Gentoo Linux?
Hello everyone Its been a while since I've been on this forum but now I'm back. Thanks to help from people here I have been using Red Hat 9 happily for a few months. Well maybe not so happily. . . I'm never going back to Windows now but I really hope I can get a better distro.
Hello everyone
Its been a while since I've been on this forum but now I'm back.
Thanks to help from people here I have been using Red Hat 9 happily for a few months. Well maybe not so happily...
I'm never going back to Windows now but I really hope I can get a better distro. I've found RedHat great when you want to maintain status quo but installing software can be a nightmare. I'm getting a new laptop soon so I am planning to get a new distro.
I've found that the configure, make, make install cycle time-consuming, tedious and unreliable (especially if there are dependencies involved). All to often I just give up. And rpms aren't that great either. Sometimes I think back to the Windows "setup.exe" files with longing...
I know that with so many distros the make, install cycle is sometimes the only way (there is no way to cater to everyone's needs when there are so many linux choices out there) but surely there is there an easier way? I've become scared of installing software of RedHat because it takes so so long...
I want a freely downloadable distro. Of course, I still want make, gcc and the usual tools. I'm looking into Gentoo as Portage seems to help a lot. Does anyone have any experiance of Gentoo? Does anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks in advance for your help
Koba
Its been a while since I've been on this forum but now I'm back.
Thanks to help from people here I have been using Red Hat 9 happily for a few months. Well maybe not so happily...
I'm never going back to Windows now but I really hope I can get a better distro. I've found RedHat great when you want to maintain status quo but installing software can be a nightmare. I'm getting a new laptop soon so I am planning to get a new distro.
I've found that the configure, make, make install cycle time-consuming, tedious and unreliable (especially if there are dependencies involved). All to often I just give up. And rpms aren't that great either. Sometimes I think back to the Windows "setup.exe" files with longing...
I know that with so many distros the make, install cycle is sometimes the only way (there is no way to cater to everyone's needs when there are so many linux choices out there) but surely there is there an easier way? I've become scared of installing software of RedHat because it takes so so long...
I want a freely downloadable distro. Of course, I still want make, gcc and the usual tools. I'm looking into Gentoo as Portage seems to help a lot. Does anyone have any experiance of Gentoo? Does anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks in advance for your help
Koba
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I found this on the Gentoo forums, they have some suggestions for editing grub.conf to get it to boot.O ne person suggests removing the "initrd", but I would suggest leaving that, just change the kernel line as suggested. This seems to have something to do with genkernel, which I havn't used for the install, but there is a wealth of information of the forums already. Search for "root block device" under that full search(top left of the forum screen) not the quick search, and specify the forum option of installing. Good luck.
Koba, It looks like this has come up several times today alone on the Gentoo forums, so you should consider trying to compile yourself. Just make sure you have what they mention in the install guide, and then go back, and handle fancy stuff later. You can have multiple kernels so making changes later won't break your system.
If you still don't have this working, consider using the live cd, and go through the process of mounting and chrooting.
Quote:mount /dev/hda4 /mnt/gentoomount /dev/hda2 /mnt/gentoo/boot
mount -t proc none /mnt/gentoo/proc
chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
env-update
source /etc/profile
To get a different kernel version use something other than gentoo-sources(I'd use gentoo-dev-sources, the gentoo-patched 2.6 kernel) and then go back through and redo the kernel install (step 7). and then add a section to your grub.conf,leaving your windows and original linux settings intact, using this form:
Quote:title=Gentoo Linux 2.4.26-r6# Partition where the kernel image (or operating system) is located
root (hd0,0)
kernel /kernel-2.4.26-gentoo-r6 root=/dev/hda3
Just use the 2.6 version if you do this. You should not need to reinstall grub.
The kernel line is this example is what you can also consider changing your current kernel line to.
If you still don't have this working, consider using the live cd, and go through the process of mounting and chrooting.
