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the.ant
n00b
Joined: 26 Dec 2007
Posts: 64
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 Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 2:09 pm Post subject: Installing Gentoo on eSata, where to put swap? |
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Hello!
This is my first post at this forum, if I infringe any (un)written rules, please give me gentle pointers...
I'm using kubuntu since a while, however the more I get to know the system the more I find answers to my questions in the gentoo resources. I see that as a pointer to switch over. However, I have keep using my machine and I don't have a second one, so the transition has to go as smooth as possible and I have to do it from my current system so I stay able to work while installing. I searched the documentaries, but I found none which catered exactly for my needs. Combining different howtos always bears unknown risks, thus I thought I should ask beforehand:
Here is how I plan to do it, I would appreciate any comments on possible problems or mistakes in my thinking.
My machine is a laptop with an internal 100gb sata drive with a 250mb /boot, the rest is a l uksencrypted partition with swap and /.
I want to install gentoo on an external esata-drive and once it's running make a backup of my internal drive on the external. Afterwards I want to move gentoo to the internal hd and I anything goes wrong I can always reinstall the backup.
My questions now:
is it feasible?
should I make a "complete" gentoo install on the external disk (including boot and swap) or should I only create / and use the boot and swap of the internal drive?
Do I have to create new encrypted partitions for the install and move them (as a partition) to the hd afterwards or can i install unencrypted (since it's faster) and just copy all the date into the existing partitions of the internal disk?
Another thing but not really related: I would like to use the laptop with an additional monitor. I found plenty of howtos for dualhead X, but I would prefer to to have X running only on the internal screen and a FB-console on the external monitor. Any ideas on that? |
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Dottout
l33t
Joined: 07 Mar 2006
Posts: 882
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| Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 2:46 pm Post subject: |
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I think that you have a quicker choice: boot from a livecd or whatever, backup your old distro, delete it and untar directly a stage3  (look at daniel robbin's one, official stage3 are 1year old..) |
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i92guboj
Bodhisattva
Joined: 30 Nov 2004
Posts: 10315
Location: Córdoba (Spain)
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| Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 3:01 pm Post subject: Re: Installing Gentoo on eSata, where to put swap? |
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Hello and welcome,
| the.ant wrote: |
My machine is a laptop with an internal 100gb sata drive with a 250mb /boot, the rest is a l uksencrypted partition with swap and /.
I want to install gentoo on an external esata-drive and once it's running make a backup of my internal drive on the external. Afterwards I want to move gentoo to the internal hd and I anything goes wrong I can always reinstall the backup.
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As you might have read on the handbook, you can install gentoo from a terminal while you are on ubuntu. That way, you can continue using your current installation until gentoo is ready to be used.
| Quote: | My questions now:
is it feasible?
should I make a "complete" gentoo install on the external disk (including boot and swap) or should I only create / and use the boot and swap of the internal drive?
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Yes to everything (unless there is something specific to luks encryption which I am not aware of. While you are installing, the swap in your Gentoo chroot will be the same that you are using in ubuntu. After that, you should be able to boot from Gentoo and use that swap partition, as long as you correctly set everything in Gentoo to use luks, and about that I have no idea, but I think that there must be howtos around. About the boot partition, there shouldn't be any problems either. You need to make sure that there is support for the needed filesystems on your kernel, and that your fstab is correctly configured.
| Quote: | | Do I have to create new encrypted partitions for the install and move them (as a partition) to the hd afterwards or can i install unencrypted (since it's faster) and just copy all the date into the existing partitions of the internal disk? |
I don't see why there should be any problem. Just remember that each time you move a partition the fstab file must be correctly fixed to match the new layout.
| Quote: | | Another thing but not really related: I would like to use the laptop with an additional monitor. I found plenty of howtos for dualhead X, but I would prefer to to have X running only on the internal screen and a FB-console on the external monitor. Any ideas on that? |
No way. At least if you only have a video card. I have heard that some people managed to get such a setup, but only using different video cards.
