How can I make a custom offline gentoo install?

antoniovalos · n00b Joined: 24 Mar 2023 Posts: 27

I have an custom gentoo installation, with some tools, that I use to install in many machines. How can I have all data of the installation data offline to perform an complete offline installation?

*I wrote an script to perform the install to avoid needing mane interventions from me, bu I would like to do this without needing to be connected to the internet

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Apr 22, 2023 9:39 am Post subject:

antoniovalos,

Make a stage4 backup (your serach engine will help).
You can restore that to as many *identical* machines as you like.
If the targets are not identical to the original then the original install must be able to run on all the different targets.

The resulting installs will be *identical* to the stage4
The will have the same ssh host_key, users, groups, passwords, static IP, if you set a static IPs, machine_id ...
Maybe even UUIDs ... and possibly more.

Your install script, if it starts from a stage4, has to deal with making the machines unique.

You could also distribute a repo snapshot and a matching binary packages, so you install binaries. Even with a world file. No internet connection required.

antoniovalos · n00b Joined: 24 Mar 2023 Posts: 27

After many similar installs of gentoo, I create a script to help me to install it needing less intervention, but I have to be connected to the internet to download the packages to install, I just wanto to have all packages store it in my media, to perform the steps without internet connection, I still want it to compile. I will install it in different machines, but all of them are amd64 (I do not know if the different hardware makes difference in which packages are going to be downloaded).

pietinger · Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2023 2:10 pm Post subject:

Hu · Administrator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 21706

Portage downloads needed files to $DISTDIR. If they are already present, then they can be used even if you are offline. If you ensure that your wrapper has a copy of the DISTDIR from the reference machine, then you will have all the sources you need to rebuild that reference machine.

Different hardware does not automatically cause Portage to want different source files. However, decisions you make about USE flags can affect what it wants, and you might choose to enable some flags dependent on the hardware you are installing on.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2023 8:08 pm Post subject:

antoniovalos,

You need to create something like the Gentoo Reference Platform which has not bees made of a long time.
Its a bootable ISO, with a stage3, a portage snapshot, and binaries all ready to install.
It may have been as much as two CDs but it stopped in 2008,

You can make your own.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.