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Calling MRD (or other Gentoo fans)

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TalRW

TalRW

Member
​
Joined
Mar 2, 2004
Location
Irvine, CA
I've been working a lot w/ my Dad on Ubuntu. He likes it but is having some problems with the OS. I told him he could try a different distro if he wanted and I mentioned Gentoo. I have never used Gentoo but I have heard people like MRD talk about the virtues of it. I told my dad that you compile all the software yourself and only what you need so supposedly it is very quick and efficient once you get it setup. I also made sure to mention that it probably would be significantly harder to install.

He told me it is something he would be interested in trying. Can anyone hook me up w/ the best Gentoo resources because I want to give my Dad the best info for when he installs it.

*Note: My dad isn't a total newb. He has only been using Linux for a short time (a few months) but has been a Unix and Vi (he loves it, I know you all hate it) expert for a long time. So as long as he has the info he should be able to figure it out.
 
http://www.gentoo.org/

The last reference you'll ever need about installing:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/index.xml

Useful for finding tips about certain programs, not always 100% upto date:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/Main_Page

To search for package names,
http://gentoo-portage.com/

Further resource:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/index.xml?catid=install
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/index.xml



Now the way I installed Gentoo, was first I wrote down all the hardware I had, went and found the name of the driver needed, then when using make menuconfig for the kernel I knew what I needed to make sure I had drivers for. Now I like to compile everything as built in not modules, so it will have a [*] not a [M] before it.

Also what gfx do you have?

Any questions or anything remember to post up and post at the gentoo forums.

Also one last think, be prepared for it to take time to compile the kernel. On my E2130 at 3.2GHz it takes 9 minutes to compile my kernel, but it takes 1.3 hours to compile Open Office, and 1.1 hours to compile KDE 4.0.4 as split ebuilds.
 
Ok I sent this thread to my Dad so he bookmarked all the links. Haha he also wants to know if you guys are all emacs fans. :)
 
The Gentoo documentation (on the Gentoo site) is one of the best parts about Gentoo. The handbook is so thorough that it makes installing Gentoo pretty easy (time intensive, but not hard).

Personally, as for the emacs thing, I'm definitely more of an emacs fan than a vi fan. I use a number of different editors, and my hatred of vi is stronger than my love of any particular editor. In general, I'm happy as long as my editor is not vi. (Not really a big ed fan either... although I think I hate vi more.)
 
MRD said:
The Gentoo documentation (on the Gentoo site) is one of the best parts about Gentoo. The handbook is so thorough that it makes installing Gentoo pretty easy (time intensive, but not hard).

Personally, as for the emacs thing, I'm definitely more of an emacs fan than a vi fan. I use a number of different editors, and my hatred of vi is stronger than my love of any particular editor. In general, I'm happy as long as my editor is not vi. (Not really a big ed fan either... although I think I hate vi more.)
Click to expand...

I agree. (Except I like Vim)
Gentoo docs are very good overall. I am a bit of a documentation enthusiast. I feel good docs are as important as good code, as far as a distribution is concerned. For me, docs can make or break a distro. Look at Frugalware; a great solid base, beautiful themes and branding, pacman package manager, but with a slim, messy wiki. I'll pass.
 
Ok well thanks everyone I passed all the info along to my Dad. He plans to do this as an experiment knowing he will probably either love it or hate it in mind. He also plans to do it some weekend but not for a while. He wants to basically set aside a weekend to work on it because he knows it should be time intensive.

Thanks for all the info.
 
Mmmm my dad tried the Gentoo beta but had problems when trying to configure the kernel. Apparently when he did "emerge gentoo-sources" he got some error and searched the forum and other people were having the problem as well and there is no known fix. He couldn't emerge other programs either.

He says he plans on trying the 2007 version next weekend.
 
I would like to pose a gentoo question...

I was doing an ssh minimal gentoo install but i was wondering if i have to keep the session open while it compiles or can I close the session while it compiles?
 
Use the nohup command (man nohup) so that terminating the xterm (ssh) won't terminate the process. However, you won't know if it succeeds or fails, or why.

In general, the terminal is considered the parent process, and when it terminates, the child processes are also terminated.

Regarding the compile error, I have never seen anything like it.... maybe go back to the non-beta version. It doesn't matter much anyways... with Gentoo, you get the latest source for everything anyways.
 
i'm kinda late to the party, but i just wanted to mention the *BSDs. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD are very nice starting blocks...Gentoo's portage is based on FreeBSD's ports. Then there are the desktop oriented BSDs: PC-BSD and DesktopBSD.

Then there is Slackware and all the linux distros based off that...like Zenwalk and Vector (iirc it's based on slackware but i might be wrong)

And if you like gentoo and all that it is but you want a more polished (arguably) starting point, there is Sabayon.

have fun browsing www.distrowatch.com :)
 
I looked at sabayon ... but i liked the idea of customizing the install... currently in the process of trouble shooting a kernel panic in gentoo
Code: 
kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)
 
Stratus_ss said:
I looked at sabayon ... but i liked the idea of customizing the install... currently in the process of trouble shooting a kernel panic in gentoo
Code: 
kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)
Click to expand...

probably didn't build in the correct ide/sata drivers in your kernel. make sure you pick "y" to build them in to the kernel, not modules, unless you are going to use an initrd....but building them in to the kernel is easy.
 
fixed the problem ... it was in grub it detected the hdd as sata when its pata.

now i have a different problem

Code: 
the superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext filesystem.
 If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem (and not swap 
or ufs or something else),  then the superblock is corrupt, and you might trying 
running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 <device>

fsck -n /dev/hda1 (and 3) come back clean

anyone have any suggestions? google hasnt turned up anything usefull

fstab:

Code: 
/dev/BOOT          /boot         ext2         defaults,noatime            1   2
/dev/ROOT          /                 ext3        noatime                          0   1
/dev/SWAP         none           swap       sw                                   0   0
/dev/cdrom       /mnt/cdrom  auto       noauto,ro                       0    0
 
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