F2FS Install Guide

Introduction

These docs assume you have a "PC compatible" computer system with a standard PC BIOS. Many new computers support UEFI for booting, which is a new firmware interface that frequently replaces the older MBR-based BIOS. If you have a system with UEFI, you will want to use this documentation along with the UEFI Install Guide, which will augment these instructions and explain how to get your system to boot. You may need to change your PC BIOS settings to enable or disable UEFI booting. The UEFI Install Guide has more information on this, and steps on how to determine if your system supports UEFI.

Installing on F2FS isn't terribly different from installing on XFS or EXT4;; but there are enough factors that warrant a guide of its own

Live CD

Funtoo doesn't provide an "official" Funtoo Live CD, but there are plenty of good ones out there to choose from.

A great choice is the System Rescue as it contains lots of tools and utilities and supports F2FS and BTRFS.

To learn how to install SystemRescueCd on a USB-stick, see

It is also possible to install Funtoo Linux using many other Linux-based live CDs. Generally, any modern bootable Linux live CD or live USB media will work. See requirements for an overview of what the Live Media must provide to allow a problem-free install of Funtoo Linux.

To begin a Funtoo Linux installation, boot your preferred live media & start a commandline session.

Starting an SSH session

This is only required if you wish to perform the installation process on a computer other than where you are installing funtoo to

service ssh start; passwd; ifconfig

This starts SSH, asks for a root password, and then displays the IP address

Install required programs

apt-get update; apt-get install f2fs-tools elinks

F2FS is not included in current linux kernels, and elinks is used to download the stage3 tarball

Partitioning

cfdisk /dev/sda

Your partition layout should be similar to

Partition	Size	MBR Block Device (fdisk)	MBR Code
/boot	512 MB	/dev/sda1	83
swap	1.5 to 2x RAM for low-memory systems and production servers; otherwise 2GB.	/dev/sda2	82
/ (root)	minimum of 10GB. Note: to compile the debian-sources kernel, requires a minimum of 14GB free space in /tmp; consider a minimum of 20GB in this case.	/dev/sda3	83
/home	User storage and media. Typically most of the disk.	/dev/sda4 (if created)	83

Formatting

mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sda1
mkswap /dev/sda2
swapon /dev/sda2
mkfs.f2fs  -l root -O extra_attr,inode_checksum,sb_checksum  /dev/sda3
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda4

Mounting the new system

mkdir /mnt/funtoo
mount -t f2fs /dev/sda3 /mnt/funtoo
mkdir /mnt/funtoo/boot
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/funtoo/boot
mkdir /mnt/funtoo/home
mount -o noatime /dev/sda4 /mnt/funtoo/home

Downloading the system

cd /mnt/funtoo/
elinks build.funtoo.org

Navigate to your build, arch, and subarch and save stage3

Installing stage3

cd /mnt/funtoo
tar --numeric-owner --xattrs --xattrs-include='*' -xpf stage3-latest.tar.xz
rm -f stage3-latest.tar.xz

Here are what the options to tar do:

• --numeric-owner

Without this option, tar will map ownership and group ownership based on the UID to user and GID to group mappings as defined on the LiveCD. We don't want this -- we want the numeric values of the UIDs and GIDs in the tarball to be preserved on disk, so when your Funtoo Linux system boots, the UIDs and GIDs are set correctly for Funtoo. That is what this option tells tar to do.

• --xattrs --xattrs-include='*'

Funtoo Linux uses filesystem extended attributes to set Linux capabilities, which allow for certain programs such as ping to have enhanced privileges without having to be fully 'suid root'. Even with the -p option, tar will not restore extended attributes we need unless these two options are specified.

