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.

Check the following requirements before you continue with the Gentoo installation:

• You need at least 1 Gb of free disk space
• If you do not use prebuilt packages, you need at least 300 Mb of memory (RAM + swap)
• For the SPARC architecture, you should check with the UltraLinux FAQ

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.

The installation media we will describe are:

• Gentoo's Minimal LiveCD
• Gentoo's Universal LiveCD

Every single media has its advantages and disadvantages. We will list the pros and cons of every medium so you have all the information to make a justified decision. But before we continue, let's explain our three-stage installation.

Gentoo Linux can be installed using one of three stage tarball files. The one you choose depends on how much of the system you want to compile yourself. The stage1 tarball is used when you want to bootstrap and build the entire system from scratch. The stage2 tarball is used for building the entire system from a bootstrapped "semi-compiled" state. The stage3 tarball already contains a basic Gentoo Linux system that has been built for you. As we will explain later, you can also install Gentoo without compiling anything (except your kernel and some optional packages). If you want this, you have to use a stage3 tarball.

Now what stage do you have to choose?

Starting from a stage1 allows you to have total control over the optimization settings and optional build-time functionality that is initially enabled on your system. This makes stage1 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.

Stage2 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 stage2 tarball.

Choosing to go with a stage3 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). stage3 is also required if you want to install Gentoo using prebuilt packages or without a network connection.

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.

Now take a look at the available installation media.

The Gentoo LiveCDs 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 LiveCDs allow you to boot, setup networking, initialize your partitions and start installing Gentoo from the Internet. However, some LiveCDs also contain all necessary source code so you are able to install Gentoo without a working network configuration.

Now what do these LiveCDs contain?

This 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 sparc64 variant of this LiveCD can be found in the sparc64/ subdirectory and is called install-sparc64-minimal-2004.1.iso.

Gentoo's Universal LiveCD is a bootable CD suitable to install Gentoo without networking. It contains a stage1 and stage3 tarballs (optimized for the sparc architecture). For example the sparc64 variant of this CD is called install-sparc64-universal-2004.1.iso and can be found in the sparc64/ subdirectory.

If you take a closer look into the directories you will see that we provide a Gentoo Package CD. This CD (which isn't bootable) only contains precompiled packages and can be used to install software after a succesfull Gentoo Installation. To install Gentoo, you only need the Universal LiveCD, but if you want OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, KDE, GNOME etc. without having to compile every single one of them, you need the Packages CD too. Such a Packages CD for sparc64 is called packages-sparc64-2004.1.iso.

You have chosen to use a Gentoo LiveCD (if not, then you are reading the wrong section). We'll first start by downloading and burning the chosen LiveCD. We previously discussed the several available LiveCDs, but where can you find them?

Visit one of our mirrors and go to releases/sparc/2004.1/livecd where the LiveCD(s) of your choice are located. Inside the subdirectories sparc32/ and sparc64/ you'll find so-called 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 install-sparc64-minimal-2004.1.iso.md5). You can check the MD5 checksum with the md5sum tool under Linux/Unix or md5summer for Windows.

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.

• With EasyCD Creator you select File, Record CD from CD image. Then you change the Files of type to ISO image file. Then locate the ISO file and click Open. When you click on Start recording the ISO image will be burned correctly onto the CD-R.
• With Nero Burning ROM, select File, Burn CD image. Set the type of file to *.* 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:
  • Type of image: Data Mode 1
  • Block size: 2048 bytes
  • File precursor and length of the image trailer: 0 bytes
  • Scrambled: no
  • Swapped: no
  Now click on OK and then Burn (the CD-R)
• With cdrecord, you simply type cdrecord dev=/dev/hdc (replace /dev/hdc with your CD-RW drive's device path) followed by the path to the ISO file :)
• With K3B, select Tools > CD > Burn Image. Then you can locate your ISO file within the 'Image to Burn' area. Finally click Start.

Insert the Gentoo LiveCD in the CD-ROM and boot your system. During startup, press Stop-A to enter OpenBootPROM (OBP). Once you are in the OBP, boot from the CD-ROM:

ok boot cdrom

You will be greeted by the SILO boot manager (on the LiveCD). Type in gentoo-2.4 (single-CPU kernel) or gentoo-2.4-smp (multi-CPU kernel) and press enter to continue booting the system. In the following example we'll boot the gentoo-2.4 kernel.

boot: gentoo-2.4

Once the LiveCD is booted, you will be greeted by a login prompt. Log on as root. There is no password, so when you are asked for one, press Enter.

login: root
password: (Press Enter here)

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.

Continue with Extra Hardware Configuration.

If not all hardware is supported out-of-the-box, you will need to load the appropriate kernel modules.

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

# modprobe 8139too

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

# hdparm -tT /dev/hda

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

Activate DMA:                                       # hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda
Activate DMA + Safe Performance-enhancing Options:  # hdparm -d 1 -A 1 -m 16 -u 1 -a 64 /dev/hda

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

To change the root password, use the passwd utility:

# passwd
New password: (Enter your new password)
Re-enter password: (Re-enter your password)

To create a user account, we first enter their credentials, followed by its password. We use useradd and passwd for these tasks. In the next example, we create a user called "john".

# useradd john
# passwd john
New password: (Enter john's password)
Re-enter password: (Re-enter john's password)

You can change your user id from root to the newly created user by using su:

# su john -

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 (only do that if you fully trust that user).

To fire up the SSH daemon, execute the following command:

# /etc/init.d/sshd start

To be able to use sshd, you first need to setup your networking. Continue with the chapter on Configuring your Network.