en/handbook/hb-install-alpha-medium.xml

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<sections>
<section>
<title>Hardware Requirements</title>
<subsection>
<title>Introduction</title>
<body>

<p>
Before we start, we first list what hardware requirements you need to
successfully install Gentoo on your box. This of course depends on your
architecture.
</p>

</body>
</subsection>
<subsection>
<title>The Alpha Architecture</title>
<body>

<p>
Check the following requirements before you
continue with the Gentoo installation:
</p>

<ul>
<li>
  You need at least 1 Gb of free disk space
</li>
<li>
  For the <e>Alpha architecture</e>, you should check with the <uri
  link="http://www.alphalinux.org/faq/FAQ-5.html">Alpha/Linux FAQ</uri>
</li>
</ul>

</body>
</subsection>
</section>
<section>
<title>Make your Choice</title>
<subsection>
<title>Introduction</title>
<body>

<p>
Still interested in trying out Gentoo? Well, then it is now time to
choose the installation medium you want to use. Yes, you have the
choice, no, they are not all equal, and yes, the result is always the same: a
Gentoo base system.
</p>

<p>
The installation media we will describe are:
</p>

<ul>
<li>The Gentoo Alpha LiveCD</li>
</ul>

<p>
Before we continue, let's explain our three-stage installation.
</p>

</body>
</subsection>
<subsection>
<title>The Three Stages</title>
<body>

<p>
Gentoo Linux can be installed using one of three <e>stage</e> tarball files.
The one you choose depends on how much of the system you want to compile
yourself. The <e>stage1</e> tarball is used when you want to bootstrap and
build the entire system from scratch. The <e>stage2</e> tarball is used for
building the entire system from a bootstrapped &quot;semi-compiled&quot; state.
The <e>stage3</e> tarball already contains a basic Gentoo Linux system that has
been built for you. 
</p>

<p>
Now what stage do you have to choose?
</p>

<p>
Starting from a <e>stage1</e> allows you to have total control over the
optimization settings and optional build-time functionality that is
initially enabled on your system. This makes <e>stage1</e> installs good for
power users who know what they are doing. It is also a great
installation method for those who would like to know more about the
inner workings of Gentoo Linux.
</p>

<table>
<tr>
  <th>Stage1</th>
  <th>Pros and Cons</th>
</tr>
<tr>
  <th>+</th>
  <ti>
    Allows you to have total control over the optimization settings and optional
    build-time functionality that is initially enabled on your system
  </ti>
</tr>
<tr>
  <th>+</th>
  <ti>Suitable for powerusers that know what they are doing</ti>
</tr>
<tr>
  <th>+</th>
  <ti>Allows you to learn more about the inner workings of Gentoo</ti>
</tr>
<tr>
  <th>-</th>
  <ti>Takes a long time to finish the installation</ti>
</tr>
<tr>
  <th>-</th>
  <ti>
    If you don't intend to tweak the settings, it is probably a waste of time
  </ti>
</tr>
</table>

<p>
<e>Stage2</e> installs allow you to skip the bootstrap process and doing this
is fine if you are happy with the optimization settings that we chose
for your particular <e>stage2</e> tarball.
</p>

<table>
<tr>
  <th>Stage2</th>
  <th>Pros and Cons</th>
</tr>
<tr>
  <th>+</th>
  <ti>You don't need to bootstrap</ti>
</tr>
<tr>
  <th>+</th>
  <ti>Faster than starting with stage1</ti>
</tr>
<tr>
  <th>+</th>
  <ti>You can still tweak your settings</ti>
</tr>
<tr>
  <th>-</th>
  <ti>You cannot tweak as much as with a stage1</ti>
</tr>
<tr>
  <th>-</th>
  <ti>It's not the fastest way to install Gentoo</ti>
</tr>
<tr>
  <th>-</th>
  <ti>You have to accept the optimizations we chose for the bootstrap</ti>
</tr>
</table>

<p>
Choosing to go with a <e>stage3</e> allows for the fastest install of Gentoo
Linux, but also means that your base system will have the optimization
settings that we chose for you (which to be honest, are good settings
and were carefully chosen to enhance performance while maintaining
stability). <e>stage3</e> is also required if you want to install Gentoo using
prebuilt packages.
</p>

