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gentoo-install/README.md

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About gentoo-install

This script performs a reasonably minimal installation of gentoo. An EFI system is highly recommended, but legacy BIOS boot is also supported. The script supports both systemd (default) and OpenRC as the init system. The main performed steps are:

  1. Partitioning
  2. Download & cryptographically verify stage3 tarball
  3. Extract stage3
  4. Initialize portage
  5. Install kernel
  6. Install additional software

The system will use sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel-bin, which should be suitable to boot most systems out of the box. It is strongly recommend to replace this kernel with a custom built one, when the system is functional. If you are looking for a way to detect and manage your kernel configuration, have a look at autokernel.

Quick start

Edit gentoo.conf and execute ./install -i in any live system. You can review the partitioning that will be applied before anything critical is done. Afterwards, this will apply the partitioning scheme and properly install the selected stage3 gentoo system. By default, the new system will use sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel-bin as the kernel, and an initramfs generated by gentoo's genkernel to provide a bootable environment. The script can optionally install sshd to allow for a convenient setup of the new system afterwards.

Overview

Here is a more complete overview of what this script does:

  1. Partition disks (supports gpt, raid, luks)
  2. Download and cryptographically verify the newest stage3 tarball
  3. Extract the stage3 tarball
  4. Sync portage tree
  5. Configure portage (create zz-autounmask files, configure MAKEOPTS, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS)
  6. Select the fastest gentoo mirrors
  7. Configure the base system
  8. Install git (so you can add your portage overlays later)
  9. Install sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel-bin (until you replace it)
  10. Create efibootmgr entry or install syslinux depending on whether your system uses EFI
  11. Generate a basic fstab
  12. Ask for a root password

Also, optionally the following will be done:

  • Install sshd with secure config
  • Install dhcpcd (only for OpenRC)
  • Install additional packages provided in config

Anything else is probably out of scope for this script, but you can obviously do anything later on when the system is booted. I highly recommend building a custom kernel. Have a look at the Recommendations section.

Install

Installing gentoo with this script is simple.

  1. Boot into the live system of your choice. As the script requires some utilities, I recommend using a live system where you can quickly install new software. Any Arch Linux live iso works fine.
  2. Clone this repository
  3. Edit gentoo.conf, and particularily pay attention to the device which will be partitioned. The script will ask for confirmation before doing any partitioning - but better be safe there.
  4. Execute ./install -i. The script will tell you if your live system is missing any required software.

The script should be able to run without any user supervision after partitioning, but depending on the current state of the gentoo repository you might need to intervene in case a package fails to emerge. The critical commands will ask you what to do in case of a failure.

Config

The config file gentoo.conf allows you to adjust some parameters of the installation. The most important ones will probably be the device to partition, and the stage3 tarball name to install. By default you will get the hardened nomultilib profile without systemd.

(Optional) sshd

The script can provide a fully configured ssh daemon with reasonably good security settings. It will by default only allow ed25519 keys, restrict key exchange algorithms to a reasonable subset, disable any password based authentication, and only allow root to login.

You can provide keys that will be written to root's .ssh/authorized_keys file. This will allow you to directly continue your setup with infrastructure management software such as ansible or simple_automation.

(Optional) Additional packages

You can add any amount of additional packages to be installed on the target system. These will simply be passed to a final emerge call before the script is done, and autounmasking will also be done automatically. It is recommended to keep this to a minimum, because of the heavily "interactive" nature of gentoo package management ;)

Troubleshooting

In theory, after the initial sanity check, the script should be able to finish unattendedly. But given the unpredictability of future gentoo versions, you might still run into an issue.

The script checks every command for success, so if anything fails during installation, you will be given a proper message of what went wrong. Inside the chroot, most commands will be executed in a checked loop, and allow you to interactively fix problems with a shell, to retry, or to skip the command.

Recommendations

There are some things that you probably want to do after installing the base system, or should consider:

  • Read the news with eselect news read.
  • Use a custom kernel (config and hardening, see autokernel), and remove gentoo-kernel-bin
  • Adjust /etc/portage/make.conf
    • Set CFLAGS to -O2 -pipe -march=native for native builds
    • Set CPU_FLAGS_X86 using the cpuid2cpuflags tool
    • Set FEATURES="buildpkg" if you want to build binary packages
  • Use a safe umask like umask 0077

Acknowledgements

This installer bundles a statically linked copy of newt

References