[TriLUG] Recommendations for a systemd-less Linux distribution

[Steve Litt via TriLUG]

On Thu, 16 Jul 2015 07:43:43 -0400 (EDT)
William Sutton via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org> wrote:

> And if you do want to run a machine with less horsepower
> (say a laptop), you can always compile on a faster machine and
> distribute the packages.

Hi William,

For the sake of fast installation, the following has occurred to me,
and I'd like to run it by you.

1) Make a Qemu virtual disk whose hardware is, to the best of your
   ability, similar to the eventual bare metal target. Make the disk
   "too big" for reasons I'll explain later.

2) Install Gentoo exactly according to the Gentoo handbook
   instructions, and get everything working.

3) Change your partitions around until they're the same as the ones you
   desire on your eventual bare metal target. Use the extra disk space
   to make extra partitions. Copy stuff and change /etc/fstab
   and /etc/lilo.conf (or whatever Grub2 conf if you drive on that side
   of the street) to accommodate.

4) Tgz up every mountpoint.

5) Boot the metal with System Rescue CD, and lay down the desired
   partition tables and partitions, which match what you did on the VM.
   Edit /etc/fstab accordingly -- actually, probably just
   copy /etc/fstab from the VM.

6) Mount everything.

7) Untar everything in its correct place.

8) Do the rain dance for /dev, /sys, /dev/pts, /dev/shm, and /proc.

9) Mount all disks and chroot to the root partition.

10) Using lshw (you need to have emerged it on the VM, it takes a
    *long* time), make sure your devices are what you think they are
    and are functional.

11) Make sure /etc/fstab represents the real situation.

12) Edit lilo.conf to make sure everything is as it should be, then run
   /sbin/lilo.

13) Reboot the metal without System Rescue CD. Gentoo should come up.
    If not, go back to System Rescue CD and chroot and troubleshoot.

I have a feeling the preceding would make a weekend project into a 10
hour project, but I haven't actually done it. Any thoughts?

SteveT

Steve Litt 
July 2015 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21