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2. Choosing the Right Installation Medium

• Hardware Requirements
• The Gentoo Installation CD
• Download, Burn and Boot a Gentoo Installation CD

2.a. Hardware Requirements

Introduction

Before we start, we first list what hardware requirements you need to successfully install Gentoo on your box.

Hardware Requirements

2.b. The Gentoo Installation CD

Introduction

The Gentoo Installation CDs are bootable CDs which contain a self-sustained Gentoo environment. They allow you to boot Linux from the CD. During the boot process your hardware is detected and the appropriate drivers are loaded. They are maintained by Gentoo developers.

Gentoo's Minimal Installation CD

The Minimal Installation CD is called install-alpha-minimal-2008.0.iso and takes up only 47 MB of diskspace. You must use this Installation CD to install Gentoo, and you need a working Internet connection.

The Stage3 Tarball

A stage3 tarball is an archive containing a minimal Gentoo environment, suitable to continue the Gentoo installation using the instructions in this manual. Previously, the Gentoo Handbook described the installation using one of three stage tarballs. While Gentoo still offers stage1 and stage2 tarballs, the official installation method uses the stage3 tarball. If you are interested in performing a Gentoo installation using a stage1 or stage2 tarball, please read the Gentoo FAQ on How do I Install Gentoo Using a Stage1 or Stage2 Tarball?

2.c. Download, Burn and Boot a Gentoo Installation CD

Downloading and Burning the Installation CDs

You have chosen to use a Gentoo Installation CD. We'll first start by downloading and burning the chosen Installation CD. We previously discussed the several available Installation CDs, but where can you find them?

You can download any of the Installation CDs (and, if you want to, a Packages CD as well) from one of our mirrors. The Installation CDs are located in the releases/alpha/2008.0/installcd directory.

Inside that directory you'll find ISO files. Those are full CD images which you can write on a CD-R.

In case you wonder if your downloaded file is corrupted or not, you can check its MD5 checksum and compare it with the MD5 checksum we provide (such as install-alpha-minimal-2008.0.iso.DIGESTS). You can check the MD5 checksum with the md5sum tool under Linux/Unix or md5sum for Windows.

Another way to check the validity of the downloaded file is to use GnuPG to verify the cryptographic signature that we provide (the file ending with .asc). Download the signature file and obtain the public key:

$ gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys 17072058

Now verify the signature:

$ gpg --verify <signature file> <downloaded iso>

To burn the downloaded ISO(s), you have to select raw-burning. How you do this is highly program-dependent. We will discuss cdrecord and K3B here; more information can be found in our Gentoo FAQ.

• With cdrecord, you simply type cdrecord dev=/dev/hdc <downloaded iso file> (replace /dev/hdc with your CD-RW drive's device path).
• With K3B, select Tools > Burn CD Image. Then you can locate your ISO file within the 'Image to Burn' area. Finally click Start.

Booting the Installation CD

When your Alpha is powered on, the first thing that gets started is the firmware. It is loosely synonymous with the BIOS software on PC systems. There are two types of firmware on Alpha systems: SRM (Systems Reference Manual) and ARC (Advanced Risc Console).

SRM is based on the Alpha Console Subsystem specification, which provides an operating environment for OpenVMS, Tru64 UNIX, and Linux operating systems. ARC is based on the Advanced RISC Computing (ARC) specification, which provides an operating environment for Windows NT. You can find a detailed guide on using SRM over at the Alpha Linux website.

If your Alpha system supports both SRM and ARCs (ARC, AlphaBIOS, ARCSBIOS) you should follow these instructions for switching to SRM. If your system already uses SRM, you are all set. If your system can only use ARCs (Ruffian, nautilus, xl, etc.) you will need to choose MILO later on when we are talking about bootloaders.

Now to boot an Alpha Installation CD, put the CD-ROM in the tray and reboot the system. You can use SRM to boot the Installation CD. If you cannot do that, you will have to use MILO.

(List available hardware drives)
>>> show device
dkb0.0.1.4.0        DKB0       TOSHIBA CDROM
(...)
(Substitute dkb0 with your CD-ROM drive device)
>>> boot dkb0 -flags 0
(If you need serial console support)
>>> boot dkb0 -flags 2

(Substitute sdb with your CD-ROM drive device)
MILO> boot sdb:/boot/gentoo_2.6 initrd=/boot/gentoo_2_6.igz root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc looptype=zisofs loop=/zisofs cdroot
(If you need serial console support)
MILO> boot sdb:/boot/gentoo_2.6 initrd=/boot/gentoo_2_6.igz root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc looptype=zisofs loop=/zisofs console=ttyS0 cdroot

You should have a root ("#") prompt on the current console and can also switch to other consoles by pressing Alt-F2, Alt-F3 and Alt-F4. Get back to the one you started on by pressing Alt-F1.

Now continue with Extra Hardware Configuration.

Extra Hardware Configuration

When the Installation CD boots, it tries to detect all your hardware devices and loads the appropriate kernel modules to support your hardware. In the vast majority of cases, it does a very good job. However, in some cases it may not auto-load the kernel modules you need. If the PCI auto-detection missed some of your system's hardware, you will have to load the appropriate kernel modules manually.

In the next example we try to load the 8139too module (support for certain kinds of network interfaces):

# modprobe 8139too

Optional: User Accounts

If you plan on giving other people access to your installation environment or you want to chat using irssi without root privileges (for security reasons), you need to create the necessary user accounts and change the root password.

To change the root password, use the passwd utility:

# passwd
New password: (Enter your new password)
Re-enter password: (Re-enter your password)

To create a user account, we first enter their credentials, followed by its password. We use useradd and passwd for these tasks. In the next example, we create a user called "john".

# useradd -m -G users john
# passwd john
New password: (Enter john's password)
Re-enter password: (Re-enter john's password)

You can change your user id from root to the newly created user by using su:

# su - john

Optional: Viewing Documentation while Installing

If you want to view the Gentoo Handbook (either from the CD or online) during the installation, make sure you have created a user account (see Optional: User Accounts). Then press Alt-F2 to go to a new terminal and log in.

If you want to view the documentation on the CD you can immediately run links to read it:

# links /mnt/cdrom/docs/html/index.html

However, it is preferred that you use the online Gentoo Handbook as it will be more recent than the one provided on the CD. You can view it using links as well, but only after having completed the Configuring your Network chapter (otherwise you won't be able to go on the Internet to view the document):

# links http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-alpha.xml

You can go back to your original terminal by pressing Alt-F1.

Optional: Starting the SSH Daemon

If you want to allow other users to access your computer during the Gentoo installation (perhaps because those users are going to help you install Gentoo, or even do it for you), you need to create a user account for them and perhaps even provide them with your root password (only do that if you fully trust that user).

To fire up the SSH daemon, execute the following command:

# /etc/init.d/sshd start

To be able to use sshd, you first need to set up your networking. Continue with the chapter on Configuring your Network.

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