New Gentoo

Table of Contents

Intro

WARNING: this is an incomplete draft but I wanted to publish it just so it exists as a resource.

As the summer is coming to a close and before the exam period starts I decided to reinstall gentoo on my university laptop. I don’t plan on doing an ordinary follow the handbook and whabam you’re up and running thing so I wanted to document it.

Background

The laptop I use for university has pretty lackluster specs which is to be expected considering I bought it for 180 euros about 5 years ago. Nevertheless, it does its job very well and I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve written more code on it than I have written on my desktop at home. However I have a habit of putting different distros on it, sometimes wiping it even in the middle of a semester. It’s pretty critical since it is used for a few classes and because I tend to work on personal projects fairly often while at university but that doesn’t mean it gets the white glove treatment.

But enough about the laptop, we’re here to talk about gentoo. Generally I can get by on any distro but I’m not going to settle for less than I can have if I can swing it. There are several trends in the linux world that I dislike and the only distro that allows me to avoid most if not all of them is gentoo. At the time of writing I’ve been using it for over 4 years with no plans in the forseeable future to move to something else. While I do love it, not everything is perfect so we’ll need to add at least one overlay and maybe write an ebuild or two but I’m getting ahead of myself. What’s the plan?

Plan

There are a few main requirements that I’d like the system to meet (in no particular order):

and probably some that I forget. It might not be possible to achieve all of them but I want to get as close as possible. There are also a couple things not on the list that I’d like to have eventually but won’t be doing this time, namely using ZFS instead of XFS and having a stripped down kernel. One might think that not installing certain software would be as easy as just not adding them, and I really wish it was. However as you’ll see later on some packages have hard (meaning non-optional) dependencies on some of the above even where it isn’t necessary which complicates things. With the plan laid out, let’s begin.

Installation media

I headed over to the gentoo downloads page, picked up the latest (at the time of writing) minimal installation ISO, which is install-amd64-minimal-20220821T170533Z.iso, and used dd to write it to a 4gb usb stick After booting into it in cached mode (this copies the contents of the ISO to RAM) I selected the default keyboard layout, set a root password with passwd, started the SSH service with rc-service sshd start and looked up the IP address using ip a. From my desktop I opened an SSH session ssh root@10.0.20.49 and started up tmux to make sure that even if I disconnected things would still keep running on the laptop and I could come back to it.

Partitioning and formatting the drive

When following the handbook, the first step after getting the network up is to partition our disk. In my case this is a cheap 240gb SSD I added to the laptop since the 32gb of on-board eMMC was not enough. There will be just two partitions, one that will be the boot and ESP and one that will be root. The handbook recommends making the boot partition 256MB but I don’t want to fill it up quickly if I’m experimenting with kernel configuration so I’ll make it 512MB. The root partition will take up the rest of the space on the SSD. When I reinstall with ZFS as the root filesystem I’ll probably put the boot/ESP partition on the eMMC so I can manage the entire SSD using only ZFS. However right now I’ll just format the boot one as fat32 and for root I’ll go with XFS. Next up we mount just the root partition at /mnt/gentoo, go into it and we’re ready to grab our stage3 tarball.

Stage3

Heading back to the downloads page I decided to go for the no multilib openrc tarball stage3-amd64-nomultilib-openrc-20220821T170533Z.tar.xz which is the latest one at the time of writing. I’m used to curl instead of wget so a little curl -O incantation later and the stage3 is ready to be unpacked with tar xpvf stage3-*.tar.xz --xattrs-include='*.*' --numeric-owner.

Minor configuration

I’m not going to do too much configuration before the system is independently bootable but we’ll take care of some basics. Sadly the installation media doesn’t have vim, only vi but I can make do.

make.conf

MAKEOPTS

First, I added MAKEOPTS="-j2" to better take advantage of the processing power.

USE

The big one, right. Initially I’ll just set the basics:

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USE="-systemd -udev -logind -consolekit -policykit -dbus -pam -networkmanager -pulseaudio -wayland -lvm -btrfs -perl -lua -ruby -python -fortran -ocaml -haskell -racket"

repos.conf

Git syncing is generally faster and doesn’t seem to have a per-day sync limit so I want to use that over rsync however the stage3 doesn’t include git so we leave those options commented out for now.

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[DEFAULT]
main-repo = gentoo

[gentoo]
location = /var/db/repos/gentoo
#sync-type = git
sync-type = rsync
#sync-uri = https://anongit.gentoo.org/git/repo/sync/gentoo.git
sync-uri = rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage
auto-sync = yes
sync-rsync-verify-jobs = 1
sync-rsync-verify-metamanifest = yes
sync-rsync-verify-max-age = 24
sync-openpgp-key-path = /usr/share/openpgp-keys/gentoo-release.asc
sync-openpgp-keyserver = hkps://keys.gentoo.org
sync-openpgp-key-refresh-retry-count = 40
sync-openpgp-key-refresh-retry-overall-timeout = 1200
sync-openpgp-key-refresh-retry-delay-exp-base = 2
sync-openpgp-key-refresh-retry-delay-max = 60
sync-openpgp-key-refresh-retry-delay-mult = 4
sync-webrsync-verify-signature = yes

Pseudo-filesystem copy-pasta

Plopping this here for the future

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mount --types proc /proc /mnt/gentoo/proc
mount --rbind /sys /mnt/gentoo/sys
mount --make-rslave /mnt/gentoo/sys
mount --rbind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev
mount --make-rslave /mnt/gentoo/dev
mount --bind /run /mnt/gentoo/run
mount --make-slave /mnt/gentoo/run

And that about does it for the pre-chroot stuff.

