search for 'Optimization'.

If necessary, you can also set proxy information here if you are behind a firewall.

# nano -w /etc/make.conf (Adjust these settings)

Now, it's time to start the "bootstrap" process. This process takes about two hours on my 1200Mhz AMD Athlon system. During this time, the extracted build image will be prepped for compiling the rest ofthe system. The GNU compiler suite will be built, as well as the GNU C library. These are time consuming builds and make up the bulk of the bootstrap process.

# cd /usr/portage
# scripts/bootstrap.sh

The "bootstrap" process will now begin.

# export PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/otherdir/tmp"

bootstrap.sh will build binutils, gcc, gettext, and glibc, rebuilding binutils, gcc, and gettext after glibc. Needless to say, this process takes a while. Have a nice nap. Once this process completes, your system will be in a "stage2" state.

12.Timezone

At this point, you should have a stage2 system that's ready for final configuration. We'll start this process by setting the timezone. By setting the timezone before building the kernel we ensure that users get reasonable uname -a output.

Look for your timezone (or GMT if you using Greenwich Mean Time) in /usr/share/zoneinfo. Then, make a symbolic link by typing:

# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/path/to/timezonefile /etc/localtime

You might also want to check /etc/rc.conf to make sure your timezone settings are correct.

13.Progressing from stage2 to stage3

Once your build image has been bootstrapped and you're at stage2 (again, if you are using a stage3 tarball than these steps are not required) it's time to build or install the rest of the base system.

# export CONFIG_PROTECT=""
# emerge -p system
	[lists the packages to be installed]
# emerge system

It's going to take a while to finish building the entire base system. Your reward is that it will be thoroughly optimized for your system. The drawback is that you have to find a way to keep yourself occupied for some time to come. The author suggests "Star Wars - Super Bombad Racing" for the PS2. When emerge system completes, you'll have a stage3 Gentoo Linux system.

14.Final steps: kernel and system logger

You now need to merge Linux source ebuilds. Here are the ones we currently offer:

Choose one and then merge as follows:

# emerge sys-kernel/gentoo-sources

Once you have a Linux kernel source tree available, it's time to compile your own custom kernel.

# cd /usr/src/linux
# make menuconfig
# make dep && make clean bzImage modules modules_install
# mv /boot/bzImage /boot/bzImage.orig
[if bzImage already exists]
# cp /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot

If you are using hardware RAID you will need to enable a couple more options in the kernel: For Highpoint RAID controllers select hpt366 chipset support, support for IDE RAID controllers and Highpoint 370 software RAID.For Promise RAID controllers select PROMISE PDC202{46|62|65|67|68|69|70} support, support for IDE RAID controllers and Support Promise software RAID (Fasttrak(tm))

If you use PPPoE to connect to Internet, you will need the following options in the kernel (built-in or as preferably as modules) : "PPP (point-to-point protocol) support", "PPP support for async serial ports", "PPP support for sync tty ports". The two compression options won't harm but are not definitely needed, neither does the "PPP over Ethernet" option, that might only be used by rp-pppoe when configured to do kernel mode PPPoE.

If you have an IDE cd burner, then you need to enable SCSI emulation in the kernel. Turn on "ATA/IDE/MFM/RLL support" ---> "IDE, ATA and ATAPI Block devices" ---> "SCSI emulation support" (I usually make it a module), then under "SCSI support" enable "SCSI support", "SCSI CD-ROM support" and "SCSI generic support" (again, I usually compile them as modules). If you also choose to use modules, then echo -e "ide-scsi\nsg\nsr_mod" >> /etc/modules.autoload to have them automatically added at boot time.