<table>
<tr>
  <th>Stage3</th>
  <th>Pros and Cons</th>
</tr>
<tr>
  <th>+</th>
  <ti>Fastest way to get a Gentoo base system</ti>
</tr>
<tr>
  <th>-</th>
  <ti>You cannot tweak the base system - it's built already</ti>
</tr>
<tr>
  <th>-</th>
  <ti>You cannot brag about having used stage1 or stage2</ti>
</tr>
</table>

<p>
Write down (or remember) what stage you want to use. You need this later when
you decide what LiveCD (or other installation medium) you want to use. You might
be interested to know that, if you decide to use different optimization settings
after having installed Gentoo, you will be able to recompile your entire system
with the new optimization settings.
</p>

<p>
Now take a look at the available installation media.
</p>

</body>
</subsection>
<subsection>
<title>The Gentoo Alpha LiveCD</title>
<body>

<p>
The <e>Gentoo Alpha LiveCD</e> is a bootable CD which contain a
self-sustained Gentoo environment. It allows you to boot Linux from the CD.
During the boot process your hardware is detected and the appropriate drivers
are loaded. It is maintained by Gentoo developers.
</p>

<p>
The <e>Gentoo Alpha LiveCD</e> is a small, no-nonsense, bootable CD which sole 
purpose is to boot the system, prepare the networking and continue with the 
Gentoo installation. It does not contain any stages (or, in some cases, a 
single stage1 file), source code or precompiled packages. For example the 
alpha variant of this LiveCD can be found in the 
<path>releases/1.4_rc1/alpha</path> subdirectory and is called
<c>gentoo-alpha-1.4rc1-test3.iso.bz2</c>.
</p>

</body>
</subsection>
</section>
<section>
<title>Download, Burn and Boot the Gentoo LiveCD</title>
<subsection>
<title>Downloading and Burning the LiveCDs</title>
<body>

<p>
You have chosen to use a Gentoo LiveCD (if not, then you are reading the
wrong document). We'll first start by downloading and burning the chosen
LiveCD. 
</p>

<p>
Visit one of our <uri
link="/main/en/mirrors.xml">mirrors</uri> and go to
<path>releases/1.4rc1/alpha</path> which is where the LiveCD(s) of your choice 
are located. Inside that directory you'll find so-called ISO-files. Those are 
full CD images which you can write on a CD-R.
</p>

<p>
In case you wonder if your downloaded file is corrupted or not, you can
check its MD5 checksum and compare it with the MD5 checksum we provide (such as
<path>gentoo-alpha-1.4rc1-test3.iso.bz2.md5sum</path>). You can check the MD5 
checksum with the <c>md5sum</c> tool under Linux/Unix or <uri
link="http://www.md5summer.org">md5summer</uri> for Windows.
</p>

<p>
Once downloaded, decompress the ISO file (as it is stored in a compressed format
using the Burrows-Wheeler text compression algorithm) using <c>bunzip2</c> (on
Unix/Linux systems):
</p>

<pre caption="Decompressing the iso.bz2 file">
# <i>bunzip2 gentoo-alpha-1.4rc1-test3.iso.bz2</i>
</pre>

<p>
To burn the downloaded ISO(s), you have to select raw-burning. How you
do this is highly program-dependent. We will discuss a couple of popular
tools on how to do this.
</p>

