Gavin's notes on getting gitian builds up and running:
You need the right hardware: you need a 64-bit-capable CPU with hardware virtualization support (Intel VT-x or AMD-V). Not all modern CPUs support hardware virtualization.
You probably need to enable hardware virtualization in your machine's BIOS.
You need to be running a recent version of 64-bit-Ubuntu, and you need to install several prerequisites:
sudo apt-get install apache2 git apt-cacher-ng python-vm-builder qemu-kvm
Sanity checks:
sudo service apt-cacher-ng status # Should return apt-cacher-ng is running
ls -l /dev/kvm # Should show a /dev/kvm device
Once you've got the right hardware and software:
git clone git://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.git
git clone git://github.com/devrandom/gitian-builder.git
mkdir gitian-builder/inputs
wget 'http://miniupnp.tuxfamily.org/files/download.php?file=miniupnpc-1.6.tar.gz' -O gitian-builder/inputs/miniupnpc-1.6.tar.gz
cd gitian-builder
bin/make-base-vm --arch i386
bin/make-base-vm --arch amd64
cd ..
# To build
cd bitcoin
git pull
cd ../gitian-builder
git pull
./bin/gbuild --commit bitcoin=HEAD ../bitcoin/contrib/gitian.yml
