User:Vadorovsky/Installation guide

My personal installation guide for a system with:

LLVM as the main compiler, musl as libc.
- ThinLTO
Encrypted ZFS as the root filesystem.
OpenRC as init system.
doas, nushell.
COSMIC desktop.

Preparing the disk(s)

Creating partitions

Use fdisk to create two partitions:

EFI partition - 1GB.
root partition - the rest of space.

Create EFI filesystem

root #mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/nvme0n1p1

Generate host ID

root #zgenhostid -f

Create ZFS filesystem

root #

zpool create -f \
-o ashift=12 \
-o autotrim=on \
-O acltype=posixacl \
-O xattr=sa \
-O relatime=on \
-O compression=lz4 \
-O encryption=aes-256-gcm \
-O keylocation=prompt \
-O keyformat=passphrase \

 -m none tank /dev/nvme0n1p2

root #zfs create -o mountpoint=none tank/os

root #zfs create -o mountpoint=/ -o canmount=noauto tank/os/gentoo

root #zfs create -o mountpoint=/home tank/home

root #zpool set bootfs=tank/os/gentoo tank

Mount the filesystems

root #

mkdir -p /mnt/gentoo

root #

zpool export tank

root #

zpool import -N -R /mnt/gentoo tank

root #

zfs mount -l tank/os/gentoo

root #

zfs mount tank/home

root #

mkdir -p /mnt/gentoo/efi

root #

mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/gentoo/efi

Download and unpack stage3

Download the newest musl-llvm stage3 archive you can find on this page:

root #

wget https://distfiles.gentoo.org/releases/amd64/autobuilds/current-stage3-amd64-musl-llvm/stage3-amd64-musl-llvm-<date>.tar.xz

Then extract it:

root #tar xpvf stage3-*.tar.xz --xattrs-include='*.*' --numeric-owner -C /mnt/gentoo

Copy configuration files

root #

cp /etc/hostid /mnt/gentoo/etc

root #

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

Configure portage

We need to configure Portage to:

Enable native builds.
Enable ThinLTO.

By editing the file:

root #nano /mnt/gentoo/etc/portage/make.conf

FILE /mnt/gentoo/etc/portage/make.confPortage configuration

WARNING_FLAGS="-Werror=odr -Werror=strict-aliasing"
COMMON_FLAGS="-O2 -pipe -march=native -flto=thin ${WARNING_FLAGS}"
CFLAGS="${COMMON_FLAGS}"
CXXFLAGS="${COMMON_FLAGS}"
FCFLAGS="${COMMON_FLAGS}"
FFLAGS="${COMMON_FLAGS}"

RUSTFLAGS="${RUSTFLAGS} -Clinker-plugin-lto"

USE="alsa bluetooth cairo corefonts cups dbus dist-kernel elogind flac flatpak fontconfig hardened icu jpeg jpeg2k kf6compat lcms libnotify lto networkmanager ogg opengl pdf pdfium pipewire policykit png pulseaudio qml qt6 security-key text tiif truetype udev unicode wayland webp video_cards_radeon vulkan vulkan-overlay x264 xcb xvfb zfs X -accessibility -systemd"
VIDEO_CARDS="amdgpu radeonsi"

CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-musl"

LC_MESSAGES=C.utf8

Accept the license of linux-firmware:

FILE /mnt/gentoo/etc/portage/package.license/kernelPortage configuration

sys-kernel/linux-firmware linux-fw-redistributable

Use dracut for generating initramfs:

FILE /mnt/gentoo/etc/portage/package.use/kernelPortage configuration

sys-kernel/installkernel dracut

If you want to use the newest mainline kernel versions, accept the unstable versions of kernel and ZFS:

FILE /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/kernelPortage configuration

sys-fs/zfs
sys-fs/zfs-kmod
sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel
sys-kernel/linux-firmware
virtual/dist-kernel

