working with Gentoo

[wolfpac181]

I know a few out there use Gentoo Linux.

So I tried to DL it and install... funkything is that is just a shell, no acutal install like Debian, BSD, or mandrake. read through docs up the wazoo.... and still no avail. So I was wondering how some of the Gentoo users got this unusual LiveCD to install on to a HDD, I downloaded the whole LiveCD plus packages.

with like knoppix, I could use $ knx-hdinstall
I did see somewhere in Gentoo docs about
$ install -eth0

to do a FTP style install of packages, is this what I should be checking? and why net-install when packages are downloaded?
I've tried net installing and fails evey though I can ifconfig with everything correct in ip settings. and it works with knoppix, so I know hardware is good.

any pointers from gentoo users? I'm not totally stupid when it comes to Linux, but this is shitting me. I don't even have a starting point here.

thanks all:)

[Asmodeus]

Print & RTFM

No really. their bootstrapping method is a bit on teh arcane side, but it seems to work for the best.

basically, its boot, make partitions, mount partitions, copy over appropriate tarball and untar for basic file system & functionality (just use the stage 3 tarballs to start), chroot to the root system, env-update, emerge sync, get coffee, emerge world, then emerge your packages like x11, gnome/kde, etc. and then come back tomorrow when its one compiling. thats teh short and skinny of it. ill post teh url later when i dig it off their site again, but its fairly straight forward and easy after teh first time.

i admit i haven't used teh latest livecd's, just the previous install method.

questions, icq:93968207, AIM: MrAsmodeus

[Asmodeus]

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-quickinstall.xml
or
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/altinstall.xml
and
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-tipsntricks.xml

what i normally do is boot it, flip to console 2 and use lynx to pull up the installation hml file thats normally in teh root of the cd. and flip back and forth for a running reference on what to do next

[Springer]

Yeah dude, the only way youre going to be able to install it is by printing and following the manual.

Theres a version out there somewhere with the RedHat installer (Anaconda Gentoo or something), but doing it the hard way will teach u to hate the gentoo install process alot more! :)

[wolfpac181]

Thanks a bunch guys..... helps a ton. I keep working on it with the stuff given.

[Asmodeus]

and as usual, remember that if you want to install big amounts of packages all at once, just emerge teh top level of the program involved and it will take care of the rest as dependencies. so instead of figuring out what form of xfree gentoo is using, just do an emerge -Dp gnome(orkde) and it will list out all teh stuff it will install with it.

oh and really, make sure you grab the use flags page and put in your correct use flags and filter out all teh stuff you won't be using, it will sometimes speed things up a ton.

same with the compile flags in the .conf file.. -O3 always look sattractice, but really, i've gotten teh best performance out of the -Os directive. like anything, you rmileage may vary, and be sure to emerge prelink and run it, it helps the windows system immeasurably

[MisterBishi]

Even I managed to get it installed using the livecd and rtfm method, I just didnt know wtf to do once it was installed so I deleted it. :cool:

[wolfpac181]

So bishi? you were able to emerge up a GUI and all that fun stuff. or are ya just bullshitting?

Actually quick question here. partitions.... most Linux versions I uses just need one big / and a little swap to get going. mandrake and HD-knoppix both took it well.

Is gentoo needing that? or the unix way of needing seperate partions of /, /var, /usr, and all the other neededs?

Like I said. gentoo is so out of the normal mold for new age distros. just going to take time and effort to get use to:)

[MisterBishi]

Originally posted by wolfpac181
So bishi? you were able to emerge up a GUI and all that fun stuff. or are ya just bullshitting?

I'll tell you what I did, I downloaded the .iso for the livecd and mounted it in Virtual PC (Bill's version of VMWare), installed it as per the docs on gentoo.org and got as far as having it installed and everything emerged (which took quite a while), but I didnt have a scooby-doo how to actually get to the GUI after boot, and I got bored of the whole thing before I found out.

[Asmodeus]

good general partition setup for gentoo is

mine:
hda1 = /boot
hda2 = >swap<
hda3 = /

basically so that i dont do somethign stupid and nuke my boot directory, as i have it unmount itself after bootup.