Your new custom kernel (and modules) are now installed. Now you need to choose a system logger that you would like to install. We offer sysklogd, which is the traditional set of system logging daemons. We also have msyslog and syslog-ng as well as metalog. Power users seem to gravitate away from sysklogd (not very good performance) and towards the newer alternatives. If in doubt, you may want to try metalog, since it seems to be quite popular. To merge your logger of choice, type one of the next four lines:

# emerge app-admin/sysklogd
# rc-update add sysklogd default
or
# emerge app-admin/syslog-ng
# rc-update add syslog-ng default
or
# emerge app-admin/metalog
# rc-update add metalog default
or
# emerge app-admin/msyslog
# rc-update add msyslog default

Now, you may optionally choose a cron package that you'd like to use. Right now, we offer dcron, fcron and vcron. If you don't know which one to choose, you might as well grab vcron. They can be installed as follows:

# emerge sys-apps/dcron
# crontab /etc/crontab
or
# emerge sys-apps/fcron
# crontab /etc/crontab
or
# emerge sys-apps/vcron
Don't forget to add your *cron to the proper init level. 
# rc-update add *cron default 

For more information how how cron works under Gentoo Linux, see this announcement.

For more information on starting programs and daemons at startup, see the rc-script guide.

15.Final steps: Install Additional Packages

If you need rp-pppoe to connect to the net, be aware that at this point it has not been installed. It would be the good time to do it.

# emerge rp-pppoe

You may need to install some additional packages in the Portage tree if you are using any optional features like XFS, ReiserFS or LVM. If you're using XFS, you should emerge the xfsprogs ebuild:

# emerge sys-apps/xfsprogs
If you'd like to use ReiserFS, you should emerge the ReiserFS tools: 
#  emerge sys-apps/reiserfsprogs
If you're using LVM, you should emerge the lvm-user package: 
# emerge --usepkg sys-apps/lvm-user

If you're a laptop user and wish to use your PCMCIA slots on your first real reboot, you'll want to make sure you install the pcmcia-cs package.

# emerge sys-apps/pcmcia-cs

16.Final steps: /etc/fstab

Your Gentoo Linux system is almost ready for use. All we need to do now is configure a few important system files and install the GRUB boot loader. The first file we need to configure is /etc/fstab. Remember that you should use the notail option for your boot partition if you chose to create a ReiserFS filesystem on it. Remember to specify ext2, ext3 or reiserfs filesystem types as appropriate.

Use something like the /etc/fstab listed below, but of course be sure to replace "BOOT", "ROOT" and "SWAP" with the actual block devices you are using (such as hda1, etc.)

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# noatime turns of atimes for increased performance (atimes normally aren't
# needed; notail increases performance of ReiserFS (at the expense of storage
# efficiency).  It's safe to drop the noatime options if you want and to 
# switch between notail and tail freely.

# <fs>           <mountpoint>   <type>   <opts>          <dump/pass>

# NOTE: If your BOOT partition is ReiserFS, add the notail option to opts.

/dev/BOOT           /boot       ext2	 noauto,noatime	 1 2
/dev/ROOT           /           ext3	 noatime         0 1
/dev/SWAP           none        swap	 sw              0 0
/dev/cdroms/cdrom0  /mnt/cdrom  iso9660	 noauto,ro       0 0
proc                /proc       proc	 defaults        0 0

Final steps: Root Passwordá

Before you forget, set the root password by typing:

# passwd

Final steps: /etc/hostnameá

Edit this file so that it contains your fully-qualified domain name on a single line, i.e. mymachine.mydomain.com.

# echo mymachine.mydomain.com > /etc/hostname

Final steps: /etc/hostsá

This file contains a list of ip addresses and their associated hostnames. It's used by the system to resolve the IP addresses of any hostnames that may not be in your nameservers. Here's a template for this file:

127.0.0.1      localhost
# the next line contains your IP for your local LAN, and your associated machine name
192.168.1.1    mymachine.mydomain.com	mymachine

Final Network Configurationá

Add the names of any modules that are necessary for the proper functioning of your system to /etc/modules.autoload file (you can also add any options you need to the same line.) When Gentoo Linux boots, these modules will be automatically loaded. Of particular importance is your ethernet card module, if you happened to compile it as a module:

This is assuming that you are using a 3com card. Check /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/net for your
card. 
3c59x

Edit the /etc/conf.d/net script to get your network configured for your first boot:

# nano -w /etc/conf.d/net
# rc-update add net.eth0 default

If you have multiple network cards you need to create additional net.ethx scripts for each one (x = 1, 2, ...):

# cd /etc/init.d
# cp net.eth0 net.ethx
# rc-update add net.ethx default

If you have a PCMCIA card installed, have a quick look into /etc/init.d/pcmcia to verify that things seem all right for your setup, then add

depend() {
	need pcmcia
}

to the top of your /etc/init.d/net.ethx file. This makes sure that the PCMCIA drivers are autoloaded whenever your network is loaded.