Chroot

Now we change root into what is going to be our system, mount our boot partition and run the initial sync using emerge-webrsync. Next up git gets installed so we can switch to git syncing in the repos.conf file mentioned previously.

Tangent: (neo)vi(m)

I wanted to edit the root user’s .bash_profile to automatically include /etc/profile and change the prompt and very quickly found out that there isn’t even vi inside the stage3. There is the option to install it but I vaguely remember it pulling in some perl or ruby dependencies that I would rather avoid. Good opportunity to see if neovim does better in this regard. Here is a pretend emerge with USE flags I would set:

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USE="X -perl" emerge -pv vim

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild  N     ] app-crypt/libmd-1.0.4::gentoo  259 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-base/xorg-proto-2022.1::gentoo  USE="-test" 1082 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/libbsd-0.11.6::gentoo  USE="-static-libs -verify-sig" 407 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] app-eselect/eselect-vi-1.2::gentoo  3 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/libsodium-1.0.18_p20210617:0/23::gentoo  USE="asm urandom -minimal -static-libs -verify-sig" CPU_FLAGS_X86="-aes -sse4_1" 1812 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-libs/xtrans-1.4.0::gentoo  USE="-doc" 182 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-libs/libXau-1.0.9-r1::gentoo  USE="-doc" 316 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-libs/libXdmcp-1.1.3-r1::gentoo  USE="-doc" 325 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-base/xcb-proto-1.15.2::gentoo  PYTHON_TARGETS="python3_10 -python3_8 -python3_9 (-python3_11)" 145 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-libs/libICE-1.0.10-r1::gentoo  USE="ipv6" 384 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-libs/libxcb-1.15-r1:0/1.12::gentoo  USE="xkb -doc (-selinux) -test" 437 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-libs/libSM-1.2.3-r1::gentoo  USE="ipv6 uuid -doc" 355 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-misc/compose-tables-1.8.1::gentoo  1776 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-libs/libX11-1.8.1::gentoo  USE="-doc -test" 0 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-libs/libXt-1.2.1::gentoo  USE="-doc -test" 767 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] app-editors/vim-core-9.0.0099::gentoo  USE="acl nls -minimal" 16324 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] app-editors/vim-9.0.0099::gentoo  USE="X acl crypt nls -cscope -debug -gpm -lua -minimal -perl -python -racket -ruby (-selinux) -sound -tcl -terminal -vim-pager" LUA_SINGLE_TARGET="lua5-1 -lua5-3 -lua5-4 -luajit" PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET="python3_10 -python3_8 -python3_9 (-python3_11)" 16321 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] app-vim/gentoo-syntax-2::gentoo  USE="-ignore-glep31" 20 KiB

Total: 18 packages (18 new), Size of downloads: 40906 KiB

Not too bad, let’s see if neovim can do better:

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USE="-tui -nvimpager" emerge -pv neovim

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild  N     ] dev-lang/luajit-2.1.0_beta3_p20220127-r2:2/2.1.0_beta3_p20220127::gentoo  USE="-lua52compat -static-libs" 1048 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/tree-sitter-0.20.6::gentoo  2857 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] app-eselect/eselect-vi-1.2::gentoo  3 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] app-crypt/rhash-1.4.2::gentoo  USE="nls ssl -debug -static-libs" 408 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/jsoncpp-1.9.5:0/25::gentoo  USE="-doc -test" 211 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/libmpack-1.0.5-r3::gentoo  33 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] app-eselect/eselect-lua-4-r1::gentoo  0 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/libuv-1.44.1:0/1::gentoo  1272 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-lang/lua-5.1.5-r106:5.1::gentoo  USE="deprecated readline" 217 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/libvterm-0.1.4::gentoo  68 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] app-arch/libarchive-3.6.1:0/13::gentoo  USE="acl bzip2 e2fsprogs iconv lzma xattr -blake2 -expat -lz4 -lzo -nettle -static-libs -verify-sig -zstd" 7258 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-util/cmake-3.22.4::gentoo  USE="ncurses -doc -emacs -qt5 -test" 9553 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-lua/lpeg-1.0.2-r101::gentoo  USE="-debug -doc -test" LUA_TARGETS="lua5-1 luajit -lua5-3 -lua5-4" 71 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-lua/mpack-1.0.9-r1::gentoo  USE="-test" LUA_TARGETS="lua5-1 luajit -lua5-3 -lua5-4" 16 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-lua/luv-1.43.0.0::gentoo  USE="-test" LUA_SINGLE_TARGET="luajit -lua5-1 -lua5-3 -lua5-4" 172 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/msgpack-3.3.0:0/2::gentoo  USE="cxx -boost -doc -examples -static-libs -test" 497 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] app-editors/neovim-0.7.2::gentoo  USE="lto -nvimpager -test -tui" LUA_SINGLE_TARGET="luajit -lua5-1" 10678 KiB

Total: 17 packages (17 new), Size of downloads: 34352 KiB

That’s too much lua so we’re going with vim instead but it was worth checking out. A little echo 'app-editors/vim X -lua -perl -python -racket -ruby -terminal -vim-pager' > /etc/portage/package.use/vim later and we’re set.