The guy above is right: if you pick a drobbins' updated stage3 file the process will be faster, and you will save some problems, like the (in)famous expat thingy which happened some months ago. See this:
http://blog.funtoo.org/
Those stage3 are not official, but -at least for now- they are completely clean stages, just like the gentoo ones, but more up to date (i.e. no crazy "optimizations" or the like). |
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the.ant
n00b
Joined: 26 Dec 2007
Posts: 64
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| Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 3:10 pm Post subject: |
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| Dottout wrote: | | I think that you have a quicker choice: boot from a livecd or whatever, backup your old distro, delete it and untar directly a stage3 |
Well, I am reluctant to do that because I don't know how long it will take me to get a running system, which I currently need. I know, in theory it's all nice and shiny, but we all know how that [url:http://xkcd.com/349/]usually works out[/url]. Could I keep the old patitions or would I have to set up a new encryption.
| Quote: | | (look at daniel robbin's one, official stage3 are 1year old..) |
Thanks, I will try that. |
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the.ant
n00b
Joined: 26 Dec 2007
Posts: 64
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| Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 3:22 pm Post subject: Re: Installing Gentoo on eSata, where to put swap? |
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| i92guboj wrote: |
As you might have read on the handbook, you can install gentoo from a terminal while you are on ubuntu. That way, you can continue using your current installation until gentoo is ready to be used. |
Yes, I read so, however, I was a bit confused about the difference between boot-cd / livecd / stage3-tarball...
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| Quote: | | Do I have to create new encrypted partitions for the install and move them (as a partition) to the hd afterwards or can i install unencrypted (since it's faster) and just copy all the date into the existing partitions of the internal disk? |
I don't see why there should be any problem. Just remember that each time you move a partition the fstab file must be correctly fixed to match the new layout.
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Nice. I will report back how it went 
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No way. At least if you only have a video card. I have heard that some people managed to get such a setup, but only using different video cards.
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Pity! But at least I know that I don't have to keep searching for instructions on that.
Cheers! |
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i92guboj
Bodhisattva
Joined: 30 Nov 2004
Posts: 10315
Location: Córdoba (Spain)
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| Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 3:33 pm Post subject: Re: Installing Gentoo on eSata, where to put swap? |
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| the.ant wrote: | | i92guboj wrote: |
As you might have read on the handbook, you can install gentoo from a terminal while you are on ubuntu. That way, you can continue using your current installation until gentoo is ready to be used. |
Yes, I read so, however, I was a bit confused about the difference between boot-cd / livecd / stage3-tarball...
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A livecd and the minimal cd are the same, if you plan to install manually. The livecd, however, has an installer. I don't advise using that installer at all. The manual installation will go smooth if you carefully read the handbook, if you have any problem you can ask here. The stage3 is a precompiled set of packages which conforms a basic system. So, for me, the ideal way to install Gentoo right now is to use the minimal boot cd and a stage3. But if you have ubuntu installed, you don't need any of these things.
Just download a stage3 (either official, or preferably from the link above) and follow the instructions in the handbook on a terminal emulator. You don't need to reboot on a livecd to install gentoo. The process is described in the handbook, I think, but again, if you have any doubts just ask.
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No way. At least if you only have a video card. I have heard that some people managed to get such a setup, but only using different video cards.
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Pity! But at least I know that I don't have to keep searching for instructions on that.
Cheers! |
In that regard, it will all depends on how smart your window manager is. You can always use xinerama (or twinview on nvidia cards), or alternatively, you can use two separate X servers. If you use xinerama or any xinerama equivalent implementation, how the windows are handled amongst the two screens will depend on your window manager. Some are smarter than others when it comes to xinerama (xfce and xmonad are two good examples of wm's that handle xinerama on a smart way). |
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the.ant
n00b
Joined: 26 Dec 2007
Posts: 64
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| Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 4:30 pm Post subject: Re: Installing Gentoo on eSata, where to put swap? |
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Just download a stage3 (either official, or preferably from the link above) and follow the instructions in the handbook on a terminal emulator. You don't need to reboot on a livecd to install gentoo. The process is described in the handbook, I think, but again, if you have any doubts just ask.
