gentoo installation - help needed !..

mssanchu · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 28 Sep 2004 Posts: 112

I got gentoo installation cds(setup & package) and got confused after reading the installation docs.

My sys config is, P4, 256ddr, 40gb, nvidia TNT 32. Currently i got xp, rh9.0 in my box, also 6gb free space(unformatted). i prefer stage 3 installation. when i tried the last time it asked for which kernel to be installed i chose gentoo(which one is preferable?...) then it logged in as root, mounted my cd rom in /mnt/gentoo, after that i read the docs from stage3 tar file. how do i install gentoo? how can i redirect the installing files to that 6gb free space? then regarding mbr, will there be any probs or will gentoo take care abt it?

Also i m interested in animation, games and web desinging. plz give me some suggestion to fine tune the os for performance(graphics, speed), then regarding drivers esp. for that video card(nVidia), heard that there is a new release from nVidia, where can i find it? also how can i play games(window games) like nfs, hitman,.....( info abt wine or something better win4lin,vmware,....) i have heard abt them a lot but dont know that much.

thanks.............in advance ! !

sorooros · Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2004 5:49 am Post subject:

First of all there is no automatic installer for Gentoo ... yet. You need to follow handbook very closely, otherwise you'll almost certainly run into trouble. Also I'd recommend keeping make.conf flags simple during initial installation and not use mirrorselect, you can always add tweaks and recompile components later on a running system.

slycordinator · Advocate Joined: 31 Jan 2004 Posts: 3065 Location: Korea

I'm gonna be blunt about this:
It is obvious that you haven't even tried installing using the guide. Asking about a command called "install" that appears nowhere in the guide.

If you want a quick/easy instruction guide for installing gentoo go here:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-quickinstall.xml

This doesn't give all the details that the regular guide gives you but is quick.

Since you want to do stage 3 you'll want to:
1) do the optional parts that say "(Optional: unpack a portage tree)" and "(Optional: copy over distfiles)"
2) skip over the "emerge sync" command (only needed for stage-1)
3) skip over the section whole section called "installing gentoo" (stage 3 already does everything in that section)

And if you want to install precompiled programs using the GRP, after you've rebooted do the stuff in the section at the bottom of the screen marked for that.

Finally,
Graphics stuff (nvidia etc) after you've got the rest of the system going you can go to:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/desktop.xml

Oh, one little thing, before emerging nvidia-glx make sure to do the following:

thechris · Veteran Joined: 12 Oct 2003 Posts: 1203

i'd do this:

echo "~media-video/nvidia-kernel-1.0.6106 ~x86" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords

the ~ means to get packages near the 6106 release (6106-r1, 6106-r2, 6106-r3, ect). this is my prefered method because it means on an update you won't update to possibly unstable versions just because you needed a new version one time.

in this case it is justified because the 6111 release is slower.