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2. Choosing the Right Installation Medium

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

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. The Gentoo Universal Installation CD

Introduction

Gentoo Linux can be installed using one of three stage tarball files. A stage file is a tarball (compressed archive) that contains a minimal environment.

• A stage1 file contains nothing more than a compiler, Portage (Gentoo's software management system) and a couple of packages on which the compiler or Portage depends.
• A stage2 file contains a so-called bootstrapped system, a minimal environment from which one can start building all other necessary applications that make a Gentoo environment complete.
• A stage3 file contains a prebuilt minimal system which is almost fully deployable. It only lacks a few applications where you, the Gentoo user, needs to choose which one you want to install.

We will opt for a stage3 installation throughout this document. If you want to perform a Gentoo installation using the stage1 or stage2 files, please use the installation instructions in the Gentoo Handbook. They do require a working Internet connection though.

Gentoo Universal Installation CD

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

There currently are two Installation CDs available:

• The Universal Installation CD contains everything you need to install Gentoo. It provides stage3 files for common architectures, source code for the extra applications you need to choose from and, of course, the installation instructions for your architecture.
• The Minimal Installation CD contains only a minimal environment that allows you to boot up and configure your network so you can connect to the Internet. It does not contain any additional files and cannot be used during the current installation approach.

Gentoo also provides a Package CD. This is no Installation CD but an additional resource that you can exploit during the installation of your Gentoo system. It contains prebuilt packages (the so-called GRP set) that allows you to easily and quickly install additional applications (such as OpenOffice.org, KDE, GNOME, ...) immediately after the Gentoo installation and right before you update your Portage tree.

The use of the Package CD is covered later in this document.

2.c. Download, Burn and Boot the Gentoo Universal Installation CD

Downloading and Burning the Installation CD

You can download the Universal Installation CD (and, if you want to, the Packages CD as well) from one of our mirrors. The Installation CD is located in the releases/hppa/2005.0/installcd directory; the Package CD is located in the releases/hppa/2005.0/packagecd directory.

Inside those directories you'll find so-called ISO-files. Those are full CD images which you can write on a CD-R.

After downloading the file, you can verify its integrity to see if it is corrupted or not:

• You can check its MD5 checksum and compare it with the MD5 checksum we provide (for instance with the md5sum tool under Linux/Unix or md5sum for Windows)
• You can verify the cryptographic signature that we provide. You need to obtain the public key we use (17072058) before you proceed though.

To fetch our public key using the GnuPG application, run the following command:

$ 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 <downloaded iso file> (replace /dev/hdc with your CD-RW drive's device path).
• 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 Universal Installation CD

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 Installation CD 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 keywords as of now are cdcache which tells the Installation CD to load itself into RAM, allowing you to unmount the CD, and noload=module1[,module2[,...]] which allows you to explicitly disable loading of particular modules.

(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 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/handbook/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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