Installation

Currently, you can install Chimera using the images that are available on the Downloads page.

Keep in mind that those images are provided for preview purposes and installation is currently officially unsupported.

Following is an example for an x86_64 EFI machine (for EFI machines of other architectures, it should be largely equivalent, besides some minor things). Other architectures and firmwares may need various alterations to the process.

First, log in as root. Then, locate the drive you will be installing on. Let’s use /dev/sda as an example.

# wipefs -a /dev/sda
# cfdisk /dev/sda

Create a partition table (GPT for EFI) and on it two partitions (~200MB first partition of type EFI System, and a regular Linux partition on the rest).

Now format them:

# mkfs.vfat /dev/sda1
# mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2

Mount the root partition:

# mkdir /media/root
# mount /dev/sda2 /media/root

Install Chimera:

# chimera-live-install /media/root

Bind pseudo-filesystems:

# mount --rbind /dev /media/root/dev
# mount --rbind /proc /media/root/proc
# mount --rbind /sys /media/root/sys
# mount --rbind /tmp /media/root/tmp

Change into the target system:

# chroot /media/root

Then from within, install the bootloader:

# mkdir /boot/efi
# mount /dev/sda1 /boot/efi
# grub-install --efi-directory=/boot/efi
# update-grub

Add a user, set a password for it and root, add it to groups you want:

# useradd myuser
# passwd myuser
# passwd root
# usermod -a -G other,groups,you,want myuser

Pre-enable some services; you can also do this from a booted system with the dinitctl command, but it’s good to do this ahead of time. Following is an example that enables udevd for early target, dhcpcd for network target, syslog-ng, elogind and dbus for login target and gdm for boot target. An equivalent with dinitctl would be something like dinitctl enable --from login dbus (without --from, boot is assumed).

# cd /etc/dinit.d/init.d
# ln -s ../udevd .
# cd ../network.d
# ln -s ../dhcpcd .
# cd ../login.d
# ln -s ../elogind .
# ln -s ../dbus .
# cd ../boot.d
# ln -s ../gdm .

Set a hostname:

# echo chimera > /etc/hostname

Also add it to /etc/hosts; this prevents syslog-ng from doing a blocking DNS lookup, which may take some time:

# echo 127.0.0.1 chimera >> /etc/hosts
# echo ::1 chimera >> /etc/hosts

Certain EFI firmwares require a bootable file at a known location before they show any NVRAM entries. In this case, the system may not boot. This does not affect most systems, but for some you may want to put GRUB at the fallback boot path:

# mv /boot/efi/EFI/chimera /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT
# mv /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/grubx64.efi /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI

You can then perform whatever other post-installation tasks you want before rebooting. When you are done, simply reboot into the new system and log in.