Installing Gentoo: Why Did I Do This to Myself?

Installing Gentoo: Why Did I Do This to Myself?

I assume that most readers of this article have installed an operating system like Windows on a computer before. If not, you’ve probably installed .exe programs where you simple click Next, Next, Finish. In many ways, a Windows installation can be described like that very straightforward and guided. In this article I will show you the ropes on how to install Gentoo step by step.

We have this activity in our networking class in which can test you on how well can you configure an operating system from scratch. Our professor just gave us some exercises like installing kali linux and ubuntu which were fairly straightforward. However, the real challenge came when we are tasked with installing Gentoo. This activity is quite difficult to be honest and pushed my patience to the limit while scanning through the documentation.

Note: that I will use # to comment out of the descriptions of each commands that I used

We are tasked to download the minimal installation CD under this site [https://www.gentoo.org/downloads/](https://www.gentoo.org/downloads/) and plug it in and install inside our virtual-machine, for my case I grabbed the amd64 version & use vmware as my virtual machine.

Before booting the virtual machine, check if the boot configuration was set to UEFI because I will exclusively use the openrc version of the init system.

Set your ram at least 8gb as this will help with the package installation

The first thing to check if you have an access to the internet so that you can install gentoo packages from it’s server

ping -c 3 gentoo.org

I also configure the dns to connect to the cloudflare dns by editing /etc/resolv.conf

nano /etc/resolve.conf

Check the available disk where you will do the partitioning using fdisk command using lsblk

lsblk

In my case the 20G I defined in the virtual machine is the sda, now we will partition it using the fdisk command to create a boot, root & swap partitions. I will use the EFI system partition;

alternatively, you can use MBR if you have older machines but don’t forget to set your boot settings to BIOS if you are using this option.

Create a boot partition and set the storage to 1GB, as it usually doesn’t take up much space.

fdisk /dev/sda
    g  #set to gpt disk label
    n  #create a new partition
        1 #set the parition number to 1
        <null> #automatically set the default sector available for writing
        +1G #set the space to 1G

Assume that we are still in process of fdisk, next is create the swap partition. Mostly linux system utilize swap parition as it is essential for managing system memory efficiently, preventing crashes in memory overload scenarios.

n #create a new partition
        2 #set the partition number to 2
        <null> #automatically set the default sector avaialable for writing
        +4G #set the space to 4G

Assume that we are still in process of fdisk, lastly create the root partition, Root partition is like the C: drive of windows. Here we will also store the stage3 openrc file temporarily as it will take up approximately 700MB.

n #create a new partition
    3 #set the partition number to 3
    <null> #automatically set the default sector available for writing
    <null> #use all of the remaining spaces available for writing

p # to show the changes you made

Assume that we are still in process of fdisk, now lets set the created partitions to their corresponding file types. After configuring all of the paritions use w command to apply all changes.

Note: if you exit the fdisk command and did not execute the write command (w) most of your progress will be lost

t #set the partition type
    1 #select the boot partition
    1 #set it to EFI system
t
    2 #select the swap partition
    19 #set it to Linux swap
t
    3 #select the root partition
    23 #set it to Linux root (x86-64)

w     #confirm all of the changes done

After syncing the disk, format the each partitions next

mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sda1 #set the boot partition format as FAT32
mkfs.xfs /dev/sda3 #set the root partition format as XFS
mkswap /dev/sda2 #initialize the swap partition
swapon /dev/sda2 #activate the swap parition

Next is to mount the root partition

mkdir --parents /mnt/gentoo #create a folder called gentoo inside mount folder

mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/gentoo #mount the folder into the root parition that you created

mkdir --parents /mnt/gentoo/efi #create a folder under gentoo called efi for the boot partition

set the date using the date command

date 021704002025 #<mm><dd><time><year>

before downloading, make sure that we are inside /mnt/gentoo the download the stage3 archives in this link. Pick the openrc with desktop profile Note: Make sure that you picked the dekstop profile or else your gentoo environment will just boot in CLI

cd mnt/gentoo

links https://www.gentoo.org/downloads/

Once downloaded extract the files

tar xpvf stage3-*.tar.xz --xattrs-include='*.*' --numeric-owner -C /mnt/gentoo #extract files

edit portage, note that you should also take note of your cpu model here msinfo32

ls #check if the files are already extracted

Before editing the make.conf file check your cpu architecture and define it into the commonflags section. As for my case, I run intel 17–7700HQ which runs in kabylake

check the flags you need to define in here https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Safe_CFLAGS

nano /mnt/gentoo/etc/portage/make.conf #edit portage

define your cpu archtecture and add a line for MAKEOPTS to utilize the cpu cores. For my case I used -march=skylake for my cpu architecture MAKEOPTS = j4 as I have only 8 gb of ram defined ACCEPT_LICENSE =”*” to accept all license available for the package installation

