Knowledge Base:Continuing after an interrupted installation

Synopsis

The Gentoo Linux installation method is a manual approach which can take some time to perform, especially if the user performs it for the first time. However it is possible to interrupt the installation and continue later, but a few vital steps are required.

Environment

This article is applicable to Gentoo Linux installations that have not been finished.

Analysis

The Gentoo Linux installation uses a phased approach (roughly the chapters of the installation section in the Gentoo Handbook) which allows users to interrupt an installation and continue later. Of course, persistent changes that were previously made do not need to be reiterated again.

Resolution

Getting the file systems ready

If "Preparing the disks" was not finished

Chapter 4 ("Preparing the disks") must be completed before it is possible for changes to persist on the drives. If the disks have been partitioned but do on to have any file system on them, then continue from that step. There is no need to re-partition the disks if the work has been done.

Make sure that the file systems are mounted before continuing:

root #swapon /dev/sda2

root #mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/gentoo

root #mkdir /mnt/gentoo/boot

root #mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/gentoo/boot

If "Preparing the disks" was finished

If the chapter on preparing the disks was finished, then simply remount the partitions:

root #swapon /dev/sda2

root #mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/gentoo

root #mkdir /mnt/gentoo/boot

root #mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/gentoo/boot

Note
The above command was an example of how to remount a typical Gentoo installation. Substitute the device names and partitions as needed to properly remount the partitions.

Getting the chroot ready

The next steps in the Gentoo Installation is to prepare the chroot by downloading and extracting the proper files on the file systems. If the middle of this process (i.e. chapter 5 ("Installing the Gentoo installation files") was interrupted then simply continue at the step that was last performed.

If this section was finished as well as chapter 6 ("Installing the Gentoo base system"), section Chrooting, then what is needed is a remounting of the /dev, /proc, and /sys locations and chroot:

root #mount --types proc /proc /mnt/gentoo/proc

root #mount --rbind /sys /mnt/gentoo/sys

root #mount --make-rslave /mnt/gentoo/sys

root #mount --rbind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev

root #mount --make-rslave /mnt/gentoo/dev

root #chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash

root #env-update

root #source /etc/profile

Continuing after the chroot

From the moment after the chroot, continue from the last step performed; all changes made in a chrooted environment will be persistent changes.

See also

• Recovering from a kernel boot failure uses a similar approach (Knowledge Base).