First encounter with udev

After syncing, I saw the eselect news read prompt and decided to take a look. I remembered that unfortunately the default now is to use systemd udev instead of eudev so I was planning on masking sys-fs/udev but thanks to reading the latest news I know I need to mask sys-apps/systemd-utils instead. The road is getting rocky already but we’ll move forward regardless. Being a fan of the s6 suite of software and mdevd being a device manager by the same author I thought I’d go with that but it’s not available in the main repository. No worries, mdev provided by busybox can work too.

The guide I followed for this part is the excellent gentoo wiki article about mdev. Armed with some echo 'sys-apps/busybox mdev static' > /etc/portage/package.use/busybox we have a device manager. To be honest I forgot about static initially so I ran emerge -avuDN @world so the USE changes would be in effect but without the correct flags for busybox. After I noticed I was missing the static flag, I added it and re-updated. Such is life sometimes. Running emerge -avc removed most of the undesireables but sys-apps/systemd-utils persisted. When trying to see what was keeping it here this is what I got:

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emerge -avc systemd-utils

Calculating dependencies... done!
  sys-apps/systemd-utils-250.7 pulled in by:
    virtual/tmpfiles-0-r3 requires sys-apps/systemd-utils[tmpfiles]


emerge -avc virtual/tmpfiles

Calculating dependencies... done!
  virtual/tmpfiles-0-r3 pulled in by:
    sys-apps/man-db-2.10.2-r1 requires virtual/tmpfiles, =virtual/tmpfiles-0-r3
    sys-apps/openrc-0.44.10 requires virtual/tmpfiles, =virtual/tmpfiles-0-r3

So it seems like man and openrc depend on it which is unfortunate but they at least depend on a virtual package so that if a systemd-free options exists we can use that instead. I could get rid of man, it’s not crucial, but that gets me nowhere since openrc also depends on tmpfiles. There is an alternative implementation that used to be the default by gentoo called opentmpfiles that isn’t active anymore but should work and is packaged by funtoo so there is an ebuild for it already. Writing a modified virtual/tmpfiles ebuild to include this is a TODO for later. There is also an implementation in rust. At any rate I seem to have gotten rid of udev which is a pretty big deal. To make sure we’re alerted in case something tries to reinstall it, let’s mask it. I made a file /etc/portage/package.mask/udev with the following contents:

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virtual/udev
sys-fs/udev
sys-fs/eudev
sys-fs/udev-init-scripts
virtual/libudev
dev-libs/libgudev
dev-python/pyudev

Continuing with the chroot

Now that that’s handled, where was I? In the new system, right. Setting the timezone and locale and… oh right! I forgot to mask the packages earlier.

Masking undesired software

After setting the timezone and locale I remembered that I only masked udev. We need to mask systemd, dbus, polkit, pam, networkmanager, pulseaudio, lvm, btrfs and wayland.

First up /etc/portage/package.mask/systemd:

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app-admin/systemdgenie
dev-ml/systemd
dev-python/python-systemd
sys-apps/gentoo-systemd-integration
sys-apps/systemd
sys-apps/systemd-bootchart
sys-apps/systemd-readahead
sys-apps/systemd-tmpfiles
#sys-apps/systemd-utils #masked. for now...
sys-boot/systemd-boot
sys-kernel/installkernel-systemd-boot
sys-process/systemd-cron

Next up, /etc/portage/package.mask/dbus:

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dev-cpp/sdbus-c++
dev-dotnet/ndesk-dbus
dev-dotnet/ndesk-dbus-glib
dev-haskell/dbus
dev-libs/dbus-c++
dev-libs/dbus-glib
dev-libs/libdbusmenu
dev-libs/libdbusmenu-qt
dev-libs/libmodbus
dev-perl/Net-DBus
dev-python/dbus-next
dev-python/dbus-python
dev-python/pydbus
dev-python/python-dbus-next
dev-python/python-dbusmock
dev-qt/qdbus
dev-qt/qdbusviewer
dev-qt/qtdbus
dev-util/dbus-test-runner
dev-util/gdbus-codegen
gnustep-libs/dbuskit
kde-frameworks/kdbusaddons
net-im/skype-dbus-mock
net-libs/dleyna-connector-dbus
sec-policy/selinux-dbus
sys-apps/dbus
sys-apps/dbus-broker
sys-apps/xdg-dbus-proxy

Moving on to /etc/portage/package.mask/polkit:

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gnome-extra/polkit-gnome
kde-plasma/polkit-kde-agent
mate-extra/mate-polkit
sys-auth/polkit
sys-auth/polkit-pkla-compat
sys-auth/polkit-qt
lxqt-base/lxqt-policykit
sec-policy/selinux-policykit

Can’t forget about /etc/portage/package.mask/pam:

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dev-erlang/epam
dev-ml/opam
dev-ml/opam-client
dev-ml/opam-core
dev-ml/opam-file-format
dev-ml/opam-format
dev-ml/opam-installer
dev-ml/opam-repository
dev-ml/opam-solver
dev-ml/opam-state
dev-perl/Authen-PAM
dev-php/pecl-pam
dev-python/python-pam
kde-plasma/kwallet-pam
net-mail/checkpassword-pam
sci-biology/paml
sys-auth/google-authenticator-libpam-hardened
sys-auth/nss-pam-ldapd
sys-auth/pam-gnupg
sys-auth/pam-pgsql
sys-auth/pam-script
sys-auth/pam_abl
sys-auth/pam_dotfile
sys-auth/pam_fprint
sys-auth/pam_krb5
sys-auth/pam_ldap
sys-auth/pam_mktemp
sys-auth/pam_mount
sys-auth/pam_mysql
sys-auth/pam_p11
sys-auth/pam_require
sys-auth/pam_skey
sys-auth/pam_smb
sys-auth/pam_ssh
sys-auth/pam_ssh_agent_auth
sys-auth/pam_u2f
sys-auth/pam_yubico
sys-auth/pambase
sys-libs/pam
sys-libs/pam_wrapper

Of course /etc/portage/package.mask/networkmanager:

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kde-frameworks/networkmanager-qt
net-misc/networkmanager
net-vpn/networkmanager-fortisslvpn
net-vpn/networkmanager-l2tp
net-vpn/networkmanager-libreswan
net-vpn/networkmanager-openconnect
net-vpn/networkmanager-openvpn
net-vpn/networkmanager-pptp
net-vpn/networkmanager-sstp
net-vpn/networkmanager-strongswan
net-vpn/networkmanager-vpnc
sec-policy/selinux-networkmanager
gnome-extra/nm-applet
gui-apps/nm-tray

Getting there /etc/portage/package.mask/pulseaudio:

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ev-python/pulsectl
media-libs/libpulse
media-libs/pulseaudio-qt
media-plugins/gst-plugins-pulse
#media-sound/apulse #we might need this
media-sound/pulseaudio
media-sound/pulseaudio-ctl
media-sound/pulseaudio-daemon
media-sound/pulseaudio-modules-bt
media-sound/pulseaudio-virtualmic
media-sound/pulseeffects
media-sound/pulsemixer
net-misc/pulseaudio-dlna
sec-policy/selinux-pulseaudio
xfce-extra/xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin
xfce-extra/xfce4-volumed-pulse

After that, /etc/portage/package.mask/lvm:

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app-backup/mylvmbackup
sys-fs/lvm2

Followed up by /etc/portage/package.mask/btrfs:

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app-backup/grub-btrfs
sys-fs/btrfs-heatmap
sys-fs/btrfs-progs
sys-fs/btrfsmaintenance
sys-fs/python-btrfs

Move b get out the way /etc/portage/package.mask/wayland:

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app-misc/wayland-utils
dev-cpp/waylandpp
dev-libs/plasma-wayland-protocols
dev-libs/wayland
dev-libs/wayland-protocols
dev-qt/qtwayland
dev-qt/qtwaylandscanner
dev-util/wayland-scanner
gui-apps/wayland-logout
gui-libs/egl-wayland
kde-frameworks/kwayland
kde-plasma/kwayland-integration
kde-plasma/kwayland-server
x11-apps/xisxwayland
x11-base/xwayland

Last and loneliest /etc/portage/package.mask/logind:

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sys-auth/elogind

This should about just about cover most of our bases. I might have gone a bit overboard in a few cases but not without reason. I’d rather block something related to the unwanted software and then find out I want to use it and need to comment it out than have to comb through all packages for any offenders.

Colonel trouble

Alright then with that handled we can install a kernel, a bootloader, fix up /etc/fstab and be on our merry way. Sounds easy enough, right? Right? This is coloring outside the lines expert edition, don’t be naive. If you think you should go for one of the distribution kernels, don’t or else dracut comes knocking on your door:

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emerge -av gentoo-kernel-bin

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!

!!! All ebuilds that could satisfy "virtual/udev" have been masked.
!!! One of the following masked packages is required to complete your request:
- virtual/udev-217-r5::gentoo (masked by: package.mask)
- virtual/udev-217-r3::gentoo (masked by: package.mask)

(dependency required by "sys-kernel/dracut-056-r1::gentoo" [ebuild])
(dependency required by "sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel-bin-5.15.59::gentoo[initramfs]" [ebuild])
(dependency required by "gentoo-kernel-bin" [argument])
For more information, see the MASKED PACKAGES section in the emerge
man page or refer to the Gentoo Handbook.

This seems easy enough to fix, echo 'sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel-bin -initramfs' > /etc/portage/package.use/gentoo-kernel-bin and we get:

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emerge -av gentoo-kernel-bin

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/elfutils-0.187::gentoo  USE="bzip2 nls utils -lzma -static-libs -test (-threads) -valgrind -verify-sig -zstd" 9,027 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] sys-devel/bc-1.07.1-r4::gentoo  USE="readline -libedit -static" 411 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] virtual/libelf-3-r1:0/1::gentoo  0 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel-bin-5.15.59:5.15.59::gentoo  USE="-initramfs -test" 190,647 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] virtual/dist-kernel-5.15.59:0/5.15.59::gentoo  0 KiB

Total: 5 packages (5 new), Size of downloads: 200,083 KiB

Would you like to merge these packages? [Yes/No]

Bootloader

It’s 3am right now and I’d rather not fight a bootloader. I’m giving up on rEFInd for the moment and installing grub.

