Installing Gentoo over existing distros?

wrc1944

Can one simply install Gentoo over a working stand alone Mandrake 9.0 install (lilo bootloader, hda and hdb drives), with /,boot,usr,home, and swap partions (reiserfs), and simply not format /home, thus preserving it? If so, can somebody please explain what the correct procedure would be at step 6?

In other words, I want to use all the pre-formatted partitions on my Mandrake installation as is- no resizing, same reiserfs, and preserve all data on home, completely replacing the Mandrake distro with Gentoo on all other partitions. Do I need a step-by-step walk through from an expert, or will there be a self-explantory option to "use existing partitions" in the Gentoo install, whatever livecd or tarball I use? Are there any tricks or pitfalls I might encounter? I have installed Mandrake many times in expert mode, and am quite familiar with partitioning drives.

Thanks,
wrc1944
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BillyD · Guru Joined: 05 May 2002 Posts: 323 Location: Australia

Take a look here :wink:

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BradN · Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2003 8:04 pm Post subject:

I think if you remove the existing stuff in /usr, /bin, /sbin, and so on except for /home, you can un-tar a given stage image over it, and it should work fine. All you'd want to preserve is the /home (and maybe /root if you keep stuff in there). Just make sure when you get around to doing /etc/fstab, that you set it correctly for your partitions and so on, and when the install guide tells you to mount your partitions, that you also do that according to your setup.

If you have /home on a separate partition, it may be faster just to re-format the other ones, than deleting the files.

Good luck!

wrc1944 · Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2003 8:17 pm Post subject:

BillyD,
I had read that Alternative install page before, but it didn't seem to apply to my specific question. I don't want to install FROM an existing distro, or resize anything. I want to know if I can just install OVER the existing distro, replacing everything except home by reformatting the other partitions, and then proceeding from that step. Essentially, I wouldn't be creating or resizing anything- since all the partitions would already be allocated- but I'm not sure the Gentoo install supports doing this.
_________________
Main box- AsRock x370 Gaming K4
Ryzen 7 3700x, 3.6GHz, 16GB GSkill Flare DDR4 3200mhz
Samsung SATA 1000GB, Radeon HD R7 350 2GB DDR5
OpenRC Gentoo ~amd64 plasma, glibc-2.36-r7, gcc-13.2.1_p20230304
kernel-6.8.4 USE=experimental python3_11

rac · Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2003 8:36 pm Post subject:

st. anger · Apprentice Joined: 30 Oct 2002 Posts: 273

wrc1944:

I did it. I have /home on it's own part, so i just reformatted the others (/, /boot that i had in slackware) and followed the install guide. worked fine.
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pizza.

wrc1944 · Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2003 9:47 pm Post subject:

rac & xamm,

If I can get access to a cable connection at another location to download and burn the .iso, I would be installing from a complete live cd (600+MB) on my 2nd testing linux box. Otherwise. I would try the basic live cd (40MB), and a tarball, which my 56k can handle on my other dual boot win98SE/linux box.

xamm seems to be advising I'll have no problems.

rac- am I correct to understand I'll need to do mkfs on each partition manually at step 6, and also reformat, and that the Gentoo install won't necessarily detect my reiserfs and partitions automatically?

Thanks for the info,
wrc1944
_________________
Main box- AsRock x370 Gaming K4
Ryzen 7 3700x, 3.6GHz, 16GB GSkill Flare DDR4 3200mhz
Samsung SATA 1000GB, Radeon HD R7 350 2GB DDR5
OpenRC Gentoo ~amd64 plasma, glibc-2.36-r7, gcc-13.2.1_p20230304
kernel-6.8.4 USE=experimental python3_11

st. anger · Apprentice Joined: 30 Oct 2002 Posts: 273

gentoo wont autodetect filesystems during install. you have to tell it what type of filesystem, specifying it in fstab.

the best thing to do would be to reformat each partition(except /home of course) and when you reformat, youll have the opportunity to choose which type of filesystem you use.

skip the fdisk part; you shouldnt have to mess with the partition table, since its already established, just format wth the desired filesystems, and follow the install guide as usual

also the livecd is only about 150 MB ( i used 1.4rc1)
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wrc1944 · Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2003 4:26 am Post subject:

Thanks guys,

This was the info I was looking for- I was pretty sure I could get away with using the old partitions. I now feel pretty confident I can do this OK. I plan on using lilo, as, it's already there, and I'm used to it, so will I have any problems, or will things fall into place OK from the old Mandrake install?

BTW, I just looked and all the live cd files on the mirrors are about 524MB, so my 56k could never handle that at one connection. I know ftp "resume" is probably OK, but I just never trusted it for things like operating systems. I already burned the basic live cd-rc2 .iso image, so now I'll try to get stage 3 tarball, and see if I can get started. Will also print out the new install doc, of course.

wrc1944
_________________
Main box- AsRock x370 Gaming K4
Ryzen 7 3700x, 3.6GHz, 16GB GSkill Flare DDR4 3200mhz
Samsung SATA 1000GB, Radeon HD R7 350 2GB DDR5
OpenRC Gentoo ~amd64 plasma, glibc-2.36-r7, gcc-13.2.1_p20230304
kernel-6.8.4 USE=experimental python3_11