downloading Gentoo

Jack_Frost · n00b Joined: 20 Mar 2003 Posts: 5

I am new to linux but have heard some exceptional things about gentoo and would like to know how i download it?

cyrillic · Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2003 5:16 am Post subject:

http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/where.xml

modal · Apprentice Joined: 02 Oct 2002 Posts: 277

Jack_Frost, since you are a newb, I have a few words of caution from an avid gentoo lover...
Make sure that you are willing to spend lots of time learning the inner workings of your system, and linux. Linux is NOT windows. It takes time and effort to be useful.

Be sure to search the forums for answers, and post if you can't find them.

also drop on into the #gentoo chat irc channel (irc.freenode.net #gentoo) there are many awesome people that can help you there.

Gentoo is a system that is hand configured, not automated, so don't expect to get it right the first or even second time. That's what makes it fun.

If all else fails, and you start to give up hope, let us on the forums know your troubles and we will try to help you out. Also, if you find that it just isn't for you...there are other great distros out there, that are much "easier " to get running. Mandrake, Redhat, SuSe.

Good luck, welcome to Gentoo.

Jack_Frost · n00b Joined: 20 Mar 2003 Posts: 5

When i go to that site it is just a directory structure. Do i just right click on every file and save or is there an easier way? Also if you could let me know which directories i will need that would be helpful as well. Thanks guys and i look forward to getting acquainted with gentoo.

arkhan_jg · Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2003 3:09 pm Post subject:

Hit the install guide: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-install.xml
first, then you'll probably find the three stage iso easiest:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/gentoo/releases/1.4_rc3/x86/x86/livecd/
is one place to get it, though a local mirror may be faster.
_________________
make menuconfig not war

Jack_Frost · n00b Joined: 20 Mar 2003 Posts: 5

Ok, i got the ISO downloaded and i am able to boot to it. Now it goes through a bunch of things and then stops at the root# and i am not sure what to do at that point. I also have my hard drives on a striped raid array and i am currently running windows xp on 80% of the harddrive and i am wanting to put gentoo on the other partition. Will gentoo allow me to install it on my second partition or will it overwrite my XP installation. I hope you guys can help me out. I really want to get this working and i have heard that gentoo linux is about the best out there right now.

michaelb · Posted: Fri Mar 21, 2003 4:49 pm Post subject:

can8ianbak0s · n00b Joined: 12 Mar 2003 Posts: 5 Location: Hartford, CT

I agree with the amount of patience you need to get you Gentoo system up and running. It took me a little over two weeks of doing the reinstall 4 times from stage 3 to get a good working system. You must have a strong curiosity and motivation to succeed and trust me once you get it right, there is not a better feeling in the world that you have just build your entire OS and it is fast as heck. Another thing is that you have to remember is that all the software you will need you will have to compile it. And yes that takes some more time. The forums in here are SOLID and search alot before posting because chances are that you will read something not related to your current issue, but may run into it at a later time. I cannot stress it enough....READ, READ, READ. Have a blast and one heck of a great learning experience. ~bak0s

Jack_Frost · n00b Joined: 20 Mar 2003 Posts: 5

I decided to give redhat a shot just to get a bit of experience first and then i will go with gentoo. I am having a problem installing redhat though and i was wondering if maybe someone could help me out. I downloaded all of the images and made the boot floppy. I am able to boot to the floppy and it give me the main screen and i hit enter to do a graphical installation and it loads the first file just fine(I forget what it was called) but when it gets to initrd.img it says boot failed and wants me to changes the disks and then press any key to continue. I have formatted about 5 floppies and remade the boot disk 5 times as well and i am still getting the same error. Is it possible i just got a bad image? Or could there be something else. I hope someone can help me out with this. Thanks again guys and i look forward to installing gentoo very soon.

arkhan_jg · Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2003 3:19 pm Post subject:

I stopped using redhat when they decided to make it much harder to download security patches for their distro without paying for the priviledge (even for purchasers of the boxed set!)

Still, politics aside, I seem to remember that you need more than just a boot disk for redhat when using floppies; I think you need couple of extras, like a modules disk, network disk, pcmcia disk, that sort of thing.

The CD-ROM is also bootable, so it might be worth a shot just trying to boot off the first CD. (you may need to change the boot order in your bios to get it to boot your CD before the hard drive though).

Failing that... well, redhat support website can be found here, they may well have more tips.
_________________
make menuconfig not war

Jack_Frost · n00b Joined: 20 Mar 2003 Posts: 5

Anybody know where i may be able to download the highpoint 370 raid driver for redhat 8.0? I can find drivers for up to redhat 7.3 but those don't work? Hopefully someone can help.

cyrillic · Posted: Tue Mar 25, 2003 1:03 am Post subject:

Unfortunately, I don't have much experience with RedHat, but I do have 4 Gentoo machines set-up the way you were thinking of setting-up your machine.
3 dualboot Windows/Gentoo
All 4 use ataraid controllers (2 Highpoint, 2 Promise)
Installation can be tricky, but I would be happy to share my experience in more detail if you want.

windymillar · n00b Joined: 26 Mar 2003 Posts: 1

Are there additional generic instructions on installing Gentoo into a dual boot system.

I currently have XP on Disk 1, Windows ME on Disk 2 controlled by BootMagic and works very well.

I would like to install Linux onto the last partition on Disk 1 which currently has 1 Boot partition, 1 XP system partition(7Gb active) and 3 data partitions ( 14, 20 and 12 Gb resp. ).

In planning the install queries I have surround can Gentoo be installed on the 5th logical partition ( 12 Gb ) and can Grub/LILO be installed into a logical partition so that BootMagic can control which OS is booted?.