The Gentoo Installation CDs
Introduction
The Gentoo Installation CDs are bootable CDs which contain a
self-sustained Gentoo environment. They allow you to boot Linux from the CD.
During the boot process your hardware is detected and the appropriate drivers
are loaded. They are maintained by Gentoo developers.
All Installation CDs allow you to boot, set up networking, initialize your
partitions and start installing Gentoo from the Internet.
Gentoo Minimal Installation CD
The Minimal Installation CD is called and
takes up only MB of diskspace. You can use this
Installation CD to install Gentoo, but only with a working Internet
connection.
The Stage3 Tarball
A stage3 tarball is an archive containing a minimal Gentoo environment,
suitable to continue the Gentoo installation using the instructions in this
manual. Previously, the Gentoo Handbook described the installation using one of
three stage tarballs. While Gentoo still offers stage1 and stage2 tarballs, the
official installation method uses the stage3 tarball. If you are interested in
performing a Gentoo installation using a stage1 or stage2 tarball, please read
the Gentoo FAQ on How do I Install Gentoo
Using a Stage1 or Stage2 Tarball?
Stage3 tarballs can be downloaded from current-stage3/ on any of the Official Gentoo Mirrors and are not provided
on the LiveCD.
Download, Burn and Boot a Gentoo Installation CD
Downloading and Burning the Installation CDs
You have chosen to use a Gentoo Installation CD. We'll first start by
downloading and burning the chosen Installation CD. We previously discussed
the several available Installation CDs, but where can you find them?
You can download any of the Installation CDs from one of our mirrors. The Installation CDs are located in
the current-iso/ directory.
Inside that directory you'll find ISO files. Those are full CD images which you
can write on a CD-R.
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
.DIGESTS). You can check the MD5
checksum with the md5sum tool under Linux/Unix or md5sum for Windows.
Another way to check the validity of the downloaded file is to use GnuPG to
verify the cryptographic signature that we provide (the file ending with
.asc). Download the signature file and obtain the public key:
$ gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys 2D182910
Now verify the signature:
(Verify the cryptographic signature)
$ gpg --verify <downloaded iso.DIGESTS.asc>
(Verify the checksum)
$ sha1sum -c <downloaded iso.DIGESTS.asc>
To burn the downloaded ISO(s), you have to select raw-burning. How you
do this is highly program-dependent. We will discuss cdrecord and
K3B here; more information can be found in our Gentoo FAQ.
-
With cdrecord, you simply type cdrecord dev=/dev/hdc <downloaded iso
file> (replace /dev/hdc with your CD-RW drive's device
path).
-
With K3B, select Tools > Burn CD Image. Then you can locate
your ISO file within the 'Image to Burn' area. Finally click Start.
Default: Booting the Installation CD with Yaboot
On NewWorld machines place the Installation CD in the CD-ROM and reboot the
system. When the system-start-bell sounds, simply hold down the 'C' until the
CD loads.
After the Installation CD loaded, you will be greeted by a friendly welcome
message and a boot: prompt at the bottom of the screen.
We provide one generic kernel, apple. This kernel is built with support
for multiple CPUs, but it will boot on single processor machines as well.
You can tweak some kernel options at this prompt. The following table lists
some of the available boot options you can add:
| Boot Option |
Description |
video
This option takes one of the following vendor-specific tags:
nvidiafb, radeonfb, rivafb, atyfb,
aty128 or ofonly. You can follow this tag with the resolution
refresh rate and color depth you want to use. For instance,
video=radeonfb:1280x1024@75-32 will select the ATI Radeon frame buffer
at a resolution of 1280x1024 with a refresh rate of 75Hz and a color depth of
32 bits. If you are uncertain what to choose, and the default doesn't work,
video=ofonly will most certainly work.
nol3
Disables level 3 cache on some PowerBooks (needed for at least the 17")
dofirewire
Enables support for IEEE1394 (FireWire) devices, like external harddisks.
dopcmcia
If you want to use PCMCIA devices during your installation (like PCMCIA
network cards) you have to enable this option.
dosshd
Starts sshd. Useful for unattended installs.
passwd=foo
Sets whatever is after the = as the root password. Use with dosshd
for remote installs.
To use the above options, at the boot: prompt, type apple followed
by the desired option. In the example below, we'll force the kernel to use the
Open Firmware framebuffer instead of the device specific driver.
boot: apple video=ofonly
If you don't need to add any options, just hit enter at this prompt, and a
complete Gentoo Linux environment will be loaded from the CD. Continue with
And When You're Booted....
Alternative: Booting the Installation CD on a Pegasos
On the Pegasos simply insert the CD and at the SmartFirmware boot-prompt type
boot cd /boot/menu. This will open a small bootmenu where you can choose
between several preconfigured video configs. If you need any special boot
options you can append them to the command-line just like with Yaboot above.
For example: boot cd /boot/pegasos video=radeonfb:1280x1024@75 mem=256M.
The default kernel options (in case something goes wrong and you need it) are
preconfigured with console=ttyS0,115200 console=tty0 init=/linuxrc
looptype=squashfs loop=/image.squashfs cdroot root=/dev/ram0.
Alternative: Booting the Installation CD with BootX
If you have an OldWorld Mac the bootable portion of the livecd can't be used.
The most simple solution is to use MacOS 9 or earlier to bootstrap into a Linux
environment with a tool called BootX.
First, download BootX
and unpack the archive. Copy the the BootX Extension from the unpacked
archive into Extensions Folder and the BootX App Control Panel into
Control Panels, both of which are located in your MacOS System Folder.
Next, create a folder called "Linux Kernels" in your System folder and copy the
apple kernel from the CD to this folder. Finally, copy apple.igz
from the Installation CD boot folder into the MacOS
System Folder.
To prepare BootX, start the BootX App Control Panel. First select the Options
dialog and check Use Specified RAM Disk and select apple.igz from
your System Folder. Continue back to the initial screen and ensure that the
ramdisk size is at least 32000. Finally, set the kernel arguments as
shown below:
cdroot root=/dev/ram0 init=linuxrc loop=image.squashfs looptype=squashfs console=tty0
The kernel parameters in the yaboot section above are also applicable here. You
can append any of those options to the kernel arguments above.
Check once more to make sure the settings are correct and then save the
configuration. This saves typing just in case it doesn't boot or something is
missing. Press the Linux button at the top of the window. If everything goes
correctly, it should boot into the Installation CD. Continue with
And When You're Booted...
And When You're Booted...
You will be greeted by a root ("#") prompt on the current console. You 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. Due to the keyboard layout,
you may need to press Alt-fn-Fx on Apple machines.
If you are installing Gentoo on a system with a non-US keyboard, use
loadkeys to load the keymap for your keyboard. To list the available
keymaps, execute ls /usr/share/keymaps/i386.
(PPC uses x86 keymaps on most systems.)
# ls /usr/share/keymaps/i386
Now load the keymap of your choice:
# loadkeys be-latin1
Now continue with Extra Hardware Configuration.