doc/en/altinstall.xml

<?xml version='1.0' encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet href="/xsl/guide.xsl" type="text/xsl"?>


<guide link="/doc/en/altinstall.xml">
<title>The Gentoo Linux alternative installation method HOWTO</title>
<author title="Contributor"><mail link="gerrynjr@gentoo.org">Gerald Normandin Jr.</mail></author>
<author title="Contributor"><mail link="lordviram@rebelpacket.net">Travis Tilley</mail></author>
<author title="Contributor"><mail link="volontir@yahoo.com">Oleg Raisky</mail></author>
<author title="Contributor"><mail link="luminousit@hotmail.com">Alex Garbutt</mail></author>
<author title="Contributor"><mail link="alex@openvs.com">Alexandre Georges</mail></author>
<author title="Contributor"><mail link="davoid@gentoo.org">Faust A.
Tanasescu</mail></author>
<author title="Contributor"><mail link="aliz@gentoo.org">Daniel Ahlberg</mail></author>
<author title="Editor"><mail link="swift@gentoo.org">Sven Vermeulen</mail></author>
<author title="Editor"><mail link="antifa@gentoo.org">Ken Nowack</mail></author>
<abstract>
This HOWTO is meant to be a repository of alternative Gentoo installation
methods, for those with special installation needs such as lack of a cdrom
or a computer that cant boot cds.
</abstract>

<version>0.31</version>
<date>17 July 2003</date>

<license/>

<chapter>
<title>About this document</title>
<section>
<body>

<p>If the standard boot-from-CD install method doesn't work for you
(or you just don't like it),
help is now here. This document serves to
provide a repository of alternative Gentoo Linux installation techniques 
to those who need them.
Or, if you prefer, it serves as 
a place to put your wacky installation methods. If you have an
installation method that you yourself find useful, or you have devised an
amusing way of installing gentoo, please dont hesitate to write something
up and  <mail link="antifa@gentoo.org">send it to me.</mail></p>


</body>
</section>
</chapter>

<chapter>
<title>Booting the LiveCD with Smart BootManager</title>
<section>

<body>
<p>Download Smart BootManager <uri link="http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/index.php3?body=download.html">http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/index.php3?body=download.html</uri>. Linux source or binary format and windows .exe versions are available as well as many language packs. However, at this time, the prefered method would be to use the binary format, as the source will not compile with newer versions of nasm.</p>

<p>Either compile the package from source or just grab the binary. There are several options that can be utilized while creating your boot floppy, as seen below.</p>

<pre caption="Smart BootManager Options">
<i>sbminst [-t theme] [-d drv] [-b backup_file] [-u backup_file]

   -t theme     select the theme to be used, in which the theme could be:
                   us = English theme       de = German theme 
                  hu = Hungarian theme     zh = Chinese theme 
                  ru = Russian theme       cz = Czech theme
                  es = Spanish theme       fr = French theme 
                   pt = Portuguese theme 

                 
  -d drv       set the drive that you want to install Smart BootManager on;
                for Linux:
                  /dev/fd0 is the first floppy driver, 
                  /dev/hda is the first IDE harddisk driver.
                   /dev/sda is the first SCSI harddisk driver.
                for DOS:
                   0   is the first floppy drive
                   128 is the first hard drive;

   -c             disable CD-ROM booting feature;

   -b backup_file backup the data that will be overwrited for
                  future uninstallation;

   -u backup_file uninstall Smart BootManager, should be used alone;

   -y             do not ask any question or warning.</i>
</pre>

<pre caption="Using sbminst to build the boot floppy">
# <i>sbminst -t us  -d /dev/fd0</i>
</pre>
<note> Replace fd0 with your repective floppy device name if yours is different. </note>
<p>Now simply place the floppy in the floppy drive of the computer you'd like to boot the LiveCD on, as well as placing the LiveCD in the CD-ROM and boot the computer.</p>

<p>You'll be greeted with the Smart BootManager dialog. Select your CD-ROM and press ENTER to boot the LiveCD. Once booted proceed with the standard installation instructions.</p>

<p>Further information on Smart BootManager may be found at <uri>http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/</uri></p>
</body>
</section>
</chapter>


<chapter>
<title>Knoppix Installation</title>
<section>

<body>
<p>Booting from the <uri link="http://www.knoppix.org/">Knoppix</uri> LiveCD is a way to have a fully functional linux system while you're compiling Gentoo. Tux Racer will help you pass the time while you wait for bootstrap.</p>

