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The GUI Installer guides you through the configuration process with detailed information regarding each step. The configurations are stored in the gentoo.conf file which can also be edited by hand by renaming the 'gentoo.conf.example' file, backed up and reused later if desired.
Supported disk layouts include ext4, ZFS and as well as additional layers such as LUKS or MDRAID.
It also supports both EFI (recommended) and BIOS boot and can be used with Systemd or OpenRC as the init system.
- Boot into a live environment such as Arch Linux live iso.
- Clone/download this repository.
- Run
./configureto launch the GUI Installer - Finally run
./installto begin the installation process
- The system will use
sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel-binshould be replaced with a custom-built one when the system is functional. - Adjust
/etc/portage/make.conf- Set
CFLAGSto-O2 -pipe -march=nativefor native builds - Set
CPU_FLAGS_X86using thecpuid2cpuflagstool - Set
FEATURES="buildpkg"if you want to build binary packages
- Set
- Use a safe umask like
umask 0077 - If you are looking for a way to detect and manage your kernel configuration, have a look at autokernel.
- Ssh You can provide keys that will be written to root's
.ssh/authorized_keys
- Introduction
- Installation concerns
- Start live-cd environment
- Installing the Gentoo base system
- Configuring base system
- Rebooting into our new Gentoo systemd
- Post-installation
- Last notes
Gentoo is a Linux distribution that, unlike binary distros like Arch, Debian and many others, the software is compiled locally according to the user preferences and optimizations.
The name of Gentoo comes from the penguin species who are the fastest swimming penguin in the world.
I've been using Gentoo since 2002, and what I like most from Gentoo is:
- Is fun
- The possibility to get everything under control
- Deep customization
- One learn a lot from using it
| Please keep in mind that this is not a generic guide on how to install Gentoo. This guide focuses on a few precise install options. |
This guide is made for those of you who wants to:
- Install Gentoo Linux
- Learn from an amazing Linux distro and its installation process
- Want to use systemD and not OpenRC
If you are that kind of person, speak emerge and enter 😉
Stop before further reading. It's important to know that this guide only contemplates an installation with uefi, crypt/luks disk, lvm partitioning and systemd init system. Please remember that if you want a different setup don't take this as a how-to but more as a general guideline. Also remember to keep an eye on each step to adapt it to your taste 👍
The first thing we need to install our Gentoo is a live-cd environment with uefi vars enabled.
I personally like systemrescuecd because is a Gentoo based distro (now is Arch based, but still makes the job) and has uefi vars enabled. You can download it here bootable usb. But it doesn't mather what distro you use as far as it's UEFI compatible.
To make sure that the distro is UEFI compatible we can run:
efivar -lIf the command listed the UEFI variables we're ready to go!
There some available options to do that job, I prefer to use gdisk, but others like cgdisk or parted should do the job.
gdisk /dev/sdaCreate new GUID partition table and destroy everything on disk:
o (Create a new empty GUID partition table (GPT))
Proceed? YThen create the following two partitions like below code. I'm not making a swap because I have enough ram but feel free to make one if you really want it (inside crypt partition).
n (Add a new partition)
Partition number 1
First sector 2048 (default)
Last sector +512M
Hex code EF00
n (Add a new partition)
Partition number 2
First sector 1050624 (default)
Last sector (press Enter to use remaining disk)
Hex code 8e00If everything looks good, save and quit:
w
YPartitions should look something like this:
gdisk -l /dev/sda
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 2048 1050623 512.0 MiB EF00 EFI
2 1050624 500118158 238.0 GiB 8300 LVMLet's set up the encryption container where the lvm volume will be. Just before start creating it it's much important to check which is the best performance setup on your system because you can't change it once created, run:
cryptsetup benchmarkIn my laptop the best performance setup is aes-xts:
