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Zacariaz
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 10, 2010 12:08 pm    Post subject: Installing Gentoo (again) Reply with quote

I'm just about ready to try my luck installing Gentoo once again, but before I proceed, there's a few things I'd like some input on first.

The hardware platform is a Lenovo Thinkpad x61 Tablet (7762-58G)
I don't expect any of the tablet features to work, at least, that is not my goal.

I've had some trouble figuring out exactly what the hardware specifications are, but this should be about right:

Intel core 2 duo L7500 1.6 GHz
4GB DDR2 RAM
Native resolution XGA 1024*768
Keyboard layout: Danish
GPU: Intel GMA X3100 (I'm not too sure about this)

Looking through the handbook, trying to remember and figure out what I've done wrong on earlier attempts, I've create a nice little list of questions.

.5 Date / UTC
On last attempt I ended up with some trouble do to wrong date or time or something. I think that I somehow got confused when setting the date, so just to be on the safe side...
Should date be set to UTC or GMT or local time or what?

1. CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS.
I don't really think I've had any problems with these before, but it would be nice to know for sure which ones to use.

2. Profile.
As I understand it there's a number of profiles to chose from, most of which obviously do not apply to me as I'm not running a server or anything. I guess the question is if it's safe to assume that the Desktop profile will be the best choice for me.
I've also been pondering if one should try going pure 64 bit, but I'm not sure it's relevant here. Can't remember if there's a no multilib profile at all.

3. The USE Variable.
Again, I don't actually think this has been a problem on earlier attempts, but I'm sure I could have done better. I intent on running KDE and I am a sucker for perfection in general, but other than that, I'm not sure what relevant information I can provide. It's all very confusing and any input will be greatly appreciated.

4. Locales.
Here I've indeed had problems. I'm using a Danish keyboard, but have been unable to find any useful information on the subject, thus I've ended up with a somewhat messed up keyboard layout on earlier attempts.

Looking at the handbook examples:
Quote:
en_US ISO-8859-1
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
de_DE ISO-8859-1
de_DE@euro ISO-8859-15


It would make sense simply to replace "en_US" and "de_DE" with "da_DK", but I've yet to get it working.

5. Kernel Configuration.
The handbook say that the kernel configuration is not half as tough as people think, but the thing is that the handbook only go through a handful of the options. I assume the remaining options are there for a reason and I would very much like to be able to set them optimally.

6. Modules.
This is not a big issue. Last time I got to the part in the handbook talking about Modules, how to list them and add them. I found that there were modules that I had absolutely no idea what to do with. Names made no sense what so ever. I think that in the end I just ignored them.

Fx.
3c59x.ko
How am I to know what it does?

7. Ext4
I've heard that Ext4 is the fantastic new kid on the block and would simply like to know if I can use it, since it's not covered in the handbook, and if I should.


Thinks that's all. I hope that you will answer my questions to the best of your ability and I thank you all in advance.


Best Regards
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Jaglover
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 10, 2010 12:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

.5 For dual-boot with some less advanced OS choose local, otherwise UTC.

1. http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Safe_Cflags/Intel

2. For KDE go with desktop

3. Emerge an USE flag editor as ufed

4. UTF-8 should cover almost everything

5. Consider spending some time here, use menuconfig help, google if necessary

6. What modules, modules are needed if there is something you use rarely (like vfat) or you need to pass parameters (like ALSA)
3c59x.ko is obviously 3com NIC driver, why?

7. Ext4 works fine for me

8. Good luck :)
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Zacariaz
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 10, 2010 12:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks for the reply, though not exactly long winded :D

anyway, regarding the utf8 thing, you mean that if I use "da_DK.UTF-8 UTF-8 " I should be fine?

Regards
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d2_racing
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 10, 2010 3:41 pm    Post subject: Re: Installing Gentoo (again) Reply with quote

Zacariaz wrote:

1. CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS.
I don't really think I've had any problems with these before, but it would be nice to know for sure which ones to use.