 <p>Boot from the Knoppix CD. It generally does a really good job of hardware detection. Although, you may have to add some boot options. </p>

<p>By default Knoppix boots into a KDE 3.0 desktop. The first thing I did was open a konsole and typed <c>sudo passwd root</c>. This lets you set the root password for Knoppix.</p>

<p> Next, I su to root and typed <c>usermod -d /root -m root</c>. This sets user roots home directory to /root (the Gentoo way) from /home/root (the Knoppix way). If you do not do this, then you will receive errors when emerging about "/home/root: not found" or something to that effect.</p>

<p>I then typed <c>exit</c> and then <c>su</c> back into root. This loads the change that was made with the usermod command. At this point, you can pick up with the standard install documentation at step 6. </p>
</body>
</section>
</chapter>

<chapter>
<title>Installing from Stage 1 without network access</title>
<section>
<body>


<p>Burn a LiveCD iso.</p>

<p>Get the latest portage snapshot from <uri>http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/gentoo/snapshots/</uri> (or your favorite <uri link="http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/mirrors.xml">mirror</uri>). Either place this tarball on an existing partition on the box your are installing to, or burn it to a CD.</p>

<p>You'll also need a package list for the stage packages. Place the following dl-list.sh script on the same medium as the portage snapshot, you'll need it later.</p>

<pre caption="dl-list.sh">
#!/bin/bash

# set your defaults here:
user_defs() {
 
  # portage directory (without a trailing "/"):
  portage_dir="/usr/portage"
 
  # default download mirror (without a trailing "/"):
  gentoo_mirror="http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo"
 
  # default sourceforge mirror (unc, telia, belnet):
  sourceforge_mirror="unc"
 
  # fix gnu mirror entries
  gnu_url="ftp:\/\/ftp.gnu.org\/pub\/gnu"
 
}


#------------------------------------------------------------

# function to remove temporary files
cleanup() {
 
  rm -f $temp_file_1 $temp_file_2
  exit $1
 
}

# set user defaults
user_defs

# set the complete url for the sourceforge mirror
# (the \'s are needed because this goes in a sed command)
sourceforge_mirror_complete="http:\/\/$sourceforge_mirror.dl.sourceforge.net\/sourceforge"

# initialize counters
num_files=0
num_alt_urls=0
total_size=0

# initialize lists (arrays)
declare -a def_urls_arr
declare -a alt_urls_arr

# create 2 temporary files
temp_file_1=`mktemp -t dl-list.XXXXXX` || cleanup 1
temp_file_2=`mktemp -t dl-list.XXXXXX` || cleanup 1

# run "emerge -p &lt;args&gt;" (too easy to forget the "-p" in the command line...)
emerge -p $@ &gt; $temp_file_1 || cleanup 1

# remove the lines that do not contain the word "ebuild"
sed -n -e '/ebuild/p' $temp_file_1 &gt; $temp_file_2

# count how many lines were left
num_ebuilds=`wc -l $temp_file_2 | sed -e 's/\(.*\) \(.*\)/\1/'`

# extract the useful information from those lines: category, package and version
#sed -e 's:\(.*\) \(.*\)/\(.*\)-\([0-9].*\) \(.*\) \(.*\):\2 \3 \4:' $temp_file_2 &gt; $temp_file_1
sed -e 's:\(.*\) \(.*\)/\(.*\)-\([0-9].*\):\2 \3 \4:' $temp_file_2 &gt; $temp_file_1

# display starting message :)
echo -n "Generating list " &gt;&amp;2

# process each package in turn
while read category package version rest
do
 
  # form the name of the digest file

digest_file="$portage_dir/$category/$package/files/digest-$package-$version"
 
  # process the contents of the digest file
  while read md5_flag md5_sum file_name file_size
  do
   
    # form the default url to download the file
    def_urls_arr[$num_files]="$gentoo_mirror/distfiles/$file_name"
   
    # increment the file counter
    num_files=$(($num_files + 1))
   
    # update the size accumulator (in kilobytes)
    total_size=$(($total_size + $file_size / 1024))
   
  done &lt; $digest_file

  # form the "ebuild depend" command line
  ebuild_depend_cmd="ebuild $portage_dir/$category/$package/$package-${version}.ebuild depend"

