Quick Install Gentoo Using 2-CD LiveCD Set in 5 minutes!

happy_angel · n00b Joined: 07 Feb 2004 Posts: 6

Install Gentoo Using 2-CD LiveCD Set in 5 minutes (!!worked for 1.4 & 2004.0!!)
(updated: 1. copy kernel, initrd, modules before chroot so that no need to mount /mnt/cloop in the chroot environment. 2. export PKGDIR instead of making a symbolic link. 3. install binary packages from the 2nd CD)

(updated for 2004.0 LiveCD: add guide for quick installation for 2004.0 LiveCD)

(updated 3/15/2004: some fixes from namuh)

(updated 3/19/2004: fixed an error in copying modules files)

(updated 3/19/2004: I just found that for 1.4 LiveCD, you still need put the first CD in the CDROM during bootup each time since the initrd from LiveCD still need mount some files on CD. But you can eject CD after bootup. So if you use 1.4 LiveCD, you'd better build a custom kernel by follow installation handbook or use the new LiveCD 2004.0)

Gentoo is great! It runs fast after it is installed, but the installation is painful and time-consume. I don't want to compile everything. With Gentoo 2-CD LiveCD set, we can choose install Gentoo from pre-build binary packages, but we still need compile some package, e.g. kernel which may last hours. The pre-build kernel in LiveCD seems work great, it can detect almost all hardwares, so I just want to use!

After several hours trying, I found out my solution. Two things speed up the whole installation:

Copy kernel, initrd and module files from LiveCD instead of compiling them (save time)

Directly access binary packages in LiveCD instead of copying them into hard disk (save space)

I decribled my procedure here. I almost follow "Gentoo Handbook Installation Instructions". Since there is almost no compilation (for 2004.0, you have to compile some packages since 1st LiveCD doesn't provide any binary packages), I installed a Gentoo 1.4 & 2004.0 Basic environment in VMWare using a script file in 5 minutes!

1. Download Gentoo 2-CD LiveCD(x86) from here:

2. Booting LiveCD:

Bodhammer · n00b Joined: 24 Feb 2004 Posts: 11

Will this work with the new Universal CD and install methods?

Thanks,
Bod

druggo · Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2004 2:37 am Post subject:

maybe ¡¡

saxophobe · n00b Joined: 04 Mar 2004 Posts: 21 Location: Dallas, TX

This is a very attractive option for someone like myself who is just getting to know Gentoo. My only question is this: if you follow these instructions, do you have to always boot from the CD? If this is the case, how is this better that just using Knoppix?

Thanks!

sax

faceplate27 · n00b Joined: 09 May 2003 Posts: 3

The beauty of Gentoo is that it builds every package for your specific architecture. To hack a build together like this completely defeats the purpose of using this wonderful distribution. I think this is very sloppy and, on top of that, does not give newer people an opportunity to learn linux. I am a veteran UNIX admin and, when I switched to Gentoo, it taught me WAY more than I thought it could about general unix stuff, as well as Linux specific things. If you are a newbie reading this, please don't even try this. It's an awful idea.

saxophobe · n00b Joined: 04 Mar 2004 Posts: 21 Location: Dallas, TX

Hi all!!!

Sorry to rain on your parade, but this procedure breaks down in Step 6:

"// copy kernel,initrd from LiveCD
cp /mnt/cdrom/isolinux/gentoo /boot/kernel-2.4.21-gss
cp /mnt/cdrom/isolinux/initrd.1024 /boot/initrd-2.4.21-gss"

I downloaded the 1.4 isos from linuxiso.org and have found that there is NO isolinux directory in the /mnt/cdrom directory, thus this procedure will leave you stuck at step 6.

The reason I know is that I tried it to see if it would work, as the normal Stage 3 install bombs out on me when I try an emerge, as my Internet connection is via USB and the LiveCD is not connecting via CDCEther; not sure why.

As much as I would like to spend a year trying to get Gentoo to install and build it from the ground up, my wife is already complaining that I spend too much time at the computer as it is, and I just want the stupid thing to work for a change.

BTW - Weren't computers originally built to make our lives easier? Well, I think the corporate types just view computers as a was to cram more stuff into your day.

Just my .02....

Thanks!

sax

someguy · Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2004 6:13 am Post subject:

i think its a good idea better than doing a 2 hour stage 3 grp ( even tho i prefer stage 2 base builds) but there are times when things like this are needed kuz i mean even when i do a stage 3 i always go back and emerge -eU | wc -l the system after its up (usually do grps when i need a quick server)
so it woule at least save 2 hours
_________________
print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`
while [ 1 ] ; do echo "*" | telnet ip.of.print.er 9100 ; done

saxophobe · n00b Joined: 04 Mar 2004 Posts: 21 Location: Dallas, TX

It WOULD be great...if it worked! But it doesn't for the reasons stated above.

happy_angel · n00b Joined: 07 Feb 2004 Posts: 6

can you sure that you download the right 1.4 iso file? and did you do this step before you chroot?

