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andrewski
Guru
Joined: 30 Apr 2004
Posts: 366
Location: Royersford, PA, USA
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 Posted: Sat May 08, 2004 5:24 am Post subject: Giving up with a laptop |
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I have an old Dell Latitude LM (P166 MMX) that can't boot from a CD. So... I've tried making a Smart Boot Manager disk (failed, wouldn't even start), I've tried using a Slackware boot floppy set (failed, wouldn't get out to the network), and of course the Tom's Root Boot disk failed ("kernel too old"). To make it short, I can't boot from the CD, nor can I get an environment where I can even do a stage 1 install from the Internet.
So far I've read:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/altinstall.xml#doc_chap2 (gave me a third-party method that didn't work)
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml (doesn't help with this)
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=8690 (grossly out-of-date)
Gentoo's supposedly great and all, but why in the world is there no support for a boot floppy that combines booting a kernel/filesystem from the CD and getting a DHCP network connection?
Frankly (and perhaps because it's too late and I've been trying this too long), I'm really frustrated and am beginning to see the benefits in sticking with something that works, like Mandrake. Good thing I didn't try this mess on my desktop! (Oh wait, I did... couldn't `make menuconfig` the kernel.)
Is there any hope for me getting Gentoo to work... ever... on any computer?
Please excuse and try to see through my sarcasm. It's cathartic, and I don't mean it (completely) seriously. |
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Rainmaker
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Joined: 12 Feb 2004
Posts: 1650
Location: /home/NL/ehv/
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| Posted: Sat May 08, 2004 5:26 am Post subject: |
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You could use a mandrake floppy I guess, and then drop back to a shell. You'll have to manually initilize your networkcard though
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If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit. |
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mjolner
n00b
Joined: 26 Apr 2003
Posts: 35
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| Posted: Sat May 08, 2004 5:58 am Post subject: Re: Giving up with a laptop |
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| andrewski wrote: |
Is there any hope for me getting Gentoo to work... ever... on any computer?
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Get a 2.5" to 3.5" HD converter, connect the laptop HD to your computer and install that way. Use chroot on your desktop to compile everything there and then dump a tar of that onto the laptop HD. This is how I install onto my laptop. |
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Zviratko
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 21 Feb 2004
Posts: 106
Location: Prague, Czech Republic
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| Posted: Sat May 08, 2004 6:38 am Post subject: Re: Giving up with a laptop |
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| mjolner wrote: | | andrewski wrote: |
Is there any hope for me getting Gentoo to work... ever... on any computer?
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Get a 2.5" to 3.5" HD converter, connect the laptop HD to your computer and install that way. Use chroot on your desktop to compile everything there and then dump a tar of that onto the laptop HD. This is how I install onto my laptop. |
Beware that hard disk geometry likes to change when you take the disk back to the laptop - older laptops boot from cylinder 1 (or 0? something of that sort), this is at least true for HP OB 4500 (the last laptop i had without bootable drives), but is true for some older laptop bios versions (phoenix at least). Solution is to partition and install grub on the machine itself... not sure how :)
But getting a 2.5"->3.5" HDD converted is a good solution, reduction comes handy anyway.
Anyway, another good solution is to install another linux distribution, make your custom kernel and untar gentoo on top of that, this is what I would do:
1) get some distribution that installs fine (debian should be fine, has good install floppies with network support, slackware should be fine as well)
2) make 3 partitions - hda1 as /boot (50MB), hda2 as swap, hda3 as gentoo /, hda4 as <debian /> (SMALL)
3) install debian to hda4 with boot on /dev/hda1
4) untar gentoo on /dev/hda3
5) modify lilo.conf with two kernels, one to boot with root=/dev/hda4, one with root=/dev/hda3
6) if it boots fine into hda3 (gentoo), you can either live with lost space occupied by hda4, or delete hda4 and resize hda3 (but i'm not aware of any floppy capable of doing this and I don't know if single mode helps for this - might go wrong)
7) you're done...
i think this should work on any machine capable of booting from floppy and with a reasonable network adapter
it's a little compicated, maybe you don't need to install debian at all - just grab a boot floppy with network support and untar... but it must have a recent kernel to handle gentoo userland
hope it helps :) i spent weeks trying to install linux on HP 4150.. i had no floppy, no cdrom, just winxp installed, network boot didn't work... bleh :) |
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Yogi-CH
Guru
Joined: 19 Apr 2004
Posts: 372
Location: Somewhere in Texas, last I remember...
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| Posted: Sat May 08, 2004 3:00 pm Post subject: Re: Giving up with a laptop |
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[quote="Zviratko"] | mjolner wrote: | | andrewski wrote: |
Is there any hope for me getting Gentoo to work... ever... on any computer?
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<SNIP>
Anyway, another good solution is to install another linux distribution, make your custom kernel and untar gentoo on top of that, this is what I would do:
1) get some distribution that installs fine (debian should be fine, has good install floppies with network support, slackware should be fine as well)
2) make 3 partitions - hda1 as /boot (50MB), hda2 as swap, hda3 as gentoo /, hda4 as <debian /> (SMALL)
3) install debian to hda4 with boot on /dev/hda1
4) untar gentoo on /dev/hda3
5) modify lilo.conf with two kernels, one to boot with root=/dev/hda4, one with root=/dev/hda3
6) if it boots fine into hda3 (gentoo), you can either live with lost space occupied by hda4, or delete hda4 and resize hda3 (but i'm not aware of any floppy capable of doing this and I don't know if single mode helps for this - might go wrong)
7) you're done...
<SNIP>
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I am intrigued with your method. I have an HP ze5570us which is giving me fits w/the 2004.0 & 2004.1 live cd installations. The 2004.0 is fine except that a necessary file is 'not found' on the server ...so that, as they say, is that. version 2004.1, on the other hand, somehow generates so much screen output from the kernel that it is nearly impossible to debug command line entries: "i8253 count too high! resetting.." and that appears anywhere from once every four to seven seconds, to three times a second.
Bottom line: I am wondering if you could elaborate a little more (even if it is in a private msg)? I have now attempted installs on the HP covering roughly three weeks (once every two or three days) without success. My Gateway desktop, on the other hand, seems to have no problem w/that screen output.
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Zviratko
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 21 Feb 2004
Posts: 106
Location: Prague, Czech Republic
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| Posted: Sun May 09, 2004 12:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Uff, not sure if I can help you, this is a specific hardware problem... that is keyborad controller or something like that? Look for a way of disabling it on boot... or live with the messages, set up networking (can be done without looking at the screen), change the password, fire up sshd and do it remotedly... |
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Installing Gentoo