  # execute the "ebuild depend" command
  $ebuild_depend_cmd || cleanup 1

  # form the name of the dependency file
  dependency_file="/var/cache/edb/dep/$category/$package-$version"

  # read in the 4th line from the dependency file,
  # which contains the official download urls
  alt_urls=`head -n 4 $dependency_file | tail -n 1`
 
  # ignore empty url list
  if [ -n "$alt_urls" ]
  then
   
    # split the urls list into $1..$N
    set $alt_urls
   
    # process each url in turn
    for i in $@
    do
     
      # remove the (use)? strings from the url list
      alt_url_tmp=`echo "$i" | sed -e '/\?$/d'`
     
      # remove the "mirror://gnome" urls
      alt_url_tmp=`echo "$alt_url_tmp" | sed -e '/^mirror:\/\/gnome/d'`
     
      # remove the "mirror://kde" urls
      alt_url_tmp=`echo "$alt_url_tmp" | sed -e '/^mirror:\/\/kde/d'`
     
      # remove the "mirror://gentoo" urls (already included)
      alt_url_tmp=`echo "$alt_url_tmp" | sed -e '/^mirror:\/\/gentoo/d'`
     
      # translate the "mirror://sourceforge" urls into valid urls
      alt_url_tmp=`echo "$alt_url_tmp" | sed -e "s/mirror:\/\/sourceforge/$sourceforge_mirror_complete/"`

      # translate the "mirror://gnu" urls into valid urls
      alt_url_tmp=`echo "$alt_url_tmp" | sed -e "s/mirror:\/\/gnu/$gnu_url/"`
      # ignore empty urls
      if [ -n "$alt_url_tmp" ]
      then
       
        # add the url to the list
        alt_urls_arr[$num_alt_urls]=$alt_url_tmp
       
        # increment the alternate url counter
        num_alt_urls=$(($num_alt_urls + 1))
       
      fi
     
    done
   
  fi

  # a progress bar :)
  echo -n "." &gt;&amp;2

done &lt; $temp_file_1

# display ending message :)
echo " done." &gt;&amp;2

# display default urls list
for i in ${def_urls_arr[@]}; do echo $i; done | sort

# display alternate urls list
for i in ${alt_urls_arr[@]}; do echo $i; done | sort

# display totals
echo "Totals:" $num_ebuilds "ebuilds," $num_files "files," $num_files "default urls," \n
$num_alt_urls "alternate urls," "${total_size}Kb." &lt;&amp;2

# remove temporary files and exit
cleanup 0
</pre>

<p>Follow all instructions of Gentoo Install Doc up to "chroot /mnt/gentoo" in Step 8. If you only have one CD-ROM remember to use the <c>cdcache</c> option while booting so you can unmount the LiveCD and mount your portage snapshot CD.</p>

<p>Run "passwd" and get a new password for root. Open a new virtual console (Alt-F2) and login as root with your new password.</p>

<p>On the new console (F2) continue with Install Doc up to running bootstrap.sh script.</p>

<p>Go back to the first console (Alt-F1, without chroot) and mount a second CD on <c>/mnt/gentoo/mnt/cdrom2</c>. Copy portage tarball from cdrom2 and unpack it to <c>/mnt/gentoo/usr/portage</c>. Further, grab the dl-list.sh script and place it in <c>/usr/sbin</c> and make it executable.</p>

<pre caption="Mount the snapshot cd">
# <i>umount /mnt/cdrom</i>
# <i>mkdir /mnt/gentoo/mnt/cdrom2</i>
# <i>mount /dev/cdroms/cdrom0 /mnt/gentoo/mnt/cdrom2</i>
# <i>cp /mnt/gentoo/mnt/cdrom2/portage-$date.tar.bz2 /mnt/gentoo/usr/portage</i>
# <i>cp /mnt/gentoo/mnt/cdrom2/dl-list.sh /mnt/gentoo/usr/sbin</i>
# <i>cd /mnt/gentoo/usr/portage</i>
# <i>tar xvjpf portage-$date.tar.bz2</i>
# <i>chmod +x /mnt/gentoo/usr/sbin/dl-list.sh</i>
</pre>

<p>Switch back to F2 console. Now if you try to run bootstrap.sh it will fail because it won't be able to download any files. We will fetch these files somewhere else and put them in /usr/portage/distfiles (on F2 console). </p>

