Gentoo questions

[petteyg359]

I am considering trying Gentoo... I have question first, though.

1. What install should I use (Stage 1, 2, or 3)?
2. How long will it take to setup on Athlon XP 2700+ (AFAIK it compiles everything from source...)?
3. Does it have anything similar to SuSE's YaST that allows changing settings and autoconfigures everything for that change?

[{PMS}fishy]

1. Stage 1.

2. To get to a base CLI OS, about 6 hours, provided you don't screw up, and you aren't using a ton of flags.

3. Not really. Everything pretty much needs to be set-up by hand. You learn more, and its portable between distros, which is a good skill to have. It does have one of the best packages managers though, if thats worth anything to you.

[petteyg359]

More questions then.

3. There's no stage1-athlonxp iso image. Should I just use stage1-x86 then?
4. Is it just the base system included in the 16MB of stage 1?
5. Does packages-athlonxp-2005.0 contain all the stuff like KDE?
6. Do any of the stages have built in distcc/icecream support? I may be able to set up distcc on some computers on my network, if that would make it compile faster.

[MRD]

Use x86, as there cannot, by its nature, be a stage 1 for athlon xp. The point of stage 1 is that you build it all yourself, so there is only one for all x86 architectures. The more specialized versions are available when you aren't compiling it yourself so you get the optimization available for your processor.

Stage 1 basically includes the bare essentials that you need to build the rest of your system.

The full CD contains most of the packages, but not everything. It probably has some version of KDE, which may or may not be out of date now.

I have no idea what distcc/icecream is, so can't help there.

[{PMS}fishy]

More questions then.

3. There's no stage1-athlonxp iso image. Should I just use stage1-x86 then?
4. Is it just the base system included in the 16MB of stage 1?
5. Does packages-athlonxp-2005.0 contain all the stuff like KDE?
6. Do any of the stages have built in distcc/icecream support? I may be able to set up distcc on some computers on my network, if that would make it compile faster.

3. Nope, wouldn't be a stage 1 then. x86 is what you want.

4. All that is included is the code to build the base system.

5. It should have some version of KDE on there, but you are best to emerge kdebase, as it will be a newer version, and thats the whole point of a built from scrath OS, plus it will be noticably faster.

6. mmmmm..........icecream. Distcc is on the livecd, but not all packages can take advantage of it. Never bothered to mess with it myself.

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/distcc.xml

[DarkArctic]

More questions then.

3. There's no stage1-athlonxp iso image. Should I just use stage1-x86 then?
4. Is it just the base system included in the 16MB of stage 1?
5. Does packages-athlonxp-2005.0 contain all the stuff like KDE?
6. Do any of the stages have built in distcc/icecream support? I may be able to set up distcc on some computers on my network, if that would make it compile faster.

3. Nothing is kept in a stage 1 install so you'd get the x86 package.
4. With stage 1 you'd download and compile all the packages of a base system. So technically nothing is included except a basic environment to build your system from scratch.
5. A stage 3 package would only contain the end result of a basic installation. So it'd be the same thing as if you started from stage 1, you end up in the same place with a barebones system.
6. The stages themselves don't contain distcc, so you'd have to emerge that after the install is complete.

I hope that answers your questions. If you have anymore just give another post. :) Have fun.

-DarkArctic

[Flamed_Chip]

Distcc works fine right from bootsrapping at stage 1. You might find this (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/distcc.xml#bootstrapping) useful if it's your first install.

All you need to do basically is follow the install guide up to the section where you bootstrap, then before you do, emerge and configure distcc and add a line into your /etc/make.conf saying:

FEATURES="distcc"

and set your MAKEOPTS="-jN" line to equal the number of processors in the distcc cluster plus one. eg. MAKEOPTS="-j5" and it should use distcc.

There are however a few packages that don't use distcc, xorg is one of them, so the compile will still be fairly lengthy.

[petteyg359]

Does emerge/portage download stuff from internet? The only way I am able to connect my computer to the network is through a wireless card, and there is a module I can compile and load to support it, how early can I do that?

[{PMS}fishy]

Does emerge/portage download stuff from internet? The only way I am able to connect my computer to the network is through a wireless card, and there is a module I can compile and load to support it, how early can I do that?

You can do that right away, provided that the live CD has the module that you need for your wireless card. It really is a heck of a lot eaiser if you can get a NIC that is autodetected, one less thing to worry about when you are installing.

