Updated image 01-01-2021, Perl, Python, and gcc changes
There was an image update in July, but it appears I failed to upload it. I've been updating the binaries, though, including nodejs. I've been trying to work on an icedtea build for this distro to move away from OracleJDK, but that hasn't worked yet.
Okay...I now have a manual kernel update to download at the bottom of the page. Process to do this...download it. Move it to /. sudo su -...you need to be root. mount /boot -- at this point I recommend making a backup of /boot just in case. Then tar -xvzf <downloaded file>. It will overwrite /boot, except for cmdline.txt and config.txt (you did back it up, right?) and install the new modules files in /lib/modules. Reboot, and you should have the new kernel. You can delete the downloaded file, your backup, and then all the old kernel modules if you want.
I've played around with the Raspberry Pi for years, and use it in many different ways at home and at work. At home, I have a Pi as my GPS time server, as my music server, as an IRC server, a web server...I think you get the hint. But up until now, I've been running Raspbian as my OS. It was the recommended OS when I started, and I didn't want to deal with any growing pains.
However, my distro of choice is Gentoo. All my servers at home run Gentoo, regardless of how new or old they are. The control over what is installed, and the ability to upgrade in a versionless fashion is prized. So I've been split...Gentoo on the Intel boxes, and Raspbian on the Arm architecture...until now.
The process for the Raspberry Pi has been...unhelpful, to say the least. There has been allusions to images, but they are unmaintained. The NOOBS image that is out there is non-functional...the compiler doesn't work, and it requires a keyboard and monitor to get started. One of the benefits of Raspbian, IMO, is that it works out of the box headless. I can flash the card, fire it up, do an nmap scan, and login. The time is already set, and the system is functional. Setting it up from a Stage 3, though, requires a keyboard and monitor. No DHCP, there are some games I have to play to get a login and a shell working...so yeah...not a good way to begin, and I wanted to change that.
In my opinion, a working Gentoo base system needed to function the same way. It needed to be able to be flashed from a Windows system (using Win32DiskImager), it needed to pick up an IP addresses using DHCP, it needed to set the time, and the work for crossdev and distributed compilation needed to already be done on the Pi. Also, in my opinion, vi and some basic very useful Gentoo tools needed to be installed.
So...that is what I have set out to do. I have a working Gentoo Pi image, as well as a working Gentoo Pi Stage 4. The stage 4 contains all the software that is on the image, but works if you don't want to copy the image over yourself, but would rather untar it to an already built card.
ntp, cronie, syslog-ng, dhcpcd, vim, and various gentoo utilities are all installed, as well as distcc. The system is up to date with portage and current build flags, which were inserted for a minimal headless system. A stage 3 install does not have ntp, cron, syslog, or dhcp installed, all of which I wanted for a headless image.
visudo, vipw, vigr....vim is now the preferred system editor. Use eselect editor if you want to revert back to nano.
If you want to see what I installed: cat /var/lib/portage/world . Note that both images do have what was current at the time in /usr/portage -- why take the time to redownload it, especially with the tie it can take for a Pi. Since the image works best when you use my binary repo, /usr/portage contains what was used for the build on the date of the image.
pi user is in wheel, wheel can sudo without password. dhcpd will run on boot, as it is designed to run headless.
There is no root password. Login is pi:raspberry (both the same as Raspbian)
If you are using the Stage 4 a FAT boot partition, a swap partition, and an ext4 3rd partition is mandatory unless you want to edit /etc/fstab and /boot/cmdline.txt in the stage 4.
mkfs.vfat -F 16 /dev/mmcblk0p1
mkswap /dev/mmcblk0p2
mkfs.ext4 -N 400000 /dev/mmcblk0p3 # it needs ~300000 inodes to install
mkdir gentoo
mount /dev/mmcblk0p3 gentoo
mkdir gentoo/boot
mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 gentoo/boot
cd gentoo
tar -xvjpf DownloadStage4Image
umount the SD card, insert, and boot. At this point the instructions for Stage 4 and the image are very similar.