# Tests are approximate using memory only (no storage IO).
PBKDF2-sha1 306601 iterations per second for 256-bit key
PBKDF2-sha256 352818 iterations per second for 256-bit key
PBKDF2-sha512 94568 iterations per second for 256-bit key
PBKDF2-ripemd160 227951 iterations per second for 256-bit key
PBKDF2-whirlpool 121362 iterations per second for 256-bit key
# Algorithm | Key | Encryption | Decryption
aes-cbc 128b 604.2 MiB/s 2515.2 MiB/s
serpent-cbc 128b 83.8 MiB/s 517.0 MiB/s
twofish-cbc 128b 180.3 MiB/s 333.7 MiB/s
aes-cbc 256b 449.5 MiB/s 1934.8 MiB/s
serpent-cbc 256b 85.8 MiB/s 516.9 MiB/s
twofish-cbc 256b 183.2 MiB/s 332.8 MiB/s
aes-xts 256b 2110.6 MiB/s 2052.8 MiB/s
serpent-xts 256b 518.3 MiB/s 502.5 MiB/s
twofish-xts 256b 323.0 MiB/s 328.5 MiB/s
aes-xts 512b 1677.8 MiB/s 1601.8 MiB/s
serpent-xts 512b 518.9 MiB/s 502.4 MiB/s
twofish-xts 512b 322.6 MiB/s 327.4 MiB/sOnce we know that proceed with the creation itself:
cryptsetup -v --cipher aes-xts-plain64 --key-size 256 -y luksFormat /dev/sda2Then open up our new crypt container to be able to create the lvm inside. In this procedure the label cryptcontainer is only a trivial name, so you can use whenever you like:
cryptsetup open --type luks /dev/sda2 cryptcontainerIn that point we've our luks container and using lvm minimize the partitioning design time, because you can modify whenever you need. In my setup I use one partition for root filesystem and other for home files, feel free to add as much as you need/like:
pvcreate /dev/mapper/cryptcontainer
vgcreate vg0 /dev/mapper/cryptcontainer
lvcreate --size 50G vg0 --name root
lvcreate -l +100%FREE vg0 --name homeLet's create the filesystems for our three partitions (two of them inside crypt lvm setup ✌️):
mkfs.vfat -F32 /dev/sda1
mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/vg0-root
mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/vg0-homeIt's time to mount our partitions:
mkdir /mnt/gentoo
mount /dev/mapper/vg0-root /mnt/gentoo
mkdir -p /mnt/gentoo/boot
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/gentoo/boot
mkdir /mnt/gentoo/home
mount /dev/mapper/vg0-home /mnt/gentoo/homeBefore installing Gentoo, make sure that the date and time are set correctly. A mis-configured clock may lead to strange results in the future! To check our current system date just run:
dateIf needed set correct date like (March 02 22:09 2016):
date 030222092016In order to avoid starting from a Linux from scratch, the Gentoo developers provide us with a Stage 3 which is a base binary semi-working non-bootable environment suitable to save us such an amount of time. To do that we just only need to download it and uncompress in our filesystem tree:
cd /mnt/gentoo
wget http://mirror.eu.oneandone.net/linux/distributions/gentoo/gentoo/releases/amd64/autobuilds/current-stage3-amd64/stage3-amd64-systemd-20210405T120143Z.tar.xzUnpacking the stage tarball into our local disk:
tar xvf stage3-*.tar.xz --xattrsAs I said, Gentoo is a great Linux distro because its deep customization and portage is its cornerstone.
Portage is the Gentoo autobuild system, similar to packing systems like apt, yum or pacman in binary distros. It's inspired by FreeBSD port system. Pre-compiled binaries are also available, but these are out of reach of this guide.
Wikipedia says:
Portage is Gentoo's software distribution and package management system. The original design was based on the ports system used by the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) based operating systems. The portage tree contains over 10,000 packages ready for installation in a Gentoo system.
Portage describe how to build the packages based on CPU architecture Flags and which features are available for every package with what are known as "use flags".
Let's see how to setting up portage with our system CPU flags. Run:
gcc -c -Q -march=native --help=target | grep marchGCC will tell you which architecture have in your system to be set in the portage optimizations flags:
nano -w /mnt/gentoo/etc/portage/make.confThese are mine safest available flags:
CFLAGS="-march=broadwell -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"And MAKEOPTS describe how many allowed parallel jobs are available to use by building system. Usually I use the same that my CPU has, but somebody says that number_of_cpu + 1 is the best option. I don't care We can see how many cores we have running:
grep processor /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
processor : 1
processor : 2
processor : 3Then I set it inside make.conf like:
MAKEOPTS="-j4"If you want to know exactly which is the best option here you can read this post to choose your best option MAKEOPTS=”-j${core} +1″ is NOT the best optimization.