Yes portage gets all its stuff from the internet, unless you get a package CD and use that, but again it will not be as upto date, but you can worry about that later.

Knoppix might have better hardware detection for you, it would be much eaiser if it had the correct drivers. Some of the newest versions even autodetect the wireless stuff, and you don't have to do anything.

[petteyg359]

I have the module on my Windows drive... Unless Gentoo is just a piece of crap (which I very much doubt :)) I should just be able to mount my Windows drive and copy the module .tar.gz from there.

EDIT: After reading part of the handbook, it seems I'll need internet access to use stage 1. Guess I'll have to move my computer so I can plug it into the router.

Downloading the install-x86-universal iso now. When I boot from the cd, how will it access the stage1 tar.bz2 file?

[petteyg359]

Finished stage1, will be ready to compile a fresh kernel when I get home from school. I would like to be able to use distcc if at all possible because I want to get this installed ASAP so I can make use of it :).

There's a 733MHz Via C3 with 256MB and a 350MHz P2 with 160MB both on WinME, can I install gcc/distcc on WinME, somehow? If I can convince my dad to let me use his laptop, then that's another 2.4GHz Celeron with 256MB available (on WinXP).

[petteyg359]

Knoppix might have better hardware detection for you, it would be much eaiser if it had the correct drivers. Some of the newest versions even autodetect the wireless stuff, and you don't have to do anything.

Knoppix supports it through NDISwrapper... But I don't want Knoppix (unless I lose a partition and want to use gpart from Knoppix (which is a very nice thing to have)). I've been using Linux off and on for almost 8 years (since I was 9 :cool:) and I'm trying to go farther into getting stuff really tweaked. I love SuSE for easy install and ease of changing settings, but the startup time and KDE's bloat is getting to be too much, so now that I know basically the way Gentoo is designed, I want to try it.

[{PMS}fishy]

I was suggesting using knoppix to get Gentoo installed, and then setting up the wifi on Gentoo.

[petteyg359]

Explain that in a little more detail please (installing Gentoo from Knoppix)...

But... I failed to make Gentoo work this first time. Got home from school today, and compiled a new kernel and rebooted, but for some reason my Ethernet wasn't detected (for install, I set up my brother's WinME computer which is in the same room for ICS, and let Gentoo download stuff with that connection) after reboot (even though I rebuilt the kernel FOUR FRICKING TIMES trying with different modules), and I realized wireless-tools wasn't installed after I compiled the RT2500 module for my wifi card, so I guess I'm going to have to start over :(.

I may start with a Stage3 this time, as I'm impatient and don't want to have to wait until tomorrow to start using my computer again. Speaking of such, is there a way I can add a timestamp to the command line prompt so I can figure out exactly how long it takes to build to stage 3 starting from stage 1?

Also, after I rebooted with the new kernel, the text-mode was entirely different (different font, different screen size), and the Gentoo "bar" wasn't across the bottom of the console anymore. I thought about using genkernel to use the same kernel as the CD, but it seems that would slightly defeat the point of custom-compiling everything.

[Gnufsh]

Explain that in a little more detail please (installing Gentoo from Knoppix)...

But... I failed to make Gentoo work this first time. Got home from school today, and compiled a new kernel and rebooted, but for some reason my Ethernet wasn't detected (for install, I set up my brother's WinME computer which is in the same room for ICS, and let Gentoo download stuff with that connection) after reboot (even though I rebuilt the kernel FOUR FRICKING TIMES trying with different modules), and I realized wireless-tools wasn't installed after I compiled the RT2500 module for my wifi card, so I guess I'm going to have to start over :(.
No need to start over, just boot from the live cd, chroot, install wireless-tools, recompile the kernel if you have to, and reboot


I may start with a Stage3 this time, as I'm impatient and don't want to have to wait until tomorrow to start using my computer again. Speaking of such, is there a way I can add a timestamp to the command line prompt so I can figure out exactly how long it takes to build to stage 3 starting from stage 1?

Like I said, you don't have to go through the whole install process, you just need to follow the steps to chroot into the environment (just don't re-format your filesystems).