Booting into the system

Of all the things that could go wrong, XFS is what bit me. I might have forgotten to install something or gentoo-kernel-bin doesn’t support XFS. After that I booted back into the live ISO, mounted the partitions, entered into the system, installed xfsprogs, rebooted and still no dice. The solution that feels better to me is to just reinstall and grab the opportunity to script this as well. I plan on doing that eventually but today is not the day so I went looking for a diffferent solution.

Changing the filesystem

A little scavenging online led me to a tool that says it can convert partitions from one filesystem to another, called fstransform. Since the laptop’s eMMC drive had ubuntu on it, I booted into there, installed git (which is one of the first things I usually install so you can tell how much I use that ubuntu install), build-essential, g++ and automake then compiled and ran the software according to the instructions in the README. With my fingers crossed, I tried booting into gentoo again and… SUCCESS! The fstab is wrong since I forgot to change it from XFS to ext4 so some errors came up and the partition UUID is different which caused a few more errors to appear but I booted into a tty. No matter that I never set a root password meaning I couldn’t log in and didn’t set up networking, this is still great news.

Small configuration and tools

After rebooting to the gentoo installation media hopefully for the last time, I did some common basic setup. This section of the installation did not lead to any issues but I’ll briefly cover it anyway.

/etc/fstab

First order of business was

Networking

I set the hostname in /etc/conf.d/hostname, set the usb ethernet interface to dhcp in /etc/conf.d/net, added a couple alternate names for 127.0.0.1 in /etc/hosts and installed dhcpcd.

System tools

The suggested defaults of sysklogd and cronie are fine with me so I installed them along with chrony and ntp for time sync. I also installed htop as well as sudo. Something I forgot was that pam provides su and since we’re not using it, the shadow implementation of su can be used instead. I had to do echo 'sys-apps/shadow su' > /etc/portage/package.use/shadow and then update again.

Package management extras

I prefer eix for searching, equery and other utilites from gentoolkit are very useful and eclean-kernel is just good manners so I got all of them installed. Don’t forget to run eix-update.

User

A non-root user is good security practice and some things won’t even run as root so a little useradd -m -G users,wheel,audio,video,usb,cdrom -s /bin/bash angle && passwd angle sets us up.

Ready, set, go!

With all of that complete, we’re ready to reboot. When doing so, a couple sh errors from mdev show up and neither the wired or wireless interfaces show up. Back into the live media we go. Time to do the dance: install linux-firmware, re-emerge and emerge --config the kernel, remake the grub config and try again. Reboot again and the problem persists. I suspect the problem has to do with the kernel at this point, possibly because I disabled initramfs. Serves me right for trying to take a shortcut instead of just writing a proper kernel config.

Investigation

After a bit of digging, it turns out it’s the module loading. I had to modprobe r8152 which is the right one for my usb ethernet adapter and then it showed up. With this discovery we can say goodbye to the installation media and continue in our journey.

Graphical environment

Now that we can successfully boot, let’s try to get an X environment. According to the gentoo wiki Xorg guide we need to set INPUT_DEVICES and VIDEO_CARDS in make.conf. I know my laptop uses the intel i915 driver for graphics so I’ll set the value to that and for input I’ll leave libinput since it’s there by default.

Installing Xorg

Let’s try emerging xorg-server now:

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emerge -pv xorg-server

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!

The following USE changes are necessary to proceed:
 (see "package.use" in the portage(5) man page for more details)
# required by media-libs/mesa-22.1.3::gentoo
# required by media-libs/libepoxy-1.5.10-r1::gentoo[egl]
# required by x11-base/xorg-server-21.1.4::gentoo[-minimal]
# required by x11-drivers/xf86-input-libinput-1.2.1::gentoo
# required by x11-base/xorg-drivers-21.1::gentoo[input_devices_libinput]
>=media-libs/libglvnd-1.4.0 X
# required by x11-base/xorg-drivers-21.1::gentoo[input_devices_libinput,-input_devices_evdev]
>=x11-base/xorg-server-21.1.4 udev
# required by x11-drivers/xf86-video-intel-2.99.917_p20201215::gentoo
# required by x11-base/xorg-drivers-21.1::gentoo[video_cards_i915]
# required by x11-base/xorg-server-21.1.4::gentoo[xorg]
# required by x11-drivers/xf86-input-libinput-1.2.1::gentoo
>=x11-libs/libdrm-2.4.112 video_cards_intel

 * In order to avoid wasting time, backtracking has terminated early
 * due to the above autounmask change(s). The --autounmask-backtrack=y
 * option can be used to force further backtracking, but there is no
 * guarantee that it will produce a solution.

!!! All ebuilds that could satisfy "virtual/libudev:=" have been masked.
!!! One of the following masked packages is required to complete your request:
- virtual/libudev-232-r7::gentoo (masked by: package.mask)
- virtual/libudev-232-r5::gentoo (masked by: package.mask)

(dependency required by "dev-libs/libinput-1.21.0-r1::gentoo" [ebuild])
(dependency required by "x11-drivers/xf86-input-libinput-1.2.1::gentoo" [ebuild])
(dependency required by "x11-base/xorg-drivers-21.1::gentoo[input_devices_libinput]" [ebuild])
(dependency required by "x11-base/xorg-server-21.1.4::gentoo[xorg]" [ebuild])
(dependency required by "x11-drivers/xf86-video-intel-2.99.917_p20201215::gentoo[dri]" [ebuild])
For more information, see the MASKED PACKAGES section in the emerge
man page or refer to the Gentoo Handbook.