• -xpf

This instructs tar to extract (x), preserve regular permissions and ownership (p), and use the filename (f) specified.

chrooting into the new system

mount -t proc none /mnt/funtoo/proc
mount --rbind /dev /mnt/funtoo/dev
mount --rbind /sys /mnt/funtoo/sys
env -i HOME=/root TERM=$TERM $(which chroot) /mnt/funtoo bash -l

Setting the root password

(chroot) #  passwd

Configuring DNS

(chroot) #  echo "nameserver 1.1.1.1" > /etc/resolv.conf

Downloading the Portage tree

Now it's time to install the Portage repository, which contains package scripts (ebuilds) that tell portage how to build and install thousands of different software packages. To create the Portage repository, simply run ego sync from within the chroot. This will automatically clone the portage tree from GitHub and all kits:

(chroot) #  ego sync

Configuring your system

As is expected from a Linux distribution, Funtoo Linux has its share of configuration files. The one file you are absolutely required to edit in order to ensure that Funtoo Linux boots successfully is /etc/fstab. The others are optional. Here are a list of files that you should consider editing:

File	Do I need to change it?	Description
/etc/fstab	YES - required	Mount points for all filesystems to be used at boot time. This file must reflect your disk partition setup. We'll guide you through modifying this file below.
/etc/localtime	Maybe - recommended	Your timezone, which will default to UTC if not set. This should be a symbolic link to something located under /usr/share/zoneinfo (e.g. /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Montreal)
/etc/make.conf (symlink) - also known as: /etc/portage/make.conf	Maybe - recommended
/etc/conf.d/hostname	Maybe - recommended	Used to set system hostname. Set the hostname variable to the fully-qualified (with dots, ie. foo.funtoo.org) name if you have one. Otherwise, set to the local system hostname (without dots, ie. foo). Defaults to localhost if not set.
/etc/hosts	No	You no longer need to manually set the hostname in this file. This file is automatically generated by /etc/init.d/hostname.
/etc/conf.d/keymaps	Optional	Keyboard mapping configuration file (for console pseudo-terminals). Set if you have a non-US keyboard. See Funtoo Linux Localization.
/etc/conf.d/hwclock	Optional	How the time of the battery-backed hardware clock of the system is interpreted (UTC or local time). Linux uses the battery-backed hardware clock to initialize the system clock when the system is booted.
/etc/conf.d/modules	Optional	Kernel modules to load automatically at system startup. Typically not required. See Additional Kernel Resources for more info.
/etc/conf.d/consolefont	Optional	Allows you to specify the default console font. To apply this font, enable the consolefont service by running rc-update add consolefont.
profiles	Optional	Some useful portage settings that may help speed up intial configuration.

If you're installing an English version of Funtoo Linux, you're in luck as most of the configuration files can be used as-is. If you're installing for another locale, don't worry. We will walk you through the necessary configuration steps on the Funtoo Linux Localization page, and if needed, there's always plenty of friendly, helpful support. (See Community)

Let's go ahead and see what we have to do. Use nano -w <name_of_file> to edit files -- the "-w" disables word-wrapping, which is handy when editing configuration files. You can copy and paste from the examples.

   Warning

It's important to edit your /etc/fstab file before you reboot! You will need to modify both the "fs" and "type" columns to match the settings for your partitions and filesystems that you created with gdisk or fdisk. Skipping this step may prevent Funtoo Linux from booting successfully.

/etc/fstab

/etc/fstab is used by the mount command which is ran when your system boots. Statements of this file inform mount about partitions to be mounted and how they are mounted. In order for the system to boot properly, you must edit /etc/fstab and ensure that it reflects the partition configuration you used earlier:

nano -w /etc/fstab

/dev/sda1                /boot            vfat            noauto,noatime           1 2
/dev/sda2                none             swap            sw                       0 0
/dev/sda3                /                f2fs            defaults,rw              0 0
/dev/sda4                /home            ext4            noatime                  0 1
#/dev/cdrom              /mnt/cdrom       auto            noauto,ro                0 0

   Note

When using f2fs as rootfs fsck fails on boot. Solutions are either disabling fsck in /etc/fstab (setting the last number to 0). See bug #671786. [1].

/etc/localtime

/etc/localtime is used to specify the timezone that your machine is in, and defaults to UTC. If you would like your Funtoo Linux system to use local time, you should replace /etc/localtime with a symbolic link to the timezone that you wish to use.

(chroot) #  ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/$(tzselect) /etc/localtime
(chroot) #  # date --set=mm/dd/yy
(chroot) #  date --set=12/12/2021
(chroot) #  # date --set=hh:mm:ss
(chroot) #  date -s 00:05:00

The above sets the timezone to Mountain Standard Time (with daylight savings). Type ls /usr/share/zoneinfo to see what timezones are available. There are also sub-directories containing timezones described by location.

