Gentoo Prefix Bootstrap Process for Solaris

1.  Bootstrapping on Solaris

Introduction

Bootstrapping on Solaris 10 and higher is relatively simple if you compare it to versions below 10. It comes with bash3 and a gcc-3.4.3 compiler by default, and with the download manager wget. If you still are in the process of installing Solaris, make sure you install wget, to make things easier later on.

Though being relatively simple, Solaris is one of the more "Spartan" platforms to bootstrap on, and for sure not as easy as for instance a Linux distribution or Mac OS X. However, don't despair when things go wrong, it's just known to be hard(er), but not impossible. Feel free to ask in the gentoo-prefix IRC channel, or mailing list.

Bootstrapping

As prerequisite, you have to have gcc and wget installed. If you didn't install wget, you have to acquire the necessary files in another way, e.g. via a brower, NFS, or scp.

The first step is to choose a path to install into. We refer to this path as "Prefix path", stored in the variable EPREFIX. Some suggestion for your Prefix path is $HOME/gentoo. Whatever you chose, make sure you set it in your environment:

$ export EPREFIX="$HOME/gentoo"
        

Next, add the following paths in your soon to be Prefix to your PATH environment. $EPREFIX/bin, $EPREFIX/usr/bin, $EPREFIX/tmp/bin and $EPREFIX/tmp/usr/bin. Adding these paths makes sure that they will be available later on in the process. Additionally, you need the following paths to find the gnu compiler, linker, make and some other tools: /usr/sfw/bin, /usr/sfw/<arch>-sun-solaris<version>/bin, /usr/bin and /bin.

$ export PATH="$EPREFIX/usr/bin:$EPREFIX/bin:$EPREFIX/tmp/usr/bin:$EPREFIX/tmp/bin:/usr/sfw/bin:/usr/sfw/i386-sun-solaris2.10/bin:/usr/bin:/bin"
        

If you want to end up with a 64-bits native Prefix installation, then set your CHOST variable accordingly to either x86_64-pc-solaris2.10 or sparcv9-sun-solaris2.10 for Solaris 10. You only need to do this if you want a 64-bits native Prefix!

Now the path is set, start with downloading the bootstrap script from http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/alt/browser/trunk/prefix-overlay/scripts/bootstrap-prefix.sh?format=txt. From the directory where the bootstrap script was stored execute the following commands:

$ chmod 755 bootstrap-prefix.sh
$ ./bootstrap-prefix.sh $EPREFIX tree
$ ./bootstrap-prefix.sh $EPREFIX/tmp make
$ ./bootstrap-prefix.sh $EPREFIX/tmp wget
$ ./bootstrap-prefix.sh $EPREFIX/tmp sed
$ ./bootstrap-prefix.sh $EPREFIX/tmp python
$ ./bootstrap-prefix.sh $EPREFIX/tmp coreutils
$ ./bootstrap-prefix.sh $EPREFIX/tmp findutils3
$ ./bootstrap-prefix.sh $EPREFIX/tmp tar
$ ./bootstrap-prefix.sh $EPREFIX/tmp patch
$ ./bootstrap-prefix.sh $EPREFIX/tmp grep
$ ./bootstrap-prefix.sh $EPREFIX/tmp gawk
$ ./bootstrap-prefix.sh $EPREFIX/tmp bash
$ ./bootstrap-prefix.sh $EPREFIX portage
        

The script will setup the $EPREFIX directory, download a portage tree snapshot, unpack it and download and install portage. Afterwards it will try to setup some sane defaults. Because we installed some new applications, we will instruct bash to reconsider all paths we have:

$ hash -r
        

On Linux profiles, the following USE flags will create circular dependancies, so we disable them until later.

$ export USE="-berkdb -fortran -gdbm -nls -pcre -ssl"
        

We continue adding some necessary tools which will deal with many errors and warnings you might see during emerging.

$ emerge --oneshot sed
        

Next, we emerge the bash shell Portage heavily relies on. The same holds for wget, the download manager. Since its dependencies cannot be compiled at this stage, we ignore those for the moment.

$ emerge --oneshot wget
$ emerge --oneshot bash
        

Now, we will emerge a compiler which will use the gnu linker. This is a requirement for many packages that follow in the bootstrap process, in particular Perl. The gcc compiler shipped by Sun uses the Solaris native linker, which is as "Spartan" as the whole system. The packages to emerge include the baselayout package. Some, if not many, scripts and tools within a Gentoo system assume the availability of the baselayout package for all communication using the Gentoo colour scheme.

$ emerge --oneshot --nodeps baselayout-prefix
$ emerge --oneshot --nodeps xz-utils
$ emerge --oneshot --nodeps m4
$ emerge --oneshot --nodeps flex
$ emerge --oneshot --nodeps bison
$ emerge --oneshot --nodeps binutils-config
$ emerge --oneshot --nodeps binutils
$ emerge --oneshot --nodeps gcc-config
$ emerge --oneshot --nodeps "=gcc-4.2*"
        

We continue getting more tools in our Prefix. We no longer ignore dependencies all the time, so a lot of packages will be emerged at this stage. Slowly our Prefix gets more robust as we progress here.

$ emerge --oneshot coreutils
$ emerge --oneshot findutils
$ emerge --oneshot tar
$ emerge --oneshot grep
$ emerge --oneshot patch
$ emerge --oneshot gawk
$ emerge --oneshot make
$ emerge --oneshot --nodeps file
$ emerge --oneshot --nodeps eselect
$ emerge --oneshot pax-utils
        

Now we have a good bunch of programs that Portage needs, we can replace the bootstrapped Portage by a properly installed one, using Portage itself. Also here a few dependencies are first emerged, such as the language Portage is written in: python. We need to temporarily tell Portage that the bootstrapped Portage can be overwritten.

$ env FEATURES="-collision-protect" emerge --oneshot portage
        

Now we have emerged everything we bootstrapped before, we remove the temporary directory and its use as it is no longer necessary.

$ rm -Rf $EPREFIX/tmp/*
$ hash -r
        

Before we do any further merges, we are going to update our tree. Updating the tree is done using:

$ emerge --sync
        

Next, we let Portage emerge all packages that complete a system install that we eventually need to finalise this Prefix installation.

$ emerge -u system
        

Now is a good time to set the preferences for our soon to be Prefix. This includes customisations such as general USE-flags, CFLAGS and MAKEOPTS in $EPREFIX/etc/make.conf. Be conservative with CFLAGS! Note that the code below is an example, and is meant for inspiration only.

$ echo 'USE="unicode nls"' >> $EPREFIX/etc/make.conf
$ echo 'CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe"' >> $EPREFIX/etc/make.conf
$ echo 'CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"' >> $EPREFIX/etc/make.conf
        

Since we have everything in place for a self-catered rebuild, we can start the final stage to install the Prefix system. This final stage recompiles everything in the system, but now all packages can be compiled with tools from the Prefix, instead of those from the host system.

$ unset USE
$ emerge -e system
        

After system has emerged successfully, your Prefix will be set up properly, and you can emerge the whichever tools you choose from the Prefix tree.

Using the Prefix

To use your bootstrapped Prefix environment, you best start a shell from the Prefix, such that your path and other environment variables are set correctly. To facilitate in this, a small helper script can be created by the bootstrap script.

$ cd $EPREFIX/usr/portage/scripts
$ ./bootstrap-prefix.sh $EPREFIX startscript
        

After running this, a script startprefix will be present in $EPREFIX. You can freely move the script to e.g. your homedir for convenience. Running the script will drop you into a Prefix shell, where for example emerge is directly at your disposal. Enjoy your Prefix!

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