Set the best mirrors for your location. Be sure that you have Internet access from your live-cd:
mirrorselect -i -o >> /mnt/gentoo/etc/portage/make.confCopy the official repository file and select which you want to use:
mkdir /mnt/gentoo/etc/portage/repos.conf
cp /mnt/gentoo/usr/share/portage/config/repos.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/portage/repos.conf/gentoo.conf
nano -w /mnt/gentoo/etc/portage/repos.conf/gentoo.confCopy the dns information from your working live-cd environment:
cp -L /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/In addition to lvm filesystem we created in our local disk, there's other pseudo-filesystems which are created during system boot that are needed to chroot into our new environment:
mount -t 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/devChroot into the new environment:
chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
source /etc/profile
export PS1="(chroot) $PS1"Great! We are now inside our final Gentoo system but we need to bake it a little more time.
Portage consists of two main parts, the ebuild system and emerge. The ebuild system takes care of the actual work of building and installing packages, while emerge provides an interface to ebuild: managing an ebuild repository, resolving dependencies and similar issues.
First we need to synchronize the remote repositories with the local Portage tree to knows what packages are available to be installed.
Download an snapshot from the remote repositories we defined inside make.conf:
emerge-webrsyncThen update the snapshot with the latest version of the repos:
emerge --syncA Portage profile specifies default values for global and per-package USE flags, specifies default values for most variables found in /etc/portage/make.conf, and defines a set of system packages. The profiles are maintained by the Gentoo developers as part of the Portage tree (/usr/portage/profiles).
List the available profiles:
eselect profile listFrom the output list we must select our best fitting option. Once our system is based on systemd, the best profile we can choose is the systemd. Of course we can choose others like Gnome which needs systemd to run, but we want a minimal environment to be configured.
[..]
[12] default/linux/amd64/13.0/systemd
[..]Choose the profile with eselect utility:
eselect profile set 12As we said USE flags are a core feature of Gentoo, and a good understanding of how to deal with them is needed for administering a Gentoo system.
The USE variable allows the system wide setting or deactivation of USE flags in a space separated list while are set inside /etc/portage/make.conf or for better fine grained per package control we should set them inside /etc/portage/package.use.
If we use tools like ufed we can easelly set system wide Flags since I prefer to choose it manually to set per package defined Flags and use as minimum as possible as system-wide. So, if you choose the easy/system-wide way simply install ufed with:
emerge ufedAnd then run it to select the USE Flag with a beautiful user interface 😄
ufedIf you, like me, want to get everything under control, then you would love an utility named quse from portage-utils package. This utility tell us which package use any specified flag. For example, if you want to know which packages use the dbus flag we simply need to run:
quse dbusAnd all packages will be shown to us.
Ok, nothing better than test it by ourself!
emerge -a app-portage/portage-utilsThese are the system wide USE Flags described in my make.conf file:
nano -w /etc/portage/make.confUSE="X aac alsa aspell bash-completion boost branding caps contrib \
cpudetection cryptsetup dbus exif filecaps flac gd gpm gstreamer gzip \
hardened hddtemp highlight hostname imagemagick int64 introspection \
jemalloc jpeg jpeg2k json kdbus kmod kms libav libnotify lm_sensors lz4 \
lzma lzo mime mp3 mp4 mpeg nano-syntax networkmanager nss numa ogg \
opencl opengl pango pcap pdf pie png pulseaudio python recode samba sdl \
seccomp simplexml slang smp sockets sound spell sse sse2 ssh \
startup-notification svg systemd tcmalloc theora threads \
timezone truetype udisks upnp upnp-av upower usb video vim vim-syntax \
vorbis wavpack wayland wayland-compositor wifi xcomposite xfs xft \
xinerama xkb xml xmlrpc xorg xpm xrandr xwayland xz zeroconf \
zsh-completion -cups"The rest of the flags are per package defined inside /etc/portage/package.use/ and here you can choose to set everything inside a file or not, simply arrange them as you like. I created these files (you can get it from this same repository):
ls /etc/portage/package.use/admin devel emulation fonts fs games media network office perl system terms themes utils xorgUSE flags are not the only optimizations we want from our portage system. Other flags corresponding to the instruction sets and other features specific to the x86 (amd64) architecture are configured into the variable called CPU_FLAGS_X86.