/etc/portage/make.conf

USE flags define what functionality is enabled when packages are built. It is not recommended to add a lot of them during installation; you should wait until you have a working, bootable system before changing your USE flags. A USE flag prefixed with a minus ("-") sign tells Portage not to use the flag when compiling. A Funtoo guide to USE flags will be available in the future. For now, you can find out more information about USE flags in the Gentoo Handbook.

LINGUAS tells Portage which local language to compile the system and applications in (those who use LINGUAS variable like OpenOffice). It is not usually necessary to set this if you use English. If you want another language such as French (fr), German (de) or Brazilian Portuguese (pt_BR), set LINGUAS appropriately.

The L10N variable is replacing LINGUAS as a USE_EXPAND, to avoid aconceptual clash with the standard gettext LINGUAS behaviour. See more at L10N USE_EXPAND variable replacing LINGUAS

If you have set LINGUAS in your make.conf, you most likely want to add its entries also to L10N. Note that while the common two letter language codes (like "de" or "fr") are identical, more complex entries have a different syntax because L10N now uses IETF language tags. (For example, "pt_BR" becomes "pt-BR" and "sr@latin" becomes "sr-Latn".) You can look up the available codes in profiles/desc/l10n.desc in the gentoo tree. A detailed description of language tags (aka BCP 47) can be found at: https://www.w3.org/International/articles/language-tags/

MAKEOPTS is a variable that defines how many parallel make jobs can be launched from Portage. The rule of thumb is should be the smaller number of: a. the size of RAM divided by 2GB b. the number of threads the CPU has. See more Gentoo MAKEOPTS and Gentoo EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS

(chroot) lscpu
Architecture:                    x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):                  32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:                      Little Endian
Address sizes:                   36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
CPU(s):                          4
On-line CPU(s) list:             0-3
(chroot) free -h
total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:          3.8Gi       134Mi       2.5Gi       0.0Ki       1.1Gi       3.4Gi
Swap:         8.0Gi        21Mi       8.0Gi

In this way edit make.conf file:

cat > /etc/portage/make.conf <<'EOF'
MAKEOPTS="-j2"
EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--jobs 2 --load-average 2"

LINGUAS="en en_US en_GB pt pt_BR"
L10N="pt-BR en en-US"
ACCEPT_LICENSE="*"
EOF

/etc/conf.d/hwclock

If you dual-boot with Windows, you'll need to edit this file and change the value of clock from UTC to local, because Windows will set your hardware clock to local time every time you boot Windows. Otherwise you normally wouldn't need to edit this file.

(chroot) #  nano -w /etc/conf.d/hwclock

Localization

By default, Funtoo Linux is configured with Unicode (UTF-8) enabled, and for the US English locale and keyboard. If you would like to configure your system to use a non-English locale or keyboard, see Funtoo Linux Localization.

Introducing Portage

Portage, the Funtoo Linux package manager has a command called emerge which is used to build and install packages from source. It also takes care of installing all of the package's dependencies. You call emerge like this:

When you install a package by specifying its name in the command-line, Portage records its name in the /var/lib/portage/world file. It does so because it assumes that, since you have installed it by name, you want to consider it part of your system and want to keep the package updated in the future. This is a handy feature, since when packages are being added to the world set, we can update our entire system by typing:

(chroot) #  ego sync
(chroot) #  emerge -auDN @world

This is the "official" way to update your Funtoo Linux system. Above, we first update our Portage tree using git to grab the latest ebuilds (scripts), and then run an emerge command to update the world set of packages. The options specified tell emerge to:

• a - show us what will be emerged, and ask us if we want to proceed
• u - update the packages we specify -- don't emerge them again if they are already emerged.
• D - Consider the entire dependency tree of packages when looking for updates. In other words, do a deep update.
• N - Update any packages that have changed (new) USE settings.

You should also consider passing --with-bdeps=y when emerging @world, at least once in a while. This will update build dependencies as well.

Advanced users may be interested in the Emerge wiki page.