<p>You need a list of Stage1 packages: glibc, baselayout, texinfo, gettext, zlib, binutils, gcc, ncurses plus their dependencies. </p>

<note>Note that you need the versions of each package synced with your portage tree.</note>

 <p>Now us the dl-list.sh script to generate the package list that you need. Then copy the subsequent list to a floppy.</p>

<pre caption="Using dl-list.sh">
# <i>dl-list.sh glibc baselayout texinfo gettext zlib binutils gcc ncurses > stage1.list</i>
# <i>mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy</i>
# <i>cp /mnt/gentoo/stage1.list /mnt/floppy</i>
# <i>umount /mnt/floppy</i>
</pre>

<p>Take the floppy to the machine that has fast access and feed this list to wget:</p>

<pre caption="Use wget to grab your source packages">
# <i>wget -N -i stage1.list</i>
</pre>


 <p>Once you have obtained all the files, take them to the computer and copy them to <c>/mnt/gentoo/usr/portage/distfiles</c>. You will then be able to run <c>bootstrap.sh</c>. Repeate this same wget fetch and place procedure for stage2 and 3.</p>


</body>
</section>
</chapter>

<chapter>
<title>Netboot install</title>
<section>
<title>Requirements</title>
<body>
<p>The requirements for a netboot install are a host computer than can
provide a tftp server and a computer
that can netboot itself via either bios or a floppy drive used to boot GRUB
or another network bootloader. A dhcp server might also be necessary. Of
course, you will also need the latest build ISO, which can be found at
<uri>http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/gentoo/releases/</uri></p>
<note>Due to changes in the LiveCD, this procedure will only work for the 1.2 LiveCD. </note>
</body>
</section>

<section>
<title>Overview</title>
<body>

<p>In order to load images off the network, the first thing a netboot machine
must do is obtain an IP address. There are multiple ways of obtaining 
an IP address, and any
one of them will do. Personally, I prefer to use GRUB for everything, but if
your computer supports booting from a network already then grub might not
be necessary, even if it might be easier to just use GRUB's <c>ifconfig</c> command
instead of setting up a bootp or dhcp server.</p>

<p>Once your computer has obtained an IP address, the next logical step is to find
out what you are going to be booting and where it might be held. Once again,
it would be easiest to do this with GRUB commands as opposed to setting up
a bootp or dhcp server. You will also need to specify how to obtain an initrd
and tell the kernel that it will be using this as it's root filesystem.</p>

<p>With your kernel loaded and root filesystem mounted, you may proceed
with installation as normal. The build image could be loaded from a cd, or it
can be downloaded from the network via tftp.</p>

</body>
</section>
<section>
<title>Using GRUB</title>
<body>

<p>To use GRUB for network booting purposes, you must first have GRUB
compiled with support for your network card. It doesn't matter if you install
to floppy, or to the hard drive of the computer you wish to install Gentoo
on. If your install target already has GRUB with network support installed,
then you are one step ahead. GRUB can be downloaded from
<uri>ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/grub/</uri></p>

<p>A configure example for enabling tulip support, the network card in my
box:</p>

<pre caption="Manual GRUB installation">
# <i>./configure --enable-tulip --prefix=/usr</i>
# <i>make &amp;&amp; make install</i>
</pre>

<p>If you are currently in Gentoo and wish to install GRUB using Gentoo
tools, then you need to install step by step in order to configure in support
for your network card. An example for using ebuild to install GRUB with
tulip support:</p>

<pre caption="Installing and configuring GRUB on Gentoo Linux">
# <i>ebuild /usr/portage/sys-apps/grub/grub-0.91.ebuild clean fetch unpack</i>
# <i>cd /var/tmp/portage/grub-0.91/work/grub-0.91/</i>
# <i>./configure --prefix=/usr --sbindir=/sbin --mandir=/usr/share/man \ </i>
> <i>--infodir=/usr/share/info --enable-tulip</i>
# <i>make</i>
# <i>touch /var/tmp/portage/grub-0.91/.compiled</i>
# <i>cd /usr/portage/</i>
# <i>ebuild sys-apps/grub/grub-0.91.ebuild install merge</i>
</pre>

<p>Now that we have the GRUB shell itself installed, we need to install to
a boot sector. Although you could install GRUB to the boot sector of your
install computer's hard drive, here we will assume that you are installing
GRUB on a boot floppy.  There are two ways of doing this. You can use the GRUB
shell itself, or you can use a provided script called <c>grub-install</c>. It is
preferable to use <c>grub-install</c> when installing GRUB to a floppy.</p>

