Installation Guide

Exherbo doesn’t recommend particular filesystems or installation procedures but the following is a simple example of how to install Exherbo. You can customise the process any way you like from changing the choice of filesystems to more advanced installations including LVM2 or preparing for diskless installations.

Read the documentation
- Re-read everything on paludis.pioto.org and exherbo.org.
- Check recent mailing list posts for any possible issues.
Boot a live system
- Download SystemRescueCD (it has both 32 and 64 bit support)
```
# links http://www.sysresccd.org/Download
```
- Burn it to a CD or use UNetbootin to put it on a USB stick
- Reboot, choose the right kernel, and get your network up
```
# net-setup wlan0
```

Prepare the hard disk

Create a boot partition (~16MB), a root partition (>=4GB), and a home partition
```
# cfdisk /dev/sda
```

Format the filesystems for each partition

# mkfs.ext2 /dev/sda1
# mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda2
# mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda3

Mount root and cd into it

# mkdir /mnt/exherbo && mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/exherbo && cd /mnt/exherbo

Get the latest archive of Exherbo from Stages and extract it

# wget http://dev.exherbo.org/stages/exherbo-amd64-current.tar.xz && unxz -c exherbo*xz | tar xpf -

Update fstab

# cat <<EOF > /mnt/exherbo/etc/fstab
# <fs>       <mountpoint>    <type>    <opts>      <dump/pass>
/dev/sda1    /boot           ext2      defaults    1 2
/dev/sda2    /               ext3      defaults    0 1
/dev/sda3    /home           ext3      defaults    0 2
EOF

Chroot into the system

Mount everything for the chroot

# mount -o rbind /dev /mnt/exherbo/dev/

IMPORTANT: Take a closer look that you really use the “rbind” option to bind mount /dev, otherwise paludis will not work properly.

# mount -o bind /sys /mnt/exherbo/sys/
# mount -t proc none /mnt/exherbo/proc/
# mount /dev/sda1 boot/
# mount /dev/sda3 home/

Make sure the network can resolve DNS, and mtab is correct

# cp /etc/resolv.conf etc/resolv.conf
# grep -v rootfs /proc/mounts > etc/mtab

Change your root

# env -i TERM=$TERM SHELL=/bin/bash HOME=$HOME chroot /mnt/exherbo /bin/bash
# source /etc/profile
# export PS1="(chroot) $PS1"

Update the install
- Make sure Paludis is configured correctly – changing C/CXXFLAGS to -march=native might be a good idea
```
# cd /etc/paludis && vim bashrc && vim *conf
```
  IMPORTANT: Update Paludis before syncing – since Paludis is very actively developed, it’s a good idea to update the client to take advantage of new features that might show up with a sync
```
# cave resolve -x1 paludis
```
- Sync all the trees – now it is safe to sync
```
# cave sync
```
- Update the configuration files
```
# eclectic config interactive
```

Make bootable

Download the latest stable kernel from The Linux Kernel Archives.

# wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-${KERNEL_VERSION}.tar.bz2

Extract it

# tar xvjf linux-${KERNEL_VERSION}.tar.bz2

Install the kernel

# cd linux-${KERNEL_VERSION} && make menuconfig
# make && make modules_install && cp arch/x86/boot/bzImage /boot/kernel

Install GRUB
```
# grub-install /dev/sda1
```

GRUB 2 example configuration

# cat<<EOF > /boot/grub/grub.cfg
set timeout=10
set default=0
menuentry "Exherbo" {
    set root=(hd0,1)
    linux /kernel root=/dev/sda2
}
EOF

Install any hardware stuff you might need, check the FAQ for “Masked by unavailable” errors
```
# cave resolve -x iwlwifi-4965-ucode
```
Set root password
```
# passwd
```

Install any locales you might need

# localedef -i en_US -f ISO-8859-1 en_US
# localedef -i en_US -f UTF-8 en_US.UTF-8

Reboot
```
# reboot && sacrifice a goat && pray
```

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