Final steps: configure basic settings (including the international keymap setting)á

# nano -w /etc/rc.conf

Follow the directions in the file to configure the basic settings. All users will want to make sure that CLOCK is set to his/her liking. International keyboard users will want to set the KEYMAP variable (browse /usr/share/keymaps to see the various possibilities).

Final steps: Configure GRUBá

The most critical part of understanding GRUB is getting comfortable with how GRUB refers to hard drives and partitions. Your Linux partition /dev/hda1 is called (hd0,0) under GRUB. Notice the parenthesis around the hd0,0 - they are required. Hard drives count from zero rather than "a", and partitions start at zero rather than one. Be aware too that with the hd devices, only harddrives are counted, not atapi-ide devices such as cdrom players, burners, and that the same construct can be used with scsi drives. (Normally they get higher numbers than ide drives except when the bios is configured to boot from scsi devices.) Assuming you have a harddrive on /dev/hda, a cdrom player on /dev/hdb, a burner on /dev/hdc and a second hardrive on /dev/hdd, for example, and no scsi harddrive /dev/hdd7 gets translated to (hd1,6). It might sound tricky, and tricky it is indeed, but as we will see, grub offers a tab completion mechanism that comes handy for those of you having a lot of harddrives and partitions and who are a little lost in the grub numbering scheme. Having gotten the feel for that, it's time to install GRUB.

The easiest way to install GRUB is to simply type grub at your chrooted shell prompt:

# grub

You'll be presented with the grub> grub command-line prompt. Now, you need to type in the right commands to install the GRUB boot record onto your hard drive. In my example configuration, I want to install the GRUB boot record on my hard drive's MBR (master boot record), so that the first thing I see when I turn on the computer is the GRUB prompt. In my case, the commands I want to type are:

grub> root (hd0,0)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit

Here's how the two commands work. The first root ( ) command tells GRUB the location of your boot partition (in our example, /dev/hda1 or (hd0,0) in GRUB terminology. Then, the second setup ( ) command tells GRUB where to install the boot record - it will be configured to look for its special files at the root ( ) location that you specified. In my case, I want the boot record on the MBR of the hard drive, so I simply specify /dev/hda (also known as (hd0)). If I were using another boot loader and wanted to set up GRUB as a secondary boot-loader, I could install GRUB to the boot record of a particular partition. In that case, I'd specify a particular partition rather than the entire disk. Once the GRUB boot record has been successfully installed, you can type quit to quit GRUB.

Note: The tab completion mechanism of grub can be used from within grub, assuming you wrote root ( and that you hit the TAB key, you would be prompted with a list of the available devices (not only harddrives), hitting the TAB key having written root (hd, grub would print the available harddrives and hitting the TAB key after writing root (hd0, would make grub print the list of partitions on the first harddrive. Checking the syntax of the grub location with completion should really help to make the right choice.

Gentoo Linux is now installed, but we need to create the /boot/grub/grub.conf file so that we get a nice GRUB boot menu when the system reboots. Here's how to do it.

Now, create the grub.conf file (nano -w /boot/grub/grub.conf), and add the following to it:

default 0
timeout 30
splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title=My example Gentoo Linux
root (hd0,0) 
kernel /boot/bzImage root=/dev/hda3 

 #Below is for setup using hardware RAID
title=My Gentoo Linux on RAID
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/bzImage root=/dev/ataraid/discX/partY

# Below needed only for people who dual-boot
title=Windows NT Workstation
root (hd0,5) 
chainloader +1

After saving this file, Gentoo Linux installation is complete. Selecting the first option will tell GRUB to boot Gentoo Linux without a fuss. The second part of the grub.conf file is optional, and shows you how to use GRUB to boot a bootable Windows partition.

