Re: building on a second machine

I have done this a few times.  It works just like the Gentoo Linux 1.4
Installation Instructions outlines except I expect you would start at
part "8. Obtaining the Desired 'stage-x' Tarball". You can chroot to any
directory  you can write to and has the capacity to hold the install.

You will need to run "mount -o bind /proc [place stage-x was extracted]"
before you chroot as the instructions state. You can bind /dev also but
it isn't necessary as the bootstrap process will create the necissary
files in dev.

Once everything is built, you will need to transfer it to the other
computer.  Then create a tarball of the Gentoo build to ensure all the
permissions are preserved.  Use Apache, some FTP server or something
else to share the file.  Using the Gentoo Boot CD, you can install the
Gentoo you built just as the installation instructions outline with the
exception of downloading your tarball instead of the stage-x tarball,
and skipping all the bootstrap, emerge and what other process you
already did.

Other options are to take the hard drive out of the computer you want to
install Gentoo on and put it the computer with a functional linux
install.  Then just mount the right file system (that you might have to
create) on the drive and install it in place on that drive.  This is
probably the fastest if its easy to move the hard drive.  Getting grub
to work this way will be a little different (not hd0 but probably hd1)
than the instructions outline.

There are many other variations on installing Gentoo.  Essentially you
just need to get all the files with the right permissions on a bootable
(rootable) partition.  Then get grub (or possibly lilo) to load a
kernel.

If you would like to test X applications before you transfer the
installation, you need to bind /tmp just like you bind /proc.  There are
some hidden FIFO's in /tmp that X apps (cleint) use to communicate with
the X server.  In addition you will need to set DISPLAY=:0.0 ("export
DISPLAY=:0.0" in bash).  This all assumes you are running an X server
when you do this.

Quinn Harris

On Fri, 25 Oct 2002 13:16:34 -0700
"Udo Hoerhold" <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi, 
> 
> Does anyone know if it would be possible to build Gentoo on one PC, then
> transfer it to another PC?  It seems like this should mostly work using
> the second partition method that's documented (building on a free
> partition on an existing Linux install), but I wonder if there are any
> issues with the /dev or /proc directories, or anything like that.  Has
> anyone tried anything like this, or can they think of anything that might
> cause problems? 
> 
> Thanks, 
> 
> Udo Hoerhold 
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