If you copied the image onto an sd card, sudo fdisk /dev/mmcblk0, delete the 3rd partition, and build it again with the entire file system. Reboot the Pi, and then run sudo resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p3. You will now have your entire SD card available.
The latest image points to my build server, and these are the binaries that are available and maintaned. If there is a binary that you need and don't want to build, let me know and I will be glad to compile and add it to my list.
I've recently added sound support to the base image, since I'm now replacing the Raspian MPD server that I used to run with a Gentoo Pi MPD server. This means that nfs-utils are also in the repo, as well as mpg123.
The next thing on my todo list is to build a desktop system, both a base system, and one that supports amateur radio. So in the end, yes, there will be at least three variant systems.
On the base system...
app-admin/logrotate app-admin/sshguard app-admin/sudo app-admin/syslog-ng app-editors/nano app-editors/vim app-misc/screen app-portage/eix app-portage/epm app-portage/g-cpan app-portage/gentoolkit app-portage/portage-utils dev-python/pip dev-vcs/git mail-mta/ssmtp media-sound/alsa-utils net-misc/dhcpcd net-misc/ntp sys-devel/distcc sys-process/cronie
g-cpan and pip are on the base system for for Perl and Python. Note that there are both Go and Ruby binaries now available
And in the repo...
app-admin/ansible app-admin/lastpass-cli app-admin/restart-services app-admin/whowatch app-crypt/gnupg app-editors/emacs app-editors/joe app-metrics/node_exporter app-misc/mmv app-misc/screenie app-portage/genlop app-portage/layman app-portage/pfl app-portage/repoman app-portage/ufed app-shells/tcsh app-shells/zsh dev-java/oracle-jdk-bin dev-lang/go dev-lang/php:5.6 dev-lang/php dev-lang/ruby app-portage/portage-utils dev-python/pyusb games-engines/frotz games-misc/bsd-games games-misc/cowsay games-misc/fortune-mod-all games-roguelike/nethack mail-client/mailx mail-client/mutt mail-client/roundcube mail-mta/postfix media-sound/mpd media-sound/mpg123 net-analyzer/hping net-analyzer/iftop net-analyzer/netcat net-analyzer/nmap net-analyzer/speedtest-cli net-analyzer/tcping net-analyzer/tcptraceroute net-analyzer/traceroute net-dns/bind net-dns/bind-tools net-fs/nfs-utils net-im/pidgin net-irc/irssi net-irc/weechat net-libs/nodejs net-mail/dovecot net-misc/knock net-misc/oidentd net-misc/unison net-misc/whois net-wireless/wpa_supplicant sci-geosciences/gpsd sys-apps/inxi sys-apps/lshw sys-apps/mlocate sys-apps/usbutils sys-auth/google-authenticator sys-devel/bc sys-devel/crossdev sys-kernel/raspberrypi-sources sys-process/at sys-process/atop sys-process/htop sys-process/lsof www-apache/anyterm www-servers/lighttpd
Current Gentoo Pi Image 01-01-2021
Gentoo Pi Stage 4 01-01-2021
current compiler upgraded to gcc-9.3.0-r2
default Python changed to 3.7.x
Perl updated to 5.30.3
Portage overhauled 3.0.12, eix updated
most other packages updated
kernel upgrade to 4.19.80The Portage files that I use for this system (make.conf, package.use, package.mask, etc...) can be found here. If you want to keep your system current with my changes, download from here. I may set up a script to download and move these files...thoughts? I use Ansible for my home setup, but a simple Bash script would do.
The point of this image, as I've said, is to get you running asap as if it were a Raspian image. One caveat: if you want to compile yourself you'll need to make changes to /etc/portage/make.conf -- these are included and documented in the current make.conf.
Older Gentoo Pi Images and Stage4 files
7-Zip Needed to uncompress the image on Windows.