We can simply use a useful python script to auto-detect which of them we should set. Install app-portage/cpuinfo2cpuflags:
emerge -a app-portage/cpuid2cpuflagsAnd then run it to get those values:
cpuid2cpuflags-x86CPU_FLAGS_X86="aes avx avx2 fma3 mmx mmxext pni popcnt sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3Put the output line into /etc/portage/make.conf
cpuinfo2cpuflags-x86 >> /etc/portage/make.confIf you would like (and believe me you should) get deeper knowledge of portage system, don't hesitate to read the official documentation wiki.gentoo.org.
In addition to Portage there's some other options should be configured before the end of the bake 😁
Configuring the time zone of our system's clock:
echo "Europe/Madrid" > /etc/timezoneNext, reconfigure the sys-libs/timezone-data package, which will update the /etc/localtime file based on the /etc/timezone entry. The /etc/localtime file is used by the system C library to know the timezone the system is in:
emerge --config sys-libs/timezone-dataLocales are a set of information that most programs use for determining country and language specific settings. To set the system locales we need to set it inside:
nano -w /etc/locale.genAnd then execute locale-gen to generate all the locales specified in the /etc/locale.gen file and write them to the locale-archive (/usr/lib/locale/locale-archive).
locale-genOnce done, it is now time to set the system-wide locale settings. Again we use eselect for this, now with the locale module.
eselect locale list
Available targets for the LANG variable:
[1] C
[2] en_US.utf8
[3] POSIX
[ ] (free form)Choose which locales would you like to active and then do it manually editing /etc/env.d/02locale or automatically by:
eselect locale set 2Now reload the environment:
env-update && source /etc/profile && export PS1="(chroot) $PS1"Before continue we must remove udev and openrc otherwise we've cyclic dependencies in the future:
emerge --deselect sys-fs/udev
emerge --unmerge sys-fs/udevAlso be sure that we don't have nothing related with openrc or systemd as masked package:
emerge --deselect sys-apps/openrc
emerge --unmerge sys-apps/openrc
rm /etc/portage/package.mask/systemdOnce we have our system prepared it's time to ensure that we have systemd installed with all required USE flags:
emerge -a app-portage/gentoolkit
euse -E cryptsetup systemd gudev dbus
emerge -a sys-apps/systemd
emerge -a sys-apps/dbusWhile Portage is the core of Gentoo Linux system the Linux kernel is the core of the operating system and offers an interface for programs to access the hardware. The kernel contains most of the device drivers.
To create a kernel, it is necessary to install the kernel source code first. The Gentoo recommended kernel sources for a desktop system are, of course, sys-kernel/gentoo-sources. These are maintained by the Gentoo developers, and patched to fix security vulnerabilities, functional problems, as well as to improve compatibility with rare system architectures. But as always in Gentoo there's other options also available.
To get a full list of kernel sources with short descriptions can be found by searching with emerge:
emerge --search sourcesLet's install the gentoo-sources:
emerge -a sys-kernel/gentoo-sourcesNow it is time to configure and compile the kernel sources. There are two approaches to do that job:
- The kernel is manually built and install.
- A tool called genkernel is used to automatically build and install the Linux kernel.
In both cases we must configure it manually that normally is the most difficult procedure a Linux user ever has to perform. Nothing is less true - after configuring a couple of kernels no-one even remembers that it was difficult 😉
So I'll explain how to use genkernel which help us to maintain config files and some more automations 😃
However, one thing is true: it is vital to know the system when a kernel is configured manually. Start by install required packages:
emerge -a sys-apps/pciutils sys-kernel/genkernelEdit /etc/genkernel.conf to set our preferences:
nano -w /etc/genkernel.confINSTALL="yes"
OLDCONFIG="yes"
MENUCONFIG="yes"
NCONFIG="no"
CLEAN="yes"
MRPROPER="yes"
MOUNTBOOT="yes"
SYMLINK="no"
SAVE_CONFIG="yes"
USECOLOR="yes"
CLEAR_CACHE_DIR="yes"
POSTCLEAR="1"
MAKEOPTS="-j5"
LVM="yes"
LUKS="yes"
DMRAID="no"
UDEV="yes"
BOOTDIR="/boot"
GK_SHARE="${GK_SHARE:-/usr/share/genkernel}"
CACHE_DIR="/var/cache/genkernel"
DISTDIR="/var/lib/genkernel/src"
LOGFILE="/var/log/genkernel.log"
LOGLEVEL=1
DEFAULT_KERNEL_SOURCE="/usr/src/linux"
COMPRESS_INITRD="yes"
COMPRESS_INITRD_TYPE="best"Notice that LVM, LUKS and UDEV must be set on to have this system works otherwise will not boot.
