Installing from a firewire drive on vaio srx99

Harpalus · n00b Joined: 16 Oct 2002 Posts: 26

Hi all,

I just got an Vaio SRX99 and am trying to install gentoo on it.
I put the 1.4 livecd in the firewire drive that comes with and booted. The booting procedure starts and I get a lot of messages. But then it stops with the following

n0de · n00b Joined: 10 Feb 2003 Posts: 8

I know it has been a while since this post, but I was just wondering how you made out on it.

I am going to start install on my srx99p tonight, and will hopefully have the thing complete by the end of the weekend.

Please let me know what issues you had, if any.

Thanks.

Harpalus · n00b Joined: 16 Oct 2002 Posts: 26

Holy, I figured nobody would ever reply.

To tell the truth I gave up and used vmware. If you find a good way to do it please tell me.

cyrillic · Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2003 2:35 am Post subject:

I have Gentoo installed on my VAIO SRX87 (almost identical to SRX99)
As you have noticed, the 1.4 livecd does not work with a firewire cdrom drive.

My solution is :
Boot with the Gentoo 1.2 CD
Use wget to download the latest 1.4 stage* tarball
Install as usual
Enjoy !

Lomendil · n00b Joined: 22 Jan 2003 Posts: 16

Just to add to the knowledgebase... here's a crazy installation method that ended up working. The instructions aren't really step by step, things took some tinkering, but it may help to get people started (if they have the same limited tools that I did (like no CD Burner))

When I was installing, I happened to have an extra computer and some redhat CDs laying around.

So, here's what I used:

1 - Redhat Install CDs
2 - Extra box with web server enabled (could also use NFS or FTP)
3 - Enough network hardware to connect the extra box to the laptop
(such as 2 cables and a switch)

Once you have those, you can do this:

0 - set up a network between the two computers
1 - boot laptop from Redhat CD
2 - take out CD and mount in extra box
3 - make the mounted CD available on the network
4 - Install redhat just enough to use the internet and basic system
5 - boot into your new redhat system
6 - go get Sam's Megapatch and other good stuff there.
7 - recompile kernel making sure to include tmpfs and things that gentoo needs (see gentoo installation docs for that stuff)
8 - download portage
9 - use portage to start gentooifying the system. See Installing Portage on Other Distros which will help with this. *
10 - emerge your way to glory!

* I didn't actually do it this way, I just started following the instructions in the gentoo installation document (be careful with those system libraries!). But I think the above method is probably safer.

bennyc · n00b Joined: 20 Feb 2003 Posts: 21

I wrote a howoto on vaio r505gl...
it's about the same situation..
http://gentoo.benstudio.us/vaio.php