Cuntoo Installation Report

February 20th, 2019

As suggested by the MP, I am providing a report on the Cuntoo installation. Some details may be fuzzy, as I did this around one week ago.

For the installation, I have picked unused machine at work, with the following specs: Core i5-4590 (3.3GHz), 8Gb RAM, Sandisk SD7SB3Q SSD, Intel e1000 NIC. More details on the CPU:

Architecture:        x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):      32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:          Little Endian
CPU(s):              4
On-line CPU(s) list: 0-3
Thread(s) per core:  1
Core(s) per socket:  4
Socket(s):           1
Vendor ID:           GenuineIntel
CPU family:          6
Model:               60
Model name:          Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4590 CPU @ 3.30GHz
Stepping:            3
CPU MHz:             892.272
CPU max MHz:         3700.0000
CPU min MHz:         800.0000
BogoMIPS:            6585.22
Virtualization:      VT-x
L1d cache:           32K
L1i cache:           32K
L2 cache:            256K
L3 cache:            6144K
Flags:               fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush
                     dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm
                     constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf
                     eagerfpu pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 sdbg fma cx16
                     xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx
                     f16c rdrand lahf_lm abm epb invpcid_single tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid
                     fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 hle avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid rtm xsaveopt dtherm
                     ida arat pln pts

And on the attached devices:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 4th Gen Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 06)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 06)
00:03.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio Controller (rev 06)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI (rev 04)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:16.3 Serial controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family KT Controller (rev 04)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection I217-LM (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI #2 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI #1 (rev 04)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Q85 Express LPC Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family 6-port SATA Controller 1 [AHCI mode] (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 04)

The installation process went smoothly, the single issue I had was with kernel config, which has nothing to do with Cuntoo scripts. First, I used the configuration of Debian 4.9 kernel that is running on the similar machine1, which Cuntoo gcc refused to build. The error message from gcc was something like 'elf_section: unknown error', or 'no error information', I don't remember which exactly. I fixed this by chrooting into the installed system and doing 'make localmodconfig'.

After that I restarted the build process, which completed just fine, but the produced system would not boot. Cuntoo does not use initramfs, so all kernel components necessary for boot must be built into the kernel image. I switched kernel configuration from using modules to fully monolithic setup, rebuilt then kernel and rebooted the machine, and was greeted with a login prompt. Then, I did another round of driver and features cleanups2, which is still not final, but I am more or less satisfied with it so far. Current kernel config is available here.

If you are interested in any other details, please write.

  1. In then hindsight, that was a quite retarded idea. []
  2. No IPv6, WLAN, etc. []