Once configured then simply run:
genkernel allIf we need to auto-load a kernel module each time to system boots we should specify it in /etc/conf.d/modules file.
You can list your available modules with:
find /lib/modules/<kernel version>/ -type f -iname '*.o' -or -iname '*.ko' | lessSome drivers require additional firmware to be installed on the system before they work. This is often the case for network interfaces, especially wireless network interfaces. Most of the firmware is packaged in sys-kernel/linux-firmware, so installing them are almost needed in a laptop system:
emerge -a sys-kernel/linux-firmwareInstall lvm tools if it's not yet installed:
emerge -a sys-fs/lvm2Then edit the package configurations:
nano -w /etc/lvm/lvm.confuse_lvmetad = 1
issue_discards = 1
volume_list = ["vg0"] # Our VG volume name, check with vgdisplayBefore editing fstab we need to know which UUID are using our devices inside and outside lvm and luks volumes:
blkid /dev/mapper/vg0-root | awk '{print $2}' | sed 's/"//g'
UUID="576e229c-cf68-4010-8d85-ff8149158416"
blkid /dev/mapper/vg0-home | awk '{print $2}' | sed 's/"//g'
UUID="95fa5807-ea57-4cf5-b717-74f4aba190e2"Then edit fstab:
nano -w /etc/fstab/dev/sda1 /boot vfat noatime 1 2
UUID="576e229c-cf68-4010-8d85-ff8149158416" / ext4 discard,noatime,commit=600,errors=remount-ro 0 1
UUID="95fa5807-ea57-4cf5-b717-74f4aba190e2" /home ext4 discard,noatime,commit=600 0 0
tmpfs /var/tmp tmpfs nodev,nosuid 0 0
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs nodev,nosuid 0 0Warning!!! As we don't have encrypted partitions other than root which must be mounted by systemd before the whole system start we don't need to set it up there, so, our crypttab must be empty.
In the past some utilities wrote information (like mount options) into /etc/mtab and thus it was supposed to be a regular file. Nowadays all software is supposed to avoid this problem. Still, before switching the file to become a symbolic link to /proc/self/mounts.
To create the symlink, run:
ln -sf /proc/self/mounts /etc/mtabSystemd-boot is a simple UEFI boot manager which executes configured EFI images. The default entry is selected by an on-screen menu.
It is simple to configure, but can only start EFI executables, such as the Linux kernel EFISTUB, UEFI Shell, GRUB, and go on.
Before installing the EFI binaries we need to check if EFI variables are accessible:
emerge -a sys-libs/efivar
efivar -lVerify that you have mounted /boot:
mount | grep bootOnce got it mounted then install the systemd-boot binaries:
bootctl --path=/boot installThis command will copy the systemd-boot binary to your EFI System Partition ($esp/EFI/systemd/systemd-bootx64.efi and $esp/EFI/Boot/BOOTX64.EFI - both of which are identical - on x64 systems) and add systemd-boot itself as the default EFI application (default boot entry) loaded by the EFI Boot Manager.
Every time there's a new version of the systemd you should copy the new binaries to that System Partition by running:
bootctl --path=/boot updateAdd one entry into bootloader with this options:
nano -w /boot/loader/entries/gentoo.conftitle Gentoo Linux
efi /kernel-genkernel-x86_64-4.4.6-gentoo
options initrd=/initramfs-genkernel-x86_64-4.4.6-gentoo crypt_root=/dev/sda2 root=/dev/mapper/vg0-root root_trim=yes init=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd ro dolvmEdit default loader:
nano -w /boot/loader/loader.confdefault gentoo
timeout 3Efibootmgr is not a bootloader itself it's a tool that interacts with the EFI firmware of the system, which itself is acting as a boot loader. With the efibootmgr application, boot entries can be created, reshuffled and updated.
