Another Opinion Among Many

This page is where you’re going to be dazzled by how awesome it can be to have Gentoo with Reiser4 and Nitro-sources from the beginning, instead of that messy “after” stuff.

Stay tuned. I’m still figuring out how to say what I want to. I’m going to leave this part up top until I get enough written that it actually looks like a helpful page.

Starting Point and Preparation

There are some things that one needs to know to do this:

• you can browse the web and your cd with links2
• establishing networking up front is good
• lxnay’s RR4 Live-CD is needed
• RTFM - I can’t stress this enough (you will fail if you don’t)
• Reiser4 is still not considered stable so you have to get it yourself
• You’ll need the Reiser4 patch in your kernel (so get one with it in unless you think that’s too sissy)
• You will encounter roadblocks (normal Gentoo install x2 difficulty)
• You need a weekend
• Beer helps (at least the first part of the box)

I started my install by getting the right system/CD to install from. I headed over to the Gentoo Wiki to get the cd image because lxnay only makes DVDs now and I have no DVD burner. I downloaded the ISO for the 2.30 Live CD, which is the latest version on cd. It does have a fairly recent 2.6 kernel (from around last March) with Reiser4 patches, so you can create the Reiser4 filesystem with it. Otherwise, there’s no point to this whole exercise, right?

For those who have a DVD burner, you can get a more recent incarnation of this neat idea by downloading the Live DVD, which can be had through links from lxnay’s website and the Gentoo Wiki. You’ll have the advantage of being able to install a lot from the DVD itself. I’m never really interested in that, so I won’t be discussing it.

I got the file from within a Microsoft Windows environment, so I grabbed the md5sum and compared it to the one generated from the output of winmd5sum, a free graphical md5sum checker for Windows from Nullriver. Always do an md5sum check on images that you wish to boot from. If they don’t match, download the file again - its been corrupted some way.

I then burned the cd image using Burnatonce, I think. Its been two weeks, and, frankly, I had too many beers at that point to remember which software I used for the job. It may have been Nero (a little hint - with Burnatonce, you’re getting a free cdrdao front end with no bloat. You can burn a CD image with a double-click and two clicks - no coasters) but not likely. I then booted the computer with the CD in the drive and the installer started loading. If you don’t do this much, be sure that you BIOS is set to boot from CD before your hard drive.

Once the installer was finished loading, I had a full Live-CD environment within which to do with whatever I want. No, folks, this is not a pretty graphical installer like Anaconda. With this Live-CD, you’re greeted with a command prompt (which is not a bad thing). If I knew how to make a screenshot from that point, I would, as its got more info there than anyone seems to have reported. There is a short blurb (kind of like the MOTD) explaining that you can use links2 to browse the install instructions from the CD and/or from the internet at http://www.gentoo.org. The instruction to set up networking is stated as well. You’ll be prompted to type “net-setup” at the prompt. I did this, as I got my install fresh off the internet. There’s a dialogue box that pops up showing the device representing your network interface (I only have one, so there is no choice - although I did install a dialup modem afterwords to interface with faxing software later). You would then either choose to get on the net via PPP (if you’re insane enough to install over dialup), DHCP, or manually. I chose manually, as my piece of crap Linksys BEFSR41 router doesn’t broadcast and assign addresses via DHCP, although the server is on.

The rules for the IP setup are generally the same. You’re going to set it up with a private IP range, either 192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x, or 172.x.x.x. I always choose what the router’s default range is. The Linksys uses 192.168.1.x. I understand that dLinks use 192.168.0.x. Whichever. The subnet is 255.255.255.0 (if you have a complex network, then it’ll be something different, but you’ll also be ignoring this part of the instructions if so, right? Don’t forget to add the router’s IP address as the gateway address. Then, if nameservers are asked for, I use my router, as it finds the nameservers from my ISP and uses them. This keeps the setup simple, effective, and easy to troubleshoot.

At this point, I must disclaim that much of what is to follow is a combination of knowledge from the Gentoo Handbook, the Wiki article, and stuff that I’ve picked up along the way.

The next step is to test the success of your network configuration. Typing ifconfig eth0 gives you the status of the first ethernet card (the only one for me). You should see an IP address and some stats for rx and tx transfers. If all’s well, you should, then, be able to go to the internet with links. I do, at this point, and go straight to the Gentoo Handbook to get the most up to date instructions. At this point, using the Handbook is the simplest way to get going. All instructions really remain the same, except for the Reiser4 specific instructions. I’ll concentrate on that part next.