what did i miss?

[metalhedd]

Compiling a new kernel is like a fine art. took me like 15 tries to build my first kernel. you need to go through every single menu and select everything that applies to your system, and deselect anything that doesnt. the defaults almost definitely won't work, theres probably a good howto or something out there somewhere. first things first. Know the exact model of everything in your system, sound card, video card, chipset, CPU, NIC, modem etc. the menuconfig program has a fairly good help systerm built in i think you just press '?' on an option and it will give you info about it, and will usually give you a recommendation as to whether or not you should put it in your kernel

Good luck

[novice]

is this the step in the process that most likely fails?

i got a fairy good hardware info on the my Compaq Armada 1750 laptop:

- PII 400
- 128 MB RAM
- 4mb ATI Video Card (I believe it a ATI MACH64)
- USB
- 1 parallel port
- 1 serial port
- 1 PS/2 mouse port
- 3COM 3C574 NIC
- ESS Maestro Sound Card (I have problem with this sound card being detect by distro like Red hat, Mandrake, Slackware)

i have success install Red Hat, Mandrake, Slackware on this laptop, but i want to try Gentoo since it provides some hands-on experience.

i will try to give the menuconfig a thorough look and deselect things that i don't need at the moment and re-compile it again. i want to enable usb (for wireless) and firewire support ( for external backup)

btw, if there are more error message than the screen can show, is there a log for me to look at?

[metalhedd]

to see more errors you can press shift+pageup or shift+pagedn to scroll through the terminal's buffer.
I'm not sure if there is an error log though...

from what i've heard compaq laptops tend to be pretty easy to get going. never tried one though.

you didn't list any info as the the chipset on the motherboard. its pretty important that you find out, theres a fairly extensive selection of them in the menuconfig. its necessary for getting your IDE Drives working. you can probably find out that info just by googling for it. if that fails, check compaq's site or your user manual.

[aardvark]

If your kernel does not compile you may try typing

"make mrproper"

in the /usr/src/linux dir before "make menuconfig".
It will clean everything up and you will have to configure again with "make menuconfig".
This normally works for me when a kernel wont compile.

->so, before "make menuconfig" as in the guide, type "make mrproper" and then proceed as written. Beware that you need the "extra/experimental" features in de kernel configuration. Gentoo relies on some of the options such as "dev filesystem" in the "file systems" menu-entry that you have to enable as well. (It is all in the guide in the yellow bit).

Good luck!

(Aaah sorry, I didn't see that you succeeded already.)

About the config files in /etc: Config files are protected against overwriting by the portage/emerge system. Apparently a package has been updated during your system emerge and a new config file has been created for that package, but the existing one was not overwritten. Often this is harmless, as default config files suplied by packages are mostly the same on newer versions. You can check the /etc (and sub-) dir(s) for strange names starting with ._cfg the rest of the name explains what that config file is for

typing "emerge config --help" will give you more info on that.
if the info flies by too fast the type " emerge config --help | more "

goodluck

[taskara]

sometimes you get error 2 and the like because you've compiled something into your kernel that does not exist in your pc/mainboard.

For example I have had the problem b4 by compiling Texas instrument firewire support directly into my kernel (cause my firewire card is indeed a texas instrument card) however when it came time to compile support for it it said it did not exist and spat out the error (but general support worked).

Same thing for DRM for sis video chipset, and a few others...

Double check your kernel config and if there's something you want that isnt' there yet, but maybe later, either make it a module, or re-compile your kernel when you get the hardware..

And do them all seperately so that you can see them all working b4 you move on to the next. And log any errors, and post them here

goodluck!

[novice]

i am in the process of running make bzImage.

in the mean time, what are general rules for compiling the kernel? when should one compile certain options as modules instead of built-in?

i hope i pose the question right.

[pizen]

[novice]

i finally completed the installation and rebooted.
will play with it some more tomorrow.
i need a break to clear my head.

('') Very Happy