Official/Ordinary LiveDVD

saraadmin · n00b Joined: 07 Jun 2005 Posts: 9

I've read quite a bit about LiveDVDs for Gentoo, but is there actually an official LiveDVD for installing Gentoo?

I want to be able to install Gentoo on my laptop which doesn't have a permanent or fast Internet connection, so I'd like to be able to make installation media with as many of the available Gentoo packages as possible (how many packages are there in Gentoo?)

If there isn't an official LiveDVD, can anyone recommend an unofficial LiveDVD which would be suitable for a Pentium M laptop?

saraadmin · n00b Joined: 07 Jun 2005 Posts: 9

OK, I've just read that there are around 8000 packages in Gentoo. If I make images of the universal install CD and the packages CD, do I get all of them?

Sven Vermeulen · Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 12:04 pm Post subject:

There is no official LiveDVD, I have also no recollection of an inofficial LiveDVD (there are such, yes, but I don't know where).

Far from all packages are in the installcd and packagecd, only a subset of them. Yet those two do contain most known packages (such as KDE, openoffice.org, GNOME, ...).

saraadmin · n00b Joined: 07 Jun 2005 Posts: 9

OK, I see.

So, the main portage tree (is that what the packages database is called?) is in the distfiles directory on mirrors. If I wanted to create a 'packages DVD' could I use the files from here? Is there an automated way of doing this? Like Jigdo or something?

I notice that there are around 30GB of files in the distfiles directory and that there are several versions of most things.
Assuming that there isn't a jigdo like facility, is there an equivalent to the the Packages.gz list files used in Debian which I could use to generate a list of distfiles necessary for, e.g., a 'stable', x86 packages DVD? I've noticed that the install and packages CD images directories both have 'CONTENTS' list files (but these look like they are relative to the root of the CD rather than the mirror files).

(Remember that I'm talking from the point of view of the, admittedly few, users out there who still don't have proper Internet connections ;-)

Sven Vermeulen · Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 4:20 pm Post subject:

No, the Portage tree is the collection of ebuilds (scripts informing Portage how to build and install software). Gentoo does not have any repository that holds packages (prebuilt packages), we only have a GRP CD-ROM (the packages CD). What you find in distfiles are all the source code used by Gentoo.

saraadmin · n00b Joined: 07 Jun 2005 Posts: 9

So is it possible to create a custom packages CD?

From the FAQ:
"I have only slow modem connection at home. Can I download sources somewhere else and add them to my system?

Definitely. You can run emerge --pretend package to see what programs are going to be installed. To find out the sources for those packages and where to download the sources from, you can run emerge -fp package. Download sources and bring them on any media home. Put the sources into /usr/portage/distfiles/ and then simply run emerge package. Be warned, however, that this is a tedious process."

Has anyone ever automated this "tedious process" for all the packages? Would that be possible? And then create an ISO image of the result and publish a jigdo file for it.

Sven Vermeulen · Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 4:44 pm Post subject:

You're missing the difference between packages and sources.

A packages cd contains prebuilt software.
The FAQ talks about sources, which you still need to build.

Sven Vermeulen · Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 4:46 pm Post subject:

Oh, and if your next question is if someone has made all built packages available: there are people who distribute their built packages, but you can't use those unless you have (1.) exact the same USE setting, (2.) a very similar CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS setting, (3.) the same Portage tree. No deviations allowed.

This is because packages (prebuilt ones) depend on all this. Any change will result in a different package. Mixing those packages together will eventually break your system.

saraadmin · n00b Joined: 07 Jun 2005 Posts: 9

Sorry, I'm not all that hot with the terminology.

I want to be able to create a sources DVD image of all the Gentoo {insert word here which means packages}.

Maedhros · Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 7:23 pm Post subject:

Although not a sources DVD, here are a couple of threads you might be interested in:

There was a discussion about the possibility of a Gentoo Sources/Live DVD here, but it doesn't seem that anyone's actually made one.
_________________
No-one's more important than the earthworm.

saraadmin · n00b Joined: 07 Jun 2005 Posts: 9

Thanks for the links; there's some interesting stuff there.

I've just downloaded the minimal and universal install CD images and tried mounting them (mount -o loop -t iso9960 etc.) to have a look at the contents.

