Trying an install, having some problems

[Boule]

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to install gentoo on both my desktop and my laptop.

I booted with the live CD on my laptop, got logged into a graphical environment. From there I have the choice between using the graphical installer (which isn't that good according to what I read), or the command installer. When I run the command, it starts by asking some questions. I can also hit ctrl-alt-f1 to go into a prompt and do everything from there. So what method should I use ?

On my desktop, the live Cd could load the graphic environment, I don't know why. So I figured I'd try the minimal install and follow the handbook step by step. Everything seemed to be going fine, until I reached the config kernel step. I tried a manual config, and since it was my 1st time configuring a kernel, I wasn't exactly sure what I was doing. The handbook is pretty shallow for this section. Would it be better if I used genkernel ? I need to access some NTFS partitions (read-only is fine), would genkernel integrate the ntfs module ?

I went ahead anyway with my manually configured kernel and finished the install. When I had to restart, I got a kernel panic : "not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown block(0,0)" . Is it fixable or do I need to restart the install ?

About the install, does it have to be done in one sitting, or can it be interrupted at some point ? If it can, how to resume later ? (a reference to the handbook steps would be much appreciated )

Thanks for your help...


My hardware is listed below.


Desktop:
AMD Athlon XP 2800+ (Barton) @ 200x10.5=2100MHz | Asus A7N8X Deluxe | Corsair 2xCMX512-3200C2PT @ 2.5-3-3-8 | MSI GeForce FX 5600 128MB | Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 160GB SATA II | Antec NeoPower 480W | Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Fatal1ty | Thermaltake BigWater SE Watercooling System with Arctic Silver 5

Laptop:
DELL Latitude 120L | Intel Pentium M 740 | OCZ 2x1GB PC2-5400 | Western Digital Scorpio WD1200VE 120GB

[V0rtex]

In my experience, I agree that the graphical installer is not very good. Every time I've used it I got annoyed and went straight to the command prompt to do the install. I have not used the command-line installer so I can't comment on it's usefulness/effectiveness or quality. I have done a lot of installs doing the minimal/command-line method and so I can certainly give you some good pointers there.

I have found that there are sometimes parts of the install guide that aren't quite as descriptive as one would hope, but I suppose that that's where trial and error has come in helpful for myself. You may not get your first or even second attempt quite right at installing Gentoo, but I guarantee that if you stick to it you will learn the process and you will learn a lot about linux as you do so.

To help you with your kernel, here's a few tips that I would suggest:

• The default configuration is usually not far at all from where you want it to be
  
• I have found genkernel to be very difficult to get working so I recommend sticking with manual configuration
  
• Write a list of the hardware (CPU type, onboard hardware and PCI cards that you have installed) including the manufacturer and model of them
  
  • While configuring the kernel you probably won't find all the drivers for everything at first, sometimes they are elusive. This is okay though as long as your kernel boots when you are done.
    
  • You don't need to get all the drivers and options into your kernel the first time you compile it because it is relatively simple to add them in later once you have a working kernel.
    
• The key things to configure are the CPU type, and drivers for the filesystems you choose to use (ext3, reiserfs, etc)
  

To answer your question about accessing NTFS partitions, there is a far better way now than to use the built-in kernel driver. You can compile the NTFS driver into the kernel to use as a default driver, however after you have your system installed you can install a package called ntfs-3g (sys-fs/ntfs3g in portage) that will give you full read/write support for your NTFS partitions.

As far as your already compiled kernel, there are probably a lot of things that could cause that error. I would recommed to first check and make sure that you compiled in support for the filesystems you are using, especially your root filesystem. I also recommend that you actually compile these into the kernel rather than as modules because if they are modules then you have to specify extra options on the kernel line in your bootloader to make the kernel load them before booting.

Your install can be interrupted, however if you interrupt it you have to follow a number of steps to get back to where you were. Basically you have to boot the CD, follow the steps in the guide to configure networking and to 'chroot' into your installation path. Usually this is all I have had to do to get back to where I was.

These are some sites other than the forums that can help with getting things installed as well. They have both been very useful resources to me.
http://gentoo-wiki.com <-- This is a wiki full of articles and howto's for everything.
http://gentoo-portage.com <-- This is basically an easy way to look at information about packages in portage.

I hope this will help you a little.

EDIT: I didn't read your hardware list before, but just so you don't get lost trying to find sound drivers Creative hasn't yet released linux drivers for the Soundblaster X-Fi line of cards and is not planning to release them until the second quarter of 2007. I have the exact same card as you, so I happen to know this. You will want to use the onboard sound of your motherboard (I used to have the same board - you'll need the "Intel/SiS/nVidia/AMD/ALi AC97 Controller" driver for that since it has the nForce 2 chipset - located under "Device Drivers > Sound > Advanced Linux Sound Architecture > PCI devices" in your kernel config).

[Boule]

Thanks for all your help

I was aware of the X-Fi problem, i'm using the on-board for linux (whenever I'll be able to access it :p)

In the kernel configuration, when selecting the file systems, there are several items for a single file system. Should I select them all ?

I thought genkernel was actually the default configuration... I have some PCI cards that I don't use much: a modem and a TV tuner. Would it be a problem if I don't "deal with them" ?

Why do gentoo use a boot partition ? Other dstros don't (fedora, suse, mandrake/driva...)

How can I format the partitions ? Windows won't allow FAT32 for partitions bigger than 30 or 40 GB. The step "applying a file system to a partition" (which is basically formatting I guess) doesn't give info about FAT32. Now I know I could manage to format it using something else (knoppix or the install CD of mandrake 9.2, who has a patition step I like very much) but I'd like to know how to do it from within gentoo...

Yeah I know, lots of questions... I knew this would be challenging, but it's partly why I'm doing it

[wynn]

[Boule]

[wynn]