Stage tarball

A Stage tarball is an archive of the basic files used for the installation of Gentoo Linux. It can be generated with catalyst using the appropriate specs files.

Stage 1
Stage 1 tarballs are generated from a file. Each system profile has a different file.

Stage 2
Stage 2 tarballs contain the same packages as a stage 1 tarball with one caveat: stage 2 tarballs are compiled from the stage 1 tarball.

Stage 3
Stage 3 tarballs are compiled from stage 2 tarballs, but contain a system set.

Stages offered in architecture specific versions as stage 3 on get.gentoo.org and hosted on distfiles.gentoo.org/releases/ /autobuilds/

Downloading and decompressing a stage 3 tarball as described in Gentoo handbook will install an almost-complete and almost-functional system (the most important parts still missing are a kernel and a bootloader).

Stage 4
Some semi-official stage 4 tarballs have recently become available for on distfiles.gentoo.org.

External resources

 * http://www.funtoo.org/Stage_Tarball - Stage tarball explained on the Funtoo Linux wiki.