Also, after I rebooted with the new kernel, the text-mode was entirely different (different font, different screen size), and the Gentoo "bar" wasn't across the bottom of the console anymore. I thought about using genkernel to use the same kernel as the CD, but it seems that would slightly defeat the point of custom-compiling everything.
You probably want to take a look at here for how to set up a nice looking console:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_fbsplash

my advice is to get a working kernel first, and compile a new one later with more features.

[petteyg359]

Started over from stage one with a lot more USE flags specified and -O3 instead of the default -O2, yay fast. I used genkernel for the kernel this time, so my ethernet worked after I rebooted this time. I emerged wireless-tools and tried to emerge rt2500, but it was masked and I tried to unmask it according to the gentoo-wiki, but it didn't work, so I just downloaded the source and compiled it manually. But ARRGH!!! iwconfig says 'no wireless extensions' on ra0. Eth0 stills works, though, but I'd like to get the wireless working so I don't have to have the ICS computer on all the time. Maybe I'll just switch the wireless cards (the other computer's card is a Prism2 chipset, so is supported by the kernel)...

BTW, I'm posting all these in Windows since I can't log in to the forums using either lynx or links2. When I go to the login page and click the login button, it just reloads the login page, and I never actually get logged in.

[electrorcamd]

Try logging in on the forum's home page. I kept having problems like that too, but I eventually figured it out (don't remember how) and was able to make a few posts in both lynx and links.
As for the wireless, just run iwconfig by itself and look at the interfaces it lists. It might assign it to wlan0, not ra0. Also be sure that the module is loaded for the rt2500 (not sure what the name of the module is).

[petteyg359]

Tried logging in from the home page too, didn't work.

The default name that the module uses is ra0, and that worked in SuSE 8.2, 9.2, and 9.3. If I were going to change it to wlan0, how would I do that?

Just tried switching wifi cards with the other comp, but apparently that other comp mobo has PCI 2.0, the Asus card didn't work in it (Windows didn't even see it).

[petteyg359]

Figured it out. Needed to enable config_radio in kernel. Should work now. But:
How can I get colored console back? I did everything according to the fbsplash thing on the gentoo-wiki but still nothing shows. GRUB has a splash, and the console text is a different font, but I'd like it to be the same as the LiveCD, and I'd like it that way on ALL consoles (as in keep it that way when I hit alt-f2 alt-f3 etc.)
I also want colors in ls in every dir, which is also gone. I compiled this new kernel with genkernel, I though that made it like the livecd...

[Gnufsh]

To get every console graphical, you need to add splash to a runlevel (eg rc-update add splash default), like the wiki guide says. If you want higher resolution, you need to specify that on the line with the kernel in grub.conf. As for color in ls, I think you need to add:
alias ls="ls --color=auto"
to .bashrc (in the home directory of the user you want to have color ls by default) or into /etc/profile.

[electrorcamd]

What Gnufsh said for the color works. I just added that line to /etc/profile then did source /etc/profile and I had color as root.

[petteyg359]

" * splash already installed in runlevel default; skipping"
I already did that... I set up the grub.conf with splash=verbose,theme:emergence and genkernel with the option gensplash=emergence or something like that, forget what it was, that was an hour ago :) And I've rebooted several times since then, so if it was going to show up I think it would've by now.
The color stuff was already in /home/petteyg359/.bashrc, apparently it set that as defaults when I did useradd, I'm using root for all this install stuff... I just copied that .bashrc to ~/.bashrc and source .bashrc made it work. source is first thing I've learned from gentoo... reload a config right then and there...

[petteyg359]

Who was it said compiling xorg-x11 would take a long time? It took less than 10 minutes... But I'll bet KDE will take lots longer than that!

[petteyg359]

Yet another spontaneous thought: Can I add --ask --deep --verbose as default options on emerge so that every time I type something like "emerge blah" those options get added to emerge?

[MRD]

xorg took me about 8 hours on an athlon 3200+. You must have had a lot of the dependencies compiled already from some previous ebuild.

[petteyg359]

Yeah, I went through --ask --deep and installed a bunch of the requirements first, but I also have at least 20 USE flags in /etc/make.conf.

[petteyg359]

Argh... wireless still not working. It's got the essid and key all setup, and it shows "Signal: 60" or something but it shows 0 where it usually shows something like 60/238. And my brother's computer isn't on right now so I have no internet from Gentoo so I had to go back to Whinedoze to post this.

