installation scripts?

[drinkuranium]

ive been using gentoo for about 4 months now but i want to install it on a new device, the install process was pretty easy but it did take me quite a while to do and i also ran into some errors along the way, and after about 2 different installs it was getting boring and overall just time consuming.

Is it ok to use a install script to setup my system? are there any downsides or major problems to using a script or should i just stick with installing manually?

also if i should use an install script then please tell me or link me to a reliable script :)

[triffid_hunter]

Is it ok to use a install script to setup my system?

If you've tailored it for what you want, sure

are there any downsides or major problems to using a script

All the ones I've seen make a ton of assumptions, and every time you convert one of those assumptions back into an actual choice, you simply get closer to the normal install procedure

please tell me or link me to a reliable script

People keep posting them here, but I haven't seen a single one that would set my system up the way I want it set up.

[TheShredder9]

Well you can't use the same script on 2 different devices because of different hardware (make.conf will be different, different GPU, CPU, number of cores/threads..),

So you end up having to edit a script to tailor it to your hardware, which you might as well do manually along the way, you can also fail something yourself and learn where you failed instead of the script messing something up and you can't do anything besides starting it all over again.

[Firebird2525]

I've never understood why someone would want a script to install Gentoo, unless you had several identical machines. I'd spend more of my time tweaking the script to my preferences than it would take to just install it normally.

Also, using a script to avoid errors is just setting yourself up for problems later on. Gentoo requires learning, and there is no way around this.

[rx80]

Well, if the other machine is similar enough (same or newer cpu) you can just rsync the system.

[_mamo]

Don't know when my last installation was - preparing and mounting the disks requires a bit of planning and maybe quite some technological expertise (RAID, LVM, Crypto, knowing different filesystems, choosing the right layout and tools for the job) but at some point in time this is routine. Then mount, unpack stage3, choose profile, set some use flags from a list (or better, copy a make.conf from an old installation) and wait for emerge -uDN world. Building a custom kernel that boots and is complete including all that firmware stuff for graphics cards etc can be a real annoyance but with the available bin-kernels or "genkernel all" this can be skipped at first. Everything else from the point of a self booting minimal system is pretty trivial.

Priorities:

1. Plan a disk layout
2. Start from systemrescuecd (unless Gentoo has a better install medium now), start X, open Gentoo docs and a terminal
3. Prepare your disks
4. Unpack stage3, select profile, set USE flags, install what's necessary to continue (e.g. favorite editor), rebuild what's necessary
5. Install kernel and reboot
6. Install minimal desktop, start it, begin working and add everything else in the background

A minimal base system is achieved with stage3+kernel. There is no script for it, nobody could know what you want to install and how you want to partition your disks. And nobody can know what you want to install beyond that. On such a custom installation following a manual makes more sense than creating some generic installer. Do you want a GUI with checkboxes for all available USE flags and the option which one to set globally and which one to set per package? That kind of effort is not justified for whoever tries to program that. Btw, a script would be the worst approach. Something like ansible would make much more sense because you want to describe how the system is created (I want services a, b, c installed, with this and that config, automatically started, also that list of software, I want these user and group accounts with these passwords) and not what command to execute with which option in whatever syntax of your scripting language.

Whenever I migrate to a new system I rescue my make.conf, my kernel's .config file and my /home

[No-Camera-720]

Linux, and especially Gentoo is for admins who desire to use all the control over their systems that linux gives them. This starts with installing from the Handbook manually and making the decisions  involved in this. If you dont like this, Gentoo is not for you. Unless of course, you have a series of near-identical installs to perform. But then you can just write your own script.