Chroot

root #

mount --types proc /proc /mnt/gentoo/proc

root #

mount --rbind /sys /mnt/gentoo/sys

root #

mount --make-rslave /mnt/gentoo/sys

root #

mount --rbind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev

root #

mount --make-rslave /mnt/gentoo/dev

root #

mount --bind /run /mnt/gentoo/run

root #

mount --make-slave /mnt/gentoo/run

root #

env -i chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash

root #

env-update

root #

source /etc/profile

Fetch repos

First do it the usual way:

root #emerge-webrsync

Install first dependencies, which will let us configure repositories:

root #emerge -av app-eselect/eselect-repository dev-vcs/git

Then switch to git:

root #

eselect repository disable gentoo

root #

eselect repository enable gentoo

root #

rm -r /var/db/repos/gentoo

Add more repositories:

root #

eselect repository enable guru

root #

eselect repository add cosmic-overlay git https://github.com/fsvm88/cosmic-overlay.git

root #

eselect repository add vadorovsky git https://github.com/vadorovsky/overlay.git

Then sync them:

root #emerge --sync

Install base system

First of all, upgrade @world to catch the USE flags changed in our configuration.

root #emerge -avuDN @world

Install kernel:

root #emerge -av sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel sys-kernel/linux-firmware

Install ZFS:

root #emerge -av sys-fs/zfs sys-fs/zfs-kmod

Then rebuild initramfs, to include the ZFS module in it:

root #emerge --config sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel

Bootloader

We are going to use ZFSBootMenu.

root #

mkdir -p /efi/EFI/BOOT

root #

curl -L https://get.zfsbootmenu.org/efi -o /efi/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI

Configure system

Set root password

root #passwd

Set hostname

root #echo tux > /etc/hostname

Set keymap

Setup system tools

sysklogd:

root #

emerge --ask app-admin/sysklogd

root #

rc-update add sysklogd default

Reboot

After that, we can reboot the system.

Rust

Installing software mentioned further requires Rust. Let's bootstrap Rust properly before proceeding.

Support for bootstraping Rust without GCC was merged just recently and didn't make it to stable ebuilds. Unmask the following packages:

FILE /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/rustPortage configuration

dev-lang/rust
dev-lang/rust-bin
llvm-runtimes/libgcc

The rust-bin package is masked for musl-llvm profile, so let's unmask it:

FILE /etc/portage/package.mask/rustPortage configuration

-dev-lang/rust-bin

After that, we should be able to install Rust with

root #

emerge -av dev-lang/rust

nushell and other Rust tools

If you share my obsession about using Rust tools, you might want to install these:

root #

emerge -av app-shells/nushell app-shells/starship

And then add nushell as a shell, which can be set as a login shell:

FILE /etc/shellsShells

/usr/bin/nu

Create user

root #

useradd -m -G users,wheel,audio -s /usr/bin/nu vadorovsky

root #

passwd vadorovsky

Install and configure doas:

root #

emerge -av app-admin/doas

FILE /etc/doas.confdoas configuration

permit :wheel

Install COSMIC desktop

Unmask COSMIC desktop packages:

FILE /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/cosmic-deUnmasking unstable ebuilds

cosmic-de/*

Accept the license of corefonts:

FILE /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/cosmic-deUnmasking unstable ebuilds

media-fonts/corefonts MSttfEULA

Then install COSMIC, greetd and other necessary packages:

root #

emerge -av cosmic-meta pop-theme-meta gui-libs/display-manager-init gui-libs/greetd sys-auth/elogind

Configure greetd as a display manager:

FILE /etc/conf.d/display-managergreetd with cosmic-greeter

CHECKVT=7
DISPLAYMANAGER="greetd"

Make sure that the following services are enabled:

root #rc-update add elogind boot

root #rc-update add dbus default

root #rc-update add display-manager default

At the end, greetd needs to be configured to run cosmic-greeter as a frontend. It's very important to run it as cosmic-greeter user.

FILE /etc/greetd/config.tomlgreetd with cosmic-greeter

[terminal]
vt = 7

[default_session]
command = "/usr/bin/cosmic-comp /usr/bin/cosmic-greeter"
user = "cosmic-greeter"