n00b looking for some guidance

Xtc4u · n00b Joined: 06 Apr 2004 Posts: 4

I know almost nothing about linux. I need to learn it because I have been appointed admin of a server that will be using gentoo. I look through most of the docs but there's nothing that will explain what i need to d/l to get it to run on my system. I know i need the amd64 version but should i d/l one of the isos or download the other stuff or what? If you say iso which one there's three. Is there anything special i need to do to get it to run in SMP? Some guidance would be well appreciated.

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Xtc4u · n00b Joined: 06 Apr 2004 Posts: 4

n/mheh missed the installation guide....duh! after reading the install guide, how do i get it to install on a sepreate drive than my Primary main? Is it possible to install on my Primary Slave?

mbjr · Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2004 1:38 pm Post subject:

Hi,

There's no complete documentation on amd64 yet, but you can use any other to understand the startup methodology

Read: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml
Get a livecd (iso image) from a gentoo mirror (http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/mirrors.xml) from dir: releases/amd64/2004.0/livecd/

Burn the image to a CD, reboot, and boot from CD. Instructions will be there.
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madchaz · Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2004 2:00 pm Post subject:

the documentation asumes you will use the primary
if you want to use another HD, then you need to understand how disks are seen in linux

here goes

the first 2 leters tell you the kind of device we are talking abut

HD means an IDE device
FD means a flopy drive
SD means a scii drive.

the 3th character is the "number" of the device. Let's take the exemple of HD

\dev\hda would refer to the first drive on your IDE bus. your primary master
\dev\hdb would mean the second drive on the IDE bus, the primary slave
\dev\hdc would mean the third, and so on. If you have a controler card (like on one of my machines) you can go beyond HDD (secondary slave) into HDE, HDF etc (that machine as gentoo on hdf in my case)

so in your case, you will want to substitute "almost" every entry of HDA to HDB if you want to install on the primary slave

I say almost because you still want to install your boot loader on the primary drive.
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Xtc4u · n00b Joined: 06 Apr 2004 Posts: 4

Ok, does it matter if the drives are partitioned already? Reason I'm asking all these questions now is I don't want to accidently wipe my primary main drive. Normally I'd just jump in with both feet but i want to do the install and such as smoothly as possible.

Dr Gonzo · Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2004 6:11 pm Post subject:

When you partition, don't actually follow the instructions provided. They suggest that you use fdisk, which is, in my opinion, archaic and overly complicated.

I use a program called cfdisk, and it's menu driven as opposed to command line. It will only allow you to partition one drive at a time. So, for instance, say you want to partition your primary slave drive, which is SCSI. You would then type

Xtc4u · n00b Joined: 06 Apr 2004 Posts: 4

ok from what i gather is that i can't really fudge anything up too badly without knowing about before hand. Thanks for putting up with my n00b questions and all.