Gentoo is grrr... impossible

Impossible = if its too hard for me noone can do it ... LOL

anyway as many of you may have read, i started a thread where i said i am going into my discovery of Linux and basically OS in general...

Anyway after posting that I have recently downloaded gentoo and read a lot on installing it and getting it to work.

Since the entire idea behind using Linux in the first place was for a learning experience I decided to try to do it from stage 1...

So after setting up my old ghetto 30 gig hard drive I got back from my friend with a 32M boot partition, a 512M swap partition, and a remaining 29.5ish root partition...

Anyway after reading installation manuals and getting a hold of everything i have to do I jump right in.

It all goes well using the gentoo universal livecd installation and i set my computer through hours of work bootstraping and "emerge system" and a few other steps...

Anyway after over 6 hours of trying to do everything myself and get through as a learning process i come to configuring and compiling the kernel....

For my kernel i chose the gentoo-dev-source kernel and all seemed well until i came to the menu screen from "make menuconfig"

YEA RIGHT! Ha i consider myself semi advanced computer user... I mean I am here at ocforums.com and i have enough knowledge to get me by in pretty much anything with windows etc... but seeing this menu and all the drivers and options upon options of what to enable and disable i nearly died...

I went through it for about an hour trying to figure out everything setting up correct processor etc... but my understanding of what I needed or may need was completely rocked... The kernel configuration menu has to have over 100,000 options in order to truly peak your systems performance...

Unfortunately I knew my knowledge extent could not be formidable enough here to truly get what I wanted so i relied on the slower less effective but automated genkernel...

After this thing took its sweet time... (it uses most options in order to make it more universal to auto detect vast ranges of hardware) it started erroring and could not complete compiling the kernel... I had just had enough at this point... neither I nor the computer could tell what I needed and i was so close to a complete installation....

At this point i was tired and needed to switch back to windows so i exited the Linux before I could figure out the configuration / compiling of the kernel as I could see no way of finding the right options for me in a reasonable amount of time....

So if you have been reading my big long blog so far this thread boils down to 2 questions.

1: When I try to do this again on the same harddrive will I be able to start at the kernel configure/ compilation point or will I have to go through all the bootstraping etc again?

2: Where on earth should I learn about everything i need to know about kernel configuration, (I understand now how long of a learning process this might be) or emerge a good automated kernel configure / compiler utility.... seeing as genkernel just couldn't even do it.

I am sure after I get past this step and have a complete installed working Linux the questions will compound about usefull modules, GNOME vrs KDE, (opinions on which is better) and other Linux questions will evolve. This is quite the learning experience I must say, but I cannot believe anything could have prepared me for the amount of extensive options and deeper connection the user has with the OS in Linux compared to the user relation with the OS in windows... (windows = point and click and let microsoft decide / linux = you decide everything but you are no longer in day care where all the hard stuff is taken care of for you anymore)

1) yes you will be able to start at the same place you left off. follow the guide again from the begining to mount all the partitions you created, turn the swapon, mount proc and then you can chroot into the environment and be right where you left off at.

2)Look around on forums.gentoo.org. they have a lot of good information about everything concerning gentoo.

As for enabling vs disabling options, you can play safe and choose M to modularize a feature. It will be avaialble in the kernel but won't be loaded unless you set it to load. For instance you could modularize 50 NIC drivers. They wouldn't be loaded up with the kerenl so they wouldn't automatically work, but adding their names to /etc/modules.autoload (is this still the file gentoo uses?) would set them to load up at boot and be useable.

hmm if you use
#genkernel all
it should go through. if not try to remeber the errors you get. the gentoo forums are huge and chances are someones had the same errors. you can do this too
#genkernel --menuconfig all
and get the same menu config up from the manuel install. i dont do much myself in there but remove built in alsa sound and make the filesystem drivers that arent needed as modules.

stick with it. when your done gentoo is better than anything else. speed stuff aside youll love the package manager. you can emerge anything you want or close to it. good luck!

What is the performance difference between making them modules as opposed to enabling them? I guess in short... If i knew my hardware that I was going to be using for instance my Audigy 2 ZS would it have any impact whether I modularized it as compared to enabling it....

I would imagine enabling it would be better from performance wise, but is this true and if so is it really noticeable?

Another question I just realized is this...

If I get a working kernel configuration compiled, and later want to change it can I use the CLI to reconfigure and recompile a new kernel to replace the old one while still keeping Gentoo installed, or will it be necessary to reinstall completely again? Say for instance I got everything running and forgot to enable or modularize support for a printer or something like that... Am I SOL or can I just reconfigure and recompile a new kernel and then replace my old one with this while keeping gentoo installed?

that's the beautiful thing about linux. if you forget to add it to the kernel, you can reconfigure it, recompile it, replace the current kernel with the one you just recompiled while keeping gentoo installed. all that's needed is a reboot. as far as what's better or faster modules vsbuilt in, i'll leave that to someone who knows a bit more about it than i do

I am not 100% sure, but I think things which are used very often, like your sound card for instance, should be built into the kernel but things which are used only sometimes should be modules.

Its a trade-off really. zIf things are modules, then you have the option of using them if you need to without building a new kernel. Stuff you don't use, but moight use... It makes the kernel larger, but then the parts (modules) are not always going to be loaded up. Whereas building in only the stuff you need is best, it also means changing hardware or supporting more stuff may require a kernel recompile later on. You can build several variations of kernel, keeping each in a different directory in /usr/src and giving different named files in /boot for your bootloader so you'll get the option to use the different kerenls you've made each time you boot.

I used to go for a very minimal kernel with the stuff I use built-in, but now I'm lazy and tend to just make a whole bunch of modules.

