How to install Gentoo on Raspberry Pi 5

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Partition SD card and format partitions

Partition SD card

Normally 3 partitions are needed here: boot, swap and root. If you decide to use swap as a file, then 2 partitions are needed. In this example, we use swap as a partition.

1. Start partitioning SD card

root #fdisk /dev/sda
Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.38.1).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.

2. Create a DOS label 

Command (m for help): o
Created a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0x4fe0c75b.

3. Create boot partition 

Command (m for help): n
Partition type
   p   primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free)
   e   extended (container for logical partitions)
Select (default p): p
Partition number (1-4, default 1): 1
First sector (2048-124735487, default 2048): 
Last sector, +/-sectors or +/-size{K,M,G,T,P} (2048-124735487, default 124735487): +256M

Created a new partition 1 of type 'Linux' and of size 256 MiB.

4. Create swap partition 

Command (m for help): n
Partition type
   p   primary (1 primary, 0 extended, 3 free)
   e   extended (container for logical partitions)
Select (default p): p
Partition number (2-4, default 2): 
First sector (526336-124735487, default 526336): 
Last sector, +/-sectors or +/-size{K,M,G,T,P} (526336-124735487, default 124735487): +8G

Created a new partition 2 of type 'Linux' and of size 8 GiB.

5. Create root partition 

Command (m for help): n
Partition type
   p   primary (2 primary, 0 extended, 2 free)
   e   extended (container for logical partitions)
Select (default p): 

Using default response p.
Partition number (3,4, default 3): 
First sector (17303552-124735487, default 17303552): 
Last sector, +/-sectors or +/-size{K,M,G,T,P} (17303552-124735487, default 124735487): 

Created a new partition 3 of type 'Linux' and of size 51.2 GiB.

6. Set the file system for boot partition. To boot raspberry pi, boot partition has to be FAT. 

Command (m for help): t
Partition number (1-3, default 3): 1
Hex code or alias (type L to list all): 0b

Changed type of partition 'Linux' to 'W95 FAT32'.

7. Set the file system for swap partition. 

Command (m for help): t
Partition number (1-3, default 3): 2
Hex code or alias (type L to list all): 82

Changed type of partition 'Linux' to 'Linux swap / Solaris'.

8. Set the file system for root partition. 

Command (m for help): t
Partition number (1-3, default 3): 
Hex code or alias (type L to list all): 83

Changed type of partition 'Linux' to 'Linux'.

9. Final check of the partitions 

Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/sda: 59.48 GiB, 63864569856 bytes, 124735488 sectors
Disk model: Storage Device  
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x4fe0c75b

Device     Boot    Start       End   Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sda1           2048    526335    524288  256M  b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda2         526336  17303551  16777216    8G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3       17303552 124735487 107431936 51.2G 83 Linux

10. Write changes to SD card. 

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered.
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.

Format partitions

1. boot partition

root #mkfs -t vfat /dev/sda1
mkfs.fat 4.2 (2021-01-31)

2. swap partition

root #mkswap --pagesize 16384 /dev/sda2
mkswap: Using user-specified page size 16384, instead of the system value 4096
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 8 GiB (8589918208 bytes)
no label, UUID=1c5c3570-8437-431f-b737-7d1e24d8d1b7

3. root partition

root #mkfs -t ext4 /dev/sda3
mke2fs 1.47.0 (5-Feb-2023)
Creating filesystem with 13428992 4k blocks and 3358720 inodes
Filesystem UUID: b9aefb9c-0c70-49df-b236-95783f17d190
Superblock backups stored on blocks: 
	32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208, 
	4096000, 7962624, 11239424

Allocating group tables: done                            
Writing inode tables: done                            
Creating journal (65536 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

Install base system and portage snapshot

Mount root partition

root #mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/gentoo
root #cd /mnt/gentoo

Install stage3

1. Download latest stage 3 tar file

2. Untar stage file

root #tar xpf /path/to/stage3-arm64-openrc-20240107T211819Z.tar.xz --xattrs-include='*.*' --numeric-owner

Install portage snapshot

1. Download latest portage snapshot

2. Untar stage file

root #mkdir -p /mnt/gentoo/var/db/repos/gentoo
root #tar xpf /home/davxi/Downloads/portage-latest.tar.bz2 --strip-components=1 -C /mnt/gentoo/var/db/repos/gentoo

Install kernel, modules and firmware

Warning
Upstream kernel and firmware versions tagged 20240306 are the minimum required to boot the Raspberry Pi 5. At the time of this writing this version is not available in Portage; bug #930269 has been filed to get this addressed. This is why it is necessary to git clone kernel sources and firmware directly from the upstream project.
Note
If you get an error to the effect of bcm2712-rpi-5b.dtb not found at boot time with a Raspberry Pi 5. You have failed to heed the above warning.

Install kernel

There are 2 ways to install the kernel for Raspberry Pi 5, use the pre-built kernel and compile from source code. In this example, we will use the pre-built kernel.

1. Clone raspberry-firmware repository.

2. To boot raspberry pi, a few files from boot folder are needed. Make sure you have copied the following files from firware/boot to /mnt/gentoo/boot

root #mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/gentoo/boot
root #cp /path/to/raspberrypi/firmware/boot/bcm2712-rpi-5-b.dtb .
root #cp /path/to/raspberrypi/firmware/boot/fixup_cd.dat .
root #cp /path/to/raspberrypi/firmware/boot/fixup.dat .
root #cp /path/to/raspberrypi/firmware/boot/start_cd.elf .
root #cp /path/to/raspberrypi/firmware/boot/start.elf .
root #cp /path/to/raspberrypi/firmware/boot/bootcode.bin .
root #cp /path/to/raspberrypi/firmware/boot/kernel8.img .
root #cp -r /path/to/raspberrypi/firmware/boot/overlays .

