Gentoo Install 2 (VIA EPIA ME6000)

(Previous post about fdisk and setting up the software RAID.)

At this point, we've partitioned the disk and setup the "/etc/raidtab" file. It's a good idea to jot down everything in that file and put it in a safe place. You should also "cat /proc/mdstat" and jot that information down too.

The following commands will format the boot and root partitions (/dev/md0 is /boot, /dev/md2 is /). I'll also be setting up the swap on /dev/md1. Since we're doing RAID1, there's no need to use the "-R stride=n" option of mke2fs (that's only useful for RAID0, RAID4 or RAID5). Note that you must mount the "/" (root) partition before creating and mounting the boot folder within that tree.

# mke2fs /dev/md0
# mke2fs -j /dev/md2
# mkswap /dev/md1
# swapon /dev/md1
# mount /dev/md2 /mnt/gentoo
# mkdir /mnt/gentoo/boot
# mount /dev/md0 /mnt/gentoo/boot

Next, initialize the 4th RAID set in preparation for LVM (pvcreate). Create the "/etc/lvm/lvm.conf" file and create the volume group for the 4th RAID set (vgcreate). Also see the Gentoo LVM documentation. If needed, use "modprobe dm-mod" to load the LVM module.

# pvcreate /dev/md3
# echo 'devices { filter=["r/cdrom/"] }' >/etc/lvm/lvm.conf
# vgcreate vgmirror /dev/md3
# vgscan

Now we need to create some logical volumes inside our "vgmirror" volume group. Here's a list of my initial logical volumes:

4GB /tmp (ext2)
4GB /var/tmp (ext2)
2GB /opt (ext3)
4GB /usr (ext3)
4GB /var (ext3)
8GB /home (ext3)

Create the logical volumes using "lvcreate", then verify by looking in the "/dev/vgmirror" folder as well as "lvscan":

# lvcreate -L4G -ntmp vgmirror
# lvcreate -L4G -nvartmp vgmirror
# lvcreate -L2G -nopt vgmirror
# lvcreate -L4G -nusr vgmirror
# lvcreate -L4G -nvar vgmirror
# lvcreate -L8G -nhome vgmirror
# ls /dev/vgmirror
# lvscan

Now, format the logical volumes with the desired filesystems.

# mke2fs /dev/vgmirror/tmp


# mke2fs /dev/vgmirror/vartmp
# mke2fs -j /dev/vgmirror/opt
# mke2fs -j /dev/vgmirror/usr
# mke2fs -j /dev/vgmirror/var
# mke2fs -j /dev/vgmirror/home

Make the directories to hold your mounted volumes. Mount your volumes.

# mkdir /mnt/gentoo/opt
# mkdir /mnt/gentoo/usr
# mkdir /mnt/gentoo/var
# mkdir /mnt/gentoo/home
# mount /dev/vgmirror/opt /mnt/gentoo/opt
# mount /dev/vgmirror/usr /mnt/gentoo/usr
# mount /dev/vgmirror/var /mnt/gentoo/var
# mount /dev/vgmirror/home /mnt/gentoo/home

Make the special directories to hold your temp file volumes (these require special permissions). Then mount your temp file volumes. Also mount your proc folder.

# mkdir /mnt/gentoo/tmp
# mount /dev/vgmirror/tmp /mnt/gentoo/tmp
# chmod 1777 /mnt/gentoo/tmp
# mkdir /mnt/gentoo/var/tmp
# mount /dev/vgmirror/vartmp /mnt/gentoo/var/tmp
# chmod 1777 /mnt/gentoo/var/tmp
# mkdir /mnt/gentoo/proc
# mount -t proc none /mnt/gentoo/proc

We are now ready to start installing Gentoo (chapter 5 in the handbook). Also see my previous post about CFLAGS, which might explain why I've chosen some particular settings. First, we need to extract the stage 1 tarball.

# date
# ls /mnt/cdrom/stages
# cd /mnt/gentoo
# tar -xvjpf /mnt/cdrom/stages/stage1-x86-20040218.tar.bz2
# ls /mnt/cdrom/snapshots
# tar -xvjf /mnt/cdrom/snapshots/portage-20040223.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/gentoo/usr
# mkdir /mnt/gentoo/usr/portage/distfiles
# cp /mnt/cdrom/distfiles/* /mnt/gentoo/usr/portage/distfiles/
# nano -w /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf

Now we need to configure the base compile options. Here's the content of my make.conf file (use at your own risk). Be sure to go look at 5.e. Configuring the Compile Options in the Gentoo Handbook. Also look at Gentoo USE flags and Gentoo Linux USE Variable Descriptions. I've set some very aggressive USE flags in my make.conf file (anything to do with graphics or multimedia since this is a headless file server) and I don't know whether it's proper to remove all of those USE flags yet. Note that even though the USE= line shown here is spread across two lines, it should be all one line in the actual make.conf file (the line break here is for visual clarity only).

CFLAGS="-Os -march=i586 -m3dnow -fomit-frame-pointer"
CHOST="i586-pc-linux-gnu"
USE="apache2 kerberos ldap -apm -gif -gnome -gtk -jpeg -kde -mad -mikmod -mpeg 
-oggvorbis -opengl -oss -pdflib -png -qt -quicktime -sdl -truetype -xmms -xv"
CXXFLAGS="$(CFLAGS)"
MAKEOPTS="-j2"

Next we're ready to install the base system, see 6. Installing the Gentoo Base System in the Gentoo Handbook.

# mirrorselect -a -s4 -o | grep -ve '^Netselect' >> /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf
# cp -L /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf /mnt/gentoo/boot/make.conf-backupcopy
# cp -L /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/resolv.conf
# cp -L /etc/raidtab /mnt/gentoo/etc/raidtab
# cp -L /etc/raidtab /mnt/gentoo/boot/raidtab-backupcopy
# mkdir /mnt/gentoo/etc/lvm
# cp -L /etc/lvm/lvm.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/lvm/lvm.conf
# cp -L /etc/lvm/lvm.conf /mnt/gentoo/boot/lvm.conf-backupcopy
# chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
# env-update
# source /etc/profile
# emerge sync

Synchronization of the portage tree will take a while (depending on the speed of your internet connection and how fast your system is). My system downloaded 60MB or so worth of updates and took 30-60 minutes (at a guess). Meanwhile, I'll continue this topic in my next post.