<ul>
  <li>
    With EasyCD Creator you select <c>File</c>, <c>Record CD
    from CD image</c>. Then you change the <c>Files of type</c> to <c>ISO image
    file</c>. Then locate the ISO file and click <c>Open</c>. When you click on
    <c>Start recording</c> the ISO image will be burned correctly onto the CD-R.
  </li>
  <li>
    With Nero Burning ROM, select <c>File</c>, <c>Burn CD image</c>. Set the
    type of file to <c>*.*</c> and select the ISO file. Older versions of Nero
    will tell you they don't recognize the format -- confirm here, it does
    recognize it but doesn't know it yet :) In the next dialog, set the
    following parameters:
    <ul>
      <li>Type of image: <c>Data Mode 1</c></li>
      <li>Block size: <c>2048 bytes</c></li>
      <li>File precursor and length of the image trailer: <c>0 bytes</c></li>
      <li>Scrambled: <c>no</c></li>
      <li>Swapped: <c>no</c></li>
    </ul>
    Now click on <c>OK</c> and then <c>Burn</c> (the CD-R)
  </li>
  <li>
    With cdrecord, you simply type <c>cdrecord dev=/dev/hdc</c> (replace
    <path>/dev/hdc</path> with your CD-RW drive's device path) followed
    by the path to the ISO file :)
  </li>
  <li>
    With K3B, select <c>Tools</c> &gt; <c>CD</c> &gt; <c>Burn Image</c>. Then
    you can locate your ISO file within the 'Image to Burn' area. Finally click
    <c>Start</c>.
  </li>
</ul>

</body>
</subsection>
<subsection>
<title>Booting the Alpha LiveCD(s)</title>
<body>

<p>
When your Alpha is powered on, the first thing that gets started is the
firmware. It is loosely synonymous with the BIOS software on PC systems. There
are two types of firmware on Alpha systems: SRM (<e>Systems Reference 
Manual</e>) and ARC (<e>Advanced Risc Console</e>).
</p>

<p>
SRM is based on the Alpha Console Subsystem specification, which provides an
operating environment for OpenVMS, Tru64 UNIX, and Linux operating systems. ARM
is based on the Advanced RISC Computing (ARC) specification, which provides
an operating environment for Windows NT.
</p>

<p>
If your Alpha system supports both SRC and ARCs (ARC, AlphaBIOS, ARCSBIOS) you
should follow <uri link="http://www.alphalinux.org/faq/x31.html">these
instructions</uri> for switching to SRM. If your system already uses SRM, you
are all set. If your system can only use ARCs (Ruffian, nautilus, xl, etc.) you
will need to choose <c>MILO</c> later on when we are talking about bootloaders.
</p>

<p>
Now to boot an Alpha LiveCD, put the CD-ROM in the tray and reboot the system.
You can use SRM to boot the LiveCD. If you cannot do that, you will have to use
<c>MILO</c>. If you don't have <c>MILO</c> installed already, use one of the
precompiled <c>MILO</c> images available on <uri
link="http://dev.gentoo.org/~taviso/milo/">taviso's homepage</uri>.
</p>

<pre caption="Booting a CD-ROM using SRM">
<comment>(List available hardware drives)</comment>
&gt;&gt;&gt; <i>show device</i>
dkb0.0.1.4.0        DKB0       TOSHIBA CDROM
<comment>(...)</comment>
<comment>(Substitute dkb0 with your CD-ROM drive device)</comment>
&gt;&gt;&gt; <i>boot dkb0 -flags 0</i>
</pre>

<pre caption="Booting a CD-ROM using MILO">
<comment>(Substitute hdb with your CD-ROM drive device)</comment>
MILO&gt; <i>boot hdb:boot/vmlinuz initrd=initrd.img root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc</i>
</pre>

<p>
You should have a root ("#") prompt on the current console and can also switch
to other consoles by pressing Alt-F2, Alt-F3 and Alt-F4. Get back to the one you
started on by pressing Alt-F1.
</p>

<p>
Now continue with <uri link="#hardware">Extra Hardware Configuration</uri>.
</p>

</body>
</subsection>
<subsection id="hardware">
<title>Extra Hardware Configuration</title>
<body>

<p>
When the Live CD boots, it tries to detect all your hardware devices and
loads the appropriate kernel modules to support your hardware. In the
vast majority of cases, it does a very good job. However, in some cases (the
SPARC LiveCDs don't even do autodetection), it may not auto-load the kernel 
modules you need. If the PCI auto-detection missed some of your system's 
hardware, you will have to load the appropriate kernel modules manually. 
</p>

<p>
In the next example we try to load the <c>8139too</c> module (support for 
certain kinds of network interfaces):
</p>

<pre caption="Loading kernel modules">
# <i>modprobe 8139too</i>
</pre>

</body>
</subsection>
<subsection>
<title>Optional: Tweaking Hard Disk Performance</title>
<body>

