server-setup

Design/Interface: The provisioning process is divided into three phases: 1) pre-chroot (2 hardcoded scripts that is executed in order) - disk and filsystem preparation (1_provision_fs.sh) - installation of base system (unzipping stage3) (2_install_system.sh) 2) during chroot (executes an arbitraty amount of scripts arranged by the number indicated in filename) - Running all of Gentoo-specific things (portage prep, timezone, profile setting)

Assumptions:

1. The provisioning process assumes that you can chroot into the device. This simplifies the design for my peanut brain.

Question marks/ possible additional learning points:

1. Bootable disk creation
   • dd works but it takes up the whole drive and putting it in one partition doesnt work
   • Rufus does it as I expect (1 bootable partition and the rest for data like provisioning scripts)
2. Manual steps when it comes to provisioning the device
   • BIOS setup (like making it boot into the USB instead of the out-of-the-box OS)
3. Required post-creation steps
   • efibootmgr clean up. What if there is already an efiboot entry for the out-of-the-box OS.

Improvements:

1. put /etc/portage as part of source control. Maybe it's own git repo?
2. For configuration setup a config.json or config.toml or config.yaml (which ever you prefer) to configure input for the scripts. Maybe a good naming convention would be PYCONF_* PYCONF_TARGET_DRIVE PYCONF_ROOT_PARTITION It might be a bit complicated for now, park it. 1) Phase 1 install root 2) Phase 2 configure system chroot
3. Distcc fun. Include cross compilation.

Also, think about making ths whole process reproducible. Possible routes:

1. Using a fixed stage3 and version controlled portage repo (/var/db/repos/gentoo)
2. Creating a stage 4 image (will likely need a bigger bootstrap drive)

TODO:

1. hardcorded shits (/etc/fstab, mount points /dev/nvme vs /dev/sda)
2. Hard coded to have 3 partitions for /efi, root, and swap.
3. Kernel version is automatically selected. Maybe improve this when we decide root build kernel from source.
4. Create a profiles flag so different profiles can be documented
5. Support possible profile scripts so that different types of devices can be automatically provisioned
   • Types of machines so far: personal, rpi3b+, rpi5, un100d, another personal machine.
   • Support for possible chrooting on another machine so provisioning is easier
     • this will mean creating a post-provisioning script that will be run on first startup.
6. cleanup is missing.