3. Config boot loader

Unlike grub or other boot loader, raspberry pi looks for cmdline.txt from /boot to boot the operating system. Put below content into /mnt/gentoo/boot/cmdline.txt 

dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=tty1 root=/dev/mmcblk0p3 rootfstype=ext4 rootwait

4. Config.txt

config.txt is needed configure raspberry pi to use correct drivers. Put below content into /mnt/gentoo/boot/config.txt 

# have a properly sized image
disable_overscan=1

# Enable audio (loads snd_bcm2835)
dtparam=audio=on

# Enable DRM VC4 V3D driver
dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d-pi5

Install modules

https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware comes with all the modules we need, just copy modules into /mnt/gentoo/lib/

root #cp -r /home/darthjoker/raspberrypi/firmware/modules /mnt/gentoo/lib/

Firmware

To use WIFI and bluetooth, we need to copy the firmware to /mnt/gentoo/lib/firmware folder.

WIFI

1. Clone wifi firmware repository

2. Create /mnt/gentoo/lib/firmware/brcm if it doesn't exist

root #mkdir -p /mnt/gentoo/lib/firmware/brcm

3. The wifi mode for raspberry pi 5 is brcmfmc43455, so we only need to copy files for brcmfmc43455.

root #cp /path/to/raspberrypi/firmware-nonfree/debian/config/brcm80211/cypress/cyfmac43455-sdio-standard.bin /mnt/gentoo/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio.bin
root #cp /path/to/raspberrypi/firmware-nonfree/debian/config/brcm80211/cypress/cyfmac43455-sdio.clm_blob /mnt/gentoo/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio.clm_blob
root #cp /path/to/raspberrypi/firmware-nonfree/debian/config/brcm80211/brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio.txt /mnt/gentoo/lib/firmware/brcm/

4. When raspberry pi 5 boots, it looks for firmware names with model name, like raspberry,5-model-b, so we need to create symbolinks for the firmware files, make sure you have following symbolinks.

root #ls -l /mnt/gentoo/lib/firmware/brcm/
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 643651 Jan 21 12:20 brcmfmac43455-sdio.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   2676 Jan 21 12:18 brcmfmac43455-sdio.clm_blob
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     22 Jan 21 12:23 brcmfmac43455-sdio.raspberrypi,5-model-b.bin -> brcmfmac43455-sdio.bin
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     27 Jan 21 12:23 brcmfmac43455-sdio.raspberrypi,5-model-b.clm_blob -> brcmfmac43455-sdio.clm_blob
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     22 Jan 21 12:24 brcmfmac43455-sdio.raspberrypi,5-model-b.txt -> brcmfmac43455-sdio.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   2074 Jan 21 12:19 brcmfmac43455-sdio.txt

Bluetooth

1. Clone bluetooth firmware repository

2. Create /mnt/gentoo/lib/firmware/brcm if it doesn't exist

root #mkdir -p /mnt/gentoo/lib/firmware/brcm

3. For bluetooth, only BCM4345C0.hcd is needed.

root #cp /home/darthjoker/raspberrypi/bluez-firmware/debian/firmware/broadcom/BCM4345C0.hcd /mnt/gentoo/lib/firmware/brcm/

4. Similarly, we need to create a symbolink for raspberry pi 5.

root #ln -s BCM4345C0.hcd /mnt/gentoo/lib/firmware/brcm/BCM4345C0.raspberrypi,5-model-b.hcd

Setting up wifi

To use wifi, a network tool is needed. I've tried to use wpa_supplicant, however, I got no luck make it work with the firmware. So I switched to NetworkManager.

To install NetworkManager, there are 2 ways:

  • If you have an ethernet cable, you can finish this tutorial and use emerge on raspberry pi.
  • If you don't have ethernet, you can download all the necessary files to /var/cache/distfiles and emerge NetworkManager on raspberry pi.

Command to install NetworkManager

root #USE="-modemmanager -ppp -gtk-doc -introspection -concheck" emerge networkmanager

Command to download cache files for NetworkManager

root #USE="-modemmanager -ppp -gtk-doc -introspection -concheck" emerge -pf networkmanager

Ready to use

Before we boot Gentoo on raspberry pi, there are a few things we need to set up.

xorg.conf

If intending to use X11 for video, edit (or create) the file /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-rpi5.conf to contain the following 

Section "OutputClass"
    Identifier "vc4"
    MatchDriver "vc4"
    Driver "modesetting"
    Option "PrimaryGPU" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "kms"
    Driver "modesetting"
    Option "AccelMethod" "msdri3"
    Option "UseGammaLUT" "off"
EndSection

fstab

Make sure you have below content on /mnt/gentoo/etc/fstab 

/dev/mmcblk0p1          /boot           vfat            noatime,noauto,nodev,nosuid,noexec	1 2
/dev/mmcblk0p2          swap            swap            defaults                                0 0
/dev/mmcblk0p3          /               ext4            noatime                                 0 0

shadow file

Before we can log into raspberry pi, we need to change the password of root user. Below is the password raspberry, replace this with the first line of /mnt/gentoo/etc/shadow file, make sure you only have one line for root user. 

root:$6$xxPVR/Td5iP$/7Asdgq0ux2sgNkklnndcG4g3493kUYfrrdenBXjxBxEsoLneJpDAwOyX/kkpFB4pU5dlhHEyN0SK4eh/WpmO0::0:99999:7:::

inittab

/mnt/gentoo/etc/inittab needs to updated, the following line should be commented. 

f0:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 9600 ttyAMA0 vt100

Unmount all partitions

root #umount /mnt/gentoo/boot
root #umount /mnt/gentoo

Enjoy Gentoo

Plug the SD card into raspberry pi and enjoy!

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