<pre caption="grub-install example">
# <i>mkfs.ext2 /dev/fd0</i>
# <i>mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy/</i>
# <i>grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/floppy/ '(fd0)'</i>
# <i>umount /mnt/floppy/</i>
</pre>

<p><c>grub-install</c> does not always work... and isn't always the best way to install
GRUB. And since the GRUB shell works exactly like GRUB would when booted
via the boot sector, it might be more desirable just to use the GRUB shell. Here
is an example of how to use the GRUB shell to install GRUB to a floppy:</p>

<pre caption="Using the GRUB shell instead">
# <i>mkfs.ext2 /dev/fd0</i>
# <i>mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy/</i>
# <i>mkdir -p /mnt/floppy/boot/grub/</i>
# <i>cp -v /usr/share/grub/i386-pc/* /mnt/floppy/boot/grub/</i>
# <i>grub</i>
grub> <i>root (fd0)</i>
grub> <i>setup (fd0)</i>
grub> <i>quit</i>
# <i>umount /mnt/floppy/</i>
</pre>

<p>Now that we have a bootable GRUB floppy, we need to set up the host tftp server
(I suggest netkit's tftp server)
for loading our kernel and initrd. If you use inetd then you will need 
a line in your <path>/etc/inetd.conf</path> that looks
like this:</p>

<pre caption="/etc/inetd.conf">
tftp    dgram   udp     wait    nobody  /usr/sbin/tcpd  in.tftpd
</pre>

<p>To install the netkit tftp server under gentoo linux, emerge net-misc/netkit-tftp</p>

<note>There is an ebuild for xinetd... if you prefer to use this than feel free to do
so. However I do not use xinetd, and do not know how to set up tftp with it. If you
use it and such, please send me info on how to get xinetd working and I will include
them in this howto.</note>

<p>Now that we have our tftp server ready, we need a kernel and a root initrd to
put in it. You can compile a custom kernel yourself, but make sure it has all the
things necessary for running gentoo (like devfs) and for netbooting (like initrd
support). The root initrd will be the rescue.gz included in the gentoo ISO.</p>

<impo>Mounting an ISO file without burning it to cd requires loopback filesystem
support.</impo>

<pre>
# <i>mkdir /tftpboot</i>
# <i>mount -o loop /path/to/gentoo-ix86-1.1a.iso /mnt/cdrom/</i>
# <i>cp /mnt/cdrom/isolinux/kernel /mnt/cdrom/isolinux/rescue.gz /tftpboot</i>
# <i>chmod 644 /tftpboot/*</i>
# <i>umount /mnt/cdrom/</i>
</pre>

<p>Boot the machine you want to install to with your incredibly usefull grub floppy.
Once booted you need to specify a way for the machine to get 
its IP address, specify where
to get a kernel and it's options, and where to get it's initrd.</p>

<pre>
grub> <i>ifconfig --address=<c>ip.add.re.ss</c> --server=<c>ip.add.re.ss</c></i>
grub> <i>root (nd)</i>
grub> <i>kernel /tftpboot/kernel devfs=nomount vga=normal load_ramdisk=1 </i>
      <i>prompt_ramdisk=0 ramdisk_size=24000 root=/dev/ram0 rw</i> <comment>(all on one line)</comment>
grub> <i>initrd /tftpboot/rescue.gz</i>
grub> <i>boot</i>
</pre>

<note>You can also use bootp and dhcp to configure your ip via grub. Use the bootp
and dhcp commands.</note>

<p>Now that you have your machine booted, you can install as normal. Refer to the
from source cd install howto.</p>

</body>
</section>
</chapter>

<chapter><title>Diskless install using PXE boot</title>

<section><title>Requirements</title>
<body>
<p>You will need a network card on the diskless client that uses the PXE protocol to boot, like many 3com cards. You will also need a BIOS that supports booting from PXE.</p>
</body></section>

<section><title>Server base setup</title>
<body>
 <p>Create directories: The first thing to do is to create the directories where your diskless system will be stored. Create a directory called <c>/diskless</c> which houses a directory for each diskless client. For the rest of this howto we'll be working on the client 'eta'.</p>

<pre caption="directory setup">
# <i>mkdir /diskless</i>
# <i>mkdir /diskless/eta</i>
# <i>mkdir /diskless/eta/boot</i>
</pre>

