Sven Vermeulen Daniel Robbins Chris Houser Jerry Alexandratos Seemant Kulleen Tavis Ormandy Aron Griffis 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 Grant Goodyear Gerald J. Normandin Jr. Donnie Berkholz Ken Nowack Lars Weiler This is the Gentoo Handbook, an effort to centralise Gentoo/Linux information. 3.2 October 23, 2004 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. You can install Gentoo in many ways. In this chapter we explain how to install Gentoo from one of our LiveCDs. If you want to install Gentoo using the Internet, you need to setup networking. To be able to install Gentoo, you must create the necessary partitions. This chapter describes how to partition a disk for future usage. Gentoo installs work through so-called stage-files. In this chapter we describe how you extract a stage-file and configure Portage. Independent of what stage you chose, the eventual result is that you have a Gentoo base system at your disposal. This chapter describes how to progress to that stadium. 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. The SPARC architecture uses the SILO bootloader to fire up your Linux system. In this chapter we step you through the process of configuring this 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.