Create a symbolic link of the dns settings before creating a new environment for chroot

cp --dereference /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/

Proceed to mounting the necessary filesystems and enter the chroot environment

mount --types 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 
mount --bind /run /mnt/gentoo/run 
mount --make-slave /mnt/gentoo/run

chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash 
source /etc/profile 
export PS1="(chroot) ${PS1}"

ping -c 3 gentoo.org #check for internet connection

create an efi folder and mount it onto your boot partition

mkdir efi
mount /dev/sda1 /efi #mount the boot drive in efi folder 

emerge-webrsync  #install a snapshot of gentoo ebuild repository

Select a mirror to download packages much faster

emerge -av mirrorselect #download mirrorselect 

mirrorselect -i -o >> /etc/portage/make.conf #use mirrorselect

Select the FTP and HTTP servers from Tera-Byte, as it is the closest option for my case.

Now we will select a profile for our gentoo configuration

eselect profile list | less #check profiles available press q to quit

eselect profile set 25 #I want to install the gnome version so that it looks like ubuntu and more lightweight than kde plasma

Enable some of the use flags needed by portage USE=”-gtk -gnome qt5 kde dvd alsa cdr”

nano /etc/portage/make.conf

Install other cpu flags using cpuid2cpuflags

emerge --ask --oneshot app-portage/cpuid2cpuflags #install the package

cpuid2cpuflags #check if the installation did go through

`echo "*/* $(cpuid2cpuflags)" > /etc/portage/package.use/00cpu-flags` #create a configuration file under package.use

check if the file had been created

Sync with the correct timezone

ln -sf ../usr/share/zoneinfo/Canada/Mountain /etc/localtime

Configure Locale gen

nano /etc/locale.gen

Uncomment en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

local-gen #generate locale

eselect locale list #list all locale available

eselect locale set 4 #select local en_US.uf8

sync your changes in locale to the system

env-update && source /etc/profile && export PS1="(chroot) ${PS1}"

Installing the kernel

emerge -av sys-kernel/gentoo-sources

emerge -av sys-kernel/linux-firmware 
emerge -av sys-kernel/installkernel dracut

emerge -av sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel-bin #encountered error in this portion refer below

Fixing masked packages

For my use case, emerge -av sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel-bin is not working as dev-lang/rust-bin1.83.0 is being package masked so I will run the ff commands

echo "dev-lang/rust-bin" | sudo tee -a /etc/portage/package.unmask #unmask rust-bin package for installation

emerge -av sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel-bin #encountered an error like config files under /etc/portage needs updating

etc-update #update the make.conf files under portage

 -3 #inside prompt apply changes

emerge -av sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel-bin #installation packages worked as all of the dependencies needed are overwritten

So basically I ran emerge -av sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel-bin command for three times just to debug and fix to install that package

Select the linux gentoo distribution, always select the linux-x.x.x.x-gentoo.dist

eselect kernel list #display available distribution that you installed earlier

eselect kernel set 2 #chose the gentoo.dist version

Create a symbolic link

ls -l /usr/src/linux

output should be like this one.

Install the kernel drivers for grub

emerge -av sys-kernel/installkernel grub

All of the installed files are in /boot partition

Edit the fstab file

nano /etc/fstab #configure fstab for later

Create hostname

echo zaakceptowac > /etc/hostname

Set the dhcp network

emerge --ask net-misc/dhcpcd

rc-update add dhcpcd default

emerge --ask --noreplace net-misc/netifrc

ifconfig

get your network device, for my case is ens33 it should have the ipv4 address

Network setup

nano /etc/conf.d/net 

cd /etc/init.d

ln -s net.lo net.ens33
rc-update add net.ens33 default

Edit hosts configuration file

nano /etc/hosts

Set up a root password

passwd

Install wireless drivers

emerge -av net-wireless/iw net-wireless/wpa_supplicant emerge -av wireless-tools  

Install system log

emerge --ask app-admin/sysklogd

rc-update add sysklogd default 

Install index manager

emerge -av sys-apps/mlocate

Install drivers for each files system

emerge -av sys-fs/xfsprogs #download xfs tools under root partition 

emerge -av sys-fs/dosfstools #download vfat tools under boot partition

emerge -av sys-fs/e2fsprogs #download ext4 as most linux use this filesystem

Install Grub

mount /dev/sda1 /efi
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/efi #initialize grub bootloader to your /efi parition 

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg #generate grub config inside uefi bootloader

Rebooting time

exit

cd ~

umount -R /mnt/gentoo

reboot

Moment of truth

I tried following the steps to install Linux with a GNOME environment but I think I failed. I ended up installing the version without the GUI environment. Looking back, I think I should have selected the linux-6.6.74-gentoo kernel instead of the distribution one.

Gentoo is still running, but in a minimal CLI-only setup

Trying to plug an xfce4 environment

nah it’s pointless just use debian/ubuntu