On Wed, May 15, 2002 at 04:51:45PM +0000, Dennis Soper wrote:
>
> There is a base system like OpenBSD.  If you have a 686, you can get an
> ISO image to install from.  Otherwise, you compile *everything* from
> source doing the install.  You can also compile from scratch if you are
> using a 686.  Portage, the Gentoo package management system, does clean
> up the object files.  The tarballs stay around, but you can move/delete
> them as you see fit.

OK, I will check it out.  The laptop is a PII 266.  How much RAM
is needed for the source install?  Any idea how long it takes (yeah
I know, that depends, but what have you observed)?  Is there any kind
of built in mechanism for duplicating systems?  OpenBSD has a
"release" make target that builds boot images and packages the
files for the base system.  I kinda like that.

> The install from source works like this.  First, you download a 17MB ISO
> image and burn a CD.  You boot from the CD and partition your hard
> drive.

The BIOS of this machine will only let it boot from 1.44MB (emulated for CD)
boot disks.  Do you know offhand if that's the size of the boot image?

> Then, it goes out
> and downloads and compiles the latest libraries and compilers and
> installs them in RAM.

I have a pretty good sized archive of free software source packages on
local NFS exports.  Could I use that somehow?

> Finally, it recompiles the newest compilers and
> libraries and installs them on the hard drive.  Now, it starts
> downloading, building, and installing your basic system.  After this is
> done, you have to do your normal configuration file editing and
> download, build, and install your kernel.  Then you reboot and install
> whatever.  You do use 'emerge' to do the installation. 

Looks like I have some good ol' RTFM ahead of me :)  Is there any
particularly important info on www.gentoo.org I should read first?

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