minimal gentoo installation

in this short guide I’ll try to explain my process of installing gentoo in a minimal way. Then I’ll install wayland and sway as wm.

this is just a hobby blogpost, I strongly recommend to read and follow carefully the official gentoo guides.

disks

partitions

fdisk /dev/sda

configuring the disks here. for my one and only SSD I’m setting up the following:

filesystems

# boot partition
mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sda1

# swap partition
mkswap /dev/sda2
swapon /dev/sda2

# root partition
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3

mount

mkdir --parents /mnt/gentoo
mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/gentoo
mkdir --parents /mnt/gentoo/efi ### boot partition will be mounted later

base system

I’ll go for openrc.

cd /mnt/gentoo
links https://www.gentoo.org/downloads/mirrors/ # > Downloads > Stage 3 openrc
tar xpvf stage3-_.tar.xz --xattrs-include='_.\*' --numeric-owner -C /mnt/gentoo

cflags, rustflags, …

add the common optimization flags

vi /mnt/gentoo/etc/portage/make.conf

>> -march=native
>> MAKEOPTS="-j8"
>> RUSTFLAGS="${RUSTFLAGS} -C target-cpu=native"

use flags

this are my use flags of choice. it’s likely some change but these are the main ones.

USE="X wayland icu opengl vulkan dist-kernel dbus nvidia pulseaudio -elogind -wayland -systemd -elogind -qt4 -qt5 -dvd -bluetooth -a52 -gnome -cups -gtk -emacs -kde -discord"

installing

cp --dereference /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/
arch-chroot /mnt/gentoo

# we are now on system

mount /dev/sda1 /efi
emerge-webrsync

profile

plain profile. i’ll add use flags and needed configs on the go

eselect profile set 21

finish up make.conf

emerge --ask --oneshot app-portage/cpuid2cpuflags

echo "*/* $(cpuid2cpuflags)" > /etc/portage/package.use/00cpu-flags
echo "*/* VIDEO_CARDS: nvidia" > /etc/portage/package.use/00video_cards

>> ACCEPT_LICENSE="\*"
>> ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~amd64"

emerge --ask --verbose --update --deep --changed-use @world # update shouldn't take long given our chosen profile
emerge --ask --depclean

timezone

ln -sf ../usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Madrid /etc/localtime

locale

nano /etc/locale.gen

en_US ISO-8859-1 # uncomment
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 # uncomment

locale-gen
eselect locale list
eselect locale set 2

env-update && source /etc/profile && export PS1="(chroot) ${PS1}"

kernel

i will be using the installkernel tool as I find it simpler than any other methods. Also I will be installing a kernel from source. Using grub and dracut.

nano /etc/portage/package.use/installkernel
sys-kernel/installkernel grub dracut

emerge --ask sys-kernel/installkernel
emerge -a sys-firmware/intel-microcode sys-kernel/linux-firmware

configure

i won’t be customizing the kernel config for the moment, just installing straight away.

emerge -av gentoo-kernel

fstab

for an easier approach I’m using the ‘genfstab’ utility.

emerge genfstab
genfstab / >> /etc/fstab

hostname

echo gentoo > /etc/hostname

network

my approach is simple as I’m only using ethernet.

emerge dhcpcd
rc-update add dhcpcd default

root passwd

passwd

keymap

remember to set your default keymap, altough we will need to change it for sway later on.

nano /etc/conf.d/keymaps

system logger

emerge --ask app-admin/sysklogd
rc-update add sysklogd default

time sync

emerge --ask net-misc/chrony
rc-update add chronyd default

bootloader

echo 'GRUB_PLATFORMS="efi-64"' >> /etc/portage/make.conf
emerge --ask --verbose sys-boot/grub
grub-install --efi-directory=/efi
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

we are done! exit and reboot the system.

wayland and sway

to install wayland, again the gentoo wiki is very well self explanatory.

emerge wayland qtwayland xwayland
echo "QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland" > /etc/environment

i won’t be using systemd nor elogind so or next approach will be using seat. To setup a backend server is very easy: need seatd package.use with flags server, builtin

rc-update add seatd default
gpasswd -a larry seat

in .bash_profile or equivalent

#!/bin/sh
if test -z "${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}"; then
  export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/tmp/"${UID}"-runtime-dir
  if ! test -d "${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}"; then
    mkdir "${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}"
    chmod 0700 "${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}"
  fi
fi

dbus-run-session sway

pipewire

very easy to install as well. here are some steps:

usermod -aG pipewire mrk

~/.config/sway/config
>> exec gentoo-pipewire-launcher restart &