Hmm, this doesn’t look very nice. The wiki article suggested tryint to emerge xorg-drivers on its own if the suggested settings don’t work. I’m sure they didn’t mean it this way but it’s a good suggestion for troubleshooting.

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emerge -pv xorg-drivers

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!

The following USE changes are necessary to proceed:
 (see "package.use" in the portage(5) man page for more details)
# required by x11-base/xorg-drivers-21.1::gentoo[-input_devices_evdev,input_devices_libinput]
# required by xorg-drivers (argument)
>=x11-base/xorg-server-21.1.4 udev
# required by x11-drivers/xf86-video-intel-2.99.917_p20201215::gentoo
# required by x11-base/xorg-drivers-21.1::gentoo[video_cards_i915]
# required by x11-base/xorg-server-21.1.4::gentoo[xorg]
# required by x11-drivers/xf86-input-libinput-1.2.1::gentoo
>=x11-libs/libdrm-2.4.112 video_cards_intel
# required by media-libs/mesa-22.1.3::gentoo
# required by media-libs/libepoxy-1.5.10-r1::gentoo[egl]
# required by x11-base/xorg-server-21.1.4::gentoo[-minimal]
# required by x11-drivers/xf86-input-libinput-1.2.1::gentoo
# required by x11-base/xorg-drivers-21.1::gentoo[input_devices_libinput]
# required by xorg-drivers (argument)
>=media-libs/libglvnd-1.4.0 X

 * In order to avoid wasting time, backtracking has terminated early
 * due to the above autounmask change(s). The --autounmask-backtrack=y
 * option can be used to force further backtracking, but there is no
 * guarantee that it will produce a solution.

!!! All ebuilds that could satisfy "virtual/libudev:=" have been masked.
!!! One of the following masked packages is required to complete your request:
- virtual/libudev-232-r7::gentoo (masked by: package.mask)
- virtual/libudev-232-r5::gentoo (masked by: package.mask)

(dependency required by "x11-base/xorg-server-21.1.4::gentoo[udev]" [ebuild])
(dependency required by "x11-base/xorg-drivers-21.1::gentoo[-input_devices_evdev,input_devices_libinput]" [ebuild])
(dependency required by "xorg-drivers" [argument])
For more information, see the MASKED PACKAGES section in the emerge
man page or refer to the Gentoo Handbook.

This looks a little simpler to make sense of so let’s analyze the dependency chain:

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curl -o /var/db/repos/local/dev-libs/libinput/libinput-1.15.5.ebuild https://gitlab.com/insanitywholesale/inherently-overlay/-/raw/master/dev-libs/libinput/libinput-1.15.5.ebuild
curl -o /var/db/repos/local/dev-libs/libinput/files/libinput-optional-udev.patch https://gitlab.com/insanitywholesale/inherently-overlay/-/raw/master/dev-libs/libinput/files/libinput-optional-udev.patch
curl -o /var/db/repos/local/dev-libs/libinput/Manifest https://gitlab.com/insanitywholesale/inherently-overlay/-/raw/master/dev-libs/libinput/Manifest`

To test if everything well we can pretend to emerge the exact version of libinput:

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emerge -pv '=dev-libs/libinput-1.15.5'

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild  N     ] sys-libs/mtdev-1.1.6::gentoo  290 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/libevdev-1.12.1::gentoo  USE="-doc -test" 437 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/libinput-1.15.5:0/10::local  USE="-doc -test" INPUT_DEVICES="-wacom" 570 KiB

Total: 3 packages (3 new), Size of downloads: 1,295 KiB

Then we can mask the newer versions using echo '>dev-libs/libinput-1.15.5' > /etc/portage/package.mask/libinput But if we try installing xorg-drivers we see not all is well:

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emerge -pv xorg-drivers

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!

The following USE changes are necessary to proceed:
 (see "package.use" in the portage(5) man page for more details)
# required by x11-base/xorg-drivers-21.1::gentoo[input_devices_libinput,-input_devices_evdev]
# required by xorg-drivers (argument)
>=x11-base/xorg-server-21.1.4 udev
# required by x11-drivers/xf86-video-intel-2.99.917_p20201215::gentoo
# required by x11-base/xorg-drivers-21.1::gentoo[video_cards_i915]
# required by x11-base/xorg-server-21.1.4::gentoo[xorg]
# required by x11-drivers/xf86-input-libinput-1.2.1::gentoo
>=x11-libs/libdrm-2.4.112 video_cards_intel
# required by media-libs/mesa-22.1.3::gentoo
# required by media-libs/libepoxy-1.5.10-r1::gentoo[egl]
# required by x11-base/xorg-server-21.1.4::gentoo[-minimal]
# required by x11-drivers/xf86-input-libinput-1.2.1::gentoo
# required by x11-base/xorg-drivers-21.1::gentoo[input_devices_libinput]
# required by xorg-drivers (argument)
>=media-libs/libglvnd-1.4.0 X

 * In order to avoid wasting time, backtracking has terminated early
 * due to the above autounmask change(s). The --autounmask-backtrack=y
 * option can be used to force further backtracking, but there is no
 * guarantee that it will produce a solution.

