First off, you'll need access to the internet!
Find your IP address:
ip addr
Choose one - if you want to use ethernet, use the one that starts with an e. If you want to use WiFi, choose the one that starts with a w.
If you're using WiFi:
net-setup wlp3s0
And net-setup will ask you some connections about your network. Your network probably has DHCP, do choose automatically generate with DHCP when prompted.
Now, test your connection:
ping 8.8.8.8
If you get some sort of error, try re-doing these steps (or set it up manually).
parted -a optimal /dev/sda
This will open up a command console for modifying disks. See your existing partitions with:
p
Switch to a more sensible unit system for our current process (megabytes):
unit mib
First, delete all partitions by creating a new label:
mklabel gpt
Create our first, 2MB partition (don't change this number!):
mkpart primary 1 3
This means start at the first megabyte, end at the 3rd. 3 - 1 = 2 MB partition.
Now, set the name to grub (this will be holding grub, the BIOS boot):
name 1 grub
set 1 bios_grub on
Feel free to print now to see the first partition completed:
p
(File System should be blank)
Now make your EFI Partition (don't change this either!):
mkpart primary 3 131
name 2 boot
Now, create a swap partition (recommended start is 512MB, but go as high as you'd like! ~10gb is a lot.):
mkpart primary 131 643
name 3 swap
And finally, set the final, full partition size (see notes below code blocks):
mkpart primary 643 -1
name 4 rootfs
-1 means to the end of your disk. Adjust as needed!
Now, some touchups:
set 2 boot on
p
You should get output like this (numbers may differ):
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1.00MiB 3.00MiB 2.00MiB grub bios_grub
2 3.00MiB 131MiB 128MiB boot boot
3 131MiB 643MiB 512MiB swap
4 643MiB 20479MiB 19836MiB rootfs
Done? Type:
quit
Time to format! We'll use ext* formats in this tutorial. Also, we'll activer our swap storage partition.
mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/sda2
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda4
mkswap /dev/sda3
swapon /dev/sda3
And finally, mount your main partition to /mnt/gentoo so we can edit it!
mount /dev/sda4 /mnt/gentoo
First, check on the date of the system:
date
It would be generally preffered that this is set to UTC time. If it's not, set it by running:
date MMDDhhmmYYYY
Now, let's grab the actual files:
cd /mnt/gentoo
Now, head over to the Gentoo downloads page, right click on the first Stage 3, select "Copy Link Address", and open a new tab to paste the text you just copied. Don't go to the link, just paste it.
Now, type:
wget <LINK YOU COPIED>
Validating your files is currently not supported in this guide, so check out the official instructions if you'd like to do it (optional).
Now, let's 'unzip' the file we just got:
tar xpvf stage3-*.tar.xz --xattrs-include='*.*' --numeric-owner
Now, we need to configure portage, which manages your packages/apps.
nano /mnt/gentoo/etc/portage/make.conf
Will open a text editor to the configuration file.
Modify the following line:
COMMON_FLAGS="-march=native -O2 -pipe"
And add the following line:
MAKEOPTS="-j2"
Replacing the 2 with your RAM divided by 2. For example, if I have 8GB of RAM, write -j4.
Now, save and quit by pressing Ctrl+S and Ctrl+X.
Run the following to select mirrors. It will open a visual box. Press space to select mirrors in countries near you - 5-10 is generally enough. Quick tip: select mirrors with https or rsync more to have a more "secure" connection.
mirrorselect -i -o >> /mnt/gentoo/etc/portage/make.conf
Once you're done, press Enter. You'll be taken out of the visual box and back to the terminal (see the bottom of the screen).
mkdir --parents /mnt/gentoo/etc/portage/repos.conf
cp /mnt/gentoo/usr/share/portage/config/repos.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/portage/repos.conf/gentoo.conf
A small bit remains before running the chroot command.
cp --dereference /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/
mount --types proc /proc /mnt/gentoo/proc
mount --rbind /sys /mnt/gentoo/sys
mount --make-rslave /mnt/gentoo/sys
mount --rbind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev
mount --make-rslave /mnt/gentoo/dev
chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
source /etc/profile
export PS1="(chroot) ${PS1}"
mount /dev/sda2 /boot
Now, this is your actual system-to-be!
Now, while we still have an internet connection, we need to sync with the rest of the web.
emerge-webrsync
Now, let's sync emerge, Gentoo's package manager.
emerge --sync --quiet
... for slow terminals/devices, or...
emerge --sync
This will take some time, but don't worry - it's syncing information about every single application/package that's available on Gentoo!