I notice that the universal CD has a distfiles/ directory which contains sources (correct?) for a number of "packages/applications/etc.". I haven't found anything which lists or points to whats in this directory. If I were to download all the, say, stable sources from a Gentoo mirror, copy them into the distfiles/ directory of the filesystem layout of the universal CD and then write the whole lot (distfiles/, docs/, isolinux/, livecd, livecd.squashfs, snapshots/ and stages/) to a new DVD image and create a DVD, would I be able to build all of the source packages (called?) from that DVD? Or is there some file which lists the 'correct' distfiles/ contents for the install CD?

And is there a way (without having Gentoo and hence emerge installed) to know which sources from a Gentoo mirror's distfiles/ directory are the current, say, stable or testing or whatever ones? So that I can download the correct ones?

saraadmin · n00b Joined: 07 Jun 2005 Posts: 9

Regarding the

Maedhros · Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2005 10:16 am Post subject:

From what I understand (never having done a stage3/networkless installation) the distfiles on the livecd allow you to finish a stage3 installation without a network, so they only provide the kernel, genkernel, several syslog programs, filesystem programs and things like that (I don't know of a list of packages that can be installed using them, I'm afraid). I don't know if you would be able to fill up the distfiles directory with other sources and then burn it to a dvd, as I don't know what sort of things go into making the cd actually boot -- catalyst is the gentoo tool used for making livecds, but you probably need a gentoo installation in order to actually use it.

As for getting a list of stable sources to download, I don't think there's an easy way to do that without a Gentoo installation either. However, if you give me a list of what packages you'd like, I can probably use the emerge-uri.sh script from above to make a list for you (along with a tar file of my portage tree so that new things haven't become stable between the two of us using it).

You might have inspired me to see if I can make the sort of LiveDVD you're after, though.

_________________
No-one's more important than the earthworm.

saraadmin · n00b Joined: 07 Jun 2005 Posts: 9

Thanks very much for your offer of help. And I'm glad that I may have re-kindled the idea of producing a LiveDVD.

With regards your offer, I was thinking on the slightly grander scale of a generally useful DVD of everything rather than a specific set of packages that I needed/wanted. But thanks anyway :-)

Yes, I can see the sense in needing a running Gentoo system in order to be able to use catalyst and emerge to build an image. I might see what I can do about installing Gentoo on a spare system at work in order to have a go. (But I can't make any promises :-(

Maedhros · Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2005 1:51 pm Post subject:

Hmm.... apart from the difficulties with masked packages, and the several hundred pages of blockers, I finally managed to get this as the result of trying to emerge everything that's unmasked for ~amd64:

kyPixel · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 31 Jan 2005 Posts: 117

I clearly remember purchasing a LiveDVD from the Gentoo store, I just used it a couple days ago to install a fresh copy of it onto one of my machines.... Last time I checked though they were no longer available.

saraadmin · n00b Joined: 07 Jun 2005 Posts: 9

16GB!!! Thats enormous!

My problem is that I don't know what I want. And that I don't want to miss out on anything! I'd much rather have everything available to me use and only use a small portion of it than crop packages and worry that I might need them in the future...

Debian (I hope we're allowed to use that word here?!) now comes on two (almost full) DVDs and I think its got around 16,000 packages in it. I always got the impression that Gentoo was slightly smaller than Debian?

The reason why I'm hunting for a new distro to try is that my Debian installation on my laptop takes ages to boot and whenever I've tried compiling new kernels (its a weekly ritual) they always cause random crashes at boot up or shutdown (but they boot much quicker). I'd also like (because its a laptop and you have to watch and wait for it to boot) to be able to use bootsplash. I've tried compiling this into kernels without any problems except that my kernels always crash anyway. Sorry, I've gone way off topic...

Anyway, Gentoo seems a good alternative to Debian, but I worry about not having lots of packages available to me (is that irrational? probably) but I don't have a decent Internet connection for my laptop so I'd like to be able to download everything somewhere else and install on my laptop later.

Maedhros · Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2005 4:52 pm Post subject:

Yup, I thought it was a bit extreme. :wink:

It's probably because in general source packages take up a lot more space than binaries -- the OpenOffice sources is about 230mb, but the binary is only (!) 70mb. The kernel sources is >30mb as well, but a binary shouldn't be more than about 5 with loads of modules included. Gentoo may be smaller than Debian (I have no idea, personally, but I'm not planning on killing you for mentioning it

) but the sources for all the packages we have available will almost certainly take up more space.

Unfortunately, I don't think there's going to be an easy way to do what you want in terms of downloading everything in advance and cherrypicking what you want, aside from making a list of the programs you might want and asking someone for a file containing all the download links.

_________________
No-one's more important than the earthworm.