[petteyg359]

I've tried bunches of things and I still can't get that bar at the bottom of the console to show up. I'd like it to be the same as the LiveCD console just because it looks nicer that way. And when I try to put vga=0x317 in grub.conf, it says something about it being an undefined mode.
I'm also unable to start X with either startx or xinit. The last message it shows says that X can't be run in framebuffer mode. How do I config whatever I need to config to make X work?

[electrorcamd]

With the undefined mode, I think they changed the modes from earlier kernels. If you want 1024x768, then when it asks to hit enter and select a mode, choose mode 6 (80x60). It will look weird at first, but should change and look normal.
As for X, what driver are you trying to use?

[petteyg359]

After genkernel finished, I emerged ati-drivers. From the log, it looks like it is using driver 'ati'. I also emerged mkxf86config and did rc-update add mkxf86config default, so it now runs at boot, but I still get the same error when I try to startx.

[petteyg359]

I have to source ~/.bashrc every time I login to root to get ls colors... Can I make it load .bashrc automatically?

[petteyg359]

Found a fglrxconfig, ran it and it created a working xorg.conf for me, but when I do startx it brings up tvwm. How do I change it so it brings up KDE instead?

[electrorcamd]

Open your /etc/rc.conf file. There should be a line that says XSESSION="". Change what is inside of the quotes to kde-<version>. For example, if you have KDE 3.4.0 installed, the line would probably be XESSION="kde-3.4.0". I think it gives an example in the file.

[petteyg359]

Alright, did that. Now I'm doing this posting from Konqueror (so much better than lynx :)). I tried to emerge kdm, but it's masked ~x86. Any idea why?

[MRD]

Not sure, just override it.

Or just skip the login manager. Personally, I prefer to boot to a command prompt and type startx if I want to run X.

[petteyg359]

I tried several times to unmask it according to directions on gentoo-wiki, but it didn't work. I guess I'll just be using startx a lot.

[MRD]

Add this to /etc/portage/package.keywords (make the file if it does not exist)

kde-base/kdm ~x86

[kaltag]

I could be wrong but KDM is supposed to be part of kdebase so it shoudl just work. change session manager to KDM and run
rc-update add xdm defaultthat oughta work for ya

[MRD]

Pretty sure it's not Kaltag. I just tested it on my system. I do have KDE installed, but I do not have kdm installed. When I do an emerge -p kdebase, it does not list kdm.

KDE was also recently reworked in gentooland. They broke it up into lots of smaller pieces, as it was installing too many things, and giving users too little choice in what got installed... very ungentooish.

I do not believe it is installed by default as part of KDE, although perhaps it was in the past.

[Gnufsh]

If your using the split out ebuilds, it is its own thing. I'm assuming that since it is masked for him, he is not using the split out ebuilds (are they still ~x86?). I'm not using the split-out ebuilds. I just did an emerge kde and it installed kdm. It is, in fact, part of kdebase (not a dependency, if you install kdebase, kdm is part of it).

[kaltag]

easiest way to know for sure is run
kdm
and see if it brings it up :) When I built the latest ~x86 kdebase which IS the split ebeuild it still built kdm. That was 3 weeks ago though so maybe they've removed it now?

[Gnufsh]

KDE 3.4 is still ~x86, so if he emerged KDE on a stable (non ~x86) system, he should have kdm installed. It should be in /usr/kde/3.3/bin/kdm for kde 3.3 and /usr/kde/3.4/bin/kdm for kde 3.4.

I actually prefer gdm myself.

[petteyg359]

locate kdm didn't find anything except in /usr/portage, and for other stuff that I know I have it doesn't show anything except in /usr/portage either... so my opinion is that locate sucks. kdebase is almost finished compiling, so I'll see if kdm is actually somewhere after it's done. (FYI: w3m is the absolute best console www-browser. Can view the whole forums page without too much side-scrolling, and it even shows most of the images :)). I'm also going to try fluxbox and xfce4 at some point. One random question, how is cedega part of the portage tree? I paid for a subscription to transgaming, and AFAIK Cedega shouldn't be elsewhere legally...

[Gnufsh]

Well, if kdebase isn't installed, locate won't find kdm outsde of /usr/portage. Also, locate uses a database, which is updated occasionally by updatedb. If you've made changes since the last update, locate won't know about it. You could find instead. It's slower, but searches through the whole filesystem.

As for Cedega, I beleive you either still have to pay, or it's a cvs version (I'm not sure, I don't use it).