I’m gonna walkthrough the process of installing gentoo on other destro.
It requires, patients, little bit knowledge about Linux.
Prepare a partition for Gentoo
Make a separate partition for gentoo, you can do partition with gnu parted.
$ sudo parted
Lets say you have following partition table before you install gentoo,
(parted) p
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 20.5kB 210MB 210MB fat32 EFI system partition boot
2 2048MB 57.0GB 55.0GB hfs+ Customer
3 67.4GB 67.9GB 500MB linux-swap
4 67.9GB 80.0GB 12.1GB ext3
use print free to print free space also,
(parted) print free
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
17.4kB 20.5kB 3.07kB Free Space
1 20.5kB 210MB 210MB fat32 EFI system partition boot
210MB 2048MB 1838MB Free Space
2 2048MB 57.0GB 55.0GB hfs+ Customer
57.0GB 67.4GB 10.4GB Free Space
3 67.4GB 67.9GB 500MB linux-swap
4 67.9GB 80.0GB 12.1GB ext3
80.0GB 80.0GB 950kB Free Space
In the my partition table you can observe that i have 10.4GB Free Space starting from 57.0GB to 67.GB.
(parted) mkpart gentoo 57.0GB 67.4GB
Where, gentoo is just a parition name, followed by start location and end location of the new partition.
Now, again have a look at new parition table here,
(parted) p
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 20.5kB 210MB 210MB fat32 EFI system partition boot
2 2048MB 57.0GB 55.0GB hfs+ Customer
5 57.0GB 67.4GB 10.4GB gentoo
3 67.4GB 67.9GB 500MB linux-swap
4 67.9GB 80.0GB 12.1GB ext3
heh, gentoo parition is set.
Now make a file system (ext3),
$ sudo mke2fs -j /dev/sda5
mke2fs 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
636480 inodes, 2536261 blocks
126813 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=2600468480
78 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
8160 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632
Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done
This filesystem will be automatically checked every 35 mounts or
180 days, whichever comes first. Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.
Lets, check with parted if the file system is successfully created.
$ sudo parted
GNU Parted 1.7.1
Using /dev/sda
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type ‘help’ to view a list of commands.
(parted) p
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 20.5kB 210MB 210MB fat32 EFI system partition boot
2 2048MB 57.0GB 55.0GB hfs+ Customer
5 57.0GB 67.4GB 10.4GB ext3 gentoo
3 67.4GB 67.9GB 500MB linux-swap
4 67.9GB 80.0GB 12.1GB ext3
All set go, my gentoo parition is ready. By the way, you can use Ubuntu’s Swap parition for the same.
Mount the new gentoo parition,
$ sudo mkdir /mnt/gentoo
$ sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt/gentoo
Get Gentoo Stage3 tarball : Using a Stage from the Internet
$ cd /mnt/gentoo
You can get Stage3 tarball from here
http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/mirrors.xml
Select nearest server from you. I feel Netherlands is nearest to India. So, i got from here http://mirror.muntinternet.net/pub/gentoo/releases/x86/2008.0_beta2/stages/ (i strongly recommend you not to use this link, get the latest release Stage3 tarball)
Directory structure for Stage3 tarball : releases > x86 > latest_version (Ex: 2008.0_beta2) > stages > Download file which has this format - stage3-x86-GENTOO_VERSION.tar.bz2 (Ex: stage3-x86-2008.0_beta2.tar.bz2)
Here is the Direct link : http://mirror.muntinternet.net/pub/gentoo/releases/x86/2008.0_beta2/stages/stage3-x86-2008.0_beta2.tar.bz2 ( as i said it is always recommended you not to use this link, get the latest version of stage3 tarball ).
Make sure, you download stage3 tarball to /mnt/gentoo directory. Then extract tarball,
# tar xvjpf stage3-*.tar.bz2
It’ll take a few seconds to extract. Read the tar manual page for tar options, Make sure you don’t miss any options from above.
Gentoo Portage
Also download gentoo portage snapshot from the mirrors,You can find it in the snapshot folder (http://mirror.muntinternet.net/pub/gentoo/snapshots/)
Download portage-latest.tar.bz2 file to /mnt/gentoo.
Extract the Portage to /mnt/gentoo/usr ,
tar xvjf /mnt/gentoo/portage-latest.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/gentoo/usr make.conf Set CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS CFLAGS="-O2 -march=nocona -pipe" CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}" also add these lines to make.conf MAKEOPTS="-j3" VIDEO_CARDS="i810 vesa" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse synaptics evdev" Chrooting Before Chrooting into gentoo, Copy DNS info # cp -L /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/ Mount proc # mount -t proc none /mnt/gentoo/proc Mount All Devices to gentoo # mount -o bind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev Also, add these lines to make.conf file GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.cites.uiuc.edu/pub/gentoo/ \ http://gentoo.osuosl.org/ \ http://gentoo.chem.wisc.edu/gentoo/" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" Now enter into the new (Gentoo) Environment. # chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash # env-update >> Regenerating /etc/ld.so.cache... # source /etc/profile # export PS1="(chroot) $PS1" Update the portage tree... # emerge --sync emerge gentoo-source Apply mactel patches to the kernel, if you are using MacBook. And the rest of the things are similar. Resources: gentoo-wiki.org gentoo handbook forums.gentoo.org http://google.com/searchq?=gentoo+macbook
