modem install

brad · Guest

Hello,

I'm on holiday this week, and I have an old 1.4Ghz AMD Thunderbird CPU with 256Mb of DDR Ram and a 30Gb 7200 rpm hard drive. All in a nice coolermaster case just begging for Gentoo!

I'm downloading the the 100+Gb Gentoo ISO image as I post this. I only have a modem at home, so my connection is a bit slow. Which leads to my question:

Can I install over a dial-up modem connection? I know it will be painfully slow, but I have all week! Has anyone done this?

Thanks,
Brad

Swishy · Guru Joined: 06 Jun 2002 Posts: 491 Location: NZ

Check out Jeremy's post under the WVDialer heading....

Cheers
Dale.
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thinker5555 · Posted: Mon Jun 17, 2002 1:28 am Post subject: Re: modem install

Brad · Guest

Your advice worked great!!!

I did a RH7.3 minimu install, then set up networking, and then started the Gentoo install. This is slow, but it works, I can even stop the install between stages by unmounting everything and come nack to it when I fell like it. My athlon chews up the compiles pretty fast, but getting the downlaods is painfully slow.

Thanks for the advice!

delta407 · Posted: Tue Jun 18, 2002 1:06 am Post subject:

If you want to download and disconnect, your best bet would be to emerge --fetchonly (-f) packagename. This is also advantageous if you can bring your computer to a place that does have a fast connection, even temporarily, so you can download (say) XFree 4.2.0, KDE 3, and GNOME 2 -- then just unplug and let your computer crunch it all back home.

Or, you can see any of the other numerous threads about burning CDs with the contents of the distfiles/ directory if you know someone that owes you a favor and has access to a high speed line.

fghellar · Posted: Tue Jun 18, 2002 1:26 am Post subject:

Brad · Guest

emerge system took 5 hours 12 minutes and 48 seconds through my 56K dial-up

thinker5555 · Posted: Tue Jun 18, 2002 1:13 pm Post subject:

Not bad. Mine took a bit longer because my ISP has gotten a little, uh, unreliable...

Thank goodness for programs that can resume downloads...

gigaboom · n00b Joined: 18 Jun 2002 Posts: 2 Location: USA

I'm just starting to check out Gentoo- I'm not sure I'm ready for this distro. I've been a programmer for 15 years, but not that flavor of programmer... and I do need to get work done at some point, not just work on the OS itself.

Anyway, from a broad base of ignorance- this seems like a pretty major hurdle to acceptance. Two-thirds or more of us are stuck behind dial-ups, that's just in the US, and that doesn't mean we're technically illiterate.. but installing over a dial-up isn't even covered in the docs.

It doesn't seem like this would even be difficult to fix. It's not like there isn't room on the .ISOs for a few utilities, wvdial and ppp and whatever, and some changes to the install directions. Instead, the message seems to be that if you're on a dial -up, they just don't care.

It's even more of a shame, since Gentoo is stripped down to essentials, and you only install what you need- which seems like the ideal approach for those on dial-ups, as opposed to those distros going to several ISOs full of stuff that many users will never touch.

Not many potential users are going to look as far for the info as I did.
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In Windows, only Bill has root.

LibraMark · Posted: Tue Jun 18, 2002 7:35 pm Post subject:

Hey all!

Actually, gigaboom, did you checkout the forum: Development -> Documentation section? I wrote up a guide there for installing from stage 3 over a modem, based on my experiences. It may be helpful, anyway it seems many are looking at it anyway?

For non-i686x systems, it seems that the above posts should help.

It seems this distribution was originally made for ethernet instllation as it depended on so many downloads. It's true that perhaps they could easily modify the install to allow for modem installation. (I don't have the expertise or else I would try it.) But I don't think it's anything the developers did (ignoring dialup users) on purpose. Perhaps if many asked 'nicely' it could get done very soon.

In the end though, remember this is a free, volunteer, effort-with not many income sources for full-time employees like Redhat, Mandrake, etc. all have.

Maybe someone could make an install guide for installing via this networking from another distro method? Maybe there is a really small utility linux download (debian net install?) that could start it off, then some network setup hints, and references to the gentoo install guide? Just write up something, post it on the 'null forum and let the developers know it's there. Could be a good start eh!

Cheers!

Mark.

gigaboom · n00b Joined: 18 Jun 2002 Posts: 2 Location: USA

LibraMark,

Thanks for the pointer to the document, will check it out.

Didn't mean to sound overly critical- it just seems a very odd omission. The solutions I've seen proposed seem to depend on having another Linux kernel loaded and connected first. Ok, I can do that, but does it seem faintly ridiculous to anyone else? I wouldn't think that getting networking working over a dial-up would be much harder than getting it working over ethernet during the install.

I have a lot more reading to do before I make the decision whether to try Gentoo, though.
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In Windows, only Bill has root.

Brad · Guest

I'm up and running! And I must say, gentoo is way cool! Now I just need to get X and all that stuff loaded. Thanks to all for the tips. The modem install was easier than I thought it would be.

Brad

thinker5555 · Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2002 12:01 am Post subject:

For anyone who's interested, I posted a Tips-n-Tricks topic on this. As with LibraMark, I went by my experiences, and put what worked for me. Feel free to give me any comments, suggestions, or ask any questions.

Jeremy