If you want, you can always go with teh usual root (/) and swap partitioning scheme, it has no problem with that or you can make 10000 partitions or so and put every directory in its own.. ok, 10000 might be a bit much.. but who knows with some people

now, if you think you'll be redoing a lot from scratch, etc, i would suggest a separate /usr partition, then you can save all your driver and misc other things your had to download and just stuff them in there and nuke the rest of teh distro and reinstall

figure out which WM you want and emerge it, and emerge will take care of installing the base window system if you didnt install it already and in general usually set it up for you to go straight into that WM on windows startup. theres a desktop setup guide on teh same page as teh install guide for 1-2 special gnome/kde tweaks and must do's for proper operation.

and the usual command to get into a gui is "startx"

if you want a graphical console, like the install, emerge bootsplash and futz with it. works great

[Springer]

You dont even need partitions if u dont want to (not sure how its going to perform on your machine tho). 1 big ass parition with /, /boot and /swap all together will work.

Thats how i used to do it when i didnt know what i was doing, :)

[druid]

It's worthwhile to put the swap partition in the beginning of the disk (assuming multiple partitions per disk) because it's faster.

[robotoverflow]

Ahh, Gentoo, i've been using it for maybe 5-6 months now, after fucking around with slackware and *shudder* redhat. Trust me when I say that if you just RTFM as much as possible you can get though pretty much every problem that you'll come across. The Gentoo Inst. handbook is great and there's a whole bunch of other docs on gentoo.org that start you off on all the other stuff you might need to know. Pretty much EVERY other question you have can be answered on forums.gentoo.org, which I think is probably the BEST linux forum out there. Really if you were limited to only those three sources you'd easily be able to handle pretty much everything, it's all there.

My partitions are set up like this on a 120GB drive:

/boot -- hda1 -- 30MB
/home -- hda2 -- whatever is left in the middle
swap -- hda3 -- 500MB
/ -- hda4 -- 15GB

My root dir hovers around 10GB usage with Lots of crap installed (X, GNOME, KDE). Having a seperate /home is great if you ever feel like nuking gentoo, as Asmo put it :D, but instead of having /usr seperate i just copy across everything in /usr/portage/distfiles and /usr/portage/packages over to my /home or another drive when ever I have to start over, that way i don't have to compile or download things again from scratch. Oh and speaking of compiling, ALWAYS use the -b flag when you're compiling something new, it saves so much damn time with things like X, mozilla, KDE, GNOME, gcc, etc.

Originally posted by druid
It's worthwhile to put the swap partition in the beginning of the disk (assuming multiple partitions per disk) because it's faster.
Wouldn't it be better to have it towards the outside of the disk? Say you had a 500MB swap partition. If it was on the outer edge of the platters then there'd be less head movement when reading/writing across the whole thing, meaning lower seek times.

At least to my knowledge. :p

And if you have a few other partitions on the disk you'd probably want to have the swap somewhere in the middle so that there's not as much back and forth head movement when stuff is happening all over the disk. That's how I've always had mine set up.

[Uther Pendragon]

Yeah gentoo is okay, I mucked around with it a bit after playing with sorceror linux (now defunct i think). I just got sick to death of 5 hour compiles for Mozilla etc. To be honest debian is easier to install and does all that fancy network install stuff, plus all packages are precompiled so you don't have to spend 3 days to get a system working like in gentoo. If you are a hardcore tweaker who likes stuffing about with compiler flags then gentoo might be for you, but on the whole debian packages are just as fast as gentoo compiled packages (there was a test done a while ago with gentoo, redhat and debian). Have fun gcc'ing :-)

[wolfpac181]

Right On everyone.....

SSW and I just got back from LinuxFest Northwest.

Man what a fun day. Got some great info and some great word out bout my company:)

Going to work on Gentoo in the next few days, had to put on back burner for a bit.

Shameless plug, but people liked my PC's

First Pic (http://gallery.fcdnet.org/album01/mini_IMG_0026)
Second. (http://gallery.fcdnet.org/lfnwjake/mini_pict0368)