Hi, try these one :

Code:

CFLAGS="-O2 -march=native -pipe"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
MAKEOPTS="-j3 -l3"
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d2_racing
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 10, 2010 3:42 pm    Post subject: Re: Installing Gentoo (again) Reply with quote

Zacariaz wrote:

3. The USE Variable.
Again, I don't actually think this has been a problem on earlier attempts, but I'm sure I could have done better. I intent on running KDE and I am a sucker for perfection in general, but other than that, I'm not sure what relevant information I can provide. It's all very confusing and any input will be greatly appreciated.


Hi, I use KDE 4.3.3 on my stable box and I have only this :

Code:

USE="kde -gnome xcomposite nls truetype userlocales unicode apache2 mysql mysqli simplexml"
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Ant P.
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 10, 2010 9:06 pm    Post subject: Re: Installing Gentoo (again) Reply with quote

Zacariaz wrote:
I've also been pondering if one should try going pure 64 bit, but I'm not sure it's relevant here. Can't remember if there's a no multilib profile at all.

There is a no-multilib, but keep in mind if you use it you're stuck with it, and a lot of packages (mostly wine and game related) are masked on it. On the other hand if you need 32 bit apps for any reason there are alternatives besides multilib.
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cach0rr0
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 5:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

the kernel will probably be the most unfamiliar/tricky part.

For that, go with one of Pappy's seeds, and his guide - the relevant links are in my signature. If you use one of his seed configs, all you have to do really is add the drivers you need, and the file systems you need; your lspci -n output pasted in the first link in my sig should tell you how.

if you get stuck, third link is a vid showing the process start to finish, plus commentary.

If you get your kernel sorted, the gentoo side of things should be quite painless - just set your profile to be the Desktop profile for amd64, don't bother trying non-multilib, and you should be good.
_________________
Lost configuring your system?
dump lspci -n here | see Pappy's guide | Link Stash
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Mike Hunt
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 11:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

First look at the output of lspci to see what your hardware is.
Then look at the output of lspci -k to see which drivers the installCD is using.

Another great guide to help you with the kernel configuration is this excellent step-by-step guide.

You could leave your system on UTC and use, for example: /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Copenhagen at the timezone step in the Gentoo Handbook.

/etc/locale.gen could probably be something like this:
Code:
en_US ISO-8859-1
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
da_DK ISO-8859-1
da_DK@euro ISO-8859-15




Even though I have a 64bit CPU, I still go with 32bit anyway for a KDE desktop.
It has the most support, the best stability, and so on ... Your choice of course. :)

For a core2 duo one of these should work fine:
Quote:
32 bit profile (x86):

CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=core2 -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"

64 bit profile (amd64):

CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=core2 -O2 -pipe"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"


The new kde profile is fine, use eselect profile to set it.
Look at the output of emerge --info to see if you want to disable one or 2 - i.e. -ipv6 -cups ... in make.conf.
Note that now xorg-server needs gcc built with fortran, so leave that one.
In fact for best results enable/disable USE flags only when you know that you specifically need to.

Modules are handled automatically now on Gentoo = normally nothing to do there. :)
You can have a look at your loaded modules by running lsmod
And add/remove modules with modprobe/rmmod

Have fun!


Last edited by Mike Hunt on Sun Apr 11, 2010 11:35 am; edited 1 time in total
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Zacariaz
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 11:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

mkay, for now I'm kinda stuck at defining the USE variable closely followed by locales and kernel configuration.

I'd really like a/some examples of USE variables for a perfectly standard amd64 KDE Desktop system, but have been unable to find anything but the one posted in this thread and while it is appreciated, I have no need for things like mysql and such, which in turn leads me to believe that it's probably not right for me.

As for the locales, I don't feel I've gotten a straight answer. Yes I was told to use utf8 and while that's all fine, one single typo is probably enough to <BLEEP!> it all up, which I'd very much like to avoid.

As for the kernel configuration, well, I'm not that concerned with that right now.


Best regards.
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Mike Hunt
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 11:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sure, if you are on the kde profile, leave it alone.
The mysql USE flag is needed by KDE4, as are all the rest of them.

Trust the great Gentoo devs. :)
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Zacariaz
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 11:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

so I don't alter the use flags and all but leave them at: "mmx sse sse2?"