First we need to install the package:
emerge -a sys-boot/efibootmgrTo list the current boot entries:
efibootmgr -vBootCurrent: 0003
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0003
Boot0000* Linux Boot Manager HD(1,GPT,3eb8effe-8e1d-4670-987c-9b49b5f605b2,0x800,0x1ff801)/File(\EFI\systemd\systemd-bootx64.efi)
Boot0001* gentoo HD(1,GPT,02f231b8-8f9a-471c-b3a9-dc7edb1bd70e,0x800,0xee000)/File(\EFI\gentoo\grubx64.efi)
Boot0003* Gentoo Linux PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1f,0x2)/Sata(2,32768,0)/HD(1,GPT,73f682fe-e07b-4870-be82-d85077f8aaa2,0x800,0x100000)/File(\EFI\systemd\systemd-bootx64.efi)I'm only Gentoo in my system so I don't really need anything but the Gentoo entry so I just delete everything with:
efibootmgr -b <entry_id> -BOnce everything is delete we can add our new systemd-boot loader entry:
efibootmgr -c -d /dev/sda -p 2 -L "Gentoo" -l "\efi\boot\bootx64.efi"Perfect, we're almost ready to reboot.
systemctl enable lvm2-lvmetad.serviceWhile in chroot we need to change the root password of our new system just before rebooting it.
passwdDon't worry you don't need to cross your fingers, everything should goes fine 😏
exit # To exit from chroot
sync # To sync filesystems
rebootWhen booted using systemd, a tool called hostnamectl exists for editing /etc/hostname and /etc/machine-info. So we don't need to edit the file manually simlpy run:
hostnamectl set-hostname <hostname>Let's plug our new Gentoo system to the world!! 🌍
We can choose between two options, to use systemd as network manager or standalone one, I prefer networkmanager but here are the two options:
systemd-networkd is useful for simple configuration of wired network interfaces. As it's disabled by default we need to configure it by creating a *.network file under /etc/systemd/network.
Here is an example for a simple ethernet DHCP configuration:
nano -w /etc/systemd/network/50-dhcp.network[Match]
Name=en*
[Network]
DHCP=yesAnd then tell systemd to manage and start that service:
systemctl enable systemd-networkd.service
systemctl start systemd-networkd.serviceOften NetworkManager is used to configure network settings. I personally use nmtui because it's easy and has a ncurses client. Just install it:
emerge -a networkmanagerAnd now simply run the following command and follow a guided configuration process through nmtui:
nmtuiYes, you're right, we set the locales before but once booted with systemd, the tool localectl is used to set locale and console or X11 keymaps. So, let's set it again to be sure that everything goes fine.
To change the system locale, run the following command:
localectl set-locale LANG=en_US.utf8Change the virtual console keymap:
localectl set-keymap esAnd finally, to set the X11 layout:
localectl set-x11-keymap esTime and date can be set using the timedatectl utility. That will also allow users to set up synchronization without needing to rely on net-misc/ntp or other providers than systemd's own implementation.
To set the local time of the system clock directly:
timedatectl set-time "yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss"To set time zone:
timedatectl list-timezones
timedatectl set-timezone Europe/MadridSet systemd-timesyncd as a simple SNTP daemon. Systemd-timesyncd that only implements a client side, focusing only on querying time from one remote server. It should be more than appropriate for most installations.
timedatectl set-ntp trueTo check the status of the daemon:
timedatectl statusWhen starting, systemd-timesyncd will read the configuration file from /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf. To add time servers or change the provided ones, uncomment the relevant line and list their host name or IP separated by a space. I'm using the NTP pool project for the main servers and the default Gentoo as fallback:
nano -w /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf[Time]
NTP=0.europe.pool.ntp.org 1.europe.pool.ntp.org 2.europe.pool.ntp.org 3.europe.pool.ntp.org
FallbackNTP=0.gentoo.pool.ntp.org 1.gentoo.pool.ntp.org 2.gentoo.pool.ntp.org 3.gentoo.pool.ntp.orgIn order to index the file system to provide faster file location capabilities we will install sys-apps/mlocate:
emerge -a sys-apps/mlocateTo keep databse update we need to run updatedb often.