<p>DHCP and TFTP setup: The client will get boot informations using DHCP and download all the required files using TFTP. Just emerge DHCP and configure it for your basic needs. Then, add the following on <c>/etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf</c>.</p>

<note>This provide a static IP adress for the client and the path of a PXE boot image, here pxegrub. You have to replace the MAC address of the Ethernet card of the client and the directory where you will put the client files with the one you use.</note>

<pre caption="dhcp.conf">
option option-150 code 150 = text ;
host eta {
hardware ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00;
fixed-address <c>ip.add.re.ss</c>;
option option-150 "/eta/boot/grub.lst";
filename "/eta/boot/pxegrub";
}
</pre>

<p>For TFTP, emerge <c>app-admin/tftp-hpa</c>. In <c>/etc/conf.d/in.tftpd</c>, put the following :</p>

<pre caption="in.tftpd">
INTFTPD_PATH="/diskless"
INTFTPD_USER="nobody"
INTFTPD_OPTS="-u ${INTFTPD_USER} -l -vvvvvv -p -c -s ${INTFTPD_PATH}"
</pre>

<p>Setup GRUB: To provide PXE booting I use GRUB. You have to compile it by yourself to enable the PXE image compilation ... but that's quite easy. First, get the latest version of the GRUB source code (<c>emerge -f grub</c> will place the tarball in <c>/usr/portage/distfiles</c>). Copy the tarball to <c>/diskless</c> and then build it to make the pxe capable binary. Once the binary is built, copy it to the diskless client's boot directory. Then edit it's grub.lst config file.</p>

<pre caption="grub setup">
# <i>tar zxvf grub-0.92.tar.gz</i>
# <i>cd grub-0.92</i>
# <i>./configure --help</i>
<codenote>In the options you will see a list of supported network interface drivers. </codenote>
<codenote>Select the driver compatible with your card. Herein referenced a $nic</codenote>
# <i>./configure --enable-diskless --enable-$nic</i>
# <i>make</i>
# <i>cd stage2</i>
# <i>cp pxegrub /diskless/eta/boot/pxegrub</i>
# <i>nano -w /diskless/eta/boot/grub.lst</i>
</pre>

<pre caption="grub.lst">
default 0
timeout 30

title=Diskless Gentoo
root (nd)
kernel /eta/bzImage ip=dhcp root=/dev/nfs nfsroot=<c>ip.add.re.ss</c>:/diskless/eta

<codenote>For the nfsroot option, the IP address is the one of the server and </codenote>
<codenote>the directory is the one where your diskless client files are located (on the server).</codenote>
</pre>

<p>Setup NFS: NFS is quite easy to configure. The only thing you have to do is to add a line on the <c>/etc/exports</c> config file :</p>

<pre caption="/etc/exports">
# <i>nano -w /etc/exports</i>
NFS file systems being exported. See exports(5).
/diskless/eta eta(rw,sync,no_root_squash)
</pre>

<p>Update your hosts:  One important thing to do now is to modify your <c>/etc/hosts</c> file to fit your needs. </p>

<pre caption="/etc/hosts">
127.0.0.1 localhost

192.168.1.10 eta.example.com eta
192.168.1.20 sigma.example.com sigma
</pre>
</body>
</section>

<section><title>Creating the system on the server</title>

<body>

<p>Reboot the server on a Gentoo LiveCD. Follow the standard install procedure as explained in the Gentoo Install Howto BUT with the following differences. When you mount the file system, do the following (where hdaX is the partition where you created the /diskless directory). You do not need to mount any other partitions as all of the files will reside in the <c>/diskless/eta</c> directory.</p>

<pre caption="mounting the filesystem">
#<i> mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/gentoo</i>
</pre>

<p>Stage tarballs and chroot: This example uses a stage3 tarball. Mount <c>/proc</c> to your diskless directory and chroot into it to continue with the install. Then follow the installation manual until kernel configuration.</p>

<warn>Be very careful where you extract your stage tarball. You don't want to end up extracting over your existing installation.</warn>

<pre caption="extracting the stage tarball">
# <i>cd /mnt/gentoo/diskless/eta/</i>
# <i>tar -xvjpf  /mnt/cdrom/gentoo/stage3-*.tar.bz2</i>
# <i>mount -t proc /proc /mnt/gentoo/diskless/eta/proc</i>
# <i>cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/diskless/eta/etc/resolv.conf</i>
# <i>chroot /mnt/gentoo/diskless/eta/ /bin/bash</i>
# <i>env-update</i>
# <i>source /etc/profile</i>
</pre>

