[CLUE-Tech] Recent Gentoo install experiences?

[Collins Richey]

On Tue, 10 Aug 2004 12:06:50 -0600 Matthew Porter <mfporter at c-creature.com>
wrote:
> My son and I recently finished building a new computer for our family
> room (around an Athlon XP 2400+), and we've been putting it through
> its paces with Knoppix.  Now it's time to install our "production" OS.
> 
> Most of our experience is with Debian, but we're still in a DIY kind
> of mood.  Emboldened by Collins' talk a few months ago, and by seeing
> how good the documentation is, we've decided to give Gentoo a try.
> (We can always go back to Debian if we get too many headaches.)
> 
> Anyone have experience with any undocumented "gotchas" that a new
> Gentoo installer should look out for?
> 
> Regardless, send some kind thoughts in our direction over the next
> few evenings...
> 

Just be aware of the following:

1. There are always some quirks surrounding the gentoo LiveCD's. They only seem
to cover about 90% of the cases, and they are (IMO) always released too soon.
Try it, but if it fails, use a different driving system-knoppix is fine.

2. Avoid genkernel like the plague. It adds complexity and it's quite a
crapshoot (it either works as advertised or fails miserably). Generate your
own kernel.

3. This is not meant to start a new round of fs flames, but... I would recommend
either ext3 or xfs (if your driving system supports it and if you choose a 2.6
kernel, since it's built in) as fs choices. Some like reiserfs, but I've had
disastrous experiences with that one, so never again.

4. I have listened to the arguments pro and con, but I have never ever setup a
/boot partition. YMMV.

5. Gentoo still sets up a 2.4 kernel by default; I prefer 2.6. If you choose a
2.6 kernel, verify that the /sys directory exists. Some of the earlier gentoo
installs didn't set that one up.

6. When you setup your general purpose users, add them to the wheel, audio, tty
groups for most flexibility. Gentoo is one of those distros that restricts the
su command to the wheel group. You may have permission problems running sound
apps unless you are in the audio group. I needed the tty group at some point to
be able to run xterm apps, but that may have been due to a bug.

7. The gentoo install documentation ends with setting up a console-only system.
I prefer to continue running in the chroot environment until I have X (use xorg
not xfree, this is porbably standard now; if you do it manually, emerge
xorg-x11), a window manager(xfce4 is good, YMMV), and an email facility (I use
sylpheed-claws).

8. You may need some packages that are not in the stable (x86) distribution. The
portage documentation is confusing. The older method of accepting certain test
(~x86) packages was to use ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86"; this is now deprecated. The
preferred way of doing this is to create the /etc/portage directory and put the
override in the file package.keywords.

9. If you want kde or gnome, just be patient. Even on an amd2400+, the compiles
will run 8-12 hours (less for gnome).

10. An afterthought. One of the most confusing things with gentoo is the USE
variable system. Anytime you issue an emerge <package> command, always issue
emerge -pv <package> first. Look at the USE settings carefully. An example

emerge -pv apache

These are the packages that I would merge, in order:

Calculating dependencies ...done!
[ebuild   R   ] net-www/apache-2.0.50  +berkdb -debug +doc +gdbm -ipv6 -ldap
+ssl -static -threads  6,197 kB 

Total size of downloads: 6,197 kB

A + sign means the USE is in effect; a - sign means no. You will note that I
don't care about ipv6 or ldap support, and thus my apache will be compiled
without that optional support.

The only real headaches are understanding the gentoo way of doing things.  If
you need any help, email me or call me at 720-217-7751.

Best of luck,

-- 
 /\/\
( CR ) Collins Richey
 \/\/     Grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, 
             the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight 
	     to tell the difference.