Gentoo System that will never have to compile

[zark]

Hello


I'm working on a project where a gentoo based linux is installed using a "hacked" gentoo minimal liveCD.


LiveCD does all the work (auto formating, partitioning, network interface detection etc...)


Basically then it untars a stage4, then reboots on the new system.



Now to avoid bloating the system and the downloadable cd, i'd like to avoid having all those big libs that allow a gentoo system to compile applications. Since the box is automated and won't need to compile anything.
I have to idea where to start looking.

besides un-merging gcc, what else can be done ? is there a flag ? a guide ? something ? i really don't know where to start looking

[depontius]

I would suggest you start by searching for "embedded gentoo". It's not quite what you describe, but I believe it might do what you want.
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[nixnut]

Moved from Installing Gentoo to Unsupported Software.
Home baked install cd's are not supported, so moved here.
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Please add [solved] to the initial post's subject line if you feel your problem is resolved. Help answer the unanswered

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[zark]

well i'm not asking for help on the install-cd .. thats already taken care off.

I'm asking help for the running gentoo, no matter how it's installed. The aim is having a system that just uses emerge --usepkgonly to install/update applications.
The applications would be compiled on another box and just rsync'd.

So since that box would not need to compile, it wouldn't need gcc, or any other libs. I'm just asking how i could possibly make such a system ? to make it as full-blown but as light as possible

[zark]

i've been reading the TINYGENTOO tutorial ... really good to give an idea of how flexible gentoo is.

basically if I install all my needed apps using ROOT=/my_new_distro emerge apache mysql php etc...

then i can get a system running that wouldn't even have gcc on it ... quite cool.

guess i'll have to experiment this method a bit :p



any other suggestions are more than welcome

[yoshi314]

you can try this

ROOT=/mnt/somewhere PORTAGE_CONFIG_ROOT=/mnt/somewhere emerge -pv system

beforehand you need to prepare make.conf and make.profile inside of /mnt/somewhere. you probably also need to mount -o bind /usr/portage inside of that directory.

add
INSTALL_MASK="*.la *.a *.h" to the target make.conf (don't do this on your gentoo install). it's said to be risky with certain kde packages, and maybe something else as well. trial and error time.

now, build deps are installed into your native system and all that's relevant (runtime deps + actual packages) go into /mnt/somewhere.

you need to remove gcc manually and leave behind only its libraries to save more space (e.g. libstdc++.X.so is the most important) - they're only a couple of mb compared to whole gcc. also try removing redundant locale using localepurge.

also you can strip manpages, or documentation (FEATURES="nodoc noman noinfo")

certain packages (gtk) leave behind extra docs, which can also be removed. 'minimal' use flag also reduces install size (e.g. with ncurses).

i made a small text-mode livecd with a couple of network tools and elinks + rtorrent that took ~22mb on cd (packed via linux-live.org scripts into squashfs) this way. it could be way smaller, though. (just look at damn small linux for comparison :]).
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~amd64
shrink your /usr/portage with squashfs+aufs

[zark]

PORTAGE_CONFIG_ROOT .. didn't know that one :p

i had problems at first, starting emerging stuff in the ROOT=/new_gentoo, but it wouldn't remember which packages where installed, etc..
guess now with that var i'll be able to do that correctly :p


thanks for your advice
sounds all good.

[zark]

mmh, this is slightly off topic, but still in the same run,


what kind of kernel should i put ?

since i don't know the target machines, should i just copy the kernel config from the latest LiveCD ? or is there some guide i couldn't find ?

ps: it's when the wiki is down you realize how usefull it is ^^