* Installing GNU from a tarball -*- Outline -*-

Written by Thomas Schlesinger.

Prerequisites:

 - This kind of installation is only recommended, if you have a
   broadband internet access.
 - To install GNU/Hurd from a snapshot file instead, you need a free
   partition on harddisk (min. 2GB big)
 - You must have an operating already installed on that machine, that
   is able to create ext2 file systems, like GNU/Linux or *BSD.
 - You need to install the application "stow"
 - You need to use GNU/Grub as your boot manager

* Installation

You can create a partition from GNU/Linux with the fdisk-command, if
it doesn't already exist. After you have created a partion, it must be
formatted. You can do that from Linux with the "mke2fs"-command. Let's
assume, you've choosen the partition /dev/hda3 (hd0s3 in Hurd
terminology, hdb would be hd1) for your installation.

Then do a

  mke2fs -o hurd /dev/hda3

from command line. The "-o hurd" is important! After that, you must
mount this partition. You could do this with:

  mkdir /tmp/hurd
  mount -t ext2 /dev/hda3 /tmp/hurd

Now, you must download the GNU tarball from
http://www.update.uu.se/~ams/GNU/. It name starts with "GNU", for
example GNU--2005-01-08.tar.bz2.

Move this file to /tmp/hurd and extract it with:

  tar -xvfj GNU--2005-01-08.tar.bz2

 After that, remove the tarball file.
 Before you can boot into your GNU, you must once make an entry in your grub configuration file:

  title=GNU/Hurd Installer
  root (hd0,2)
  kernel /boot/gnumach root=device:hd0s3
  module /hurd/ext2fs.static --multiboot-command-line=${kernel-command-line} --host-priv-port=${host-port} --device-master-port=${device-port} --exec-server-task=${exec-task} -T typed ${root} $(task-create) $(task-resume)
  module /lib/ld.so.1 /hurd/exec $(exec-task=task-create)
  boot

If you have more that 512MB of RAM, you need to add the entry 

  uppermem 524288

for example after the "title"-line.

 Note: (hd0,2) and hd0s3 do both mean /dev/hda3 here. (hd0,0) would
       mean /dev/hda1 and hd1s2 would mean /dev/hdb2, for example.
       Booting into GNU

Now reboot your machine into GNU. At the first boot, you'll get a
shell command prompt. Do a "reboot" now. After the reboot you'll have
now a login prompt of the Hurd console. With Alt-F1 to Alt-F4, you can
change between the sessions.

Now, you can login as "root" and enjoy your new GNU installation!