You may have noticed a message prompting you about news. It's generally recommended to read through the news, in case there is an important piece of information.
eselect news list
Read a specific piece of news:
eselect news read 1
Read all of the content:
eselect news read
Delete your news items:
eselect news purge
Profiles are the building blocks of your Gentoo system.
eselect profile list
Here, we will be selecting the raw desktop profile - this gives us access to installing any graphical Desktop Environment or Window Manager later on.
The magic number we need at the moment is in that list. You want to choose the newest version number (for us, 17.1). Now, find the line that says this:
[##] default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop
If you have a newer version number than 17.1, use that. Now, our magic number is the number in [##].
Now, we select what we want:
eselect profile set {magic number}
In our case, (maybe not yours), 20:
eselect profile set 20
Make sure this number is correct!
eselect profile list
And there should be a blue asterisk beside the profile you chose.
emerge --ask --verbose --update --deep --newuse @world
You'll be asked if you want to proceed - press y then enter, or just immediately enter - they do the same thing!
This will take quit a while, so sit back! You're re-compiling every package that you have installed!
All done updating @world? Now, let's set a timezone.
ls /usr/share/zoneinfo
Will output all available timezones.
To get more in-depth, you can keep going, for example:
ls /usr/share/zoneinfo/Canada
Will give us all of the available timezones in Canada!
Once you know which one you're using, run the following command:
echo "Canada/Eastern" > /etc/timezone
Obviously replacing "Canada/Eastern" with your timezone.
And to update the time based on what you chose:
emerge --config sys-libs/timezone-data
Run
nano -w /etc/locale.gen
That will open up a text editor for your locales. Add the following at the top of the file to enable English locales:
en_US ISO-8859-1
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
It's recommended to always have at least one UTF-8 locale. Also, it's best to keep the C locale.
You can add more locales, if you want. Just add the following under what you just wrote:
de_DE ISO-8859-1
de_DE.UTF-8 UTF-8
Will add German locales.
Once you're done, Ctrl+S and Ctrl+X. Then, run:
locale-gen
Will output:
* Generating 6 locales (this might take a while) with 2 jobs [ ok ]
* (2/5) Generating en_US.ISO-8859-1 ... [ ok ]
* etc etc
* Generation complete
* Adding locales to archive... [ ok ]
Make sure all of the locales you wrote are mentioned in that output - if they're not, head back to nano -w /etc/locale.gen and make sure you saved the file.
Now, let's select a system-wide locale. Run:
eselect locale list
For a list of locales you have available.
Once you've decided which locale you'd like to use, run:
eselect locale set 6
For us, the 6th was en_US.utf8.
And finally, reload the environment for your changes to take affect:
env-update && source /etc/profile && export PS1="(chroot) ${PS1}"
You might not even feel a difference!
emerge --ask sys-kernel/gentoo-sources
emerge --ask sys-kernel/installkernel-gentoo
Now, let's make a choice - do you want to install the kernel from source or not? From-source means a slower compilation, but you get more customizablity when needed. From-binary means you get way speedier compile time, but less kernel customization. This guide covers both!
emerge --ask sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel
emerge --ask sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel-bin
Now that we have a kernel, either from-source or from-binary, we need to update the modules. This does take a while though!
emerge --ask @module-rebuild
When that's over, we need to update the kernel:
emerge --config sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel
emerge --config sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel-bin
And we're done! The magic of this is that now when we ask Gentoo to update the system, it'll update the kernel too - everything is smooth sailing!
Now, let's check out your kernel modules. Run:
emerge --ask sys-apps/pciutils
That'll install pciutils. Now,
lspci -knn
You'll get a list of hardware your PC is connected to! Note the following lines:
Kernel river in use: <driver code>
Now, for each , run the following command:
find /lib/modules/<kernel version>/ -type f -iname '*.o' -or -iname '*.ko' | grep <driver code>
NOTE: if you have a driver with an _ in the name, it might be using a - (dash) in its counterpart. For example, xhci_hcd could be xhci-hcd. Test with both to be sure.
For example, we had 16 devices, so we would run the following 16 times:
find /lib/modules/5.4.66-gentoo-x86_64/ -type f -iname '*.o' -or -iname '*.ko' | grep ath9k
ath9k was just one of our codes - we had 16, so we'd replace it 16 times.
Now, note the ones that give output. If there's no output, it's not interesting :).