<p>
If you are an advanced user, you might want to tweak the IDE hard disk
performance using <c>hdparm</c>. With the <c>-tT</c> options you can
test the performance of your disk (execute it several times to get a
more precise impression):
</p>

<pre caption="Testing disk performance">
# <i>hdparm -tT /dev/hda</i>
</pre>

<p>
To tweak, you can use any of the following examples (or experiment
yourself) which use <path>/dev/hda</path> as disk (substitute with your
disk):
</p>

<pre caption="Tweaking hard disk performance">
<comment>Activate DMA:</comment>                                       # <i>hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda</i>
<comment>Activate DMA + Safe Performance-enhancing Options:</comment>  # <i>hdparm -d 1 -A 1 -m 16 -u 1 -a 64 /dev/hda</i>
</pre>

</body>
</subsection>
<subsection>
<title>Optional: User Accounts</title>
<body>

<p>
If you plan on giving other people access to your installation
environment or you want to chat using <c>irssi</c> without root privileges (for
security reasons), you need to create the necessary user accounts and change 
the root password.
</p>

<p>
To change the root password, use the <c>passwd</c> utility:
</p>

<pre caption="Changing the root password">
# <i>passwd</i>
New password: <comment>(Enter your new password)</comment>
Re-enter password: <comment>(Re-enter your password)</comment>
</pre>

<p>
To create a user account, we first enter their credentials, followed by
its password. We use <c>useradd</c> and <c>passwd</c> for these tasks.
In the next example, we create a user called &quot;john&quot;.
</p>

<pre caption="Creating a user account">
# <i>useradd john</i>
# <i>passwd john</i>
New password: <comment>(Enter john's password)</comment>
Re-enter password: <comment>(Re-enter john's password)</comment>
</pre>

<p>
You can change your user id from root to the newly created user by using
<c>su</c>:
</p>

<pre caption="Changing user id">
# <i>su john -</i>
</pre>

</body>
</subsection>
<subsection>
<title>Optional: Starting the SSH Daemon</title>
<body>

<p>
If you want to allow other users to access your computer during the
Gentoo installation (perhaps because those users are going to help you
install Gentoo, or even do it for you), you need to create a user
account for them and perhaps even provide them with your root password 
(<e>only</e> do that <e>if</e> you <b>fully trust</b> that user).
</p>

<p>
To fire up the SSH daemon, execute the following command:
</p>

<pre caption="Starting the SSH daemon">
# <i>/etc/init.d/sshd start</i>
</pre>

<p>
To be able to use sshd, you first need to setup your networking. Continue with
the chapter on <uri link="?part=1&amp;chap=3">Configuring your Network</uri>.
</p>