Quote:mount /dev/hda4 /mnt/gentoomount /dev/hda2 /mnt/gentoo/boot
mount -t proc none /mnt/gentoo/proc
chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
env-update
source /etc/profile
To get a different kernel version use something other than gentoo-sources(I'd use gentoo-dev-sources, the gentoo-patched 2.6 kernel) and then go back through and redo the kernel install (step 7). and then add a section to your grub.conf,leaving your windows and original linux settings intact, using this form:
Quote:title=Gentoo Linux 2.4.26-r6# Partition where the kernel image (or operating system) is located
root (hd0,0)
kernel /kernel-2.4.26-gentoo-r6 root=/dev/hda3
Just use the 2.6 version if you do this. You should not need to reinstall grub.
The kernel line is this example is what you can also consider changing your current kernel line to.
Hoorah!
Some progress. I followed the link and tried using fewer arguments to the kernel. At least gentoo loaded (I reached the localhost prompt) even though there were error messages beforehand.
I mounted the cdrom but couldn't use any of the package files as I got this error:
Quote:OSError=[Error30] Read-only file system '/var/cache/ebd/dep//app-dev/'
Looks like I set one of my partitions as read-only. Not quite sure what went wrong there. Any ideas?
Anyway, thanks for your help. Maybe next week I'll have something linux to enjoy
Koba
Some progress. I followed the link and tried using fewer arguments to the kernel. At least gentoo loaded (I reached the localhost prompt) even though there were error messages beforehand.
I mounted the cdrom but couldn't use any of the package files as I got this error:
Quote:OSError=[Error30] Read-only file system '/var/cache/ebd/dep//app-dev/'
Looks like I set one of my partitions as read-only. Not quite sure what went wrong there. Any ideas?
Anyway, thanks for your help. Maybe next week I'll have something linux to enjoy
Koba
Good to hear you got Gentoo up; Hoorah! was how I felt when I first successfully installed it.
This is what I have fo my cdrom in /etc/fstab
Quote:/dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom auto noauto,users 0 0
Could you also post what /etc/mtab has listed for you cd drive?
What were some of these error messages at boot?
This is what I have fo my cdrom in /etc/fstab
Quote:/dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom auto noauto,users 0 0
Could you also post what /etc/mtab has listed for you cd drive?
What were some of these error messages at boot?
Hi
Sorry, I didn't make myself clear.
The CD-Rom mounted fine and I could see all the folders on it with ls. I then did: export PKGDIR="/mnt/cdrom". That generated no errors. Only when I tried emerge -usepkg kde or emerge -usepkg gnome did I get the above error.
There were many error messages at boot so I can't remember what they were exactly. They also flashed past very quickly but I got the impression that it was complaining about read-only files.
I think its my hard drive partitions with this problem not the CDRom. Of course, I could be wrong.
Koba
Sorry, I didn't make myself clear.
The CD-Rom mounted fine and I could see all the folders on it with ls. I then did: export PKGDIR="/mnt/cdrom". That generated no errors. Only when I tried emerge -usepkg kde or emerge -usepkg gnome did I get the above error.
There were many error messages at boot so I can't remember what they were exactly. They also flashed past very quickly but I got the impression that it was complaining about read-only files.
I think its my hard drive partitions with this problem not the CDRom. Of course, I could be wrong.
Koba
Man, GenToo ROCKS! it is by far the best linux distro that I have used (Being MCSE windows nerd), and from what other's say it is only surpassed by FreeBSD itself. The support is unreal at forums.gentoo.org as well. if you have any problems, people really help you out there.
I hope you enjoy the new install!
check out http://internal.digitalson.com that is the site my G2 box is hosting (amongst a few others)
I hope you enjoy the new install!
check out http://internal.digitalson.com that is the site my G2 box is hosting (amongst a few others)
Good news!
I have got Gentoo working. I was forced to format my windows partition and reinstall XP (it had become syware infested, adware ridden, virus infected useless pile of junk - which is almost good for Microsoft). Microsoft being the open-minded people they are didn't allow me to keep my Gentoo partitions ("too many partitions!" it complained) so I had to reinstall gentoo as well.