   Important

Make sure you read any post emerge messages and follow their instructions. This is especially true if you have upgraded perl or python.

Configuring and installing the Linux kernel

Now it's time to build and install a Linux kernel, which is the heart of any Funtoo Linux system. The kernel is loaded by the boot loader, and interfaces directly with your system's hardware, and allows regular (userspace) programs to run.

A kernel must be configured properly for your system's hardware, so that it supports your hard drives, file systems, network cards, and so on. More experienced Linux users can choose to install kernel sources and configure and install their own kernel. If you don't know how to do this, we provide ebuilds that will automatically build a "univeral" kernel, modules and initramfs for booting your system that supports all hardware. This is an extremely simple way of building a kernel that will get your system booted.

What is our goal? To build a kernel that will recognize all the hardware in your system necessary for booting, so that you will be greeted by a friendly login prompt after installation is complete. These instructions will guide you through the process of installing a kernel the "easy" way -- without requiring user configuration, by using a "universal" kernel.

Building the Kernel

   Note

See Funtoo Linux Kernels for a full list of kernels supported in Funtoo Linux. We recommend debian-sources for new users.

(chroot) #  echo "sys-kernel/linux-firmware initramfs" >> /etc/portage/package.use
(chroot) #  emerge -av sys-kernel/debian-sources sys-kernel/genkernel sys-fs/f2fs-tools sys-kernel/linux-firmware
(chroot) #  emerge -av gentoolkit intel-microcode iucode_tool

Go to /usr/src/linux and let's use genkernel:

(chroot) #  cd /usr/src/linux
(chroot) #  genkernel --menuconfig --no-clean --disklabel --fullname=$(uname -r)  all

See more about genkernel at Gentoo Genkernel

F2FS is not included by default; we must specify that we need it Under foo-->bar:

Filesystems-->Miscellaneous-->F2FS
> File systems ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
<*> F2FS filesystem support                                                               │ │
│ │[*]   F2FS Status Information                                                          │ │
│ │-*-   F2FS extended attributes                                                         │ │
│ │[*]     F2FS Access Control Lists                                                      │ │
│ │[*]     F2FS Security Labels                                                           │ │
│ │[ ]   F2FS consistency checking feature                                                │ │
│ │[ ]   F2FS fault injection facility                                                    │ │
│ │[*]   F2FS compression feature                                                         │ │
│ │[*]     LZO compression support                                                        │ │
│ │[*]       LZO-RLE compression support                                                  │ │
│ │[*]     LZ4 compression support                                                        │ │
│ │[*]       LZ4HC compression support                                                    │ │
│ │[*]     ZSTD compression support                                                       │ │
│ │[*]   F2FS IO statistics information                                                   │ │

Installing a Bootloader

   Note

An alternate boot loader called extlinux can be used instead of GRUB if you desire. See the extlinux Guide for information on how to do this.

Installing Grub

The boot loader is responsible for loading the kernel from disk when your computer boots. For new installations, GRUB 2 and Funtoo's boot-update tool should be used as a boot loader. GRUB supports both GPT/GUID and legacy MBR partitioning schemes.

To use this recommended boot method, first emerge sys-boot/grub. This will also cause grub-2 to be merged, since it is a dependency of ego boot update. (You may need to adjust GRUB_PLATFORMS if you are on a UEFI system. See UEFI Install Guide).

(chroot) #  emerge -av sys-boot/grub
(chroot) #  nano -w /etc/boot.conf

Then, edit /etc/boot.conf should now look like this:

boot {
	generate grub
	default "Funtoo Linux"
	timeout 3
}

"Funtoo Linux" {
	kernel kernel[-v]
	initrd initramfs[-v]
	params += real_root=/dev/sda3 rootfstype=f2fs
}

"Funtoo Linux (nomodeset)" {
	kernel kernel[-v]
	initrd initramfs[-v]
	params += real_root=/dev/sda3 rootfstype=f2fs nomodeset
}

Please read man boot.conf for further details.

Rootwait

If you are using a root partition on an nvme device, add the rootwait kernel parameter to force the kernel to wait for it to asynchronously initialize or the kernel will panic on some hardware.

