Major Help Wanted: Installing From Existing Ubuntu

[1337455 10534]

Ubuntu is running on my computer, and I very much want to try Gentoo (http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Gentoo, was hooked). I have made a previous post asking about the details of building Gentoo, but that doesn't worry me as much as the process required to get to that state does. The directions at (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/altinstall.xml) are vague, and I need pointers.
Firstly, I have enough experience with Linux to do most things with the terminal (mkdir, cd, mv etc. etc.) and I'm not scared of editing sensitive files. Second, the DVD wont boot for me, so I am choosing this alternate method.

So this is what I really am stuck on;
I have parted (the recommended partitioner), and the extracted files from the Gentoo FullDVD.iso. Em, do I resize /dev/sda1 (my one and only primary partition)? Yes? Then what do I do??
The instructions go on about Mininux, but from what I understood that step is unnecessary if you can resize and unmount your / (which I can do with gparted (which is parted for GNOME with a GUI)).

[Wormo]

The only purpose of the minix steps are to get a bootable floppy with parted. If you've already got a bootable CD with gparted, then feel free to use that instead to resize /dev/sda1.

[GivePeaceAChance]

Heh. You sound exactly like me. I installed Gentoo directly from Ubuntu as well. Now, I'm hoping your road to getting Gentoo is a lot smoother than mine, because I'll be honest, it was HELL, but I persevered, and now I've got a working system, with still a whole lot of bugs to work out. It took ME three attempts to finally get it right, each time better than the last.

Anyway, I put all that there because I can relate to your route of installing gentoo, and to your apparent experience with linux before wanting to try gentoo (i.e. not much )

That said, don't bother with the CDs or whatnot. If you have an internet connection, start here:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=4

Happy Linuxing, and I'll keep an eye to give ya help if I can (although I am a noob, so we'll see how much *I* can actually help )

EDIT: Oh, and keep your Ubuntu install around so you have a fall-back and a medium to install from. I know the handbook does the partitioning thing by wiping the slate clean. DON'T DO THAT. At least not yet. What *I* did when installing gentoo was create the following partitions:

/boot
/
swap
extended
Ubuntu

Can't remember how I managed that while keeping ubuntu on, but that was a good starting point. Be sure to give your root partition about 20 GB too. I made the mistake of alloting only <5 GB for it, and consequently, a few days ago, had to get rid of my ubuntu install in order to resize my root partition. Luckily I didn't use ubnutu for too much though.

[Wormo]

My last 3 gentoo installs have been on Dell laptops with ubuntu pre-installed, and in each case I used parted and a bootable CD to shrink the ubuntu just like "1337455" is doing

[1337455 10534]

Right, so I have 1 major Ubuntu partition (which I do aim to keep around for a while) that needs to be shrunken. After I resize, to say, half my HDD, I have to make a /boot, /, swap, and root for Gentoo. Apply a FS to each, activate the swap, then Mount.

After I have done all of this (hypothetically) I still have a working Ubuntu. So, I boot into Ubuntu and follow the steps from the normal handbook about installation!

Thank-you so much!

[Wormo]

Here is another suggestion for your filesystem layout, based on what I have done:

1. ubunto /, shrunk
2. ubuntu swap, unchanged but now shared with gentoo
3. gentoo /, new
4. shared /home, new

You don't really have to have /boot as a separate partition on gentoo any more than you do with ubuntu.
If you already had one with ubuntu, I'd suggest sharing it, but keeping /boot dir inside the big / partition is ok too.

Swap is swap, don't need to create another.

I like to share my user files between both distros, and keep them separate from both
so I can redo either root partition without having to restore all my user files from backups.

[1337455 10534]

You guys are awesome!
Well, I didn't read this post in time (to avoid doing research) but as predicted, Gparted could not Unmount /. Makes sense. So instead of doing the whole Mininux thing I justed flashed out my Ubuntu LiveCD (as Wormo wisely suggested) and divided my /dev/sda1 into;

1. /dev/sda1: ext3: 53 GB: Ubuntu (Boot Flag is on it)
2. /dev/sda3: ext2: 32 MB: (Future) Gentoo Boot
3. /dev/sda4: ext3: 20 GB: Gentoo Root/Home/Storage
4. /dev/sda2 --> /dev/sda5: extended --> linux-swap; 2.9 GB

So I shrunk Ubuntu from 73 GB to 53 GB. Swap is unchanged, although I do not know how to tell Gentoo to use it (or activate it I think). Gentoo New is my reiserfs, but what does "shared /home, new" mean? Should I not create a separate boot partition? Will I be able to access my files in the Ubuntu partition if I do?

