1st time installing Gentoo

**stokes** · 12-14-2005

Hi all,

I'm about to tackle a Gentoo installation for the first time, and not in the normal method so need to run a few things past the guru's ... I will be using the alternative installation chroot method. I need to do this because I'm installing to a Cobalt Qube3 box which doesn't have a connection for a keyboard or mouse, and doesn't have a graphics card, and it won't boot from the network so the only way is to install through shh. I've inserted a 2nd disk (/dev/hdc) and have set up and formatted the the partitions for my new Gentoo system. My plan is to install via ssh to the new drive, then power down & remove the old drive and make the new one the primary and boot into Gentoo .... if it doesn't work for whatever reason I can stick the old drive back in to boot up and ssh in tweak it some more.

My first question is this - the Qube is considered old hardware these days, and I've read I should stick to Gentoo Stage1 - ( I know it's is no longer supported). Is this the right thing to do or should I just got for Stage3? It is an AMD K6 300Mhz with 256Mb of RAM, and a 40Gb hard drive.

Second question - I am setting up the make.conf for portage, does this look ok or am I missing anything vital?

Code:

# Please consult /etc/make.conf.example for a more detailed example
CFLAGS="-Os -mcpu=i686 -pipe"
CHOST="i386-pc-linux-gnu"
CXXFLAGS="$&#123;CFLAGS&#125;"

# Portage Directories
# ===================
PORTAGE_TMPDIR=/var/tmp
PORTDIR=/usr/portage
DISTDIR=$&#123;PORTDIR&#125;/distfiles
PKGDIR=$&#123;PORTDIR&#125;/packages
PORT_LOGDIR=/var/log/portage
PORTDIR_OVERLAY=/usr/local/portage

# Default fetch command &#40;5 tries, passive ftp for firewall compatibility&#41;
FETCHCOMMAND="/usr/bin/wget -t 5 --passive-ftp \$&#123;URI&#125; -P \$&#123;DISTDIR&#125;"
RESUMECOMMAND="/usr/bin/wget -c -t 5 --passive-ftp \$&#123;URI&#125; -P \$&#123;DISTDIR&#125;"

# Using wget, ratelimiting downloads
FETCHCOMMAND="/usr/bin/wget -t 5 --passive-ftp --limit-rate=200k \$&#123;URI&#125; -P \$&#123;DISTDIR&#125;"
RESUMECOMMAND="/usr/bin/wget -c -t 5 --passive-ftp --limit-rate=200k \$&#123;URI&#125; -P \$&#123;DISTDIR&#125;"

GENTOO_MIRRORS="http&#58;//distfiles.gentoo.org http&#58;//www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo"

SYNC="rsync&#58;//rsync.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage
RSYNC_RETRIES="3"
RSYNC_TIMEOUT=180

# Advanced options
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
FEATURES="sandbox buildpkg ccache distcc userpriv usersandbox notitles noclean noauto cvs keeptemp keepwork autoaddcvs"
CCACHE_SIZE="512M"
RSYNC_EXCLUDEFROM=/etc/portage/rsync_excludes

Are there any other pitfalls I should be aware of during the install? I'm going to try to follow the handbook to the letter.

**variant** · 12-14-2005

everything looks fine except you have keeptemp and keepwork in FEATURES so that your hard disk space will dissapear pretty fast. those are only needed in rare circumstances where you want the unpacked tarballs and temp compilation files to be saved instead of wiped which is normal. stage one will take quite a while on that box but you shouldnt have any problems doing it via ssh. stage 3 will also work but on that kinda box you probably want the optimisations.

**variant** · 12-14-2005

you also have a couple of other FEATURES that i just noticed actualy, autoaddcvs, distcc, noclean, noauto, cvs and notitles. if you dont know what those are for then you dont need them. type man make.conf for more info on what those and other features actualy do.

**stokes** · 12-14-2005

Duely noted. I have made a few changes to the FEATURES.

I've carried on but hit an error straight away, when issuing the chroot command:

Code:

# env -i HOME=$HOME TERM=$TERM /usr/sbin/chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
FATAL&#58; kernel too old

Is there any way to get around this? I've done a bit of searching on the Gentoo forums but the solutions seem to be to boot using a floppy with a more recent kernel ... but as I'm on a diskless system this won't work for me! Any ideas what version kernel I need to be on for chroot to work? Maybe I could upgrade.

**variant** · 01-09-2006

Originally Posted by stokes

Duely noted. I have made a few changes to the FEATURES.

I've carried on but hit an error straight away, when issuing the chroot command:

Code:

# env -i HOME=$HOME TERM=$TERM /usr/sbin/chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
FATAL&#58; kernel too old

Is there any way to get around this? I've done a bit of searching on the Gentoo forums but the solutions seem to be to boot using a floppy with a more recent kernel ... but as I'm on a diskless system this won't work for me! Any ideas what version kernel I need to be on for chroot to work? Maybe I could upgrade.

Take the hard disk and put it in annother box for the duration of the install.

**mactabilis** · 01-09-2006

Ive installed gentoo and been runing it for about a month,I only have this in my
make.conf,

Code:

# Please consult /etc/make.conf.example for a more detailed example
CFLAGS="-Os -mcpu=i686 -pipe"
CHOST="i386-pc-linux-gnu"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"

Is it necessary to add more ,My system seems fine?

**josolanes** · 01-09-2006

Originally Posted by mactabilis

Ive installed gentoo and been runing it for about a month,I only have this in my
make.conf,

Code:

# Please consult /etc/make.conf.example for a more detailed example
CFLAGS="-Os -mcpu=i686 -pipe"
CHOST="i386-pc-linux-gnu"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"

Is it necessary to add more ,My system seems fine?

you don't need to add any more, but the more you add the more finely tuned your system will become for your personal computer....the downside to this is that you may potentially cause problems if you take it too far. but, within reason, it could help a lot.

if it seems fine and you're happy with it, than there's no need to change anything, though...it won't hurt anything at all running like that

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