</body>
</subsection>
</section>
</sections>
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2			<!DOCTYPE sections SYSTEM "/dtd/book.dtd">
3
4			<!-- The content of this document is licensed under the CC-BY-SA license -->
5			<!-- See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0 -->
6
7	bennyc	1.5	<!-- $Header: /home/cvsroot/gentoo/xml/htdocs/doc/en/handbook/hb-install-alpha-medium.xml,v 1.4 2004/04/15 11:59:45 swift Exp $ -->
8	swift	1.1
9			<sections>
10			<section>
11			<title>Hardware Requirements</title>
12			<subsection>
13			<title>Introduction</title>
14			<body>
15
16			<p>
17			Before we start, we first list what hardware requirements you need to
18			successfully install Gentoo on your box. This of course depends on your
19			architecture.
20			</p>
21
22			</body>
23			</subsection>
24			<subsection>
25			<title>The Alpha Architecture</title>
26			<body>
27
28			<p>
29			Check the following requirements before you
30			continue with the Gentoo installation:
31			</p>
32
33			<ul>
34			<li>
35			You need at least 1 Gb of free disk space
36			</li>
37			<li>
38			For the <e>Alpha architecture</e>, you should check with the <uri
39			link="http://www.alphalinux.org/faq/FAQ-5.html">Alpha/Linux FAQ</uri>
40			</li>
41			</ul>
42
43			</body>
44			</subsection>
45			</section>
46			<section>
47			<title>Make your Choice</title>
48			<subsection>
49			<title>Introduction</title>
50			<body>
51
52			<p>
53			Still interested in trying out Gentoo? Well, then it is now time to
54			choose the installation medium you want to use. Yes, you have the
55			choice, no, they are not all equal, and yes, the result is always the same: a
56			Gentoo base system.
57			</p>
58
59			<p>
60			The installation media we will describe are:
61			</p>
62
63			<ul>
64			<li>The Gentoo Alpha LiveCD</li>
65			</ul>
66
67			<p>
68			Before we continue, let's explain our three-stage installation.
69			</p>
70
71			</body>
72			</subsection>
73			<subsection>
74			<title>The Three Stages</title>
75			<body>
76
77			<p>
78			Gentoo Linux can be installed using one of three <e>stage</e> tarball files.
79			The one you choose depends on how much of the system you want to compile
80			yourself. The <e>stage1</e> tarball is used when you want to bootstrap and
81			build the entire system from scratch. The <e>stage2</e> tarball is used for
82			building the entire system from a bootstrapped "semi-compiled" state.
83			The <e>stage3</e> tarball already contains a basic Gentoo Linux system that has
84			been built for you.
85			</p>
86
87			<p>
88			Now what stage do you have to choose?
89			</p>
90
91			<p>
92			Starting from a <e>stage1</e> allows you to have total control over the
93			optimization settings and optional build-time functionality that is
94			initially enabled on your system. This makes <e>stage1</e> installs good for
95			power users who know what they are doing. It is also a great
96			installation method for those who would like to know more about the
97			inner workings of Gentoo Linux.
98			</p>
99
100			<table>
101			<tr>
102			<th>Stage1</th>
103			<th>Pros and Cons</th>
104			</tr>
105			<tr>
106			<th>+</th>
107			<ti>
108			Allows you to have total control over the optimization settings and optional
109			build-time functionality that is initially enabled on your system
110			</ti>
111			</tr>
112			<tr>
113			<th>+</th>
114			<ti>Suitable for powerusers that know what they are doing</ti>
115			</tr>
116			<tr>
117			<th>+</th>
118			<ti>Allows you to learn more about the inner workings of Gentoo</ti>
119			</tr>
120			<tr>
121			<th>-</th>
122			<ti>Takes a long time to finish the installation</ti>
123			</tr>
124			<tr>
125			<th>-</th>
126			<ti>
127			If you don't intend to tweak the settings, it is probably a waste of time
128			</ti>
129			</tr>
130			</table>
131
132			<p>
133			<e>Stage2</e> installs allow you to skip the bootstrap process and doing this
134			is fine if you are happy with the optimization settings that we chose
135			for your particular <e>stage2</e> tarball.
136			</p>
137
138			<table>
139			<tr>
140			<th>Stage2</th>
141			<th>Pros and Cons</th>
142			</tr>
143			<tr>
144			<th>+</th>
145			<ti>You don't need to bootstrap</ti>
146			</tr>
147			<tr>
148			<th>+</th>