In any case, my computer just finished making the partitions. What you see above is my scheme. Have I done something catastrophically wrong? I made backups, but before I try to boot back into *buntu I'd like some confirmation...
Here's what I plan to do next;

[NeddySeagoon]

1337455 10534,

If you look in your ubuntu install and do

[Wormo]

[1337455 10534]

Right, still in Live Mode, Seeing as I only have Ubuntu and Gentoo, I won't make another /boot. Gparted does not allow me to make extended partitions anyways, but I might try Fdisk or parted alone. That's not the point though... I made an ext3 26 GB partition for storage, further shrinking the Ubuntu one to 25 GB. There is no separate /boot partition. There is one 20 GB ext3 for Gentoo and an extended Swap for both (which I will activate later.) The swap was in the extended partition by default, actually. When I first formatted the disk using Ubuntu's automatic partitioner, it made the swap under the extended. Odd, isn't it? I'm not gonna mess with that because I think I have a workable setup here.

What is left is to edit the /etc/fstab and grub.conf.
Here is my fstab;

[1337455 10534]

I think I found my """"grub.conf"""". It's at the bottom of /boot/grub/menu.lst;

[NeddySeagoon]

1337455 10534,

The /etc/fstab you posted is from your Ubuntu install, not from Gentoo. Swap is

[1337455 10534]

I have not even installed Gentoo yet..
So I replace UUID=hashhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh with /dev/sda5 (my swap)?
Will Ubuntu detect the swap (can its default behavior be changed so that it does not use UUID [since i dont plan on moving drivers anywhere])?


edit>> edited fstab and made backups. OK. Proceeding to boot back into Ubuntu.

[1337455 10534]

OMG! I KISS THE GROUND AT ALL OF YOU PEOPLES FEET!!!!!

I am back in native Ubuntu, HDD was found, and all of the partitions I made to the HDD are still there! Nothing has crashed, and everything is fine!! yay!

[NeddySeagoon]

1337455 10534,

There is an old saying that after the nipple, everything else is learned.
Your helpers know more than you do (at the moment) because they started before you.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[GivePeaceAChance]

^^ True that. Look at it this way: You started with windows. It took you up til now, let's say, to master it. Expect it to be similar with Linux. And thankfully, with Gentoo, we get to muck around with all the config files and such, so we spend a LOT of time with our system, and once we're done, we'll be all that more wiser with respect to Linux, and if we stick with Linux for as long as we did with Windows, we'll likely be as good with Linux as we were with windows. It just has to be learned, and it's not like you will pick up a new OS and be a wiz at it just because you've used a different type of OS.

[davascript]

[cwr]

I usually build Gentoo from scratch by booting another OS - generally Gentoo
on a "maintenance" partition, since that's quicker and easier than using a
Live CD. Obviously the first time around you have no option.

The essential parts of my fstab are:
/dev/hda8 /boot ext2 noauto,noatime 1 2
#/dev/hda9 /boot ext2 noauto,noatime 1 2
/dev/hda10 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hda11 / ext3 noatime 0 1
/dev/hda12 /home ext3 noatime 0 2
/dev/hda13 /var/spool ext3 noatime 0 2
/dev/hda14 /usr/portage ext3 noatime 0 2
#/dev/hda15 / ext3 noatime 0 1
# DVD / CDR/W drive.
/dev/hdc /media/cdrw udf noauto,ro 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/dvd iso9660 noauto,ro 0 0
# USB flash drives.
#/dev/sda1 /mnt vfat noauto,noatime 0 0
#/dev/sda2 /mnt vfat noauto,noatime 0 0

(eek, proportional fonts...)