Edit:
Just a little add on regarding the locales.
I've found that there's only two legal combinations:

da_DK.UTF-8 UTF-8
da_DK ISO-8859-1

Now the question is:
Can I and /or should I use both?
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Mike Hunt
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 3:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sure go ahead and use both, can't hurt, could help.
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d2_racing
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 3:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Look, I use these one :

Code:

fr_CA ISO-8859-1
fr_CA.UTF-8 UTF-8


Since 2005 :P
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Zacariaz
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 4:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

SUCCESS! (I think)

I seem to have a perfectly well working environment now, so thank you all for your invaluable help.

No, the next step is somewhat more complicated, not leat because I've been unable to find any Gentoo specific guides to installing KDE...


Please help.
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Zacariaz
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 5:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It would seem I was mistaken.
I did find a guide after all...
I would also seem I was very much mistaken regarding my miraculously working system which is in fact NOT working

It would seem that it's a networking problem. I'm followed the book to the letter, which was easy since I need a standard dhcp setup, but it doesn't work.
At this point I don't really have any tools available so figuring out what is wrong is kinda hard for a noob like me. I tried doing an emerge -- sync thinking if it don't work, it's probably a network issue and what do you know, it didn't.


I have no idea what to do and I must say that I getting more and more tired of Gentoo. The handbook make it all look so easy, well most of it anyway, but in reality that is most definitively not the case.

If you think you can help, it will be much appreciated, otherwise I'm screwed, for the billionth time I might add.


Regards
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Mike Hunt
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 5:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

When you were on the installCD did networking work, did iwconfig eth0 report anything, and did you note the network driver from lspci -k ?

No need to give up so easily, many people have Gentoo on Lenovo x61.

:arrow: Have a look.
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Zacariaz
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 5:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Please don't think I'm giving up easily. I've been trying this a lot of times.

Anyway, networking worked fine. I did a network install and downloaded both stage3 and portage snapshot and emerged system looger, cron deamon and dhcpcd.

Everything seemed to work fine, even after rebooting in to the new environment, but no internet.

As for driver and such, didn't really worry about it as it worked and the handbook didn't tell me to.
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 7:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

is your network connection to be wired or wireless?
boot your install
run
Code:
ifconfig -a

this will show what network interface cards you have that have drivers compiled in the kernel.
if only lo is listed or the interface that you need is not listed, the likely explanation is that the appropriate driver was not selected when you compiled the kernel.
in this case reboot to the cd, run lspci -k as previously suggested, look for keywords 'Network controller' and "'ethernet' and then 'Kernel driver in use:' post the associated device names and driver names; we'll get back to you with the menuconfig choices to make for a kernel recompile.
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Zacariaz
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 8:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
* Some local filesystem failed to mount
...............
INIT: Entering runlevel :3
* Starting syslog-ng ...
* Starting eth0
* Bringing up eth0
* dhcp
* network interface eth0 does not exist
* please verify hardware or kernel module (driver)
* ERROR: cannot start netmount as net.eth0 could not start
* Starting vixie-cron ...
* Starting local ...


This is myname-laptop.unknown_domain (Linux x86_64 2.6.31-gentoo-r10) 21:50:49


The above is what I see of interest during boot. i don't remember seeing it on the first boot though, but anyway, there's some critical stuff in there.

As for the ifconfig, I have not eth0 device.


You have probably noticed that something is not mounted.
Output of mount:
Quote:
/dev/sda3 on / type ext3 (rw,noatime)
proc on/proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,relatime,size=10240k,mode=755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620)
shm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)



I suspect that the fact that I've installed from an external usb hard drive, may have something to do with the mount error during boot, but other than that, I very much doubt that you guys can help. I've obviously screwed something up in the kernel configuration or something.

Anyway, looking on the positive side of things, this is the best I've done so far. Maybe next time I'll actually be able to do something useful with it.
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DONAHUE
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 8:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

* Some local filesystem failed to mount

you probably have
Quote:
/dev/sda1 /boot ext2 defaults,noatime 1 2
or the like in /etc/fstab which can't mount because the default kernel settings do not provide ext2fs support. This is an annoyance not a problem.
so boot the usb ( what system is on it?? )
run lspc -k and tell us what ethernet/network devices you have with what drivers
unscrewing is easy
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Zacariaz
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 8:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

/dev/sda1 /boot ext2 defaults,noatime 1 2 is exactly what I have and exactly what the handbook instructed me to have and now you're telling me that it per definition don't work? Wow, that unprofessional. Anyway, I'm glad to hear it's not a big problem.