For us, the following modules gave output:
ath9k, r8169, xhci-hcd, ahci, lpc_ich, snd-hda-intel
Now, we create a file and throw the module names into that, seperated by newlines:
mkdir /etc/modules-load.d/
nano -w /etc/modules-load.d/load.conf
For example, we would do the following:
nano -w /etc/modules-load.d/load.conf:
ath9k
r8169
xhci-hcd
ahci
lpc_ich
snd-hda-intel
I know, that was a huge pain. But, we're done! Now, we proceed to some more minor configuration steps, and we'll be ready to boot to our system!
mkdir /etc/portage/package.license
echo "sys-kernel/linux-firmware linux-fw-redistributable no-source-code" >> /etc/portage/package.license/linux-firmware
emerge --ask sys-kernel/linux-firmware
You may or may not remember that we modified a file named fstab once, for genkernel. Now, let's modify it again, for real this time. Open up /etc/fstab:
nano -w /etc/fstab
And change the file so it looks like so:
/dev/sda2 /boot ext2 defaults,noatime 0 2
/dev/sda3 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/sda4 / ext4 noatime 0 1
Again, lines that start with a # don't matter - no need to delete or change them.
If you have a CD-ROM drive, add the following as well:
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom auto noauto,user 0 0
You can check if you do by Saving and Quitting nano (Ctrl+S and Ctrl+X), and running ls /dev/cdrom. If you get an error like "file not found", you don't - if it returns the same text, you do.
Now that we've got the fstab sorted out, save and quit - Ctrl+S and Ctrl+X.
Let's set your hostname. This is a simple name that allows you to be recognized among a network. If you can't pick a hostname, tux is the recommended default.
nano -w /etc/conf.d/hostname
Will open up a file that says:
# Set to the hostname of this machine
hostname="localhost"
Let's change it to tux. Remember - you can change this anytime post-installation!
# Set to the hostname of this machine
hostname="tux"
Save and quit - Ctrl+S and Ctrl+X
Now, let's get rid of some text that we don't need:
nano -w /etc/issue
Will open up
This is \n.\O (\s \m \r) \t
Delete the .\O, so that we have the following:
This is \n (\s \m \r) \t
Save and quit again.
Now,
nano -w /etc/hosts
And add the following to the bottom of the file:
127.0.0.1 tux.homenetwork tux localhost
Replacing tux with your hostname.
root is the account that has super access. Anyone that knows the root password can pretty much murder your computer. Choose your password wisely!
passwd
And enter your password. And enter it again.
nano -w /etc/conf.d/keymaps
Will open up the file for keymaps. Read through the commented lines, and change accordingly. Generally, the file needs no changes. If you're unsure what to choose, you can skip it.
Now, run the following command to open up the openrc configuration file:
nano -w /etc/rc.conf
Generally, changes aren't needed - but if you'd like, sit through and read the beautiful commented lines.
Note: this is a big file - ~315 lines.
emerge --ask app-admin/sysklogd sys-process/cronie sys-apps/mlocate sys-fs/dosfstools net-misc/dhcpcd net-wireless/iw net-wireless/wpa_supplicant
rc-update add sysklogd default
rc-update add cronie default
rc-update add wpa_supplicant default
In the first line, make sure you write all of these - for example, there are two packages that start with net-wireless in the end. Pay attention, we will need these later!
echo 'GRUB_PLATFORMS="efi-64"' >> /etc/portage/make.conf
emerge --ask sys-boot/grub:2
It's absolutely mandatory that you run the first command before the second.
Once that completes, run the following:
ls /boot
If it returns a handful of files, you're good. Some things you should see in there are vmlinuz, System.map, etc.
If you get no output, run the following command
mount /dev/sda2 /boot
And run the top command again (ls /boot).
Now, let's install GRUB onto your disk. Run:
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot
If you get an error like Could not prepare Boot variable: Read-only filesystem, run the following:
mount -o remount,rw /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
And rerun the grub-install command again.
Now, we run the mkconfig command to create the configuration:
emerge --ask sys-boot/os-prober
You will be prompted to make USE changes. Don't worry - say yes. Then, run:
dispatch-conf
And press u when prompted.
Now, rerun the emerge command:
emerge --ask sys-boot/os-prober
Now, run:
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
exit
cd
cp /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/wpa_supplicant/
umount -l /mnt/gentoo/dev{/shm,/pts,}
umount -R /mnt/gentoo
reboot
When it startes rebooting, safely unplug your boot USB.
Boom, you're in - congrats, you just installed Gentoo Linux!
Sign in with the user of root, you set the password earlier on.
Now, run the following, replacing bobbbay with the name of the user you'd like to add:
useradd -m -G users,wheel,audio -s /bin/bash bobbbay
Then, run:
passwd bobbbay
Obviously replacing bobbbay with your username. This will set a new password for the user.
Now, run the following:
rm -v /stage3-*.tar.*
This is just clean-up.
And finally, let's grab xorg (not needed if you don't want a graphical environment):
emerge --ask x11-base/xorg-server
And, you're ready! Now, proceed to install a Graphical Desktop with the instructions given to you by your choice. You could remain in complete terminal as well.