Linux on the Flybook - Booting From Gentoo LiveCD

Chapter 6 - Booting From Gentoo LiveCD

First check was to simply attempt to boot from the Gentoo LiveCD. If the CD boots and Linux starts, then more hardware info is available using tools like lspci and the contents of /proc/interrupts.

Setting the Flybook BIOS to boot in the following order...

Removable Devices
CD-ROM Drive
Hard Drive
Network etc.

...and attaching the USB CD-ROM drive with the Gentoo LiveCD inserted, resulted in a bootup checking the USB drive.
The LiveCD booted perfectly. The boot scripts ask for screen size and keymap, I used 80x25 display mode and default US English keyboard layout (I am from England but the English Flybooks are for the US market, and have US English keyboards).

Many devices were autodetected, and the Flybook came up with working screen, keyboard, USB mouse, and the all-important Ethernet connection. I have a DHCP server on my network so no manual network config was required for Gentoo to get the Flybook on the internet.
The LiveCD kernel tries to autodetect devices, and installs the relevant modules if necessary. From the booted CD, it was possible to see which modules had been started:

sbp2
ohci1394
ieee1394
ohci_hcd
uhci_hcd
usb_storage
ehci_hcd
8139too
pcmcia_core
yenta_socket

From this stage on, I simply followed the installation instructions on the Gentoo website. I will not repeat this here.
Required BIOS settings: Legacy USB Support on, Plug And Play OS on.

I went for a Gentoo Universal CD, since my plan was to tailor the kernel and then install the required packages, rather than build standard stuff like ls from scratch. The LiveCD boot worked without requiring any additional boot parameters.