issues booting into new system

Ben_Taylor · n00b Joined: 21 May 2007 Posts: 7

Hello,
I just installed a new system following this guide
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-quickinstall.xml#reboot

I had root (/mnt/gentoo) on /dev/hda4, boot (/mnt/gentoo/boot) on /dev/hda1, swap on /dev/hda2, and /mnt/gentoo/usr on /dev/hda3. (I put usr on a separate partition as previously I've had issues ('segmentation fault') when unpacking portage which having usr on a different partition seemed to fix, although it might have been because I was unpacking stage3 at the same time.)

Anyway. I did it from stage3 by downloading and unpacking the stage3 archive, I don't want to do it from stage 1 or 2.

When I got to the point in the guide where I've done 'make menuconfig' and verified that all the options are ok, I then did as it says which is to do 'make -j2'. It took hours and hours, and eventually I noticed it wasn't doing anything as it had been doing one line (can't remember exactly what but it was along the lines of "LD ... something something.... video.o" so I Ctrl-C'ed it. I then just did 'make' and it finished in under a minute, apparently successfully.

I then installed reiserfsprogs, grub without issues, unmounted and rebooted, and when it rebooted it came up with the grub loader successfully where you choose the operating system to boot ('Gentoo'), but after that it just rebooted again. and again, and it would have gone on in a continual cycle of getting to the grub screen and rebooting if I hadn't stopped it.

What have I done wrong? What does the "-j2" option do on the make of the kernel? Will the fact that I tried to do "make -j2" and then stopped it and then just did "make" have affected it? Is my kernel buggered?

Also is it possible to rescue it without having to go through the whole process of downloading and unpacking and whatnot all over again?

Thanks for any help!

kevstar31 · Guru Joined: 22 Nov 2006 Posts: 449 Location: Ohio

can you post your grub.conf

Ben_Taylor · n00b Joined: 21 May 2007 Posts: 7

I booted into the live cd, and now everything in /boot has vanished, as has everything in /usr, therefore the compiled kernel has been wiped out. I'm beginning to suspect a dodgy disk... either that or the files were deleted by the restarting process...but everything else seems ok, it mounts fine.
I definitely did create a grub.conf with

Ben_Taylor · n00b Joined: 21 May 2007 Posts: 7

does anybody know what the -j2 option to the kernel's make does and why that guide is telling me to use it?

does that tell it to build from stage 2 instead of 3?

Syque · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 15 Aug 2004 Posts: 110

The -j2 option is telling the computer to compile 2 processes simultaneously. The rule of thumb from the Gentoo guidebook is to compile (n+1) processes simultaneously, where n is the number of CPUs you have. The 2 has nothing to do with stages.

About the disappearing /usr and /boot files, did you remember to mount those two partitions after you rebooted using the boot disk? If not, you wouldn't see the files.