now it's starting to get frustraiting

Dr. Jones

Well all my other Linux expierence has given me some patience...

However, this is starting to test it. I've been trying to install Gentoo for about 4 weeks now. I lost count exactly, but I think this is somewhere around my 11th-13th attempt. Each time something different seems to occur. I went through the instructions piece by piece, without error.

The one just now seemed to be going good, was bootstraping for a while (3 hours). I didn't see it all, but I think it compiled gcc, and the libs, and it started doing some non-compile stuff (think it was installing). Then all the suddent it checked an md5 that was invalid.... That happened before too. So taking the advice I got last time, I cleared the distfiles and redid emerge sync, which went good for about 15 seconds, then my comp randomly rebooted....

Every time it's something different. I thought/think it might be a hardware problem (Windows wouldn't even format the drive), but I did a memtest-86 on the ram (4 sucessfull passes), and did a badblocks on the HD. I wasn't sure exactly how to do that one, I think I just did badblocks /dev/hda, it didn't say it was good, but also didn't report any errors, it didn't say anything (is that normal?). I have another drive that I can try... I don't want to format it but I guess I can try...

I think I only have the patience for another few attempts. I really want to bootstrap it just to have a pure system. I also really like how gentoo looks, and I want it to be a sucess...

I might need somone from CO to give me a hand. (there will be a case of beer/soda in it for you

)

Scotty49 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 14 May 2003 Posts: 86

Hello!

When I first attempted to install Gentoo, I encountered all kinds of strange problems, too. I found out, that the cooler of my CPU was not in the perfect position and so the whole thing overheated sometimes, causing a great variety of errors from kernel panics to reboots, segmentation faults, ... Perhaps that might be your problem as well.
Concerning your harddrive I would suggest you to download a special utility from your manufacturer, this is the best thing to check it.
A last, but pretty improbable possibility was, that your Internet Connection is a little faulty, which would explain the MD5 errors.

I hope, one of this ideas can help you to fix the problem!

Scotty

mb4guns · Guru Joined: 04 Dec 2002 Posts: 300 Location: Netherlands

give us soem specs on your hardware, the more details the better. And have u tried a stage2/3 installation by skipping the bootstrap?

The random system rebooting sounds like your running windows

but hardware can couse this problem also.

In my previous pc build I had a broken CPU, it worked but not properly and couse stranged computer behavier.
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sys0: Athlon64, Corsair TWINX DDR400 (1024mb), GeForce FX5600 256mb, 2x SATA MAxtor 120gig, Plextor 708a, Zalman cooling, Zalman powered, gnomed
sys1: Dell inspiron 4100 PentiumIII-mobile@1000 512mb ATI Radeon mobility m6 30gig, gnomed

mb4guns · Guru Joined: 04 Dec 2002 Posts: 300 Location: Netherlands

Scotty49 was a bit faster but the point has been made...
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sys0: Athlon64, Corsair TWINX DDR400 (1024mb), GeForce FX5600 256mb, 2x SATA MAxtor 120gig, Plextor 708a, Zalman cooling, Zalman powered, gnomed
sys1: Dell inspiron 4100 PentiumIII-mobile@1000 512mb ATI Radeon mobility m6 30gig, gnomed

Dr. Jones · Posted: Tue Nov 04, 2003 4:51 pm Post subject:

Are there any good test sweets I might run (like memtest-86) to see if any other hardware parts are bad?
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