"no wireless extensions" error

[DONAHUE]

all makes sense except kernel-2.6.34-gentoo-r1 but I suspect that resulted from being very literal with the handbook

[pottzie]

Just tried another reboot, and again nothing happened-and that's what strikes me as odd. If I just screwed up the kernel information, I would expect to see the grub splash screen, probably with an error 17 or 15. I don't get anything but a tagline from the bios saying that it's waiting for me to put in a cd so the system can boot, as that's all that it recognises. I ran "grub-install --no-floppy /dev/sda" after saving the grub.conf file, but saw nothing to confirm that the command did anything.

[pottzie]

Well....I re-ran "grub-install --no-floppy /dev/sda" after rebooting. I had some things to do, so I was away for about 15 minutes. Came back, and while checking the forums, noticed that the terminal suddenly changed in the background. Said something like "file has been updated", or something, I forget. Anyways, that's what was happening, I thought grub would be written in a few seconds and expected a short pause and an acknowledgement that it had installed. Instead it took several minutes. When I reboot, grub works!
It throws off all kinds of crazy stuff, doesn't load the kernel, says it can't find anything or make sense of anything, but grub is at least there and trying to boot.

It might be a good idea to see what (from memory here) vmlinuz and initrd say, and see what's supposed to be in grub. I went with what I saw during the kernel download, but grub doesn't see that anywhere. Also, it would be a big help to me to know how to find it generically, as this isn't the first time I've gotten grub wrong and probably won't be the last. And thanks to what you've shown me, I'm a lot more comfortable about going into a partition with a live cd and searching it. i'm sure Google can dish up where and how to find the correct way to see what (again, from memory) two lines of code grub needs to start and run an OS, but how and where is vmlinuz and initrd in any Linux OS?

[DONAHUE]

boot cd
mount gentoo partitions
enter chroot

[DONAHUE]

gentoo is not using vmlinuz, but rather bzImage renamed kernel-2.6.34-gentoo-r12
as you did not use genkernel and did not create an initramfs you do not have an initramfs for initrd to read
the change to a non-genkernel /boot/grub/grub.conf as posted above will stop grub from looking for nonexistent files.

so change grub.conf and reboot.
boot cd mount gentoo partitions
and edit /mnt/gentoo/boot/grub/grub.conf (a simple edit does not require chroot)(may require su)

if you do get kernel panic best is to take a picture and post it on a photo site and the url here

[pottzie]

I ran "setup", it exited showing what you have posted, then checked /grub.conf. It was already showing just what's shown in your post. When I reboot, still get the same errors. Some of them (I'm posting from another computer, unsure how to get a screen shot of the grub error list):
no NFS sever
cannot open root device sda3
please append correct "root" option
kernel panic- not syncing:vfs

Clue me in on how to get a screenshot of a grub screen and I'll give it a try. All I can think of is the "print screen" key and a usb memory stick.
That's one way to find out if usb got set up:)

[DONAHUE]

digital camera
webcam on another computer

at kernel panic the cpu effectively freezes and reset or power off or plug pulling are the only communications left so an external device is required.

Meantime:
boot cd, mount gentoo partitions, run

[pottzie]

Does this say I've got a problem?

[pottzie]

When I configured the kernel I went with the defaults. I tried going in and checking that everything you showed earlier was checked, but I could only find (maybe) a third of what was shown. The make menuconfig seemed to have everything included that was on the list, so I accepted the default. maybe that's what the problem is. make menuconfig wasn't the easiest thing to get through for me, a lot of what was on the screen didn't seem to jive with what I could find. Then again, I have trouble finding the mayonnaise in the refrigerator.

[DONAHUE]

boot cd and mount gentoo partitions

[pottzie]

[DONAHUE]

missing sata_nv in kernel configuration is likely cause of the panic.

[pottzie]

Have to go back and reconfigure the kernel?

[DONAHUE]

fraid so. Recommend you work in menuconfig to acquire familiarity and to get all the drivers in and recompiled.

I'll work on an alternate in the meantime.

[pottzie]

I'm looking at the menuconfig screen. From the post way back on page three of this saga, I'm looking for:
Device Drivers --->
< > ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support --->
SCSI device support --->
*** SCSI support type (disk, tape, CD-ROM) ***
<*> SCSI disk support
< > SCSI tape support
< > SCSI OnStream SC-x0 tape support
<*> SCSI CDROM support
<*> Serial ATA (prod) and Parallel ATA (experimental) drivers --->
--- Serial ATA (prod) and Parallel ATA (experimental) drivers

I'm good down to the <*> SCSI CDROM support line. After that, all I have/see is:

<*> SCSI CDROM support │ │
│ │ [*] Enable vendor-specific extensions (for SCSI CDROM) │ │
│ │ <*> SCSI generic support │ │
│ │ < > SCSI media changer support │ │
│ │ [ ] Probe all LUNs on each SCSI device │ │
│ │ [*] Verbose SCSI error reporting (kernel size +=12K) │ │
│ │ [ ] SCSI logging facility

That may be where I went wrong (right at the start, natch,) but I don't see the SATA and PATA drivers.

[DONAHUE]

right arrow to exit, enter, to leave scsi menu
see <*> Serial ATA and Parallel ATA drivers --->
enter to select

[pottzie]

Getting the hang of it. Haven't found anything that gets me into graphics support, sound card support, or advanced sound architecture.

[DONAHUE]

all under device drivers, stretch the dialog box they are low on the list

[DONAHUE]

after compiling and copying the kernel you are currently working on, while still in the /usr/src/linux directory, run:

[pottzie]

A few thoughts as I'm doing this. Following the suggestions you gave as to what to include and what to uncheck, I don't see a lot that says anything about AMD64. The stage3 had AMD in it's title, maybe that explains that. Also, the whole "missing sata_ nv" thing; I don't really know what part of the configuration does that! Hope I've got that checked this time!
So that brings me to the big question: how does someone become proficient at this? Or is there a way that you can say with some certainty that leaving A out but checking B is a good idea, and not just a good way to, (as I did once using SUSE's custom configuration option) neglect to include drivers for usb, sound and other superfluous functions.

It's a good thing we can't select our DNA this way. "Oops. Forgot to include heartbeat and breathing."

[pottzie]

Under "console display driver support" there's a box that says : (64) scrollback Buffer Size. I'm trying to change the 64 to 1024, but can't delete the numbers or overwrite them. There were a few other places where I was unable to change a (*) to <M> , although there were several where I was able to.

[DONAHUE]

"console display driver support" that step not important, my personal quirk, so you can forget about it or just hit enter, then backspace to clear the entry, type in new entry, hit enter, right arrow to exit, hit enter.
the MSDOS command line used to act like this.
[ ] only allows [*] or [ ]
< > allows < > or <M> or <*> IF the item does NOT depend on an item already selected as a module
values can be selected with y or n or m or toggled with the space bar
if I had an item shown as M you should be able to set M; if not able "why not?" becomes a good question. Can you give specific items?

[pottzie]

Finished compiling and posted to pastebin. There was one (*) that I couldn't make into a module. I think it was under newtwork support or ethernet. Maybe the pastebin will show it.

[DONAHUE]

copy kernel to /boot and reboot?
url of pastebin?

[pottzie]

Last time I did it, it gave me a URL. This time it's just: