2 attempts failed miserably

[pjp]

All appears to go well until Grub time. I used the stage1 method.
For the record, Win 2k system info reports my cpu as:
x86 Family 6 Model 2 Stepping 1 AuthenticAMD ~656 Mhz

1st install, I tried using the option to compile so it would only work on my machine. When booting, Missing Operating System was the failure message.

2nd install, I tried optimized for Athlon, but will work on any x86 machine.
After the boot menu displays, neither my Windows or Gentoo would boot. I was able to manually load the bzImage from grub. After that, the machine seemed to lock up. I could manually get Win 2k Pro to start loading, but then would freeze. I guessed this might have been a 1024 cylinder issue.

Here's how my drive was set up.
partition 1: ~10MB for Partition Magic (primary)
partition 2: ~2GB 2k Pro (primary)
partition 3: ~544MB swap (primary)
partition 4: extended partition
partition 5: ~100MB /boot
partition 6: / (remainder of 12G drive)

I was unable to restore my windows drive, so I had to reinstall there. My current partition scheme is as follows:
part 1: ~110mb (currently holds 2k Pro boot files, intended for /boot) Primary
part 2: ~2gig (2k Pro) Primary
part 3: ~544MB (Swap) Primary
part 4: remaining space (/) Primary

I'm still hoping to get Gentoo going, but I'm not sure what the problem is.

Thanks

[fghellar]

[pjp]

After I installed Windows, I was wondering about my "wisdom" of placing the boot partition first. Of course, I didn't realize Grub didn't care about the 1024 issue.

I'm not confident with the kernel setup. Also, I didn't come up with anything to enter into the /etc/modules.autoload file. I've got an SMC adapter, but didn't see it listed. Later on, I THINK it was recognized as either an SMSC epic/100 or something called mii.

At one point, I get this message (paraphrased) epic/100 83c170 at 0xde00 IRQ 11

Another time, I see this:
epic/100 12292 (size) (unused)
mii 1040 [epic100]

I don't have a printer, so I get to write down the instructions. From my notes, here's what I think I had in my menu.lst file. Right now, Gentoo isn't loaded since I redid my partitions.

default 0
timeout 30
splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title=My example Gentoo Linux
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/bzImage root=/dev/hda6

#dual boot
title=Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
root (hd0,4)
chainloader +1

By the way, feel free to say I should give up at any point . I don't want to, but if it becomes too difficult to troubleshoot, I'll understand.

[pjp]

After a very long night, I have Win2K & Gentoo booting

I tried to painlessly move the boot partition and put Windows first. Partition Magic had other ideas. Anyhow, here's the new setup:

/dev/hda1: ~2G, Win2K
/dev/hda2: ~100M, /boot
/dev/hda3: ~544M, swap
/dev/hda4: ~10G, /

I can only surmise it was a partition issue. Glad its over, whatever it was.

Next step is getting eth0 to work. During boot a couple of failures occur. 'Failed to bring up eth0 [!!!]' and 'Error: Problem starting needed services "netmount" not started'

modprobe reports "alias eth0 off". No idea what that means. Running /sbin/ifconfig eth0 up reports 'eth0: unknown interface: No such device'

At least it boots! . Now off to find out why eth0 isn't working.

Thanks for you help.

[pjp]

No luck yet. During the install, it appeared to be using drivers for something called "epic/100" & "mii". I thought those were installed, but I'm not sure.

[fghellar]

What's the exact model of your network card? Is it onboard? If yes, what's your motherboard?
_________________
| www.gentoo.org | www.tldp.org | www.google.com |

[pjp]

SMC EtherPower II 10/100 Ethernet Adapter. Thats how Windows is reporting it. This one is a PCI card (just in case SMC does any on-board stuff).

[fghellar]

See if this can help you:
http://www.scyld.com/network/epic100.html
_________________
| www.gentoo.org | www.tldp.org | www.google.com |

[Guest]

IT WORKS!!! I have no clue why. I looked at the page, but it was a bit over my head (without spending ALOT of time on it).
I looked for mii-diag and tried insmod, but there are no .o files. Just for the heck of it, I rebuilt the kernel and included support
for another card (SMC EtherPower II I think it was). Rebooted, still didn't work. Then, I looked at a line in /etc/conf.d/net I'd
been thinking about. I had this entry:

dhcpcd_eth0="...".

I remarked it out (I had unremarked it before) and after rebooting, the network came up. What makes this interesting part is,
I thought I had unremarked it earlier because the network wasn't coming up.

I'm going to call this thread done. Now on to security and the user environment.

Thanks again for the help, maybe this will help someone else.

[pjp]

That was me... have to love forgetting to log in .