Yet another noob...

Sk1p · Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2003 2:31 pm Post subject: Yet another noob...

This is my first installation attempt at any linux system.

Here is what I have accomplished thus far:
Downloaded and burned the x86 athlon xp liveCDs
Booted to Gentoo and used fdisk to construct my partition table
hda1 - ntfs (WinXP)
hda2 - 83 64M
hda3 - 82 512M
hda4 - 83 rest (approx 11g)
Inialized my partitions
hda2 - ext3
hda3 - swap
hda4 - reiser
Activated my swap (swapon /dev/hda3)
Created mount points (mount /dev/hda4 /mnt/gentoo - mkdir /mnt/gentoo/boot - mount /dev/hda2 /mnt/gentoo/boot)
Unpack Gentoo stage 3....
tar xvjpf /mnt/cdrom/stages/stage3-athlon-xp-20030910.tar.bz2
Here is where my problem lies... the stage begins to unpack and appears to run smooth until about 75% I get 'Wrote only 0 of 10240bytes' 'Skipping to next header'

I have tried the installation a several times with the same result. Thoughts please?

Thanks,
Skip

dsd · Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2003 2:40 pm Post subject:

possibly a hardware problem, could you check the output of

guitou · Guru Joined: 02 Oct 2003 Posts: 534 Location: France

Looks like a corrupted CD.
If you still have the iso, test it with md5sum. Once you're sure your iso is good, burn a new CD at low speed (4X ?).

Sk1p · Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2003 2:47 pm Post subject:

The checksum completes correctly, the file is indeed intact (658de473906fb9ec015cd517de5d88d8).
The subject machine is a Sony NVR-23 laptop. 1800+ 256DDR 30g
It is not online.

Suggestions?

guitou · Guru Joined: 02 Oct 2003 Posts: 534 Location: France

But what if your cdrom is corrupted ?
Try "md5sum /dev/wheryouputyourcdrom".

Sk1p · Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2003 3:20 pm Post subject:

My ISO checked out okay... burned a new cd as suggested... same as before =/

What now? I don't think that there is a hardware problem. Gentoo found initialized and mounted my cdrom all by itself. The cdrom has worked well so far. I would guess that its user error. Is there a step that I am leaving out?

Sk1p · Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2003 4:40 pm Post subject:

If I attempt to continue without the unwritten files will I be able to fix things later? Will I get that far?

ebruning · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 27 Nov 2002 Posts: 104

When you unpacked the tarball where you in the /mnt/gentoo directory? I have done that before and got the same errors. Depending on what isn't getting unpacked determines if you can continue. You may want to try a stage 1 or 2 install if you are going to have to compile the packages anyways.

Sk1p · Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2003 5:08 pm Post subject:

Yes i was in the mount dir. I don't think I have learned enough to use stage 1 or 2. I feel like such a lamer =/

dsd · Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2003 5:13 pm Post subject:

i'd suggest giving stage1 or 2 a try, apart frmo a lot more waiting around, theres not much more involved in the installation
_________________
http://dev.gentoo.org/~dsd

ebruning · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 27 Nov 2002 Posts: 104

Doing an install from stage 1 or 2 is just a few extra commands (the bootstrap and emerging system). But it will add time to the install depending on what your hardware is. When you untar the file what do you get when you issue the mount command and df -H command?

Sk1p · Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2003 7:36 pm Post subject:

It begins to unpack. It gets about 75-80% complete before it stops due to error.

I was hoping to do this without getting on the internet with the installation system. If I choose stage 1 or 2 is that still possible?