Gentoo Live Cd

[Lauren Redder]

Alive image provides an operating system (OS) environment contained within a file that can be used to boot a system. Live images are typically written to local media to be used to boot into a "live environment". Such an environment is often non-persistent, but can sometimes be used to install a "permanent" OS to non-volatile storage.

Live images are used to create a live environment from which to install Gentoo to persistent storage. Live images may also be used to maintain a Gentoo-based operating system, particularly in the case of issues resulting in a non-bootable system.

This article explains how to create a Gentoo LiveUSB or, in other words, how to emulate a x86 or amd64 Gentoo LiveCD using a USB drive. This is particularly useful for installing Gentoo on a modern laptop with no CD-ROM drive.

Although the instructions found in this document aim at emulating a Gentoo LiveCD using a USB drive, they should work for any arbitrary block device as long as the device names are adjusted accordingly.

The architecture appropriate Gentoo Minimal Installation CD iso can be downloaded and used to install from a command line interface, as a "light" installation option. There is also a Gentoo LiveGUI USB Image which can provide a more ergonomic option (e.g. open the handbook in another window and copy paste commands with a middle mouse click to a terminal emulator, use a GUI IRC client for support, etc.).

Most modern LiveCD's, like Gentoo are already in hybrid mode. If the LiveUSB does not boot, then it may be that the image will have to be converted to hybrid mode. Hybrid mode means image will enable the ISO to boot from both a CD-ROM device or a USB drive.

When using the Gentoo Installation CD ISOs, it is sufficient to directly copy the ISO contents onto the USB device. The dd command can be used to accomplish this. For instance, assuming the USB device is at /dev/sdc:

Universal USB installer is one of the oldest Linux-capable LiveUSB creators for Windows systems. It supports most Linux distributions, and has a simple, helpful wizard for selecting the Linux distribution. For Gentoo Minimal Installation CDs, however, select the Try Unlisted Linux ISO which is at the very bottom of the list. Select the proper USB drive to format and extract Linux to, and click Create.

When attempting to boot from a USB device, be sure to select or enable USB drives as bootable devices in the system's firmware interface. If the ISO is UEFI capable, it may be necessary to enable booting UEFI devices as well. This is typically performed via toggle options in the BIOS or UEFI firmware interface.

The boot order may need to be adjusted in the system's firmware for USB devices to boot first, although it is usually easier to hit the appropriate key (commonly either F2 or Delete) and manually select the USB device as a one-time boot option from the list of bootable devices.

This page is based on a document formerly found on our main website gentoo.org.

The following people contributed to the original document: brix, neysx

They are listed here because wiki history does not allow for any external attribution. If you edit the wiki article, please do not add yourself here; your contributions are recorded on each article's associated history page.

To configure the VM, I need to install software, and that requires root privileges. For root privileges, I need to know the root password, which Gentoo fails to provide. In fact, I don't even have the gentoo user password, so I can't SSH into the box or change the gentoo user's password.

Searching for how to change the password is pulling answers from 2005 to 2011 (yep, these problems have existed for over a decade...). Suggestions like "open a root terminal and issue passwd" don't work because there is no root terminal (or I can't find it by searching in the tablet interface for desktops). And suggestions like performing a Chroot don't work because there does not appear to be one setup (chroot does not offer any suitable suggestions).

More backstory is I am not a Gentoo user. I need to test one piece of software under it because one of our users prefers the platform. After testing, I am done with it for another 3 or 6 months. Hence the reason I want to make my changes to the LiveCD image in memory, and then save the VM without jumping through all the hoops to perform an actual install.

Unfortunately, Debian and many other linux distros are quickly phasing out support for 32bit ppc processors, leaving debian 8 the last release that could be install on mybook live, moreover, all powerpc debs are already moved to archive.debian.org.

The uboot of mybooklive only boot kernel from ext2/3 partition, so first install debian on ext2/3 to bootstrap gentoo on ext4, after gentoo is ready, debian partition will act as a boot partition and a backup system.

Cool walkthrough. One question though, why use the 64k block size for the ext4 partition? Just followed your guide but with default blocksize and everything works just fine. Plus, the gentoo partition becomes visible in an external linux box such as a x86 machine.