!!! All ebuilds that could satisfy "virtual/libudev:=" have been masked.
!!! One of the following masked packages is required to complete your request:
- virtual/libudev-232-r7::gentoo (masked by: package.mask)
- virtual/libudev-232-r5::gentoo (masked by: package.mask)

(dependency required by "x11-base/xorg-server-21.1.4::gentoo[udev]" [ebuild])
(dependency required by "x11-base/xorg-drivers-21.1::gentoo[input_devices_libinput,-input_devices_evdev]" [ebuild])
(dependency required by "xorg-drivers" [argument])
For more information, see the MASKED PACKAGES section in the emerge
man page or refer to the Gentoo Handbook.

The problem here is that the xorg-drivers ebuild which you can read here forces xorg-server to have the udev USE flag enabled. We’ll have to go through a similar procedure as before to fix this. Run mkdir -p /var/db/repos/local/x11-base/xorg-drivers to create the directory structure for this package and then

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curl -o /var/db/repos/local/x11-base/xorg-drivers/xorg-drivers-21.1.ebuild https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/plain/x11-base/xorg-drivers/xorg-drivers-21.1.ebuild

Following that, delete lines 61 and 66 and then cd /var/db/repos/local/x11-base/xorg-drivers && pkgdev manifest. In my case the local ebuild repository has higher priority so now when trying to install xorg-server get:

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Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild  N     ] x11-misc/util-macros-1.19.3::gentoo  83 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-misc/xbitmaps-1.1.2-r1::gentoo  127 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] sys-devel/llvm-common-14.0.6::gentoo  USE="-verify-sig" 103,143 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-libs/pixman-0.40.0::gentoo  USE="(-loongson2f) -static-libs -test" CPU_FLAGS_X86="mmxext sse2 -ssse3" 620 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-misc/xkeyboard-config-2.36::gentoo  861 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] gui-libs/display-manager-init-1.0-r4::gentoo  0 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] sys-libs/mtdev-1.1.6::gentoo  290 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] sys-libs/binutils-libs-2.38-r2:0/2.38::gentoo  USE="nls -64-bit-bfd (-cet) -multitarget -static-libs" 23,287 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] app-crypt/rhash-1.4.2::gentoo  USE="nls ssl -debug -static-libs" 408 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/jsoncpp-1.9.5:0/25::gentoo  USE="-doc -test" 211 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-python/pygments-2.12.0-r1::gentoo  USE="-test" PYTHON_TARGETS="python3_10 (-pypy3) -python3_8 -python3_9 (-python3_11)" 4,182 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-python/mako-1.2.1::gentoo  USE="-doc -test" PYTHON_TARGETS="python3_10 (-pypy3) -python3_8 -python3_9 (-python3_11)" 479 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-libs/libXext-1.3.4::gentoo  USE="-doc" 380 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] media-fonts/font-util-1.3.3::gentoo  140 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-libs/libxkbfile-1.1.0::gentoo  357 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-libs/libxshmfence-1.3-r2::gentoo  302 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-libs/libXfixes-6.0.0::gentoo  USE="-doc" 291 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-apps/iceauth-1.0.9::gentoo  128 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-apps/rgb-1.0.6-r1::gentoo  136 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-libs/libxcvt-0.1.2::gentoo  10 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/libevdev-1.12.1::gentoo  USE="-doc -test" 437 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-libs/libXrender-0.9.10-r2::gentoo  302 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] app-arch/libarchive-3.6.1:0/13::gentoo  USE="acl bzip2 e2fsprogs iconv lzma xattr -blake2 -expat -lz4 -lzo -nettle -static-libs -verify-sig -zstd" 7,258 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/libuv-1.44.1:0/1::gentoo  1,272 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-libs/libfontenc-1.1.4::gentoo  313 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-python/docutils-0.19::gentoo  PYTHON_TARGETS="python3_10 (-pypy3) -python3_8 -python3_9 (-python3_11)" 2,009 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-libs/libpciaccess-0.16-r1::gentoo  USE="zlib" 359 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] media-libs/libglvnd-1.4.0::gentoo  USE="X -test" 551 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-libs/libXmu-1.1.3::gentoo  USE="ipv6 -doc" 386 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-apps/xkbcomp-1.4.5::gentoo  246 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-libs/libXfont2-2.0.5::gentoo  USE="bzip2 ipv6 -doc -truetype" 513 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-libs/libXScrnSaver-1.2.3::gentoo  USE="-doc" 285 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-libs/libinput-1.15.5:0/10::local  USE="-doc -test" INPUT_DEVICES="-wacom" 570 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-libs/libXxf86vm-1.1.4-r2::gentoo  USE="-doc" 289 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-libs/libXrandr-1.5.2::gentoo  USE="-doc" 323 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] dev-util/cmake-3.22.4::gentoo  USE="ncurses -doc -emacs -qt5 -test" 9,553 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-libs/libdrm-2.4.112::gentoo  USE="-valgrind" VIDEO_CARDS="intel -amdgpu (-exynos) (-freedreno) -nouveau (-omap) -radeon (-tegra) (-vc4) (-vivante) -vmware" 442 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-apps/xauth-1.1.2::gentoo  154 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-apps/xrdb-1.2.1::gentoo  140 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-apps/xinit-1.4.1-r1::gentoo  USE="-twm" 173 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] sys-devel/llvm-14.0.6-r2:14::gentoo  USE="binutils-plugin libffi ncurses -debug -doc -exegesis -libedit -test -verify-sig -xar -xml -z3" LLVM_TARGETS="(AArch64) (AMDGPU) (ARM) (AVR) (BPF) (Hexagon) (Lanai) (MSP430) (Mips)
(NVPTX) (PowerPC) (RISCV) (Sparc) (SystemZ) (VE) (WebAssembly) (X86) (XCore) (-ARC) (-CSKY) (-M68k)" 229 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] sys-devel/llvmgold-14::gentoo  0 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] media-libs/mesa-22.1.3::gentoo  USE="X gles2 llvm zstd -d3d9 -debug -gles1 -lm-sensors -opencl -osmesa (-selinux) -test -unwind -vaapi -valgrind -vdpau -vulkan -vulkan-overlay -wayland -xa -xvmc -zink" CPU_FLAGS_X86="sse2" VIDEO_CARDS="(-freedreno) -intel (-lima) -nouveau (-panfrost) -r300 -r600 -radeon -radeonsi (-v3d) (-vc4) -virgl (-vivante) -vmware" 15,642 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] media-libs/libepoxy-1.5.10-r1::gentoo  USE="X egl -test" 325 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-base/xorg-server-21.1.4:0/21.1.4::gentoo  USE="xorg -debug -elogind -minimal (-selinux) -suid -systemd -test -udev -unwind -xcsecurity -xephyr -xnest -xvfb" 4,825 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-base/xorg-drivers-21.1::local  INPUT_DEVICES="libinput -elographics -evdev -joystick -synaptics -vmmouse -void -wacom" VIDEO_CARDS="i915 -amdgpu -ast -dummy -fbdev (-freedreno) (-geode) -glint -intel -mga -nouveau -nv
-nvidia (-omap) -qxl -r128 -radeon -radeonsi -siliconmotion (-tegra) (-vc4) -vesa -via -virtualbox -vmware" 0 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-drivers/xf86-input-libinput-1.2.1::gentoo  306 KiB
[ebuild  N     ] x11-drivers/xf86-video-intel-2.99.917_p20201215::gentoo  USE="dri sna -debug -tools -udev -uxa -xvmc" 1,222 KiB

