Gentoo VirtualBox Image Builder

About

Time saving unattended quick installation script to local VirtualBox for Gentoo.

Prerequisites

VirtualBox
openssh, openssl, bash, curl, coreutils (Linux and macOS)
gnupg (for livecd/admincd GPG validation)

NOTE: on macOS use homebrew to install missing tools

Usage

Run ./gentoo-vbox-builder.sh --help for help.

Usually you just need to run script and wait until it will finish the job:

./gentoo-vbox-builder.sh

By default, root password will be Gentoo123 and locally available ssh public key will be also installed for password-less authentication over SSH.

Some options could be helpful to solve different problems and speedup the process:

--use-livecd-kernel yes - Use precompiled kernel, modules and initramfs from LiveCD. The fastest way to get bootable Gentoo.
--use-admincd - Workaround if minimal install cd is broken.
--gentoo-stage3 - Choose specific stage3 to use for bootstrap.
--gentoo-profile - Choose specific profile (slow build time if used, experimental).
--root-password - Choose root password or disable password-based auth (if empty).

There are more options available, run ./gentoo-vbox-builder.sh --help to learn more.

If specific stage3 is broken, for example, stage3-amd64-systemd then you still could build using profile switch from base profile and rebuild the world, but it will significantly increase the build time.

Please note, some profiles have no prebuilt stage3 so the only way to get them is to use option --gentoo-profile but it will be most likely much slower than if prebuilt stage3 is used.

Systemd examples:

# use precompiled stage3 with systemd - fast
./gentoo-vbox-builder.sh --gentoo-stage3 amd64-systemd
# use precompiled stage3 but rebuild with systemd support - average
./gentoo-vbox-builder.sh --gentoo-stage3 amd64 --gentoo-profile default/linux/amd64/17.0/systemd
# use precompiled stage3 but rebuild with systemd support and migrate lib32 - slow
./gentoo-vbox-builder.sh --gentoo-stage3 amd64 --gentoo-profile default/linux/amd64/17.1/systemd

Please note, 17.1 experimental profiles have the slowest build time (causing gcc/glib recompilation).

Sometimes Gentoo mirrors are slightly out of sync. That could cause checksum errors and GPG errors. In most cases it is a trancient error and process will success after retry. By the way, you could set explicitly Gentoo mirror to use with --gentoo-mirror option. List of Gentoo mirrors is available here: https://www.gentoo.org/downloads/mirrors/

Tested configurations

Not all profiles/stage3 combinations are tested. Please report an issue if something doesn't work as expected.

Below are verified combinations that should work well.

Tested on MacBook Pro Retina 13" (Early 2013), 3.0 GHz Core i7, 2 hyper-threaded cpus (1 physical core) shared with guest. Tests below have

./gentoo-vbox-builder.sh --gentoo-stage3 i686 --guest-name "Gentoo i686" --use-livecd-kernel yes
# Process took ~15 minutes

./gentoo-vbox-builder.sh --gentoo-stage3 i686 --guest-name "Gentoo i686"
# Process took ~50 minutes

./gentoo-vbox-builder.sh --gentoo-stage3 amd64 --guest-name "Gentoo amd64" --use-livecd-kernel yes
# Process took ~15 minutes

./gentoo-vbox-builder.sh --gentoo-stage3 amd64 --guest-name "Gentoo amd64"
# Process took ~60 minutes

./gentoo-vbox-builder.sh --gentoo-stage3 amd64-systemd --guest-name "Gentoo amd64 systemd"
# Process took ~60 minutes

./gentoo-vbox-builder.sh --gentoo-stage3 amd64 --gentoo-profile default/linux/amd64/17.0/systemd  --guest-name "Gentoo amd64 17.0 systemd"
# Process took ~100 minutes

./gentoo-vbox-builder.sh --gentoo-stage3 amd64 --gentoo-profile default/linux/amd64/17.1/systemd  --guest-name "Gentoo amd64 17.1 systemd"
# Process took 197 minutes

Troubleshooting

If you are getting error "gpg: keyserver receive failed: No route to host", then try to use different GPG server, for example:

GENTOO_GPG_SERVER="ipv4.pool.sks-keyservers.net" ./gentoo-vbox-builder.sh ...

Screenshots

Reporting Issues

Gentoo is rolling release system so the builder that worked Yesterday could stop working Today. This application requires periodical maintenance to ensure that it is still working on latest Gentoo and latest VirtualBox. Please file a bug if you are experiencing an issue and we will take care of it.

Please use the GitHub issue tracker for any bugs or feature suggestions.

Contributing

Contributions are very welcome!

Please submit patches to code or documentation as GitHub pull requests!

For code changes please consider doing a few builds to verify that there are no any regressions related to amd64/i686 arch support, openrc/systemd support and livecd/compiled kernel support:

--gentoo-stage3 amd64 --use-livecd-kernel yes
--gentoo-stage3 amd64-systemd --use-livecd-kernel no
--gentoo-stage3 i686 --use-livecd-kernel yes
--gentoo-stage3 i686-systemd --use-livecd-kernel no

Contributions must be licensed under the MIT.

Copyright

gentoo-vbox-builder is licensed under the MIT.

A copy of this license is included in the file LICENSE.txt

u5d60d9/gentoo-vbox-builder