When it comes to breeding and nesting, gentoo penguins have been dubbed one of the more romantic seabirds in the animal kingdom. Gentoo penguin pairs start by building intricate nests of rocks and pebbles together, and individual pebbles may be shared between potential mates beforehand as a sign that they are interested in becoming a breeding pair. The nests are then used for laying the egg in during incubation, which lasts for close to 40 days. Males and females work together closely during the process, taking turns incubating the egg and forming long-lasting bonds with each other that continue after the chick has hatched. Many gentoo penguins, once reaching sexual maturity at around 2 years old, will return to previous nesting sites year after year.

Gentoo penguins are listed as near threatened on the IUCN Red List, largely because of apparent significant population declines on the sub-Antarctic islands on which they live. Collection of gentoo eggs used to be widespread in parts of their range, but today increasing oil exploration, tourism and interactions with fisheries threaten populations.

Gentoo Live ISO With KDE Plasma Desktop19201080 82.6 KB

Gentoo has released an ISO using KDE Plasma for the desktop. Been awhile

since Gentoo ha had a live GUI to work with. May have to give it a go.

@nevj

If I were to use this to install Gentoo, I would install the Mate DE, really do not care for KDE.

The live ISO will let one mount the Gentoo install and copy and paste the commands from

the Gentoo wiki, saves a lot of typo errors.

Finally, version may have a Gentoo revision number in the form -r1.The initial Gentoo version should have no revision suffix, the first revisionshould be -r1, the second -r2 and so on.See Ebuild revisions. Revision numbers aredistinguished from patch releases by revision bumps being changes by Gentoodevelopers, while patch releases are new releases by upstream (with theexception of snapshots, see below).

When packaging a snapshot of a source repository, there are two commonly usedformats. The first treats the snapshot as a patch to the previous version, andso the ebuild version is in the format $(last-released-version)_pYYYYMMDD.Alternatively, the snapshot may be treated as a pre-release to an upcomingversion, usually used when a release is anticipated but not out yet. The formatfor this is $(upcoming-version)_preYYYYMMDD.

The policy for so-called live ebuilds(see src_unpack actions)is to use 9999 as the version (or as the last version component). Forpackages with more than 4 digits e.g. YYYYMMDD format, 99999999 is anacceptable alternative.

Gentoo usually builds its packages from source. Exceptionally, a binary packagecan be provided instead (e.g., if upstream does not provide a source).Such packages should still follow normal naming conventions and do not need anyspecial suffix.

If a binary package is provided in addition to its open-source basedequivalent, the name of the former should be suffixed with -binif necessary for distinction. Examples are packages that are heavy on resourceslike CPU time or memory when being built from source.

All ebuilds committed to the tree should have a two line header immediately atthe start indicating copyright, followed by an empty line. This must be anexact copy of the contents ofheader.txt in the top directory of the Gentoo repository.

In the past, humans collected the eggs of gentoo penguins, particularly in the Falkland Islands. At the Falklands, the penguins share their colony grounds with grazing animals, such as sheep and cattle, that can trample nests.

Predators of gentoo penguins include other birds and sea animals. Skuas eat the eggs of gentoo penguins. Sheathbills, caracaras (falcons), kelp gulls, giant-petrels and feral cats pray on young birds. Leopard seals prey on older birds. Nests are often flattened by indifferent southern elephant seals as they move about the island.

Requiring users to type two extra asterisks (**) in/etc/portage/package.accept_keywords1 is only a relativelyminor issue of a -9999-only package. A -9999-only package causes moreinconvenience than this to its users and may also backfire on its maintainers,leading to a lose-lose situation.

The upstream may update the sources in the VCS repository at any time, andchanges may break things: what worked yesterday may be broken today.Unfortunately, the live ebuild is also one of the things that can be broken.

Adding a non-live ebuild resolves all these issues and thus benefits both usersand maintainers. In fact, a non-live ebuild is inherently immune from theseissues because it always builds the package from the same sources.

When a new version of a package is not working properly or has a regression, itis customary for users to temporarily roll back to the previous version. For a-9999-only package, roll-back is not always possible, which may leave theusers with a broken installation of the package.

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