<p>Kernel configuration: When you do the <c>make menuconfig</c> of your kernel configuration, don't forget to enable the following options with the others recommended into the install howto.</p>

<pre caption="menuconfig options">
- Your network card device support

- Under "Networking options" :

[*] TCP/IP networking
[*] IP: kernel level autoconfiguration
[*] IP: DHCP support
[*] IP: BOOTP support


- Under "File systems --> Network File Systems" :

&lt;*&gt; NFS file system support
[*] Provide NFSv3 client support
[*] Root file system on NFS
</pre>

<p>Next configure your diskless client's <c>/etc/fstab</c>.</p>

<pre caption="/etc/fstab">
# <i>nano -w /etc/fstab</i>
/dev/cdroms/cdrom0 /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,ro 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
</pre>

<p>Bootloader. Dont install another bootloader because we already have one - pxegrub. Simply finish the install and restart the server. Start the services you'll need to boot the new client: DHCP, TFTPD, and NFS.</p>

<pre caption="Starting services">
# <i>/etc/init.d/dhcp start</i>
# <i>/etc/init.d/tftpd start</i>
# <i>/etc/init.d/nfs start</i>
</pre>

</body></section>

<section><title>Booting the new client</title>
<body>
<p>For the new client to boot properly, you'll need to configure the bios and the network card to use PXE as the first boot method - before CD-ROM or floppy. For help with this consult your hardware manuals or maufacturers website. The network card should get an IP address using DHCP and download the GRUB PXE image using TFTP. Then, you should see a nice black and white GRUB bootmenu where you will select the kernel to boot and press Enter. If everything is ok the kernel should boot, mount the root filesystem using NFS and provide you with a login prompt. Enjoy.</p>
</body></section>

</chapter>


<chapter> <title>Installing Gentoo from an existing Linux distribution </title> 
<section> <title> Requirements </title> 
<body>
<p>In order to install Gentoo from your existing Linux distribution you need to
have chroot command installed, and have a copy of the Gentoo installation
tarball or ISO you want to install. A network connection would be preferable if
you want more than what's supplied in your tarball. (by the way, a tarball is
just a file ending in .tbz or .tar.gz). The author used RedHat Linux 7.3 as the
"host" operating system, but it is not very important.  Let's get started! </p>
</body>
</section>

<section> <title> Overview </title>
<body>
<p>We will first allocate a partition to Gentoo by resizing our existing Linux partition, mount the partition, untar the tarball that is mounted, chroot inside the proto-system and start building. Once the bootstrap process is done, we will do some final configuration on the system so as to make sure it boots, then we are ready to reboot and use Gentoo. </p>
</body>
</section>

<section> <title> How should we make space for gentoo? </title>
<body>

<p>
The root partition is the filesystem mounted under "/". A quick run of mount on my system shows what I am talking about. We well also use df (disk free) to see how much space I have left and how I will be resizing. Note that it is not mandatory to resize your root partition! You could be resizing anything else supported by our resizer, but let's talk about that later.</p>


<pre caption="Filesystem information">
# <i>mount</i>
/dev/hdb2 on / type ext3 (rw) 
none on /proc type proc (rw) 
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620) 
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw) 
# <i>df -h </i>
Filesystem           Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on 
/dev/hdb2            4.0G 1.9G  2.4G  82% /
none                  38M    0    38M   0% /dev/shm 
</pre>

<p>As we can see, the partition mounted as "/" named /dev/hdb2 has 2.4 gigabytes free. In my case, I think I will resize it as to leave 400Megs free of space, therefore allocating 2 gigabytes for Gentoo. Not bad, I could have quite some stuff installed. However, think that even one gigabyte is enough for most users. So let's partition this thing! </p> 

</body> </section>

<section> <title> Building parted to resize partition </title> 
<body>
<p>Parted is an utility supplied by the GNU foundation, an old and respectable huge project whose software you are using in this very moment. There is one tool, however, that is extremely useful for us at the moment. It's called parted, partition editor and we can get it from <uri> 
http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/</uri> 
</p>
<note> There are other tools for doing resize of partitions as well, but author
is unsure/uninterested whether PartitionMagic(tm) or other software of the kind
do the job. It's the reader's job to check them out </note>

