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gentoo-stage4

Table of Contents

Idea

All of us know that a Gentoo installation takes some time compared to any other distro. For the last few years, I have been installing via an auto-installer script which takes a few minutes, but on each installation does some repetitive operations, so why not have a tarball that contains the basics I need to add on each installation?

The idea comes from the fact that some Hosting Providers (like Hetzner) do not provide a Gentoo image on their virtual cloud servers, so this is an EASY and FAST way to have Gentoo Installed everywhere.

Stage4 TYPES

I'm providing two types of stage4:

  • Standard
    It uses the standard profile (default/linux/amd64/17.1). Since nowadays the compiler forces pie and ssp, this stage4 aims to avoid compiling with ssp/pie/relro and other protections, to speed-up as much as possible where the protection flags are not needed, otherwise it would look very similar to the hardened stage4.
    If you are looking for something compiled with hardened protections then look at the Hardened stage.
  • Hardened
    It uses the hardened profile (default/linux/amd64/17.1/hardened) without any modifications, so all protections are enabled.

The package app-admin/checksec provides a script that can help you understand the status of the compiled binaries:

~ $ checksec --proc-all

Scripts

I'm providing two scripts:

  • stage4 ( For general usage )
  • stage4-hetzner-cloud ( For Hetzner Cloud )

Why multiple scripts instead of one?
The goal is to keep the script as simple as possible without dozens of if/for, so people will be able to quickly understand what it does.

If your cloud provider offers a rescue system, you will probably be able to install the general stage4.

Support for others Cloud Providers

Do you want to have your favourite cloud provider fully supported here? Just open a ticket and I will do my best to add the support.

Packages

Packages included into the stage4:

app-admin/checksec
app-admin/logrotate
app-admin/spectre-meltdown-checker
app-admin/syslog-ng
app-misc/delay
app-misc/tmux
app-portage/eix
app-portage/gentoolkit
dev-vcs/git
net-misc/chrony
sys-apps/haveged
sys-boot/grub
sys-kernel/linux-firmware
sys-power/acpid
sys-process/cronie
sys-process/htop

Services

Services added to default runlevel:

syslog-ng
acpid
cronie
net.eth0 (only for stage4-hetzner-cloud)
chronyd
sshd

Service added to the boot runlevel:

haveged

Kernels

For the stage4-hetzner-cloud script a custom Monolithic Kernel is provided. It is based on the Hetzner Cloud hardware. If you need to include some other modules, the related Kernel config is provided, so you can start from there.
For the stage4 script, a common genkernel-based kernel is provided.

SSH access

If there is a file called id_rsa.pub in the same path where you are executing the stage4 script, this file will be copied as /root/.ssh/authorized_keys

Future changes and releases

The future changes in the stage4 can be relevant to:

  • kernel
  • packages update
  • any other modification in the configuration

Releases will not be frequent.
This doesn't mean that the project is not maintained, but simply it is not necessary to have a release every week.
Usually a release will be published after major upstream stable changes (gcc, glibc) and for each toolchain update, a complete emerge -e world will be done before publishing a new release.

In any case you can install the stage4 anytime and update to the latest stable packages available via emerge with:

~ $ emerge -DuNav world

Changelog

To avoid navigating and searching the git history, a plaintext Changelog is provided, which will summarize and track changes between releases.

Google Cloud (GCP)

Google Cloud does not offer a rescue system, so in order to use this script, you have to:

  • Create an empty disk/volume;
  • Install a new virtual machine with a Linux-based OS (that you will use like a rescue);
  • Attach the disk/volume on the freshly-installed OS;
  • Run the stage4 script;
    NOTE: You must edit the DISK variable and point it to the attached disk/volume. A working config could be:
DISK="/dev/sdb"
ESP="/dev/sda1"
BOOT="/dev/sda2"
ROOT="/dev/sda3"

What you need to do...

If you are using something from this repository, I appreciate if you "Star" the repository. This will give me an idea of how many people are using this stuff and, consequently, how much effort I need to put in to maintain the project in a good state.

# Gentoo hetzner cloud
# Gentoo Google Cloud # Gentoo gcp # Gentoo stage4
# Gentoo cloud