[gentoo-dev] Gentoo install methods

[gentoo-dev] Gentoo install methods

[Jan Henkins]

Hi all,

I'm in the process of getting "geared" in getting Gentoo up and running. 
The reasons for me actually trying Gentoo are quite diverse, like being 
bored with Mandrake, cheesed at RedHat, dissappointed with Slackware (no 
native pam) etc. However, I'm a big OpenBSD fan, and what I see from 
your portage system looks very much like what Theo and his boys are 
using (with some steroids in your case). Very nice so far! I'll let you 
know how things are progressing, because in my case installation is 
going to take quite a while (P133 with 32Mb RAM).

Just a thought (I'm sure you were posed this question before...), how 
about making a set of source CD's available that can be accessed by 
portage as an alternative source of software? Debian's APT can do this, 
and even if I don't like Debian much I find that a very powerful 
feature. The main reason is that in developing countries like where I am 
(South Africa) Internet bandwidth is at a huge premium. Most people here 
would balk at the idea of installing an entire OS over the net, just 
having to do it yet again next time they install. Over here the run of 
the mill line clocks in at only 64 Kilobits per second (8 kilobytes), 
which is only a little bit faster than a 56k analogue modem. Get my 
drift? Anyway, have you looked at devising an ISO update scheme like 
Sorcery (or whatever they are calling themselves today...) Linux? They 
follow almost the same basic idea as you guys, but you can download 
their installation media as an ISO or sets of ISO's, and then update the 
ISO images with xdelta patches. That means you only download ISO images 
once. Neat idea! But even if one has to have a set of static Gentoo ISO 
images for basic installs, that would be preferable over not having them 
at all. You can always simply update certain packages later on (like 
OpenSSH etc.).

Nuff said for now. I'll pop you an Email when I'm finished with my 
installation "project".

-- 
Regards,
Jan Henkins
Project Manager: Transtel Linux Project
Tel: 	(011) 359-1024
Cell: 	(083) 379-6890

Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo install methods

[Chad M. Huneycutt]

Jan Henkins wrote:
> Just a thought (I'm sure you were posed this question before...), how 
> about making a set of source CD's available that can be accessed by 
> portage as an alternative source of software?

Portage already has the functionality to do this.  The biggest issue with 
actually doing it is that Gentoo is a moving target.  We could make CD with 
the source images, but as soon as we update the portage tree for a new 
version of an ebuild, the CD is no longer completely valid.

Here are the step to roll your own:
   Grab a snapshot of the portage tree (just the ebuilds).  I believe daily 
snapshots are available on ibiblio now.  The next part is hardest, because 
I don't think anyone has scripted it yet.  You need to go through each 
ebuild (either all of them or just those that you want) and grab the 
corresponding tarball from the distfiles directory and burn them to a CD 
(in all it should be 1GB or smaller (2 CD's at most).

Once you have a Gentoo ISO, the portage tree, and all those packages, you 
can unpack the build tarball per the instructions, unpack the portage tree 
to /usr/portage, and then either mount the CD to /usr/portage/distfiles (if 
there is 1 CD) or copy the contents of the CD's' with packages to 
/usr/portage/distfiles.

Make sure you don't do emerge sync to synch your portage tree, or you will 
have to hit the network.  Once you have your system setup like you want it, 
then you can do 'emerge sync' and upgrade as you like over the network.


-- 
Chad Huneycutt                                try { Windows }
Ph.D. Student                                 catch ( Exception BSOD )
Georgia Tech College of Computing               { linux };
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~chadh