install gentoo safely as stage 3 doesn't have kernel files.

[rupeshforu3]

Hi I am Rupesh from India and I brought a new pc with AMD ryzen 5500GT Asus prime b450 motherboard. I have tried a number of Linux operating systems and at present I have installed successfully Fedora, Debian, and Arch Linux but I can't install gentoo safely.

I have tried the instructions specified in gentoo AMD handbook to install gentoo safely as follows

1) I have downloaded gentoo live iso image from the official gentoo website.

2) I created usb installation medium using dd in Arch Linux.

3) I booted into the gentoo live environment.

4) using Firefox web browser I have downloaded stage 3 desktop systemd tar ball.

5) I created 40 Gb xfs partition for new gentoo root.

6) I created 600 mb fat 32 alias vfat for gentoo efi.

7) I created 3 gb swap partition for new gentoo

I mounted 40 Gb xfs partition to /mnt/gentoo

9) I have mounted vfat partition to /mnt/gentoo/efi

10) I copied the stage 3 tar ball to /mnt/gentoo and extracted it as specified in handbook.

11) I modified the fstab file and added entries for root, efi and swap.

12) I added -march=znver3 to COMMON_FLAGS entry in /etc/portage/make.conf and made symbolic link to /etc/make.conf.

13) rebooted my system and entered into Arch Linux and issued the following command

sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

I found something as "found gentoo on /dev/nvme0n1p18

After that I entered the following command

grub install /dev/nvme0n1

14) I have rebooted my system and in grub I selected gentoo but I got error as kernel not found.

15) I restarted my system and entered into gentoo live environment and searched Firefox for gentoo install kernel and found article saying to install gentoo-kernel

So I done chroot into my new gentoo and issued the following command

emerge gentoo-kernel

16) After that I have rebooted my system and entered into Arch Linux and issued the following command

sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

After that I issued grub install in Arch Linux.

17) After that I have restarted my system and in grub I have selected gentoo but this time I got error something as

cannot open /dev/root

1 After that I have restarted my system and entered into gentoo live environment and searched for gentoo install kernel and this time I found an article saying that linux-firmware to install first before doing anything else.

Even though I issued the following command

emerge linux-firmware

19) After that I have restarted my system and entered into Arch Linux and issued grub commands as before.

20) As usually I restarted my system and in grub I have selected gentoo but unfortunately this time also I got the same error as

/dev/root: Cannot open blockdev

21) I tried a number of times to remove the installed kernel and compile it from source from the beginning but no use I am getting the same error as

/dev/root: Cannot open blockdev

If I want to install or remove packages I must enter into gentoo live environment and do chroot and do anything.


In the gentoo live environment chroot when I issue emerge command I am getting error as the current package is masked. For example the following command

emerge linux-firmware

I have searched portage for some packages like sudo, grub, network manager etc., and mostly I found 50 percent in the repository are masked.

Upto now I have used a number of Linux operating systems and upon installing them to my system I found a working kernel all utilities like sudo, grub, network manager etc.,.

I can't understand why gentoo stage 3 tar ball doesn't have kernel installation files and grub.


At present I am getting error /dev/root cannot open blockdev and in chroot environment sometimes I am getting error as "efi directory not found".

My requirement is I want a working Linux operating system through compilation of all packages optimised for my ryzen zen3 processor. For this I included -march=znver3 in /etc/.

Another requirement is if I issue the command "emerge kde" all the packages related to kde must be downloaded and compiled properly and the system must not be in a broken state.

Kindly try to suggest how to install gentoo properly and if you want I am ready to provide diagnostic output of the commands provided by you.
_________________
Regards,
Rupesh.

[pietinger]

rupeshforu3,

Welcome to Gentoo Forums !

Your steps 1 - 12 were correct. I assume you did step 13 because you have other partitions (for other Linux distros) and ALREADY a working grub from Arch ... somewhere ... But I dont understand why you did after (the correct) grub-mkconfig a grub install again ?

Step 14 could be important. Here we would need the file /boot/grub/grub.cfg (from your Arch partition)

Side note:

[pietinger]

P.S.:

[rupeshforu3]

What is the meaning of

/dev/root: can't open blockdev
VFS: Cannot Open root device /dev/nvme0n1p18 or unknown-block(0,0): error -6
Please append a correct "root=" boot option

There are two entries for efi and so what are the meanings of them and what is the purpose and can I neglect them totally.

1) /boot/efi
2) /efi

At present I mounted newly created efi partition for/boot/efi

How to generate correct kernel image and initramfs which are detected by Arch Linux grub-mkconfig.

If you suggest to use native grub-mkconfig I am ready to use but can it detect other operating systems like Arch Linux and windows.

I found a number of making to packages in gentoo repository and even essential packages are also masked.
_________________
Regards,
Rupesh.

[rupeshforu3]

I think that the first partition of my SSD which is efi mounted somewhere on gentoo is full and so how to remove old entries so that the problem may be solved.
_________________
Regards,
Rupesh.

[pietinger]

[rupeshforu3]

Hi I am providing the output of various commands specified by you so that you can track the problem and these commands were run in chroot environment.

[pietinger]

We have already had experience with various UEFIs here in the forum; some have not adhered to the UEFI specifications at all, others have only accepted a single ESP. You have a very lenient UEFI, because it even accepts an ESP that is not labeled as an ESP [see *].

At the moment you have booted from a USB stick:

[rupeshforu3]

Hi in Arch Linux grub.cfg file for the entry of gentoo there is no vmlinuz as Arch Linux has and there's no initrd entry.

To solve this issue in gentoo I ran grub-mkconfig and copied the output to text file and then copied the text file to Arch Linux.

In Arch Linux I ran grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg after that I copied last line present in the output of gentoo grub-mkconfig to the last line of the entry of gentoo.

The copied line is

initrd: amd-ucode initramfs...

At present I have restarted my system and in the grub screen I selected gentoo and I am able to boot into gentoo fully.

Previously I used other linux distributions like Fedora Debian and Arch Linux etc., and all have the entries for kernel initrd and vmlinuz but unfortunately gentoo doesn't have vmlinuz.

My requirement is not to boot into gentoo directly through UEFI but I want to boot through grub.

I want to boot through gentoo native grub but I suspect that it can't detect other operating systems properly.

Finally I am requesting you to answer the following

1) What does /efi mean and what is the partition type for this file system.

2) What does /boot/efi mean and what is the partition type of this file system.

3) What does /boot mean and what is the partition type for this file system.

In other linux distributions there are only two entries ie /boot and /boot/efi related to boot but gentoo has another /efi

I think I may do wrong when I partition /boot with vfat and mount it under / file system of gentoo.

Somewhere I read that /boot must be formatted with vfat.

So can you please suggest which of the following to use for /boot

1) vfat
2) ext4
3) xfs

I asked you a number of questions sorry for that but I want to clarify my doubts so that everything works fine on my system.
_________________
Regards,
Rupesh.

[pietinger]