If you need to pass any additional options to the kernel, simply add them to the end of the kernel command. We're already passing one option (root=/dev/hda3), but you can pass others as well. In particular, you can turn off devfs by default (not recommended unless you know what you're doing) by adding the gentoo=nodevfs option to the kernel command.

If you are using hardware RAID, you must make a GRUB boot disk. With hardware RAID if you try to install grub from your chrooted shell it will fail. So we will make a GRUB boot disk, and when you reboot the first time we will install GRUB to the MBR. Make your bootdisk like this:

# mke2fs /dev/fd0
# mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
# mkdir -p /mnt/floppy/boot/grub
# cp /usr/share/grub/i386-pc/stage1 /mnt/floppy/boot/grub/
# cp /usr/share/grub/i386-pc/stage2 /mnt/floppy/boot/grub/

# grub

grub> root (fd0)
grub> setup (fd0)
grub> quit

17.Installation Complete!

Now, Gentoo Linux is installed. The only remaining step is to exit the chrooted shell, udpate necessary configuration files, safely unmount your partitions and reboot the system:

# etc-update
# exit 
// This exits the chrooted shell; you can also type ^D
# cd / 
# umount /mnt/gentoo/boot
# umount /mnt/gentoo/proc
# umount /mnt/gentoo
# reboot

If you have any questions or would like to get involved with Gentoo Linux development, consider joining our gentoo-user and gentoo-dev mailing lists (there's a "click to subscribe" link on our main page). We also have a handy Desktop configuration guide that will help you to continue configuring your new Gentoo Linux system, and a useful Portage user guide to help familiarize you with Portage basics. You can find the rest of the Gentoo Documentation here. Enjoy and welcome to Gentoo Linux!

18.Gentoo-Stats

The Gentoo Linux usage statistics program was started as an attempt to give the developers a way to find out about their user base. It collects information about Gentoo Linux usage to help us in set priorities our development. Installing it is completely optional, and it would be greatly appreciated if you decide to use it. Compiled statistics can be viewed at http://stats.gentoo.org/.

The gentoo-stats server will assign a unique ID to your system. This ID is used to make sure that each system is counted only once. The ID will not be used to individually identify your system, nor will it be mached against an IP address or other personal information. Every precaution has been taken to assure your privacy in the development of this system. The following are the things that we are monitoring right now through our "gentoo-stats" program:

• installed packages and their version numbers
• CPU information: speed (MHz), vendor name, model name, CPU flags (like "mmx" or "3dnow")
• memory information (total available physical RAM, total available swap space)
• PCI cards and network controller chips
• the Gentoo Linux profile your machine is using (that is, where the /etc/make.profile link is pointing to).

We are aware that disclosure of sensitive information is a threat to most Gentoo Linux users (just as it is to the developers).

• Unless you modify the gentoo-stats program, it will never transmit sensitive information such as your passwords, configuration data, shoe size...
• Transmission of your e-mail addresses is optional and turned off by default.
• The IP address your data transmission originates from will never be logged in such a way that we can identify you. There are no "IP address/system ID" pairs.

The installation is easy - just run the following commands:

# emerge gentoo-stats   // Installs gentoo-stats
# gentoo-stats --new    // Obtains a new system ID

The second command above will request a new system ID and enter it into /etc/gentoo-stats/gentoo-stats.conf automatically. You can view this file to see additional configuration options.

After that, the program should be run on a regular schedule (gentoo-stats does not have to be run as root). Add this line to your crontab:

0 0 * * 0,4 /usr/sbin/gentoo-stats --update > /dev/null

The gentoo-stats program is a simple perl script which can be viewed with your favortive pager or editor: /usr/sbin/gentoo-stats.