Slyde · Guru Joined: 14 Jul 2003 Posts: 314

GRP is good when you are in a bind. Other than that, Gentoo is a source based distro...so way use binaries?

happy_angel · n00b Joined: 07 Feb 2004 Posts: 6

Yeah, I agree that Gentoo is a source-based distribution, but all building almost automatically in Gentoo. most of time, you just do "emerge ..." and wait compilation for a long time. If we really want to study, we can choose "Linux from scratch".

The reasons that I choose Gentoo, it was optimized for my computer and automatically update. But at first time, I don't want to wait for a long time to set it up on my computer. So my post just want to help some guys who want to setup Gentoo quicky.

namuh · n00b Joined: 06 Jan 2004 Posts: 32 Location: Vermont

Hi All,
I tried the above on the new Universal CD 2004.0 and got it to work, but not without some fiddling. The kernel booted but I had to hand configure some of the devices (specifically the network card) so I must have missed some of the scripts/programs on the CD that do that. Also I don't think the initrd worked properly because I had to secondary boot to /dev/hda1 (boot partition) even though grub.conf was configured correctly. If anyone could list those additional files it would help (I followed the above so you know what I did copy).

As to the argument over source vs binary, may I say that I'm using Gentoo for my production machines now and it is MUCH better to put a machine into production in a half hour and then rebuild from source in the background over a couple of days than having to delay a vital machine waiting for all the optimization. I consider Gentoo to be converging on the best of both worlds. Fast install (getting there) and Highly flexible and optimized via a system that even newbies can use and pros can really twist to their needs.

An interesting aside is that after the install and copy I used genkernel to build a second kernel which of course booted fine, but apparently genkernel also put in the scripts I was missing because the CD kernel now also boots and self configures flawlessly.

Dreamsmith · n00b Joined: 09 Mar 2004 Posts: 33

happy_angel · n00b Joined: 07 Feb 2004 Posts: 6

Hauser · Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2004 12:35 pm Post subject:

Why don't you do:

#cp -a /boot/* /mnt/gentoo/boot
#cp -a /lib/modules/* /mnt/gentoo/lib

Then you'll have both 2.4.25 and 2.6.1(if I remember the version numbers correctly), either of which you can choose to boot. :wink:

I did an experiment on my test partition, both of them boot on my machine though not without issues.
_________________
AMD Athlon XP 2600+; 512M RAM;
nVidia FX5700LE; Hitachi 120Gb
2.6.9-nitro4, reiser4, linux26-headers+nptl

Do I like to compile everything?
Positive definite!

namuh · n00b Joined: 06 Jan 2004 Posts: 32 Location: Vermont

Happy Angel, I don't disagree. I, however did do it the way Hauser suggests in the next post. The problem I ran into with either method (I've tried both now) is that upon rebooting some things don't configure correctly, implying that there are missing config scripts elsewhere in the system that are missed. It is those scripts/programs that I'm after. I also suspect that Hauser's "issues" are similar to mine. They can all be corrected manually but it would be cleaner if we caught everything and the CD kernel autoconfigured as it should.

Hauser · Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2004 4:50 pm Post subject:

I think ultimately you need to compile your own kernel. I did this experiment for fun (I've got lots of diskspace). :lol:

With this method I was able to install all the GRPs and many apps seem to work fine. However, from the booting messages, something seem to have gone wrong, I don't know what they are and can't be bothered to find out (I've wiped out the install already). I'm sure they can be fixed but still I would say if you want to know more about gentoo, do it the 'gentoo way' ! Of course, some people prefer to have a (seemingly) working system set up quickly before they feel comfortable to start compiling things (in the background), I'm not against that, that's why I'd like to share some of my experience.

_________________
AMD Athlon XP 2600+; 512M RAM;
nVidia FX5700LE; Hitachi 120Gb
2.6.9-nitro4, reiser4, linux26-headers+nptl

Do I like to compile everything?
Positive definite!

namuh · n00b Joined: 06 Jan 2004 Posts: 32 Location: Vermont

I wasn't planning on leaving the CD kernel active. I just wanted a fast way to bring up an operational system. I saw a side benefit in that the running CD kernel would make it easy to list off the drivers and modules that need to be built into the final kernel. This would avoid having to build a genkernel system when you are unsure of the exact config and go right to a manual (and thus most efficient) kernel. Sometimes a short cut may seem like the long way around, but in this case... not!

namuh · n00b Joined: 06 Jan 2004 Posts: 32 Location: Vermont

Hey Happy Angel, I'm curious as to how you knew which kernel was in isolinux??

happy_angel · n00b Joined: 07 Feb 2004 Posts: 6

namuh · n00b Joined: 06 Jan 2004 Posts: 32 Location: Vermont

Thanks!!! will do.

happy_angel · n00b Joined: 07 Feb 2004 Posts: 6

I have update the guide, now this method worked for 2004.0 except that you have to compile some packages from sources, but the compilation is much shorter than compiling everything.

Hauser · Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2004 5:17 am Post subject:

As to installing the binaries, you need to use the portage snapshot on the LiveCD during installation:

# ls /mnt/cdrom/snapshots
# tar -xvjf /mnt/cdrom/snapshots/portage-20040223.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/gentoo/usr

If you still have the iso on your harddisk for the GRP CD, you can also do this as I've posted in some other threads:

# mkdir -p /usr/portage/packages
# mount -o loop /the/path/to/packages-xxxxx-2004.0.iso /usr/portage/packages

Then you should be able to use emerge -k to install the binaries without even reboot. BTW, don't do 'emerge sync' anytime before you finish installing the GRPs.

