install with other distro or livecd...

z-e-n · n00b Joined: 10 Nov 2008 Posts: 42

hi folks!

i don't undestand how to install 'gentoo' and gentoo 'minimal' with 'other' distro or 'livecd'...how is that possible? maybe is there some literature?

c u!

slycordinator · Advocate Joined: 31 Jan 2004 Posts: 3065 Location: Korea

If you follow the handbook you'll notice that you're going to be installing gentoo using a shell like bash. So any linux livecd that both supports your hardware, is relatively recent, and has a command-line shell can be used for installing gentoo.

And the reason I said it has to be relatively recent is because if the livecd is old the kernel used by it might be too old for when you try to "chroot" into your gentoo install.

notHerbert · Advocate Joined: 11 Mar 2008 Posts: 2228 Location: 45N 73W

To install from an existing Linux distro you can look here for info

cach0rr0 · Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 11:40 pm Post subject:

I've seen a fair few people using SysRescCd to do the gentoo install, chiefly because it usually has a morere cent kernel than the gentoo images

Snag that, open a terminal, and then just follow the Gentoo Handbook as per usual

There's heaps on the forums about doing this as well, already documented, so you might give a quickie search for it

Stupendoussteve · n00b Joined: 06 Sep 2005 Posts: 72 Location: US West

Debian boot floppies/businesscard/PXEboot works, just need a binary of bzip2. Used to be my primary install method.

Ender305 · n00b Joined: 24 Apr 2008 Posts: 61

SysRescCd works very well, there are one or two things that don't work, but you can get around it.
I also did part of an installation through a working Ubuntu installation, doing it through an existing installation is nice because the OS is faster and when you get halfway through menuconfig and want to gouge your eyes out, you can take a break and play a game.

phaeton · Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2008 4:00 pm Post subject:

i`ve done it many times from a ubuntu live CD

djinnZ · Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2008 4:26 pm Post subject:

I have never used the gentoo livecd to install, I use everytime sabayon now.
You must only partition the disk, mount, download and untar the stage 3 on the mounted directory, bind mount /sys /proc and /dev and chroot. The rest is identical as reported in the official guide.
The only thing you can need is to disable the features sandbox and user-sandbox in some environments (but not in sabayon) if you get sandbox errors.
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notHerbert · Advocate Joined: 11 Mar 2008 Posts: 2228 Location: 45N 73W

... also you don't even need to mount /sys and it's a good to flush your environment when you chroot

cazort · Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 10:19 pm Post subject:

The install is almost completely the same whether you do it from an official gentoo CD or some other distro. I've used the gentoo CD's most of the time, but I've also done an install from a very minimal debian "rescue" system...and it was totally fine. Just follow the directions in the handbook!
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monsm · Guru Joined: 26 Sep 2007 Posts: 467 Location: London, UK

I have just finished a somewhat roundabout route to installing Gentoo. I had only a wireless card to connect to the net with from my old AMD Athlon thunderbird (1.2 GHz) based box and I couldn't make it work with anything else then the Sabayon install DVD.

I installed Sabayon and then went about changing this into a Gentoo installation. I had to remove the Sabayon overlay, change the CHOST variable (nice howto on the wiki on that), set stable tree (x86 from ~x86). Removed that package manager sabayon uses (entropy). I also removed lots of unnecessary packages, e.g. games, gnome, fluxbox and decided to keep kde and xfce4 on this one. After cleaning out I emerge world, which still took ages and I also changed kernel to a super slim Pappy based 2.25-gentoo-r9 (his kernel seeds are great, check this thread: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-707499-start-0-postdays-0-postorder-asc-highlight-.html).

Quiet a bit of work in the end, but an educational process. I wouldn't do this again though. I have a d-link wireless card with the infamous acx111 chip. The open source driver just isn't very good yet and only now when I have finished everything else, have I found the correct windows driver to use with ndiswrapper. So if I have to do this again I would use a live cd and the chroot process.

Anyway, going via a Sabayon installation and reverting it to Gentoo is possible (just about). I think its likely to become more and more difficult with each Sabayon release though. They will probably drift away from Gentoo as they go forward using that entropy package manager.

Mons