The USB disk contains a regular minimal install cd.

00:19.0
Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82566MM Gigabit Network Connection (rev 03)
Subsystem: Lenovo Device 20de
Kernel driver in use: e1000e
Kernel modules: e1000e

03:00:0
Network controller: Itel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AGN [Kedron] Network Connection (rev 61)
Subsystem: Imtel Corporation Device 1011
Kernel driver in use: iwlagn
Kernel modules: iwlagn


Think that's the best I can do.
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 11:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

boot the usb, mount the gentoo partitions, enter the chroot
Quote:
mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/gentoo
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/gentoo/boot
mount -t proc none /mnt/gentoo/proc
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev
chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
env-update
source /etc/profile
export PS1="(chroot) $PS1"

Fix the menuconfig:
Code:
cd /usr/src/linux
make menuconfig

edit to include:
Quote:
Device Drivers --->
[*] Network device support --->
<M> PHY Device support and infrastructure --->
--- PHY Device support and infrastructure
<M> Drivers for the Intel LXT PHYs
<M> Support for bitbanged MDIO buses
[*] Ethernet (1000 Mbit) --->
<M> Intel(R) PRO/1000 PCI-Express Gigabit Ethernet support (NEW)
Wireless LAN --->
[*] Wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11)
<M> Intel Wireless Wifi
[*] Enable LED support in iwlagn and iwl3945 drivers (NEW)
[*] Enable Spectrum Measurement in iwlagn driver (NEW)
[*] Enable full debugging output in iwlagn and iwl3945 drivers (NEW)
<M> Intel Wireless WiFi Next Gen AGN (iwlagn) (NEW)
<M> Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG/BG Network Connection (iwl3945) (NEW)
File systems --->
<*> Second extended fs support
[*] Ext2 extended attributes
[*] Ext2 POSIX Access Control Lists
[*] Ext2 Security Labels

recompile and recopy the kernel:
Code:
make && make modules_install
cp arch/x86_64/boot/bzImage /boot/<your kernel name>
exit
reboot

Be sure the <your kernel name> matches the value in grub.conf

Quote:
that it per definition don't work?
Actually it would have worked if the kernel had contained ext2 support. Whether the boot partition should be mounted at boot is a "religious" question with fanatics on both sides. There is a lesser but similar "religious" dispute concerning the desirability of having a separate partition for /boot at all. Obviously the gentoo guy who wrote the handbook is a "mount it" guy while the guy who builds kernels at kernel.org is either a "don't have" or "don't mount" or "don't use ext2" guy. Not "religious": if /boot is on its own partition it needs to be mounted when files (like the kernel or grub) are copied to it.
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Zacariaz
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 12, 2010 7:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've done as suggested and it have worked.

Apart from a single line during boot: "sed: can't read /etc/ntp.conf: No such file or directory" everything seems to work.

So thanks a lot. I'm sure I'll return, but eh, someone has to be the noob ;)


Regards


edit:
when emerge --sync
rsync: mkstemp "/usr/portage/dev-scheme/chicken* failed: Input/output error (5)

Dunno if it's important, but it sure takes a long time to sync.

edit2:

when emerge -av kde-meta:4.3

>>> Verifying ebuild manifest
!!! A file is not listed in the manifest: '/usr/portage/sys-devel/automake/automake-1.6.3.ebuild'
!!! A file is not listed in the manifest: '/usr/portage/net-nds/opendap/openldap-2.3.43.ebuild'
!!! A file is not listed in the manifest: '/usr/portage/sys-devel/automake/automake-1.6.3.ebuild'

apparently something important is missing.

edit3:
I've tried rsync mirrors from sweden, germany, netherland and france for now and none of them seem to work, thus I assume the problem is local, though I can't figure out what it should be.

edit4:
root contain errors.
forced check.
can't be fixed.

I'm screwed.

edit5:
I somehow fixed the filesystem, did a successful sync an apparently I'm now in the process of installing kde.
Well, if it works, it will take some time. I'll return when it's done.
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Mike Hunt
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 12, 2010 12:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Awesome. :)

Have fun!
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d2_racing
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 12, 2010 2:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, have fun :P
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