149			<ti>Faster than starting with stage1</ti>
150			</tr>
151			<tr>
152			<th>+</th>
153			<ti>You can still tweak your settings</ti>
154			</tr>
155			<tr>
156			<th>-</th>
157			<ti>You cannot tweak as much as with a stage1</ti>
158			</tr>
159			<tr>
160			<th>-</th>
161			<ti>It's not the fastest way to install Gentoo</ti>
162			</tr>
163			<tr>
164			<th>-</th>
165			<ti>You have to accept the optimizations we chose for the bootstrap</ti>
166			</tr>
167			</table>
168
169			<p>
170			Choosing to go with a <e>stage3</e> allows for the fastest install of Gentoo
171			Linux, but also means that your base system will have the optimization
172			settings that we chose for you (which to be honest, are good settings
173			and were carefully chosen to enhance performance while maintaining
174			stability). <e>stage3</e> is also required if you want to install Gentoo using
175			prebuilt packages.
176			</p>
177
178			<table>
179			<tr>
180			<th>Stage3</th>
181			<th>Pros and Cons</th>
182			</tr>
183			<tr>
184			<th>+</th>
185			<ti>Fastest way to get a Gentoo base system</ti>
186			</tr>
187			<tr>
188			<th>-</th>
189			<ti>You cannot tweak the base system - it's built already</ti>
190			</tr>
191			<tr>
192			<th>-</th>
193			<ti>You cannot brag about having used stage1 or stage2</ti>
194			</tr>
195			</table>
196
197			<p>
198			Write down (or remember) what stage you want to use. You need this later when
199			you decide what LiveCD (or other installation medium) you want to use. You might
200			be interested to know that, if you decide to use different optimization settings
201			after having installed Gentoo, you will be able to recompile your entire system
202			with the new optimization settings.
203			</p>
204
205			<p>
206			Now take a look at the available installation media.
207			</p>
208
209			</body>
210			</subsection>
211			<subsection>
212			<title>The Gentoo Alpha LiveCD</title>
213			<body>
214
215			<p>
216			The <e>Gentoo Alpha LiveCD</e> is a bootable CD which contain a
217			self-sustained Gentoo environment. It allows you to boot Linux from the CD.
218			During the boot process your hardware is detected and the appropriate drivers
219			are loaded. It is maintained by Gentoo developers.
220			</p>
221
222			<p>
223			The <e>Gentoo Alpha LiveCD</e> is a small, no-nonsense, bootable CD which sole
224			purpose is to boot the system, prepare the networking and continue with the
225			Gentoo installation. It does not contain any stages (or, in some cases, a
226			single stage1 file), source code or precompiled packages. For example the
227			alpha variant of this LiveCD can be found in the
228			<path>releases/1.4_rc1/alpha</path> subdirectory and is called
229			<c>gentoo-alpha-1.4rc1-test3.iso.bz2</c>.
230			</p>
231
232			</body>
233			</subsection>
234			</section>
235			<section>
236			<title>Download, Burn and Boot the Gentoo LiveCD</title>
237			<subsection>
238			<title>Downloading and Burning the LiveCDs</title>
239			<body>
240
241			<p>
242			You have chosen to use a Gentoo LiveCD (if not, then you are reading the
243			wrong document). We'll first start by downloading and burning the chosen
244			LiveCD.
245			</p>
246
247			<p>
248			Visit one of our <uri
249			link="/main/en/mirrors.xml">mirrors</uri> and go to
250			<path>releases/1.4rc1/alpha</path> which is where the LiveCD(s) of your choice
251			are located. Inside that directory you'll find so-called ISO-files. Those are
252			full CD images which you can write on a CD-R.
253			</p>
254
255			<p>
256			In case you wonder if your downloaded file is corrupted or not, you can
257			check its MD5 checksum and compare it with the MD5 checksum we provide (such as
258			<path>gentoo-alpha-1.4rc1-test3.iso.bz2.md5sum</path>). You can check the MD5
259			checksum with the <c>md5sum</c> tool under Linux/Unix or <uri
260			link="http://www.md5summer.org">md5summer</uri> for Windows.
261			</p>
262
263			<p>
264			Once downloaded, decompress the ISO file (as it is stored in a compressed format
265			using the Burrows-Wheeler text compression algorithm) using <c>bunzip2</c> (on
266			Unix/Linux systems):
267			</p>
268
269			<pre caption="Decompressing the iso.bz2 file">
270			# <i>bunzip2 gentoo-alpha-1.4rc1-test3.iso.bz2</i>