<p> 
Look up on that page the type of filesystem you want to resize and see if parted
can do it. If not, you're out of luck, you will have to destroy some partition
to make space for gentoo, and reinstall back. Go ahead by downloading the
software, install it. Here we have a problem. We want to resize our Linux root
partition, therefore we must boot from a floppy disk a minimal linux system and
use previously-compiled parted copied to a diskette in order to resize "/".
However, if you can unmount the partition while still in Linux you are lucky,
you don't need to do what follows. Just compile parted and run it on an
unmounted partition you chose to resize. Here's how I did it for my system.
</p>

<impo> Make sure that the operations you want to do on your partition are
supported by parted! </impo>

<p> Get tomsrtbt boot/root disk (free of charge) from <uri>
http://freshmeat.net/tomsrtbt" </uri>, create a floppy as suggested in the
Documentation that accompanies the software package and insert a new floppy in
the drive for the next step. </p>

<note> Note again that Linux is synonym of "There's one more way to do it". Your
objective is to run parted on an unmounted partition so it can do its work. You
might use some other boot/root diskset other than tomsrtbt. You might not even
need to do this step at all, that is only umount the filesystem you want to
repartition in your Linux session and run parted on it. </note>

<pre caption="Utility disk creation">
# <i>mkfs.minix /dev/fd0</i>
480 inodes
1440 blocks
Firstdatazone=19 (19)
Zonesize=1024
Maxsize=268966912
</pre>

We will now proceed with the build of parted. If it's not already downloaded and untarred, do so now and cd into the corresponding directory. Now run the following set of commands to build the utility and copy it to your floppy disk.

<pre caption="Building the utility floppy">
# <i> mkdir /floppy; mount -t minix /dev/fd0 /floppy &amp;&amp; 
export CFLAGS="-O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -static" &amp;&amp; ./configure 
&amp;&amp; make &amp;&amp; cp parted/parted /floppy &amp;&amp; umount /floppy </i>
</pre>

<p>
Congratulations, you are ready to reboot and resize your partition. Do this only
after taking a quick look at the parted documentation on the GNU website. The
resize should take under 30 minutes for the largest hard-drives, be patient.
Reboot your system with the tomsrtbt boot disk (just pop it inside), and once 
you are logged in, switch the disk in the drive with your utility disk we have
created above and type mount /dev/fd0 /floppy to have parted under /floppy.
There you go. Run parted and you will be able to resize your partition. Once
this lenghty process done, we are ready to have the real fun, by installing
gentoo. Reboot back into your old Linux system for now. Drive you wish to 
operate on is the drive containing the partition we want to resize. For 
example, if we want to resize /dev/hda3, the drive is /dev/hda
</p>

<pre caption="Commands to run once logged into tomsrtbt system">
# <i>mount /dev/fd0 /floppy </i>
# <i>cd /floppy; ./parted [drive you wish to operate on]</i>
(parted) <i> print </i>
Disk geometry for /dev/hdb: 0.000-9787.148 megabytes
Disk label type: msdos
Minor    Start       End     Type      Filesystem  Flags
1          0.031   2953.125  primary   ntfs        
3       2953.125   3133.265  primary   linux-swap  
2       3133.266   5633.085  primary   ext3        
4       5633.086   9787.148  extended              
5       5633.117   6633.210  logical               
6       6633.242   9787.148  logical   ext3        
(parted) <i> help resize </i>
  resize MINOR START END        resize filesystem on partition MINOR

        MINOR is the partition number used by Linux.  On msdos disk labels, the
        primary partitions number from 1-4, and logical partitions are 5
        onwards.
        START and END are in megabytes
(parted) <i> resize 2 3133.266 4000.000 </i>
</pre>

<impo> Be patient! The computer is working! Just look at the hardware LED on
your case to see that it is really working. This should take between 2 and 30
minutes. </impo>

<p>Once you have resized, boot back into your old linux as described. Then go to
<uri link="/doc/en/gentoo-x86-install.xml">http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-install.xml</uri> and follow steps 6 through 17. Don't forget to create the <path>/mnt/gentoo</path> directory before proceeding with step 7. In step 8 you have to download the requested stage-tarball as we're not working from a LiveCD.


Enjoy!
</p>
</body>
</section>
</chapter>
</guide>