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pheelay
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 06 Nov 2002
Posts: 128
Location: Ireland
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 Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2003 1:12 am Post subject: LiveCD comments |
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I'd just like to see what other peoples' opinions on the LiveCDs are. How come the newer ones are having so many problems with hardware conflicts and network card compatibility? Many of which are solved by using the older 1.2 Cd? Surely this type of thing should evolve, not go backwards. Also, I'd be interested to hear what else people have used the LiveCDs for? And apart from UT! 
I think 1.4rc1_r2 is excellent, when it works. A long distance friend of mine wanted to convert his windows router to Linux. I did a complete Gentoo installation from the 1.4rc1_r2 cd over ssh, and with hardly any router downtime. (The cd includes all the modules/services for routing, masquerading etc so the server was fully operational while Gentoo happily compiled from stage 1 - that impressed the guy big time  )
However, I believe I'm not alone in finding systems that wont boot 1.4rc1_r2. Today I tried to rescue a friends laptop after Windows XP trashed the hard disk. 1.4rc1 hung at "Partition Check". I had to resort to the 1.2 CD to rescue her data, backing it up over the network and then clean everything off the HD for a fresh install.
1.4rc2 on the other hand, seems like a total joke to me. I have yet to find a system that will boot it. I've tried re-downloading, burning it many times but it always hangs at the start "Loading gentoo.........."
My point is that I think these CDs are more useful than just for basic installations of Gentoo and rescue disks. While I was using 1.2, I noticed that there was really only the bare minimum on it to do an install (I'm not complaining tho!) and I missed many of the utilities that made 1.4 a pleasure to use. They are (or should be) powerful tools that could be used in all sorts of situations. I liked completeness of 1.4rc1_r2, but obviously it should be made as universally usable and reliable as 1.2 (and the state of hard disk partitions shouldn't come into it!). It's also nice in 1.4rc1 having a relatively fully operational operating system during the installation process - links, pine etc.
Is this the aim for 1.4final? Meaning will it be an improvement on 1.2? Altho I haven't tried any of the current experimental CDs, and I don't know what they are in relation to the final release, but the filesize looks very small comparing to 1.4rc1_r2.
Looking forward to your comments....
phil |
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delta407
Bodhisattva
Joined: 23 Apr 2002
Posts: 2876
Location: Chicago, IL
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| Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2003 2:44 am Post subject: Re: LiveCD comments |
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| pheelay wrote: | | How come the newer ones are having so many problems with hardware conflicts and network card compatibility? Many of which are solved by using the older 1.2 Cd? |
The newer ones include a more complex system, as you must have noticed. Graphical splash screen, a full set of utilities (much more than 1.2) including very useful things (sshd!), and a wider range of hardware support and autodetection.
| pheelay wrote: | | Surely this type of thing should evolve, not go backwards. |
It has been evolving -- the 1.4_rc1-r2 disks include the standard (very nice) Gentoo startup scripts. Plus, from a development perspective the new disks are really nice: you get real shared libraries and few space constraints.
| pheelay wrote: | | However, I believe I'm not alone in finding systems that wont boot 1.4rc1_r2. Today I tried to rescue a friends laptop after Windows XP trashed the hard disk. 1.4rc1 hung at "Partition Check". I had to resort to the 1.2 CD to rescue her data, backing it up over the network and then clean everything off the HD for a fresh install. |
Ditto with my laptop (partition check kills 1.4, 1.2 works fine) except that I was destroying Windows XP rather than saving it.
| pheelay wrote: | | 1.4rc2 on the other hand, seems like a total joke to me. I have yet to find a system that will boot it. I've tried re-downloading, burning it many times but it always hangs at the start "Loading gentoo.........." |
I've never had that problem on any of the five machines I've run it on; boxen ranging from a 7U rackmount server with 4 Xeons to a Pentium 2.
| pheelay wrote: | | I liked completeness of 1.4rc1_r2, but obviously it should be made as universally usable and reliable as 1.2 (and the state of hard disk partitions shouldn't come into it!). It's also nice in 1.4rc1 having a relatively fully operational operating system during the installation process - links, pine etc. |
Here's the difference between 1.4x and 1.2. Gentoo 1.2 uses a 22 MB initrd (ramdisk) to hold everything; as it's made larger to hold more utilities, it takes RAM away from the system for general use (compiles, etc.). Gentoo 1.4, on the other hand, uses an initrd during the boot process -- an initrd that's just large enough to contain mass-storage modules, a script that auto-probes them, and a shell in case it fails. Once that script can find your CD-ROM, it mounts it and does a loopback mount of a file on the CD-ROM. (Loopback mounting is a technique whereby a normal file becomes a block device suitable for mounting as a filesystem.) The CD then chroots into the loopback-mounted filesystem and continues the boot process using the standard rc scripts.
The big difference is this: the loopback-mounted filesystem on the CD means that far less RAM is used and that more programs can be included without sacrificing performance. You'll notice how 1.4_rc1-r2 and later spin up the CD when using basic things like 'ls', for instance -- this is because of the loopback filesystem. (Note that you can pass the 'cdcache' option at boot to copy the filesystem into RAM for faster access, if you prefer.)
| pheelay wrote: | | Is this the aim for 1.4final? Meaning will it be an improvement on 1.2? |
It will be a better-tested version of 1.4_rc2.
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Techie2000
Guru
Joined: 16 May 2002
Posts: 344
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| Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2003 3:34 am Post subject: |
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I think they are absolutely horrible! I tried to install Gentoo earlier today with a 1.4_RC2 LiveCD. It doesn't see my NIC at all. Even if I modprobe it. I think they should go back to the regular install CDs. These LiveCDs are CRAP.
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"And I'm right. I'm always right, but in this case I'm just a bit more right than I usually am." - Linus Torvalds |
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gsfgf
Veteran
Joined: 08 May 2002
Posts: 1266
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| Posted: Wed Feb 19, 2003 12:32 am Post subject: |
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We need 2 options
1) a working 1.4 style disc. But make sure it's as robust as the 1.2 ones since the other disc will have the features.
2) A modified knoppix cd w/ some sort of graphical frontend to setup. I'll try and make this this week. My qt skills are much better than my curses skills so i should be able to pull this off. :) |
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Techie2000
Guru
Joined: 16 May 2002
Posts: 344
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| Posted: Wed Feb 19, 2003 2:58 am Post subject: |
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Agreed. Right now I think all this Gentoo Reference Platform and a ton of different LiveCDs just is too confusing for anyone who wants to try gentoo for the first time. We need a nice robust stage 1 install disk (called install disk, not LiveCD) that we can confirm works with everything we throw at it. There would be seperate versions of this for x86, sparc, powerpc, etc. and then we would give people the option of also downloading the stage 2 and stage 3 tarballs. Maybe rather than having ISOs for each one, we put something in the install guide about if you want to install a stage 2 or stage 3 type "wget [location for proper tarball]" and then work from there. I honestly don't care about the LiveCDs, but would rather have something called install disk that's basic stage 1 I could use to install from scratch.
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"And I'm right. I'm always right, but in this case I'm just a bit more right than I usually am." - Linus Torvalds |
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iplayfast
l33t
Joined: 08 Jul 2002
Posts: 642
Location: Cambridge On,CA
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| Posted: Fri Feb 21, 2003 4:19 pm Post subject: |
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| I also do not think the Live Cd's are up to snuff. In my mind the Knoppix ones are way better, and we would be better off incorperating that technology into the gentoo Live cd. I'm looking for discussion of it here https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=36150 |
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