Gentoo AMD64 on Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe (part 3)

It's now time to start refering to the Gentoo Installation Handbook for AMD64. While I'm pretty sure that my install method works, it's worthwhile verifying against the handbook. Plus I'm using a minimal CD to do the installation, so things will be slightly different then normal.

(I use my own recipe for the initial configuration due to the mix of Software RAID + LVM2. It has served me well over the past few years and works well.)

This page starts with section 5 in the Gentoo handbook (Installing the Gentoo Installation Files).

livecd / # date
Fri Aug 25 21:23:52 UTC 2006
livecd / # cd /mnt/gentoo
livecd gentoo # links http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/mirrors.xml

Follow the directions on the Gentoo handbook page to download the correct stage3 tarball for your install. The steps are roughly thus:

1. Pick an HTTP mirror from the list (arrow up/down then press [Enter] on the link)
   
2. Go into the "releases/" folder
   
3. Go into the "amd64/" folder (note: Not all mirrors carry the AMD64 folder, you may need to pick another mirror)
   
4. Go into the "current/" folder
   
5. Go into the "stages/" folder
   
6. Find the stage3-amd64-NNNN.N-tar.bz2 tarball, highlight it and click [D] to download
   
7. Press [Q] to quit out of links
   

Now you should have the tarball in /mnt/gentoo:

livecd gentoo # ls -l
total 105797
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Aug 25 21:11 backup
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 1024 Aug 25 20:46 boot
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Aug 25 20:59 home
drwx------ 2 root root 16384 Aug 25 20:47 lost+found
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 108186115 Aug 25 22:05 stage3-amd64-2006.0.tar.bz2
drwxrwxrwt 3 root root 4096 Aug 25 20:59 tmp
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Aug 25 21:00 usr
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Aug 25 21:10 var
livecd gentoo #

Extract the tarball:

livecd gentoo # tar xvjpf stage3-*.tar.bz2

You'll follow similar steps for the portage tarball. In fact, we probably should've downloaded it at the same time to /mnt/gentoo.

livecd gentoo # tar xvjf /mnt/gentoo/portage-20060123.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/gentoo/usr

Setup your make flags. Since I have an X2 CPU, I'm using "-j3" for MAKEOPTS.

livecd gentoo # vi /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf
# These settings were set by the catalyst build script that automatically built this stage
# Please consult /etc/make.conf.example for a more detailed example
CFLAGS="-march=k8 -O2 -pipe"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
MAKEOPTS="-j3"

Now we start in on Section 6 (Installing the Gentoo Base System). Time to pick mirrors and other things.

livecd gentoo # mirrorselect -i -o >> /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf
livecd gentoo # mirrorselect -i -r -o >> /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf
livecd gentoo # cat /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf
# These settings were set by the catalyst build script that automatically built this stage
# Please consult /etc/make.conf.example for a more detailed example
CFLAGS="-march=k8 -O2 -pipe"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
MAKEOPTS="-j3"


GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.arcticnetwork.ca/ http://www.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/gentoo http://gentoo.chem.wisc.edu/gentoo/ http://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ "

SYNC="rsync://rsync.namerica.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
livecd gentoo #

Copy the resolv.conf file and mount /proc and /dev:

livecd gentoo # cp -L /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/resolv.conf
livecd gentoo # mount -t proc none /mnt/gentoo/proc
livecd gentoo # mount -o bind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev

We're ready to chroot and start the build.

livecd gentoo # chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
livecd / # env-update
>>> Regenerating /etc/ld.so.cache...
livecd / # source /etc/profile
livecd / # export PS1="(chroot) $PS1"
(chroot) livecd / #

Read the next section carefully! I use an extremely limited USE flag (that turns off all multimedia and graphical support).

(chroot) livecd / # emerge --sync

(chroot) livecd / # ls -FGg /etc/make.profile
lrwxrwxrwx 1 50 Aug 25 22:10 /etc/make.profile -> ../usr/portage/profiles/default-linux/amd64/2006.0/
(chroot) livecd / # nano -w /etc/make.conf
USE="-alsa -apm -arts -bitmap-fonts -gnome -gtk -gtk2 -kde -mad -mikmod -motif -opengl -oss -qt -quicktime -sdl -truetype -truetype-fonts -type1-fonts -X -xmms -xv"
(chroot) livecd / # ls /usr/share/zoneinfo
(chroot) livecd / # ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/EST5EDT /etc/localtime
(chroot) livecd / # date
(chroot) livecd / # zdump GMT
(chroot) livecd / # zdump EST5EDT

Read section 7 carefully. I'm using the default "gentoo-sources" kernel.

(chroot) livecd / # USE="-doc symlink" emerge gentoo-sources

I'll cover configuration of the kernel in the next post.