I reinstalled Gentoo exactly the same way except for leaving the noatime option for the root partition in fstab. So now it works! There are a few things I have noted though:
-Message at boot: "missing kernel or user mode driver hw-random"
-"You must set /etc/hostname to a valid hostname"
These messages haven't stopped me doing anything - they are just annoying. Any ideas how to get rid of them?
I have emerged the kde package though I have no idea what to do now. Can anyone point out where I should go to get a desktop environment?
Thanks
Koba
I have got Gentoo working. I was forced to format my windows partition and reinstall XP (it had become syware infested, adware ridden, virus infected useless pile of junk - which is almost good for Microsoft). Microsoft being the open-minded people they are didn't allow me to keep my Gentoo partitions ("too many partitions!" it complained) so I had to reinstall gentoo as well.
I reinstalled Gentoo exactly the same way except for leaving the noatime option for the root partition in fstab. So now it works! There are a few things I have noted though:
-Message at boot: "missing kernel or user mode driver hw-random"
-"You must set /etc/hostname to a valid hostname"
These messages haven't stopped me doing anything - they are just annoying. Any ideas how to get rid of them?
I have emerged the kde package though I have no idea what to do now. Can anyone point out where I should go to get a desktop environment?
Thanks
Koba
To fix the /etc/hostname I think you need to do:
Quote:echo pic-a-hostname > /etc/hostname
I'm not sure about the other one though.
To start kde you will also need to install X.
Quote:emerge -p xorg-x11This should return:
Quote:[ebuild R ] x11-base/xorg-x11-6.7.0-r2 If it shows [ebuild N] X is not installed. X should be installed since it a dependancy of KDE, so you should just need to configure X, the Desktop Setup Guide should help. This includes in formation on editing /etc/rc.conf to have kde work when you do "startx", it also has information on setting up ati or nvidia drivers, and login managers such as kdm. Please let me know if you need more help. Good Luck.
Quote:echo pic-a-hostname > /etc/hostname
I'm not sure about the other one though.
To start kde you will also need to install X.
Quote:emerge -p xorg-x11This should return:
Quote:[ebuild R ] x11-base/xorg-x11-6.7.0-r2 If it shows [ebuild N] X is not installed. X should be installed since it a dependancy of KDE, so you should just need to configure X, the Desktop Setup Guide should help. This includes in formation on editing /etc/rc.conf to have kde work when you do "startx", it also has information on setting up ati or nvidia drivers, and login managers such as kdm. Please let me know if you need more help. Good Luck.
Ok...you guys were right all along.
Gentoo is for someone new to linux a VERY difficult distro to install. Of course, with persistence anything is possible. I can see Gentoo is what I will eventually be using (unless I find something better than Portage) but for now I'll leave it as a work in progress. In the meantime I really need a ready-to-run distro so I'm taking your advice and downloading MEPIS.
It simply makes no sense to install Gentoo now when in less than a months time I'll have a new laptop/desktop. At least I've learnt a LOT so far from my experiments with Gentoo:
-How to use fdisk
-How to perform a stage 3 install
-How to configure the Grub
-How to use the .profile script
-A little how X works
So now I'm downloading MEPIS. All I need is more CD-R's (linux distros keep swallowing up cds :x.
Koba
Gentoo is for someone new to linux a VERY difficult distro to install. Of course, with persistence anything is possible. I can see Gentoo is what I will eventually be using (unless I find something better than Portage) but for now I'll leave it as a work in progress. In the meantime I really need a ready-to-run distro so I'm taking your advice and downloading MEPIS.
It simply makes no sense to install Gentoo now when in less than a months time I'll have a new laptop/desktop. At least I've learnt a LOT so far from my experiments with Gentoo:
-How to use fdisk
-How to perform a stage 3 install
-How to configure the Grub
-How to use the .profile script
-A little how X works
So now I'm downloading MEPIS. All I need is more CD-R's (linux distros keep swallowing up cds :x.
Koba