271			</pre>
272
273			<p>
274			To burn the downloaded ISO(s), you have to select raw-burning. How you
275			do this is highly program-dependent. We will discuss a couple of popular
276			tools on how to do this.
277			</p>
278
279			<ul>
280			<li>
281			With EasyCD Creator you select <c>File</c>, <c>Record CD
282			from CD image</c>. Then you change the <c>Files of type</c> to <c>ISO image
283			file</c>. Then locate the ISO file and click <c>Open</c>. When you click on
284			<c>Start recording</c> the ISO image will be burned correctly onto the CD-R.
285			</li>
286			<li>
287			With Nero Burning ROM, select <c>File</c>, <c>Burn CD image</c>. Set the
288			type of file to <c>.</c> and select the ISO file. Older versions of Nero
289			will tell you they don't recognize the format -- confirm here, it does
290			recognize it but doesn't know it yet :) In the next dialog, set the
291			following parameters:
292			<ul>
293			<li>Type of image: <c>Data Mode 1</c></li>
294			<li>Block size: <c>2048 bytes</c></li>
295			<li>File precursor and length of the image trailer: <c>0 bytes</c></li>
296			<li>Scrambled: <c>no</c></li>
297			<li>Swapped: <c>no</c></li>
298			</ul>
299			Now click on <c>OK</c> and then <c>Burn</c> (the CD-R)
300			</li>
301			<li>
302			With cdrecord, you simply type <c>cdrecord dev=/dev/hdc</c> (replace
303			<path>/dev/hdc</path> with your CD-RW drive's device path) followed
304			by the path to the ISO file :)
305			</li>
306	swift	1.2	<li>
307	bennyc	1.5	With K3B, select <c>Tools</c> > <c>CD</c> > <c>Burn Image</c>. Then
308			you can locate your ISO file within the 'Image to Burn' area. Finally click
309	swift	1.2	<c>Start</c>.
310			</li>
311	swift	1.1	</ul>
312
313			</body>
314			</subsection>
315			<subsection>
316			<title>Booting the Alpha LiveCD(s)</title>
317			<body>
318
319			<p>
320			When your Alpha is powered on, the first thing that gets started is the
321			firmware. It is loosely synonymous with the BIOS software on PC systems. There
322			are two types of firmware on Alpha systems: SRM (<e>Systems Reference
323			Manual</e>) and ARC (<e>Advanced Risc Console</e>).
324			</p>
325
326			<p>
327			SRM is based on the Alpha Console Subsystem specification, which provides an
328			operating environment for OpenVMS, Tru64 UNIX, and Linux operating systems. ARM
329			is based on the Advanced RISC Computing (ARC) specification, which provides
330			an operating environment for Windows NT.
331			</p>
332
333			<p>
334			If your Alpha system supports both SRC and ARCs (ARC, AlphaBIOS, ARCSBIOS) you
335			should follow <uri link="http://www.alphalinux.org/faq/x31.html">these
336			instructions</uri> for switching to SRM. If your system already uses SRM, you
337			are all set. If your system can only use ARCs (Ruffian, nautilus, xl, etc.) you
338			will need to choose <c>MILO</c> later on when we are talking about bootloaders.
339			</p>
340
341			<p>
342			Now to boot an Alpha LiveCD, put the CD-ROM in the tray and reboot the system.
343			You can use SRM to boot the LiveCD. If you cannot do that, you will have to use
344			<c>MILO</c>. If you don't have <c>MILO</c> installed already, use one of the
345			precompiled <c>MILO</c> images available on <uri
346			link="http://dev.gentoo.org/~taviso/milo/">taviso's homepage</uri>.
347			</p>
348
349			<pre caption="Booting a CD-ROM using SRM">
350			<comment>(List available hardware drives)</comment>
351			>>> <i>show device</i>
352			dkb0.0.1.4.0 DKB0 TOSHIBA CDROM
353			<comment>(...)</comment>
354			<comment>(Substitute dkb0 with your CD-ROM drive device)</comment>
355			>>> <i>boot dkb0 -flags 0</i>
356			</pre>
357
358			<pre caption="Booting a CD-ROM using MILO">
359			<comment>(Substitute hdb with your CD-ROM drive device)</comment>
360			MILO> <i>boot hdb:boot/vmlinuz initrd=initrd.img root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc</i>
361			</pre>
362
363			<p>
364			You should have a root ("#") prompt on the current console and can also switch
365			to other consoles by pressing Alt-F2, Alt-F3 and Alt-F4. Get back to the one you
366			started on by pressing Alt-F1.
367			</p>
368
369			<p>
370			Now continue with <uri link="#hardware">Extra Hardware Configuration</uri>.
371			</p>
372