Additional to the tools for managing ext2, ext3, or ext4 filesystems (sys-fs/e2fsprogs) which are already installed as a part of the @system set I like to install other filesystem utilities like VFAT, XFS, NTFS and so on:
emerge -a sys-fs/xfsprogs sys-fs/exfat-utils sys-fs/dosfstools sys-fs/ntfs3gUntil now we have done everything as root but working as root on a Unix/Linux system is dangerous and should be avoided as much as possible. Therefore it is strongly recommended to add a user for day-to-day use.
The groups the user is member of define what activities the user can perform. The following table lists a number of important groups:
| Group | Description |
|---|---|
| audio | Be able to access the audio devices. |
| games | Be able to play games. |
| portage | Be able to access portage restricted resources. |
| usb | Be able to access USB devices. |
| video | Be able to access video capturing hardware and doing hardware acceleration. |
| wheel | Be able to use su. |
Once you selected which groups would you like to add simply run:
useradd -m -G users,wheel,audio,video,audio,usb -s /bin/bash <username>To set the user password run:
passwd <username>Sudo is a way that a regular user could run commands as root user. It's very useful to avoid using root password each time we need to run a command which needs root perms. To install run:
emerge -a app-admin/sudoThen edit config file with command:
visudoThere's lot of examples inside the config file so we should not have any problem to set it up.
With the Gentoo installation finished and the system rebooted, if everything has gone well, we can now remove the downloaded stage3 tarball from the hard disk. Remember that they were downloaded to the / directory.
rm /stage3-*.tar.bz2*emerge -a sys-power/powertopThe first step we need to do is to calibrate it, it's quite long process but the most important is to keep our system until the whole process is finished.
powertop --calibrateTo apply automatically optimal settings at boot we need to create a new Systemd unit:
nano -w /etc/systemd/system/powertop.service[Unit]
Description=Powertop tunings
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/powertop --auto-tune
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.targetEnable at each boot:
systemctl enable powertop.servicePrior to install xorg we will configure our video card, mine is Intel Generation 6 so we need to add this line into make.conf:
nano -w /etc/portage/make.confVIDEO_CARDS="intel i965"Before installing xorg we need to configure it again by adding custom graphic card information:
nano -w /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.confSection "Device"
Identifier "Intel Graphics"
Driver "intel"
Option "AccelMethod" "sna"
Option "DRI" "3"
Option "Backlight" "intel_backlight"
EndSectionWe need to do the same with the input devices. I'm using a laptop so check if you need to add joystick, mouse, keyboard, ... 😉
nano -w /etc/portage/make.confINPUT_DEVICES="evdev synapticsAt the time to write this guide wayland is available but I'ld like to use bspwm which only support xorg so I'll continue with xorg server installation and configuration:
emerge -a xorg-serveremerge -a app-admin/ccze app-arch/unp app-editors/vim app-eselect/eselect-awk app-misc/screen app-shells/gentoo-zsh-completions app-shells/gentoo-zsh-completions app-vim/colorschemes app-vim/eselect-syntax app-vim/genutils app-vim/ntp-syntax media-gfx/feh sys-process/htop x11-terms/rxvt-unicodeWe're running portage with modified scheduling priority, to not impact whole system performance during compilation.
echo 'PORTAGE_NICENESS="15"' >> /etc/portage/make.confBranch defines if portage use stable or testing packages. Every package in the portage tree has it stable and testing version. The ACCEPT_KEYWORDS variable defines what software branch to use on the system. It defaults to the stable software branch for the system's architecture, for instance amd64.
I recommend to stick with the stable branch. However, if stability is not that much important for you and/or want to help out Gentoo by submitting bug reports to https://bugs.gentoo.org, then the testing is your way.
