Sven Vermeulen Roy Marples Daniel Robbins Chris Houser Jerry Alexandratos Seemant Kulleen Tavis Ormandy Jason Huebel Guy Martin Pieter Van den Abeele Joe Kallar John P. Davis Pierre-Henri Jondot Eric Stockbridge Rajiv Manglani Jungmin Seo Stoyan Zhekov Jared Hudson Colin Morey Jorge Paulo Carl Anderson Jon Portnoy Zack Gilburd Jack Morgan Benny Chuang Erwin Joshua Kinard Tobias Scherbaum Lars Weiler Jochen Maes Grant Goodyear Gerald J. Normandin Jr. Donnie Berkholz Ken Nowack This is the Gentoo Handbook, an effort to centralise Gentoo/Linux information. 4.2 2005-06-09 In this part you learn how to install Gentoo on your system. Users not familiar with Gentoo do not always know that choice is what Gentoo is all about. Using our Universal Installation CD you can boot up your system into a running environment that allows you to install Gentoo. If you need networking, this is the place where the network (and Internet connection) is configured. To be able to install Gentoo, you must create the necessary partitions. This chapter describes how to partition a disk for future usage. In this chapter we describe how you extract a stage3 file and how to configure Portage. Now that the stage3 file is extracted, we chroot into the new system and modify the USE variable. The Linux kernel is the core of every distribution. This chapter explains how to configure your kernel. You need to edit some important configuration files. In this chapter you receive an overview of these files and an explanation on how to proceed. As mentioned before, Gentoo is about choices. In this chapter we help you choose and install some important tools. Several bootloaders exist. Each one of them has its own way of configuration. In this chapter we'll describe all possibilities for you and step you through the process of configuring a bootloader to your needs. You're almost done. We'll just create one (or more) users for your system and (optionally) install prebuilt packages. Now you have your Gentoo system, but what's next? Learn how to work with Gentoo: installing software, altering variables, changing Portage behaviour etc. This chapter explains the "simple" steps a user definitely needs to know to maintain the software on his system. USE-flags are a very important aspect of Gentoo. In this chapter, you learn to work with USE-flags and understand how USE-flags interact with your system. Discover the features Portage has, such as support for distributed compiling, ccache and more. Gentoo uses a special initscript format which, amongst other features, allows dependency-driven decisions and virtual initscripts. This chapter explains all these aspects and explains how to deal with these scripts. With Gentoo you can easily manage the environment variables for your system. This chapter explains how you do that, and also describes frequently used variables. "Working with Portage" provides an in-depth coverage of Portage, Gentoo's Software Management Tool. Once you want to know Portage in-depth you need to know where it stores its files and data. Portage is completely configurable through various variables you can set in the configuration file or as environment variable. Gentoo provides software separated in several branches, depending on stability and architectural support. "Mixing Software Branches" inform you how these branches can be configured and how you can override this separation individually. Portage comes with a few extra tools that might make your Gentoo experience even better. Read on to discover how to use dispatch-conf and other tools. "Diverting from the Official Tree" gives you some tips and tricks on how to use your own Portage tree, how to synchronise only the categories you want, inject packages and more. In "The Ebuild Application" you are informed about the steps Portage takes while installing software and how you can do this yourself using the ebuild application. A comprehensive guide to Networking in Gentoo. A guide to quickly get your network interface up and running in most common environments. Here we learn about how the configuration works - you need to know this before we learn about modular networking. Gentoo provides you flexible networking - here you are told about choosing different DHCP clients, setting up bonding, bridging, VLANs and more. Wireless isn't straight-forward. Hopefully we'll get you working! If you're feeling adventurous, you can add your own functions to networking. For laptop users or people who move their computer around different networks.