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Well, I'm working now with the above mentioned tarbal, from my running system on. You are right, just following the handbook is much clearer than reading it beforehand...
One question though, how can I find out which gcc version is included in that tarball? or is it in the current portage?
Sorry that I am a bit confused about that. Only asking 'cause I have a core2duo which is only optimized from gcc 4.3 on. |
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i92guboj
Bodhisattva
Joined: 30 Nov 2004
Posts: 10315
Location: Córdoba (Spain)
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| Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 4:43 pm Post subject: Re: Installing Gentoo on eSata, where to put swap? |
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| the.ant wrote: | | Quote: |
Just download a stage3 (either official, or preferably from the link above) and follow the instructions in the handbook on a terminal emulator. You don't need to reboot on a livecd to install gentoo. The process is described in the handbook, I think, but again, if you have any doubts just ask.
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Well, I'm working now with the above mentioned tarbal, from my running system on. You are right, just following the handbook is much clearer than reading it beforehand...
One question though, how can I find out which gcc version is included in that tarball? or is it in the current portage?
Sorry that I am a bit confused about that. Only asking 'cause I have a core2duo which is only optimized from gcc 4.3 on. |
4.3 is not stable upstream, so, if you use it, you do it at your own risk.
Don't be over-excited about the new optimizations. The performance difference is nothing noticeable anyway. About the gcc version on the stage, you can check it with gcc -v once you have done the chroot, env-update and source /etc/profile part.
Your correct march until 4.3 is out, will be nocona. Remember that there's no problem in changin this at a later stage. So, don't worry too much about it. |
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Dottout
l33t
Joined: 07 Mar 2006
Posts: 882
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| Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 5:48 pm Post subject: |
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you may find this discussion interesting: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-517629.html (its about gcc-4.3.0 testing)
about cflags..if you use gcc-4.2 you can put -march=native, if you plan to use a 32bit instead of 64 also prescott instead of nocona will be good. march core2 adds ssse3 btw. |
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the.ant
n00b
Joined: 26 Dec 2007
Posts: 64
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| Posted: Thu Dec 27, 2007 4:00 pm Post subject: |
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Well, my problem was rather that I just did not know which gcc version was being used.
But yea, for now I thought I stick to the default, I can still think about optimization once the system is running.
However, getting the system to run is far more complicated than I thought:
At first I tried to use the boot and swap from the old installation.
Problem is, the swap is a LVM partition inside an encrypted disk. I did not manage to combine those in gentoo.
LVM yes, encryption yes, but both... no luck.
Then I tried to create a new boot and swap on the external drive. Problem now arises that the bios does not let me boot from the esata cause the controller is a pcmcia card. I can boot from the drive as usb but I am not sure if I could then switch to esata and usb is a pain...
I tried again to use the old boot with the existing grub and add gentoo manually. Problem is, that I apparently still need to load the modules first. In Ubuntu that is done through initram, but that's all automatic, I have no idea how it was set up (during installation you can just use the option "encrypt whole disk" and ubuntu sets up lvm, luks and initram automaticallly.). I haven't found anything yet how to set up initramfs for gentoo or to how to adapt the ubuntu script to deal with this.
I guess there is a possibility, but I haven't found it yet and I currently don't have the time to spend more days on it, I'm afraid I will have to postpone it.
Oh yea, and when I was in chroot and tried to emerge some stuff, I got heaps of circular dependencies.
I solved some of them but then I decided to try to get the system to start in the first place. Anyways, that's just my only criticism on the installation routine, the use-flags are really not explained very clearly. As a noob I have no idea which ones I should choose and which are problematic. If the best way is to start with none at all and then to activate them as needed that should be described in the handbook, otherwise it get's REALLY frustrating. Anyways, I will deal with it some other day. For now I am REALLY glad that I did not delete my old Linux. On the one hand, it's very helpful to have a proper editor at hand during installation, on the other hand, I can take a break in installing now and I still have a running system |
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Installing Gentoo
