Installation
From Gnuffy
Welcome to the Gnuffy installation Howto. If you are new to GNU/Linux at all, this might probably not be the right thing for you.
To install Gnuffy, you need an already running GNU/Linux System, usually a live-CD. You can use any system that provides GnuPG (which is needed, because you cannot verify signatures without it)
grml-1.1 LiveCD has been tested successfully. It also works from usb stick that was created using the grml usb howto. KNOPPICILLIN 6 "diagnostic knoppix" has been tested successfully. SystemRescueCD-1.0.3 has been tested. Most of the installation is OK, but there are some problems with a few packages. Although these problems can be solved easily by the experienced user, SystemRescueCD is not recommended to use for gnuffy installation. But hey, it's still a great live-system. SLAX does not provide gnupg in its default version, so it cannot be used to install Gnuffy. Installing Gnuffy from OpenSuSE from the actual LinuxUser (09/2008) LiveCD worked fine, with Sabayon Linux from the same CD installation failed. with Kubuntu Linux from the actual LinuxUser ( 9.04 ) installation failed. (please add your experience with other LiveCDs)
Installing Gnuffy64 does not work from GRML64, but you can just install Archlinux64 and run Arch2Gnuffy afterwards. Of course, you can also run Arch2Gnuffy on a 32 bit system. If you do not want to go through this whole document, it probably is a good choice for you to install Archlinux and convert it to Gnuffy afterwards. (due to changes in most recent spaceman the situation might have changed, please try if you are sufficiently patient and update this entry)
Contents |
Preparation
Before you can start your Gnuffy installation you already should have at least one partition for Gnuffy. This partition should be formatted and mounted somewhere (for example /mnt/gnuffy). If you want to use more than one partition (i.e. to split /var from your rootfs) you should mount the additional partitions in their supposed path too (for example /mnt/gnuffy/var)
Once you have mounted your partition(s) you are ready to go.
Spaceman
Get a current version of spaceman from http://linux01.org/~nlissne/spaceman-current.tar.bz2 and extract the archive. Change the current workdir to the directory which contains spaceman and run
SPACEMAN_ROOTDIR=/mnt/gnuffy ./spaceman -i base-meta
The SPACEMAN_ROOTDIR environment variable is used by spaceman as the root-directory for the installation. -i is the parameter to install packages and "base-meta" is a meta package which does not install any files by itself but depends on packages virtually any gnuffy system should have. For a new installation it might be useful to exclude arch-testing, arch-unstable and aur-* from the package-selection (this would not only result in a sane system, it also speeds up the selections). You can do this with:
SPACEMAN_ROOTDIR=/mnt/gnuffy ./spaceman -i base-meta -x 'arch-testing,arch-unstable,aur-.*'
Spaceman will ask if this is a new installation (of course, it is) and which architecture you want to use. Then it gets a current packagelist and continues with asking you which packages to install (in case there is more than one available). In most cases spaceman will already preselect a repository based on your former selections (or later based on your installed packages)
Just follow the dialogs.
During installation of fakeroot you will probably see an error message about sbin/ldconfig is missing - you can safely ignore this message, ldconfig will be run automatically after all packages are installed.
Hint: If you don't want to change the preselected repositories spaceman offers and you don't want to go through all the package-selection dialogs, there is a shorter way: press ctrl-c when you see the first package-selection-dialog and start spaceman again with:
SPACEMAN_ROOTDIR=/mnt/gnuffy ./spaceman -i base-meta --dontask
The --dontask switch skips the dialogs if there is a preselection already. So basically this is the same as you would just press F10 whenever a package-selection dialog with a preselected package appears. Of course, spaceman will still ask which package to use if there is no such preselection (i.e. none of the repositories offering the package have been selected before). Don't use --dontask if you do not really understand what it does.
Hint: Spaceman will complain about ld.so.conf been changed after installation. Please mark it as protected.
After package selection a dialog appears, listing the repositories you have chosen and giving you the option to change the trust-status of the repositories. This dialog will appear whenever you install packages and there is at least one package from a repository not marked as trusted by you. If you trust a repository you can switch it to trusted, to prevent the dialog appear again the next time you use spaceman to install from the same repository again.
WARNING: As of 10-16-2006, you are better off using only packages from the arch repositories for the base install. If you mix arch packages with ones from other gnuffy users, then there is a high possibility that it will screw your system to the max (post_install scripts not running, etc.). For example: I did a base install using only packages from gnuffy users, which resulted in my thinkpad being an overpriced brick after i did an update. --Lowercase 19:40, 16 Oct 2006 (CEST)
Now choose between different versions of the packages if there is more than one available; spaceman will also offer those out of archlinux repositories. If a package is signed, which it is unless it is from an archlinux repository, the key will be shown there and you will be able to chose in which person you trust the most.
TIP: For a base install, choose binary packages only.
You can also build the packages yourself.
Repository
If you like to build packages from source-code, there are several ways to do this.
- You can use the PKGBUILDs from our svn server - see SVN check out.
- You can use PKGBUILDs from archlinux, including the PKGBUILDs from aur.archlinux.org
- You can use the PKGBUILD another user offers in a repository (this can be recognized by keyword "src" at the end of the package-description when using spaceman -s)
- You can write your own PKGBUILDs and publish your repository.
Now choose between different versions of the packages if there is more than one available; spaceman will also offer those out of archlinux repositories. If a package is signed, which it is unless it is from an archlinux repository, the key will be shown there and you will be able to chose in which person you trust the most.
TIP: For a base install, choose only binary packages.
You can also build the packages yourself.
Chroot
Once the installation of base-meta is finished, your Gnuffy System is ready to chroot in it.
Run the following commands to have proc, some device nodes and nameservers in the chroot and then descend into it: Assuming you have used /mnt/gnuffy as SPACEMAN_ROOTDIR above, run the following commands to fill /proc, /dev and /sys with valid content and enter your Gnuffy System:
# mount -t proc none /mnt/gnuffy/proc # mount -t sysfs none /mnt/gnuffy/sys # cp -a /dev/* /mnt/gnuffy/dev/ # cp -L /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gnuffy/etc/resolv.conf # chroot /mnt/gnuffy /bin/bash
Before setting your password for the user root, you should first reset your environment to prevent some curious things when trying to change the password:
# reset
You should now set a password for the user root:
# passwd
sets the root password, as you should know. I added it just to remind you of it. Tip: Your password should have at least 8 characters containing letters, numbers and special signs like '(}?
What next?
- Install your kernel and configure your bootloader
- Install gcc and other packages you need, such as pppoe, openssh, etc..
- Reboot
You are not alone: If you run in trouble with your installation of just want a friendly chat, feel free to contact the gnuffy-community in channel #gnuffy on irc.freenode.net
Additional information on system configuration and other software: Instalacion en Español, Xorg, Audio, UTF8