Total: 48 packages (48 new), Size of downloads: 183,533 KiB

The following USE changes are necessary to proceed:
 (see "package.use" in the portage(5) man page for more details)
# required by media-libs/mesa-22.1.3::gentoo
# required by media-libs/libepoxy-1.5.10-r1::gentoo[egl]
# required by x11-base/xorg-server-21.1.4::gentoo[-minimal]
# required by x11-drivers/xf86-input-libinput-1.2.1::gentoo
# required by x11-base/xorg-drivers-21.1::local[input_devices_libinput]
>=media-libs/libglvnd-1.4.0 X
# required by x11-drivers/xf86-video-intel-2.99.917_p20201215::gentoo
# required by x11-base/xorg-drivers-21.1::local[video_cards_i915]
# required by x11-base/xorg-server-21.1.4::gentoo[xorg]
# required by x11-drivers/xf86-input-libinput-1.2.1::gentoo
>=x11-libs/libdrm-2.4.112 video_cards_intel

 * In order to avoid wasting time, backtracking has terminated early
 * due to the above autounmask change(s). The --autounmask-backtrack=y
 * option can be used to force further backtracking, but there is no
 * guarantee that it will produce a solution.

Which is awesome! Just to be safe, I did echo '>x11-base/xorg-drivers-21.1' > /etc/portage/package.mask/xorg-drivers before installing xorg-server. Now we’ll do emerge -av instead of emerge -pv so the USE changes are staged and then etc-update to finalize them before installing xorg-server. Additionally, echo 'x11-base/xorg-server suid' > /etc/portage/package.use/xorg-server because without (e)logind we need that to be able to start an X session.

And now we can finally install xorg-server. Since it pulls in llvm I left it to install overnight.

Starting Xorg

Since git is installed, I pulled down my customized versions of dwm and st to have a window manager and a terminal for testing. This required libXft and libXinerama to be installed since they’re build dependencies. After a quick echo 'exec dwm' > ~/.xinitrc and startx dwm started up successfully! Keyboard and mouse don’t seem to be working though.

Input Devices

The gentoo-kernel-bin package got me this far but now it’s a bottleneck. To remedy the situation I described previously I configured a custom kernel and left it to compile. The important bit was to disable modules so everything is built-in and we don’t need to worry about module loading and all the cruft that comes with that. Keeping in mind that this was done on a dual-core Celeron running at a maximum of 1.6GHz, it takes a while even with the unnecessary things disabled.

After recompiling the kernel and rebooting into it, the same problem persists. This made me turn my attention to what input drivers I’m using. I assumed libinput would do the trick but it doesn’t seem to be that simple. Next thing to try is enable synaptics by changing INPUT_DEVICES="libinput" to INPUT_DEVICES="libinput synaptics" in /etc/portage/make.conf and run an update. After rebooting and running startx nothing seems to have changed.

Any and all opinions on this site are mine and mine alone.
The source code for this site is in this repository and the docker images of it are on dockerhub.