392 Part III . Choosing and Installing a (Virtual web hosting)
Monday, December 31st, 2007392 Part III . Choosing and Installing a Linux Distribution If you have a slow processor, consider getting precompiled packages because the full compilation process can take a long time. Obtain the Gentoo installation CD image from the CD that comes with this book, as described in Appendix A. With the install CD in hand, here s how to install Gentoo on your computer: 1. Insert CD. Insert the CD (minimal or universal) into your computer s CD or DVD drive. 2. Reboot. Reboot your computer. 3. Boot CD. From the boot prompt, press Enter. (If you are not able to boot the install medium, press F1 or F2 to see other install options that might help you get going.) Gentoo should detect your computer hardware, start the install process, and display a boot prompt. 4. Set date. Type the date command to make sure the date and time are set correctly. If they need to be changed, use the date command (with options) to change them. For example, to set the date to 8:15 a.m. June 15, 2006, type: # date 061508152006 5. Load modules. If some piece of hardware was not auto-detected, you may have to load the module you need to access that hardware. Use the modprobe command with the name of the module you want to load. For example, to load the module for an Orinoco wireless LAN card, you can type: # modprobe orinoco Do a Web search for Linux and the name of the hardware not being detected to find out what module to load. 6. Configure network. Type ifconfig eth0 to see if the Internet connection to your first Ethernet card is up and running. Then try to ping a computer on the Internet to make sure you can get out (for example, ping www.gentoo.org). If you are not able to pick up a DHCP server to automatically connect to the Internet, you can set up your Internet connection manually, by typing: # net-setup eth0 Refer to the network configuration information in the installation procedure in Chapter 8 to help you answer questions about setting up your Internet connection manually. 7. Partition hard disk. Partition your hard disk to prepare it to receive your Gentoo installation. You can use the fdisk utility to do this. Gentoo recommends a 64MB boot volume (ext2 file system), a swap partition that s double the size of your RAM, and a large root (/) partition (ReiserFS file system). Start fdisk by following the command with the name of your first hard disk (such as /dev/hda or /dev/sda for your first IDE or SCSI hard disk, respectively). Tip
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