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AtOMiCNebula
n00b
Joined: 23 Mar 2004
Posts: 13
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 Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 10:08 pm Post subject: Installing Gentoo over Fedora |
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Hey. I have a dedicated server box that I have Fedora Core 1 installed on, and I want to install Gentoo over it. I tried searching Google and the forums here, but all I found that seemed relevant were these two pages. They say they are for RH7.2 and RH9 respectively, and neither of them mention anything about Fedora. Would the steps be any different?
One of my server's other admins attemped following the instructions in the 2nd link, since RH9 was closest to Fedora Core 1. But, after rebooting it, the server didn't come back online (couldn't even ping it). We don't know if the bootloader screwed up, or if eth0 didn't start up for some reason, or some other reason. All we know is it didn't come up so that the internet could see it. Our host was kind enough to reimage it for free (with Fedora Core 1, of course).
So. Any suggestions? I'm sorry if there's a post somewhere on here about fedora and I missed it. Maintaining our fedora server is a pain, and I've installed Gentoo using LiveCDs many many times, so I'm hoping this shouldn't be that difference. I guess the only problem here is if I mess up anything so that the kernel/system/network doesn't boot, we're out of luck and need to get it reimaged. Any help is greatly appreciated!  |
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racoontje
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Joined: 19 Jul 2004
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| Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 10:10 pm Post subject: |
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I'd reccomend doing a fresh install, and I'd strongly reccomend against installing a bloody server when you don't have physical access to it  |
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AtOMiCNebula
n00b
Joined: 23 Mar 2004
Posts: 13
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| Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 10:26 pm Post subject: |
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heh, tell me about it. But seeing how the server is in some datacenter in california, and I'm on the opposite side of the US, it gets kinda hard. And, it's very annoying to run Fedora right now.
There seems to be a lot of bloat on our server. It has XFree v4.3.0 installed...and it's a web server. I don't understand. And, having Gentoo installed on my home's server, I've become way too used to using emerge. It's just so handy! We can live with Fedora if we need to...but if we can install gentoo, that would be fantastic. |
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racoontje
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Joined: 19 Jul 2004
Posts: 1290
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| Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2004 10:29 pm Post subject: |
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| Theoretically, you could get it to work, I guess, but not without lots of leftover muck from FC :'( |
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Raffi
l33t
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
Posts: 731
Location: Moscow, Id.
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| Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2005 2:26 am Post subject: |
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If you have the disk space to free up a partition, I would install onto that partition and get it working as well as possible under the chroot'ed environment and then you can boot back and forth between the two installs. That does require someone on site that can use the grub menu, but most any trained monkey can do that.  |
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AtOMiCNebula
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Joined: 23 Mar 2004
Posts: 13
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| Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2005 3:23 am Post subject: |
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Optimally, I'd want to be completely rid of Fedora, but if that's not feasable and/or safe (don't want to run the risk of having the host do a reset) then I'll keep a partition for it. What's a good program to safely partition? My disk usage is as follows:
| Code: | [root@***** root]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2 7.7G 609M 6.8G 9% /
/dev/hda1 76M 9.9M 63M 14% /boot
/dev/hda8 48G 629M 45G 2% /home
none 252M 0 252M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda7 1012M 33M 928M 4% /tmp
/dev/hda6 7.7G 5.6G 1.8G 77% /usr
/dev/hda5 7.7G 1.7G 5.7G 23% /var
[root@***** root]# |
I'm guessing I'd resize hda8 down a bit (or a lot!  ). So basicially all I'd do is size hda8 down, create a new partition to store the new gentoo root. Also, if I resize partitions, do I need to worry about GRUB losing it's place in the MBR, and have to reconfigure it?
Wow, as I look back at this, this could be kinda easy |
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Raffi
l33t
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
Posts: 731
Location: Moscow, Id.
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| Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2005 4:12 am Post subject: |
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That sounds like the right approach. The one downside is you will need to reboot after resizing and repartitioning. The kernel does not like to resize partitions that have been used with out a reboot.
If all you are playing with is hda8 (and the added hda9) grub should not loose anything or need a change. |
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AtOMiCNebula
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Joined: 23 Mar 2004
Posts: 13
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| Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2005 4:17 am Post subject: |
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Sounds good. My only problem is that I'm not very proficient with Fedora's package management utilities. GNU Parted v1.6.3 is installed. v1.6.20 is the most recent stable version, which parted's site says is from 2002-08-11. Unless Fedora includes security patches on their stuff...that is SERIOUSLY out of date, and I seem to remember some time ago about some parted bug that would wipe out your disk's MBR if you did some certain things. My question is, how do I update parted to v1.6.20, or at least a version that doesn't have any critical bugs (if there are any in v1.6.3)?
I can't wait until I get Gentoo working on this thing...it'll be quite nice |
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Raffi
l33t
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
Posts: 731
Location: Moscow, Id.
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| Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2005 4:20 am Post subject: |
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fedora should have fdisk on it. I personally would feel much more comfortable using fdisk when doing some partition manipulation. Also, be very sure to write down all of the partition starts and stops just in case the worst happens and you have to try to rebuild...
Also, don't forget to resize the file system on /home before changing the partition. |
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dacha_san
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 26 Dec 2004
Posts: 82
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| Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2005 12:57 pm Post subject: Re: Installing Gentoo over Fedora |
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| AtOMiCNebula wrote: | Hey. I have a dedicated server box that I have Fedora Core 1 installed on, and I want to install Gentoo over it. I tried searching Google and the forums here, but all I found that seemed relevant were these two pages. They say they are for RH7.2 and RH9 respectively, and neither of them mention anything about Fedora. Would the steps be any different?
One of my server's other admins attemped following the instructions in the 2nd link, since RH9 was closest to Fedora Core 1. But, after rebooting it, the server didn't come back online (couldn't even ping it). We don't know if the bootloader screwed up, or if eth0 didn't start up for some reason, or some other reason. All we know is it didn't come up so that the internet could see it. Our host was kind enough to reimage it for free (with Fedora Core 1, of course).
So. Any suggestions? I'm sorry if there's a post somewhere on here about fedora and I missed it. Maintaining our fedora server is a pain, and I've installed Gentoo using LiveCDs many many times, so I'm hoping this shouldn't be that difference. I guess the only problem here is if I mess up anything so that the kernel/system/network doesn't boot, we're out of luck and need to get it reimaged. Any help is greatly appreciated! |
It is completely the same, Fedora or RH. Fedora is the successor of the RH, since the last one has moved to commercial versions. |
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Crucis
n00b
Joined: 07 Sep 2004
Posts: 65
Location: Singapore
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| Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2005 1:02 pm Post subject: |
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| It is definitely possible, though i won't install a server if i dont have physical access to it |
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Installing Gentoo