There are two ways to approach the testing branch for packages:
- System wide setting: to make or system set to testing branch.
nano -w /etc/portage/make.confACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~amd64"
- Per package setting: we can set testing branch only for particular packages (This is and example, set whatever you want).
nano -w /etc/portage/package.accept_keywordssys-kernel/gentoo-sources sys-power/powertop app-admin/pass
Masking a package the way where Gentoo Developers block a package version from being auto installed. The reason why that package is masked is mentioned in the package.mask file (situated in /usr/portage/profiles/ by default). But if we still wants to use this package, then add the desired version (usually this will be the exact same line from the package.mask file in the profile) to the /etc/portage/package.unmask file (or in a file in that directory if it is a directory).
nano -w /etc/portage/package.unmask>=app-emulation/docker-compose-1.5.2
>=app-emulation/docker-swarm-1.1.3
>=app-emulation/docker-1.7.1It is also possible to ask Portage not to take a certain package or a specific version of a package into account. To do so, mask the package by adding an appropriate line to the /etc/portage/package.mask location (either in that file or in a file in this directory).
nano -w /etc/portage/package.mask=sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-4.5.0Overlays contain additional packages for your Gentoo system while the main repository contains all the software packages maintained by Gentoo developers, additional package trees are usually hosted by repositories. Users can add such additional repositories to the tree that are "laid over" the main tree - hence the name, overlays.
emerge -a app-portage/laymanTo list all available overlays simply run:
layman -LTo install an overlay run:
layman -a <overlay_name>To keep your installed overlays up to date, run:
layman -SIf we want to maintain a custom set of ebuilds we just only need to create a local overlay doing these few steps:
mkdir -p /usr/local/portage/{metadata,profiles}
echo '<overlay_name>' > /usr/local/portage/profiles/repo_name
echo 'masters = gentoo' > /usr/local/portage/metadata/layout.conf
chown -R portage:portage /usr/local/portageNext, tell portage about the overlay:
mkdir -p /etc/portage/repos.confnano -w /etc/portage/repos.conf/local.conf[<overlay_name>]
location = /usr/local/portage
auto-sync = noVirtualization is widely use nowadays. Everybody wants to test some environments, apps, or simply have a virtualized machine with other operating systems. In order to do that we should use any virtualization platform available for desktop use such as virtualbox, kvm/qemu, xen or vmware. Among all these options I choose kvm/qemu because its performance and simplicity. So here we are!
First we need to check if our hardware support virtualization:
grep --color -E "vmx|svm" /proc/cpuinfoWe could also check if kvm device is available in our /dev directory:
ls /dev/kvmIf both are available we can continue installing kvm, otherwise you shouldn't use virtualization on your machine.
Before continue building kvm with should check if we have some kernel options enabled as module or build-in.
[*] Virtualization --->
<*> Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) support
<*> KVM for Intel processors support <-- if we use Intel cpu, otherwise disable it
<*> KVM for AMD processors support <-- if we use AMD cpu, otherwise disable it
<*> Host kernel accelerator for virtio net
Device Drivers --->
[*] Network device support --->
[*] Network core driver support
<*> Universal TUN/TAP device driver support
[*] Networking support --->
Networking options --->
<*> The IPv6 protocol
<*> 802.1d Ethernet Bridging
File systems --->
<*> The Extended 4 (ext4) filesystem
[*] Ext4 Security LabelsOnce we have kernel compiled and running with new options we can continue by installing package:
emerge -av app-emulation/qemuIn order to run kvm as normal user and not as root we should add our user account to the kvm group:
gpasswd -a <username> kvmFinally, to be sure that libvirt daemon is running all the time we should enable with systemd:
systemctl enable libvirtd.serviceWhat is Prelink and how can it help me? I'm sure that most of you are asking this question right now well, most applications we have installed in our system use shared libraries. Every time a program call this libraries they need to be loaded into memory. As more libraries program needs as more time it takes to resolve all symbol references. So prelink simply "maps" this symbol references and makes applications run faster. Of course this is a summary of what it does, but it's enough for us.
The only thing we need to do is to prelink binaries every time we upgrade or install any new program o library. But don't worry, portage will automatically prelink our system for us each time we install a package if we have prelink installed in our system. That's great!!
So we will simply install prelink:
emerge -av prelinkThen configure the package by running env-update and then editing config file:
env-updateUnfortunately we can't prelink files that were compiled by old versions of binutils. Be default prelink define a number of libraries and directories which as blacklisted to avoid prelinking them. We can add or remove directories in prelink config files:
nano /etc/prelink.conf
nano /etc/prelink.conf.d/*Finally we will prelink our system with:
prelink -amRWhich is:
- a: prelink all binary files.
- m: conserve virtual memory space. If we have a lot of binaries to prelink it takes a lot of space during the process, this parameter will ensure that we not run out of memory.
- R: randomize the address ordering to enhance security against buffer overflows.