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darrenc
n00b
Joined: 29 Aug 2007
Posts: 2
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 Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 11:21 pm Post subject: Multiple install problems |
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OK, I've been fighting for 2 days now trying to install Gentoo onto a new HP laptop. It's been a while since I've used Gentoo, but I've never had issues like this with it before. First off, I'm using the LiveDVD. This is on an HP Pavilion dv9000 series laptop with an AMD Turion64 TL-64 processor. The live DVD boots fine and works as would be expected - right up until the point I tell it to actually install Gentoo on the system. The install is networkless, and is being done on a partition on my secondary hard drive. If I run the graphical installer, everything seems to work fine, however installing grub seemed a bit odd. It tells me my only option is grub (no problem, that's what I want), but as soon as I click ok it says it's installed and moves on - it doesn't ask me where I want it (in the MBR) or anything else that grub usually asks. But, the rest of the install goes on without any problems, right up to it telling me to "reboot and enjoy".
Well, there's nothing to enjoy on rebooting because the system goes straight into windows (and there's no joy there). No grub in the MBR, so, to my knowledge no way to get into my install of Gentoo. Just on an off change, I tried rebooting with the LiveDVD and giving it the kernel parameters for the installed version, but that didn't work. I could mount the partition and see that it really was installed, but no way to boot it.
So, I wiped all that out and tried again with the command line installer. Wow, that opened a whole new list of issues for me. Virtually every attempt to install that way produces some fatal error somewhere. Most commonly, some variant of the 3 following messages result.
| Code: | | File "opt/installer/fe/dialog/dialog.py", line 740, in _wait_for_program_termination raise DialogError("the dialog-like program exited with code %d (was passed to it as the DIALOG_ERROR environment variable)" % exit_code) dialog.DialogError: <DialogError: the dialog-like program exited with code 3 (was passed to it as the DIALOG_ERROR environment variable)> |
| Code: | File "opt/installer/Partitioning.py", line 253, in add_partition raise GLIException("PartitionFormatError", 'fatal', '_partition_format_step', "Could not create %s filesystem on %s" % (fstype, devnode))
GLIException.GLIException: PartitionFormatError :FATAL: _partition_format_step: Could not create <PedFileSystemType object at 0x682f60> filesystem on /dev/sdb2 |
| Code: | | There was an exception received during the install that is outside of the normal install errors. This is a bad thing. The error was: [Errno 17] |
Now, I'm not a Gentoo guru by any stretch, so those don't really tell me anything useful, except that the install failed.
These installs, though, are all failing after the point that grub is being installed - and the command line installer asks me where I want it and puts it in the correct place (in the MBR). That would all be great except grub does not detect my instance of windows so it doesn't include it. And since there really is no instance of Gentoo installed, there is no grub.conf file to edit to add windows to it. (On a side note here, why on earth has Gentoo decided that grub should be installed before the OS, instead of at the very end like other linux distros? A failed install leaves you with grub, but nothing for it to boot.)
Several more install attempts finally got me a minimal system with only X and gdm, but my network refused to do anything. Came up ok, but wouldn't actually speak to anyone. Ifconfig reported the link encapsulation as "undefined", which I suspected was the problem but could find no way to correct it. When I boot the LiveDVD it gets an IP from my router and everything is fine.
So, we wiped that out and started trying again. Now I can't even get that far again - the best I can get now is a command-line only instance - if I choose any packages at all (even just X and gnome) when the list comes up it errors with one of the above messages. But at least the OS is really there and bootable, so I edited grub.conf and now I at least have windows back.
Anyway, I thought I would go from there and see if I could finish building it into the full thing by just emerging everything else. Can't do that, though, because my network doesn't work again. Since I'm command line only now, I get a more detailed message than what I saw before in ifconfig. Now it tells me "interface eth0 is not Ethernet or 802.2 Token Ring". Of course, it should be ethernet. I suspect this is the same thing as before when it reported my link encapsulation as "undefined" instead of the normal "ethernet". Why it works from the DVD but not after it's installed I have no clue.
So, I realize there's a HUGE amount of info that is not included here. But at this point I'm open to suggestions on either how to get the installer to really install or even just how to get my networking to see that it really is ethernet so I can try emerging the rest. I can post any additional info needed, as long as you ask for it in somewhat simple terms (I've used one or another distro of linux for years, but only as a casual user, so I'm not kidding about that "not a Gentoo guru" claim).
Thanks. |
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Nick C
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Joined: 18 Mar 2005
Posts: 526
Location: Portsmouth, England
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| Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2007 11:28 pm Post subject: |
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sounds like you might be better of just starting over using the manual method, as i understand things the graphical installer is still under development and therefore doesnt always work.
Following the handbook manual install should work just fine (albeit you have to do it yourself of course) 
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darrenc
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Joined: 29 Aug 2007
Posts: 2
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| Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2007 3:15 pm Post subject: |
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| Nick C wrote: | | sounds like you might be better of just starting over using the manual method |
Depending on what may have changed since the last time I did an install (which was manual), I'm not sure that's a good option for me. If I recall correctly, on a manual install there is no portage tree until it sets it up during the install process, and I would assume somewhere in that process this is going to involve rsync. My internet access is through a local community WiFi setup, which I connect to with a gateway system running Squid on Ubuntu, so unless something has changed with rsync (or if I'm wrong and it's not necessary during an install), it's not an option for me via proxy. On a manual install, will webrsync be available to me for the initial portage setup? If not, I would have to try to get my built-in WiFi working so the new system could connect directly - and thus far Gentoo hasn't even been able to detect that hardware, let alone make it work. But I haven't really dug into the WiFi yet, since I haven't been able to really get much of anything going yet - if someone can readily point me to the info for setting up an internal Broadcom 802.11 b/g wlan device at the onset, then I would have no problem trying a manual install. |
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NeddySeagoon
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Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54300
Location: 56N 3W
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| Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2007 3:24 pm Post subject: |
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darrenc,
Gentoo install CDs support very little wifi out of the box but if you will do the manual install, you need not start with a Gentoo CD. You can use any LiveCD you wish. e.g. Knopppix for a 32 bit install will provide you with ndiswrapper for your wifi.
If you stick with the Gentoo CD, you need two files from the web which you can get in advance
1. The stage 3 tarball
2. The portage snapshot.
When you get to making your kernel, use emerge -pf <package> to find the URLs you need and use Sneakernet to move the files to /usr/portage/distfiles, so you can do the emerge for real.
If you need external kernel modules for your wifi, you can get them the same way.
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NeddySeagoon
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those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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Installing Gentoo