Well unfortunately I have been set back from the kernel compiling because a portage/distfile couldnt be downloaded. (www.sleepycat.com changed where they store there distfiles so the install couldnt find it...)

This is where it got complicated... For some of you you my have believed this to be easy but I had to bevery resourcefull considering i barely know any comands... i mean i had to look up copy command just to do this....

So after wondering and wondering why i could no longer acess the internet through links2 i realized after about 30 minutes i was using the incomplete OS on my harddrive i had already chroot to. Then after realizing i had to go back to liveCd os I navigated to the correct link for the portage distfile db-4.1.25.tar.gz... and used that link in links2 to download the file.. then by luck links2 had a save as option.

Once I did this i had to look on the internet in how to use the copy command to copy the newly downloded file to the correct /mnt/gentoo/usr/portage/distfile directory...

Long story short I got it working (Yes I am proud) and now it has got to another sleepycat site so i get to do it again... good for learning harsh on the spare time

Man there are a lot of terrible links out there how man times will i have to do my amazing trick?! hehe

Is there a way to add a url to the mirror list that i am fairly sure it up to date and will stop giving me this cannot download error that is like 10 so far.

well using nano i just added a local mirror to the mirrorselect and i must say no more stupid searching for workin mirrors.. teaches me to try to use auto mirror select...

drewmister said:

well using nano i just added a local mirror to the mirrorselect and i must say no more stupid searching for workin mirrors.. teaches me to try to use auto mirror select...

Click to expand...

Mirror select does not work off the liveCD. You must chroot, emerge mirrorselect, and run it.

mirrorselect -a -s3 (will auto. find the fastest 3 mirrors)

Ill read the rest of your issues too, and get back to you. My laptop is about to die though.

Most of the stuff that you need is all ready selected in the kernel config. There are some Gentoo specific parts that need to be compiled for the system to work, devfs comes to mind (its all laided out in the guide)
Also some other important thingst that you are going to want to add in, are lan drivers, chipset drivers, fb support (if so inclined) as well as any file systems that you want.

If in doubt of an option, you can hit "?" and it will give you a breif description. Most of the stuff in there that is not selected, is not needed. Go though every menu 1 by 1 and read all the options, if it sounds like its somehting you have, than add it in. If not that pass it by. More often that not, this will leave you with a working kernel. If not, go back, see what you missed and try again.

Another option is genkernel, it builds basically everything into the kernel, but it ends up being bigger, and thus slower. Its important that you know how to make your own kernel, and its one of the harder steps of the install. Pay attention to what you are doing, and take your time. You should be alright, its really not as bad as it seems.

Really, you could just enable what the manual says you have to enable in regards to your system/gentoo version and go on using your machine in linux.

Later on, when you learn more about linux, you can come back and recompile your kernel without losing all of your data. That's what I did.

Well i got it all up and running but something isn't right... I am trying to figure it out, but haven't really had time lately.

The hard drive I am using is a old Seagate Barracuda 30 gig. The problem with it is that dma doesn't even work. So this thing takes 20-30 minutes just to load gentoo up. Then everything seems to load find except i get an error I can barely read:

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda1,
or too many mounted file

I followed the guide as best I could and even restarted several times. Also when It finally boots up and gets going I can log in and everything appears to be working I think but it doesn't read my internet. When I used the livecd it detected it automatically and worked fine... Since I wanted a little time to get used to Linux before trying to compile my own kernel I used genkernel. I thought it would work with my internet because it said it was very similar to the LiveCD and i figured since it detected it immediately during installation it would after. Maybe I need to emerge dhcpcd for it to detect my dhcp network, but i figured I wouldn't because it saw it before.

So basically why am i having mount errors and what file would i have to edit to figure out this....

I compiled it using USE="-gtk -gnome qt kde alsa cd dvd cdr" and hoped to get a nice KDE setup on it because looking at KDE-look.org I am very impressed...

Unfortunately something about this setup is way too slow and I am not sure I like it... 20-30 minute boot time is just a little out of my league.

Another question I thought might be the problem is that even though I know without DMA the harddrive is a LOT slower I think that speed is even slower. What I think may be happening is that when trying to mount my partitions it is erroring before it realizes dma doesnt work.. So how do I set DMA off (hdparm -d 0 /dev/hda) before it boots up?

I came upon this because when setting it up and i tried to mount my paritions it would give DMA not working errors and take quite a while and then finally mount it after going through severl errors.

But if i set (hdparm -d 0 /dev/hda) before mounting they mounted much quicker and of course without errors...

man hdparm

fix your /etc/fstab

check that your chipset drivers are enabeled in the kerenel

Well decided to do the kernel myself instead of genkernel... easier then i thought. Fixed it up and made it smaller.... I am sure DMA is not working right so i guess its off how to figure to turn it off in boot to hopefully cut down on the still rediculously slow boot.... Maybe i can get 10 min boot! LOL

Recompiling the kernel myself got the internet working and no more mount error.. Also the boot time while cut down continues to be rediculously long.... another amazingly long process

emerge kde

This thing is taking at this point 4 hours and tht is on package 60 / 83....

I wanted the whole package because as stated many times previously this is a learning experience... I want to be able to have a little bit of experience in everything so eventually i can manage myself. I am really starting to like this Linux thing... While the compatibillity for a lot of the stuff isn't there it is still amazing to have complete control over every option available.....

Plus almost every application and every piece of software I would ever need is free, customizable, and immediately available by emerge (I must admit I am very impressed by gentoos's portage)

**To bad I have chess software and other stuff that must use windows**

PS. Is there any way to run CS through Linux?