Boot is 64M, swap 1G (the machine has 512MB of RAM), root 6G, home 2G, spool
2G, portage 3G. Life's easier if filesystems are kept separate; every so
often I wipe portage, for instance, when I need a lot of space for something
else. boot is kept separate to make it quite difficult to hose the system
completely. spool is separate because builds, and news, can fill a filesystem
if not watched and it's easier if you can just wipe it and start over (however,
it doesn't need to be more than 1G; I use 2G just to add flexibility).
home doesn't just have my user home directory, but bulky documentation and
any large software packages I'm looking at. (Note that root's home directory
is /root, so that all other partitions can be unmounted for maintenance.)

On this system df gives:

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda11 6198404 4383364 1500168 75% /
/dev/hda12 2068620 1748384 215156 90% /home
/dev/hda13 2068620 115336 1848204 6% /var/spool
/dev/hda14 3102940 2218372 726944 76% /usr/portage

/home is actually about 30% full, mostly with docs, if the temporary source
packages are deleted. /dev/hda15 is a 1G partition that contains an old
Gentoo build used for emergencies and new installs. I don't use /dev/hda9
unless I'm upgrading grub; it mirrors /dev/hda8. The boot manager I use
boots either Windows or Grub, from /dev/hda8, which then brings up Grub's
standard menu; grub.conf is, in part:

# By default, boot the first entry.
default 0

# Fallback to the third entry.
fallback 2

# For booting the current kernel.
title Gentoo Linux 2007.0 Current
root (hd0,7)
kernel /kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.19-gentoo-r5-1 init=/linuxrc real_root=/dev/hda11
initrd /initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.19-gentoo-r5-1

# For booting the release kernel.
title Gentoo Linux 2007.0 Release
root (hd0,7)
kernel /kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.19-gentoo-r5 init=/linuxrc real_root=/dev/hda11
initrd /initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.19-gentoo-r5

# For booting Windows NT or Windows95
title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

So to build, or rebuild, Gentoo I boot off /dev/hda15 and reformat the root
and portage directories. I find that the filesystem for portage needs a lot
of inodes; "mkfs -t ext3 -T net /dev/hda14" generally works. I generally
copy the /etc tree across to /home/etc beforehand, since it's a useful
temporary reference for the initial configuration, though since the rebuild
is usually an upgrade I don't simply keep /etc unchanged.

Then I unpack the new stage 3 file onto /dev/hda11, and the new portage snapshot
onto /dev/hda14, and copy the new kernel into /dev/hda8 (mounting these where
convenient first, obviously). For a new install you'd have to put grub on the
boot partition as well. Depending on your hd drivers and the module set up the
new kernel may actually boot, though it will complain bitterly about missing
modules. You may find loading /lib/modules from the Live CD helps with this.
Alternatively use the original kernel to install the basics of civilized life
including the new kernel sources, and rebuild the default (release) kernel.
(I've forgotten where the Boot CD or DVD puts its kernel config file, but it's
somewhere about.) Once that's booting cleanly you're home free, and can start
on the detailed configuration.

The configuration files that really need to be set up first are (as far as I
can tell):

/etc/conf.d/clock
/etc/conf.d/domainname
/etc/conf.d/hostname
/etc/conf.d/keymaps
/etc/fstab
/etc/genkernel.conf
/etc/group
/etc/hosts
/etc/host.conf
/etc/locale.gen
/etc/localtime
/etc/make.conf
/etc/passwd # I just cancel the password, and install as root.
/etc/profile
/etc/rc.conf
/etc/resolv.conf
/root/.bashrc
/var/log/portage # Directory

Then check the USE flags, and if you need a network, set that up. After
that it's just a question of emerging stuff; I usually start with syslog-ng
and vixie-cron and a reboot, which gets me a nominally stand-alone system.

Then emerge genkernel, gentoolkit, portage-utils, linux-headers if they
aren't present, and gentoo-sources; that should give you enough to build
a kernel. After that miscellaneous utilities, X, Gnome, and the final set
of applications.

Hope this helps - Will

[GivePeaceAChance]

[quote="davascript"]

[davascript]

[GivePeaceAChance]

Heh, not critical at all! The reference just went *right* over my head.

[davascript]