373			</body>
374			</subsection>
375			<subsection id="hardware">
376			<title>Extra Hardware Configuration</title>
377			<body>
378
379			<p>
380			When the Live CD boots, it tries to detect all your hardware devices and
381			loads the appropriate kernel modules to support your hardware. In the
382			vast majority of cases, it does a very good job. However, in some cases (the
383			SPARC LiveCDs don't even do autodetection), it may not auto-load the kernel
384			modules you need. If the PCI auto-detection missed some of your system's
385			hardware, you will have to load the appropriate kernel modules manually.
386			</p>
387
388			<p>
389			In the next example we try to load the <c>8139too</c> module (support for
390			certain kinds of network interfaces):
391			</p>
392
393			<pre caption="Loading kernel modules">
394			# <i>modprobe 8139too</i>
395			</pre>
396
397			</body>
398			</subsection>
399			<subsection>
400			<title>Optional: Tweaking Hard Disk Performance</title>
401			<body>
402
403			<p>
404			If you are an advanced user, you might want to tweak the IDE hard disk
405			performance using <c>hdparm</c>. With the <c>-tT</c> options you can
406			test the performance of your disk (execute it several times to get a
407			more precise impression):
408			</p>
409
410			<pre caption="Testing disk performance">
411			# <i>hdparm -tT /dev/hda</i>
412			</pre>
413
414			<p>
415			To tweak, you can use any of the following examples (or experiment
416			yourself) which use <path>/dev/hda</path> as disk (substitute with your
417			disk):
418			</p>
419
420			<pre caption="Tweaking hard disk performance">
421			<comment>Activate DMA:</comment> # <i>hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda</i>
422			<comment>Activate DMA + Safe Performance-enhancing Options:</comment> # <i>hdparm -d 1 -A 1 -m 16 -u 1 -a 64 /dev/hda</i>
423			</pre>
424
425			</body>
426			</subsection>
427			<subsection>
428			<title>Optional: User Accounts</title>
429			<body>
430
431			<p>
432			If you plan on giving other people access to your installation
433			environment or you want to chat using <c>irssi</c> without root privileges (for
434			security reasons), you need to create the necessary user accounts and change
435			the root password.
436			</p>
437
438			<p>
439			To change the root password, use the <c>passwd</c> utility:
440			</p>
441
442			<pre caption="Changing the root password">
443			# <i>passwd</i>
444			New password: <comment>(Enter your new password)</comment>
445			Re-enter password: <comment>(Re-enter your password)</comment>
446			</pre>
447
448			<p>
449	swift	1.4	To create a user account, we first enter their credentials, followed by
450	swift	1.1	its password. We use <c>useradd</c> and <c>passwd</c> for these tasks.
451			In the next example, we create a user called "john".
452			</p>
453
454			<pre caption="Creating a user account">
455			# <i>useradd john</i>
456			# <i>passwd john</i>
457			New password: <comment>(Enter john's password)</comment>
458			Re-enter password: <comment>(Re-enter john's password)</comment>
459			</pre>
460
461			<p>
462			You can change your user id from root to the newly created user by using
463			<c>su</c>:
464			</p>
465
466			<pre caption="Changing user id">
467			# <i>su john -</i>
468			</pre>
469
470			</body>
471			</subsection>
472			<subsection>
473			<title>Optional: Starting the SSH Daemon</title>
474			<body>
475
476			<p>
477			If you want to allow other users to access your computer during the
478			Gentoo installation (perhaps because those users are going to help you
479			install Gentoo, or even do it for you), you need to create a user
480			account for them and perhaps even provide them with your root password
481			(<e>only</e> do that <e>if</e> you <b>fully trust</b> that user).
482			</p>
483
484			<p>
485			To fire up the SSH daemon, execute the following command:
486			</p>
487
488			<pre caption="Starting the SSH daemon">
489			# <i>/etc/init.d/sshd start</i>
490			</pre>
491
492			<p>
493			To be able to use sshd, you first need to setup your networking. Continue with
494			the chapter on <uri link="?part=1&chap=3">Configuring your Network</uri>.
495			</p>
496
497			</body>
498			</subsection>
499			</section>
500			</sections>