_________________
AMD Athlon XP 2600+; 512M RAM;
nVidia FX5700LE; Hitachi 120Gb
2.6.9-nitro4, reiser4, linux26-headers+nptl

Do I like to compile everything?
Positive definite!

namuh · n00b Joined: 06 Jan 2004 Posts: 32 Location: Vermont

Here are 3 scripts I wrote yesterday that build a Gentoo system in 30 minutes with minimal intervention. After reboot, I just emerge the kernel of my choice, manually configure it after doing an lspci to get the right devices and compile. Then I have a usable machine while I 'emerge -Ue world' in the background whereupon I'm back in the world of source Gentoo!!

To use the scripts you must first create proper fstab, grub.conf and net files on an available rsync server. Boot the Gentoo Universal CD. Fdisk, filesystems and mount everything per the Gentoo Handbook. Mkdir /mnt/gentoo/gen_config. Rsync the scripts and config files to this directory. Make the scripts executable and run gensys1. Gensys1 will chroot when required and call gensys2. The last script is an automated config run after rebooting to make this particular machine a fax server (it's one of my production machines that I'm replacing with Gentoo). It will finish with a Gnome environment and binary packages used where available. Don't forget after gensys2 finishes to umount the /mnt/gentoo..etc filesystem before rebooting. Also don't forget to load the 'package CD' after the reboot or genelmo won't work.

gensys1:

#!/bin/sh
echo "Make and mount proc\n"
mkdir /mnt/gentoo/proc
mount -t proc none /mnt/gentoo/proc
cd /mnt/gentoo
echo "Un-tar stage3\n"
tar -xvjpf /mnt/cdrom/stages/stage3-i686*.bz2
echo "Un-tar snapshot\n"
tar -xvjf /mnt/cdrom/snapshots/portage*bz2 -C /mnt/gentoo/usr
mkdir /mnt/gentoo/usr/portage/distfiles
echo "Copy sources\n"
cp /mnt/cdrom/distfiles/* /mnt/gentoo/usr/portage/distfiles/
echo "Copy /etc/resolv.conf\n"
cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/resolv.conf
echo "Copy the CD kernel and initrd\n"
cp /mnt/cdrom/isolinux/gentoo /mnt/gentoo/boot/kernel-2.4.24-xfs-r3
cp /mnt/cdrom/isolinux/gentoo.igz /mnt/gentoo/boot/initrd-2.4.24-xfs-r3
echo "Copy the Modules\n"
cp -R /mnt/cdrom/zisofs/lib/modules /mnt/gentoo/lib
echo "Better hope we remembered to rsync in fstab, conf.d/net and grub.conf\n"
cp /mnt/gentoo/gen_config/fstab /mnt/gentoo/etc/fstab
cp /mnt/gentoo/gen_config/net /mnt/gentoo/etc/conf.d/net
echo "chroot now... Run /gen_config/gensys2\n"
chroot /mnt/gentoo /gen_config/gensys2

gensys2:

#!/bin/sh
env-update
source /etc/profile
echo "emerge hotplug and install"
emerge hotplug
rc-update add hotplug default
echo "link in Eastern Time"
ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/EST5EDT /etc/localtime
rc-update add net.eth0 default
echo "emerge grub and run it to configure"
emerge grub
grub
echo "move the grub.conf to /boot/grub"
mv /gen_config/grub.conf /boot/grub/grub.conf
echo "emerge syslog-ng and then vixie-cron and install"
emerge syslog-ng
rc-update add syslog-ng default
emerge vixie-cron
rc-update add vixie-cron default
passwd
echo "root password should now be set so taking you back to the CD system"
echo "etc-update"
etc-update
exit

genelmo: (my fax system)

#!/bin/sh
echo elmo1 > /etc/hostname
echo mydomain.com > /etc/dnsdomainname
emerge sync
mount /mnt/cdrom
export PKGDIR="/mnt/cdrom"
echo "emerge gentoolkit vim gnome samba apache webmin hylafax\n"
USE="gtk qt gnome" emerge --usepkg gentoolkit
USE="gtk qt gnome" emerge --usepkg vim
USE="bindist gtk qt gnome" emerge --usepkgonly gnome
USE="gtk qt gnome" emerge --usepkg samba
USE="gtk qt gnome" emerge --usepkg apache
USE="gtk qt gnome" emerge --usepkg webmin
USE="gtk qt gnome" emerge --usepkg hylafax
echo "add startups for each to runlevel/default\n"
rc-update add xfs default
rc-update add xdm default
rc-update add sshd default
rc-update add apache2 default
rc-update add webmin default
echo "don't forget to edit rc.conf for gdm and others before restarting\n"

Sven Vermeulen · Posted: Fri Mar 12, 2004 11:20 am Post subject:

A similar script is, besides GLIS, being developed by the server project. It's called GSDS.