Running grub-install (UEFI)

Finally, we will need to actually install the GRUB boot loader to your disk, and also run boot-update which will generate your boot loader configuration file:

For x86-64bit systems:

(chroot) #  mount -o remount,rw /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
(chroot) #  grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id="Funtoo Linux [GRUB]" --recheck /dev/sda
(chroot) #  ego boot update

For x86-32bit systems:

(chroot) #  mount -o remount,rw /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
(chroot) #  grub-install --target=i386-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id="Funtoo Linux [GRUB]" --recheck /dev/sda
(chroot) #  ego boot update

OK -- you are almost ready to boot!

Configuring your network

It's important to ensure that you will be able to connect to your local-area network after you reboot into Funtoo Linux. There are three approaches you can use for configuring your network: NetworkManager, dhcpcd, and the Funtoo Linux Networking scripts. Here's how to choose which one to use based on the type of network you want to set up.

A simple entropy daemon

The haveged project is an attempt to provide an easy-to-use, unpredictable random number generator based upon an adaptation of the HAVEGE algorithm. See more at Haveged official documentation.

(chroot) #  emerge -av sys-apps/haveged
(chroot) #  rc-update add haveged default

Network

Using NetworkManager

For laptop/mobile systems where you will be using Wi-Fi and connecting to various networks, NetworkManager is strongly recommended. The Funtoo version of NetworkManager is fully functional even from the command-line, so you can use it even without X or without the Network Manager applet. Here are the steps involved in setting up NetworkManager:

(chroot) #  emerge -av net-misc/networkmanager net-misc/dhcpcd
(chroot) #  rc-update add NetworkManager default
(chroot) #  rc-update add dhcpcd default

Desktop (Wired Ethernet)

For a home desktop or workstation with wired Ethernet that will use DHCP, the simplest and most effective option to enable network connectivity is to simply add dhcpcd to the default runlevel:

(chroot) #  emerge -av net-misc/dhcpcd
(chroot) #  rc-update add dhcpcd default

When you reboot, dhcpcd will run in the background and manage all network interfaces and use DHCP to acquire network addresses from a DHCP server.

Server (Static IP)

For servers, the Funtoo Linux Networking scripts are recommended. They are optimized for static configurations and things like virtual ethernet bridging for virtualization setups. See Funtoo Linux Networking for information on how to use Funtoo Linux's template-based network configuration system.

Above, we installed linux-firmware which contains a complete collection of available firmware for many hardware devices including Wi-Fi adapters, plus NetworkManager to manage our network connection. Then we added NetworkManager to the default runlevel so it will start when Funtoo Linux boots.

Wi-Fi

After you reboot into Funtoo Linux, you will be able to add a Wi-Fi connection this way:

root #  nmtui

This network configuration entry is stored in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections so that it will be remembered in the future. You should only need to enter this command once for each Wi-Fi network you connect to.

Using wpa_supplicant

If for some reason you don't want to use a tool such as NetworkManager or wicd, you can use wpa_supplicant for wireless network connections.

First, emerge wpa_supplicant:

(chroot) #  emerge -a wpa_supplicant

Now, edit the wpa_supplicant configuration file, located at /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf. The syntax is very easy:

network={
ssid="MyWifiName"
psk="lol42-wifi"
}

network={
ssid="Other Network"
psk="6d96270004515a0486bb7f76196a72b40c55a47f"
}

You will need to add both wpa_supplicant and dhcpcd to the default runlevel. wpa_supplicant will connect to your access point, and dhcpcd will acquire an IP address via DHCP:

(chroot) #  rc-update add wpa_supplicant default

Finishing Steps

Set your root password

It's imperative that you set your root password before rebooting so that you can log in.

passwd

Next Steps

If you are brand new to Funtoo Linux and Gentoo Linux, please check out Funtoo Linux First Steps, which will help get you acquainted with your new system. We also have a category for our official documentation, which includes all docs that we officially maintain for installation and operation of Funtoo Linux.

We also have a number of pages dedicated to setting up your system, which you can find below. If you are interested in adding a page to this list, add it to the "First Steps" MediaWiki category.

{{#ask: | format=ul }}

If your system did not boot correctly, see Installation Troubleshooting for steps you can take to resolve the problem.