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2. Choosing the Right Installation Medium

• Hardware Requirements
• Make your Choice
• Download, Burn and Boot a Gentoo LiveCD

2.a. Hardware Requirements

Introduction

Before we start, we first list what hardware requirements you need to successfully install Gentoo on your box. This of course depends on your architecture.

The HPPA Architecture

Check the following requirements before you continue with the Gentoo installation:

• You need at least 2 Gb of free disk space
• A list of supported hardware can be found on the PA Team website. You may find additional information about your box in the Parisc-Linux Hardware Database.

2.b. Make your Choice

Introduction

Still interested in trying out Gentoo? Well, then it is now time to choose the installation medium you want to use. Yes, you have the choice, no, they are not all equal, and yes, the result is always the same: a Gentoo base system.

The installation media we will describe are:

• The Gentoo HPPA LiveCD

Before we continue, let's explain our three-stage installation.

The Three Stages

Gentoo Linux can be installed using one of three stage tarball files. The one you choose depends on how much of the system you want to compile yourself. The stage1 tarball is used when you want to bootstrap and build the entire system from scratch. The stage2 tarball is used for building the entire system from a bootstrapped "semi-compiled" state. The stage3 tarball already contains a basic Gentoo Linux system that has been built for you. As we will explain later, you can also install Gentoo without compiling anything (except your kernel and some optional packages). If you want this, you have to use a stage3 tarball.

Now what stage do you have to choose?

Starting from a stage1 allows you to have total control over the optimization settings and optional build-time functionality that is initially enabled on your system. This makes stage1 installs good for power users who know what they are doing. It is also a great installation method for those who would like to know more about the inner workings of Gentoo Linux.

A stage1 installation can only be performed when you have a working Internet connection.

Stage2 installs allow you to skip the bootstrap process and doing this is fine if you are happy with the optimization settings that we chose for your particular stage2 tarball.

A stage2 installation can only be performed when you have a working Internet connection.

Choosing to go with a stage3 allows for the fastest install of Gentoo Linux, but also means that your base system will have the optimization settings that we chose for you (which to be honest, are good settings and were carefully chosen to enhance performance while maintaining stability). stage3 is also required if you want to install Gentoo using prebuilt packages or without a network connection.

Write down (or remember) what stage you want to use. You need this later when you decide what LiveCD (or other installation medium) you want to use. You might be interested to know that, if you decide to use different optimization settings after having installed Gentoo, you will be able to recompile your entire system with the new optimization settings.

Now take a look at the available installation media.

Gentoo LiveCDs

The Gentoo LiveCDs 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.

All LiveCDs allow you to boot, set up networking, initialize your partitions and start installing Gentoo from the Internet. However, some LiveCDs also contain all necessary source code so you are able to install Gentoo without a working network configuration.

Now what does this LiveCD contain?

The Gentoo HPPA LiveCD

This is a small, no-nonsense, bootable CD which sole purpose is to boot the system, prepare the networking and continue with the Gentoo installation. It does not contain any stages (or, in some cases, a single stage1 file), source code or precompiled packages.

2.c. Download, Burn and Boot a Gentoo LiveCD

Downloading and Burning the LiveCDs

You have chosen to use a Gentoo LiveCD (if not, then you are reading the wrong section). We'll first start by downloading and burning the chosen LiveCD. We previously discussed the several available LiveCDs, but where can you find them?

Visit one of our mirrors and go to experimental/hppa/livecd which is the path where the LiveCD(s) of your choice are located. Inside that directory you'll find so-called 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-hppa-minimal-2004.2.iso.md5). 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 pgp.mit.edu --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 (replace /dev/hdc with your CD-RW drive's device path) followed by the path to the ISO file :)
• With K3B, select Tools > CD > Burn Image. Then you can locate your ISO file within the 'Image to Burn' area. Finally click Start.

Booting the HPPA LiveCD(s)

Boot your HPPA system. During the boot process, you will see a message similar to the following:

Searching for Potential Boot Devices.
To terminate search, press and hold the ESCAPE key.

When this message appears, press and hold the Esc-key until an option menu appears. This can take a while, be patient. By default, you should enter the BOOT_ADMIN console. If you receive an option menu, choose Enter Boot Administration mode to enter the BOOT_ADMIN console. You should now have an '>' prompt.

Put the Gentoo LiveCD in the CD-ROM. If you do not know the SCSI ID of your CD-ROM drive, your PA-RISC station will search for it when you issue the search command.

> search
Searching for Devices with Bootable Media.
To terminate search, please press and hold the ESCAPE key.

Your PA-RISC station will now display all the available boot media. This is an example result of this command:

Device Selection      Device Path             Device Type and Utilities
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

P0                    scsi.5.0                TOSHIBA CD-ROM XM-3301TA
                                                  IPL
P1                    scsi.2.0                COMPAQ ST32550N
                                                  IPL
P2                    lan.0010a7-06d1b6.3.6   server
                                                  IPL

To boot from a CD-ROM you need the accompanying Device Path. For instance, if we want to boot from the TOSHIBA CD-ROM in the above example, we would need to type the following command:

> boot scsi.5.0 ipl

Trying scsi.5.0

The ipl keyword (Initial Program Loader) tells palo (the PA-RISC boot LOader) to enter interactive mode. This will allow you to change, for example, the kernel boot parameters.

When the boot is successful, palo will start in interactive mode:

Boot path initialized.
Attempting to load IPL.


Hard booted.
palo ipl 1.2 root@b180l.da-kot Tue Apr  8 12:43:07 CEST 2003

Boot image contains:
    0/vmlinux32 4028015 bytes @ 0x1520000
    0/ramdisk 834748 bytes @ 0xf800
Current command line:
0/vmlinux initrd=initrd.gz TERM=linux console=tty root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc
  0: 0/vmlinux
  1: initrd=initrd.gz
  2: TERM=linux
  3: console=tty
  4: root=/dev/ram0
  5: init=/linuxrc

Edit which field?
(or 'b' to boot with this command line)? 

These parameters are suitable for most situations.

If you need extra features you must add the appropriate keyword(s) to the end of the command line. To add a keyword, edit the last field, add a space and type your keyword. The only implemented keyword as of now is cdcache which tells the LiveCD to load itself into RAM, allowing you to unmount the CD.

(or 'b' to boot with this command line)? 5
init=/linuxrc cdcache

Now that you have tweaked your kernel boot params, boot it.

(or 'b' to boot with this command line)? b

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

Most hppa machines have an onboard ethernet card. Old ones use use the lasi driver which is compiled in the kernel. Newer ones need the tulip driver which is compiled as a module. To use the latter, you need to load its driver.

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

# modprobe tulip

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-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 links2 to read it:

# links2 /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 links2 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):

# links2 http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-hppa.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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