Easy Gentoo - Gentoo Installation Script

shdcn · Last edited by shdcn on Thu May 29, 2014 2:59 pm; edited 4 times in total

Hi everyone,
I was trying to find an easier Gentoo install method for years. I ran into outdated scripts, read tons of pages, had too many headaches and I started writing a script for myself when i lost hope

Finally I have a script that gets me what I need. This bash script is basically a group of commands listed in Gentoo Handbook but does more than just executing them all. It does every little configuration change that is necessary.
I was targeting Turkish Gentoo users at first so it had all echos etc in Turkish. But I translated (at least I tried ^^) it to English because I decided to stop improving it. I don't have enough time to test, fix, update it anymore. Someone else may do that from now on. That's why I'm writing this post.

So what does that script do?
Easy Gentoo uses a profile to get information it needs from you and installs Genoo based on that profile. Installation is automated, you won't need to interfere. Script does its job and in the end it executes a shutdown. It is even easier than it sounds.
I tried to make every little detail as good as possible and there are lots of things that Easy Gentoo does. The best way to inspect them all is to give it a try i guess.
For example: I did 3-4 installs today on a virtual machine using Easy Gentoo; one of them was a 64bit install with a ready to use Xfce desktop using vesa at 1920x1080, another one was a 32bit basic install which doesn't have X.

Note: Script uses stable packages, it doesn't/can't do an unstable install.

It is important for you to read this before using Easy Gentoo: https://github.com/shdcn/easygentoo/blob/master/README.md

These are some of the main steps (to give you an idea about installation).
For more information please take a look at https://github.com/shdcn/easygentoo/blob/master/installation_steps.txt

*** Steps for basic install ***
1- Check if necessary tools/commands are available to continue (like cut, grep, wc, sed, awk, mkfs.foo)
2- Format partitions
3- Mount partitions
4- Check mirrors (not a mirrorselect)
5- Download and extract latest stage3 tarball and portage snapshot
6- Continue inside chroot
7- Create a temporary make.conf
8- Emerge portage and some tools
9- Create locale.gen
10- Update make.conf and create package.use
11- Do a controlled "emerge -e system"
12- Kernel compilation (genkernel) with lots of needed settings/drivers
13- Emerge grub and create grub.conf
14- Create/update configuration files (localtime, keymaps, hostname, etc)
15- Change locale based on keymap
16- Change root password and create user
17- Update /etc/sudoers and .bashrc
18- Unmerge unnecessary packages and do "emerge -uDN world"
*** Steps for normal install ***
--- Emerge xorg-server and create xorg.conf
--- Emerge and configure Xfce
--- Emerge and configure LightDM Login Manager
--- Configure evdev
--- Emerge NetworkManager
--- Emerge and configure Alsa
19- Purge unnecessary man pages etc. (localepurge)
20- Create a small report about whole process.
21- Delete temporary files that were created by script
22- Shutdown computer

Script is located at https://github.com/shdcn/easygentoo repository.

Direct download link: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/shdcn/easygentoo/master/easygentoo
Profile description: https://github.com/shdcn/easygentoo/blob/master/profile

Example profiles:
https://github.com/shdcn/easygentoo/blob/master/profile.example.1
https://github.com/shdcn/easygentoo/blob/master/profile.example.2
https://github.com/shdcn/easygentoo/blob/master/profile.example.3

Screenshots:
http://imgur.com/a/OgWLN#0
http://imgur.com/a/ujDdT#0

Update (29.05.2014):
Easy Gentoo is now using systemd, grub2, genkernel-next and lightdm
improved stage tarball and network adapter handling
added a new profile setting: autonet (yes/no) - enables or disables network connection handling (ping check, reconnect), disable if you want to handle your connection on your own when a problem pops out

Edit (11.03.2012):
Added detailed installation steps

Edit (15.02.2013):
I have added some tested changes to script. Pulseaudio is disabled, Alsa replaced it. It compiles 36 less packages than before (previous tests had a total of 440 packages included in a normal install, now it is 404) and has improved config file handling now. Added some screenshots. README had some changes too.

windex · n00b Joined: 09 Dec 2012 Posts: 70

Thanks! I'll have to give this a shot!

rookieljw · n00b Joined: 15 Jan 2013 Posts: 12 Location: China

thx but I recommand that do original way to do it,because we can learn something during install gentoo :wink:

shdcn · Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2013 8:18 pm Post subject:

I agree that normal Gentoo installation procedure is very educating but it takes too much user input to get a system working. This is a little tiring if you don't have enough time or when you need multiple installations in a short period.
I believe this script may save the user a lot of time. I did some improvements/cleaning since my first post here and still trying to make it better. It's still not perfect but installing Gentoo with "2-3 commands + 10-15 words of config" is very entertaining from my point of view ^^
Besides that, normal way is always there to teach us more

justabrain · n00b Joined: 14 Feb 2013 Posts: 2

i make my register just to say thank you !

amazing job, im new in linux world, but im learning, and i never can install gentoo before, but with your script, its very easy !

thank you very much !!!

shdcn · Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2013 12:42 am Post subject:

You're welcome

Hope it serves you well.

justabrain · n00b Joined: 14 Feb 2013 Posts: 2

very well ! thank you ! im in love with gentoo :]

cryptosteve · Veteran Joined: 04 Jan 2004 Posts: 1169 Location: GER

Hmm,
one day too late.

I switched a box from debian to gentoo some days ago ... so I can't test your script now.

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shdcn · Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 10:52 am Post subject:

My bad, I should post earlier ^^ Hope you use your new Gentoo for a long time and won't need my script

Hypnos · Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 11:38 am Post subject:

You might want to write up your work on the wiki, and link to it from this page.
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shdcn · Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 11:48 am Post subject:

Nice idea Hypnos, I'll do it as soon as possible. Thanks for reminding me.

cryptosteve · Veteran Joined: 04 Jan 2004 Posts: 1169 Location: GER

shdcn · Posted: Mon Mar 04, 2013 10:39 am Post subject:

I'm trying to create a modified version for Dell XPS 15z as justabrain requested and it includes Brazilian (pt_BR) localization.
I added pt_BR related parts to the original script too. So the script can handle three locales now; English, Brazilian and Turkish.

shdcn · Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2013 12:57 pm Post subject:

Easygentoo works fine on a PC but it needs some tinkering for laptops (to get a ready to use system). Because I couldn't find a laptop for testing until yesterday. Now I'm torturing poor little thing with endless compiles to make sure everything is fine.

shdcn · Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2013 8:44 pm Post subject:

I made some little changes (kernel config, USE flags, packages etc.) and had some installs on my laptop to test them all. Everything is working fine.

dataking · Apprentice Joined: 20 Apr 2005 Posts: 251

shdcn · Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2013 10:23 am Post subject:

shdcn · Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2013 4:06 pm Post subject:

Looks like some changes were made to mirrors (directory layout) and now my script is having problems while trying to download stage3 tarball and portage snapshot. Trying to fix it at the moment.

Edit: Fixed it temporarily. Looking for a better solution but script is working for now.

dataking · Apprentice Joined: 20 Apr 2005 Posts: 251

maxim.251 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 14 Jul 2012 Posts: 127

Can you show me the script that performs the chroot command on?
Because I'm going to write my own script setup similar to yours. But I can not understand how to get work from reading or writing the script for further work in chroot.

maxim.251 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 14 Jul 2012 Posts: 127

I think I have found. Is this command, go to the root and it takes next operations?

shdcn · Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2013 11:35 am Post subject:

First of all Easy Gentoo has a two main parts; before chroot and after chroot. I may change some parts/names in the code to make it simpler to understand. So you won't be able to find below lines inside the original code. Here are the details:

When executed, script checks if we are inside chroot or not. This is the code that runs first and does this check:

maxim.251 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 14 Jul 2012 Posts: 127

Thank you very much. This is very helpful.
Even I did not understand how is make start script in the chroot, but this explanation is fast approaching me to understand.
Thank you for your response.

it seems to me that your installation script is the first ever made. Because nowhere in the network have not found similar.

maxim.251 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 14 Jul 2012 Posts: 127

Also, I noticed an interesting way to install packages.
Is not that a problem for you if you described to me the action in short? As the above?

siljrath · Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2013 7:42 pm Post subject:

thnx, nice to see some other people's efforts.

i made (amidst other grander plans) an interactive installation script for gentoo (with intent of adding others too). when it started, the idea was a simple interactive handbook walkthrough, so that the user would still be learning the handbook content through the interactive installation process.

the priority of inclusion of handbook content got a little lost in the wild fray of other aspirations, but a lot of it is still in there.

it was working on last test... but who knows after subsequent changes (i know the step-by-step testing guide no longer fits since the refactoring, but i'm sure if you're interested enough you can figure it out)

https://github.com/Digit/witch

i'll definately be having more looks into these other ways, profiles, and so on.
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