Gentoo and Windows 7

[Epiphany]

Hi there. I'm completely new to Gentoo though I've had little prior experience with other Linux distros. Anyway, recently I became interested in building my own Gentoo as it seems to have a lot of promise. So while the handbook seems fairly easy to follow, I am having trouble with the partition section of the guide. See I have one disk with Windows 7 installed and the handbook only covers how to install Gentoo on a completely empty disk and then asks to delete all partitions, which I don't wanna do. So basically the question is how do I go about configuring my Gentoo partitions on a disk with Windows 7 already on it.
I have this other partition called Recovery though i'm sure this doesn't concern the issue right here.
Do I just need to create some free space through Windows and then create the partitions through the Gentoo installation?

Thanks.

[Logicien]

Hello,

first, save the original partitions table to a file from Linux for a reverse procedure. Be sure you can reinstall the Windows bootloader in the MBR if you decide to go back later. That can be done with the Windows installation cd, cd backup, partition restauration and Linux tools.

The partition table task consist to make free space in the last partition if possible and than use the free space to make an extended partition contigue to the last one in which you can create logicals partitions for Gentoo. You will probably have to make the extended partition where you can get the free space anyway. Windows and Linux can do that task.

By experience, it is not garanty that Windows will boot normaly after things changes in machine, specially if it is tatoo. Less trouble can come form a separate disk or computer or resign from Windows. Can be harder to sell later to a non Linux user.

Edit: some factory partitions tables setup already use all the primary partitions and make harder the task to install an other operating system. My HP netbook is an example.

[kite14]

Yes, basically you need to free up some space for your gentoo installation, resizing the Windows partition.
If you use the gentoo-based "SystemRescueCD" as installation medium (highly recommended), this step
can be semplified using its graphical tool like GParted: just boot the CD (or USB stick) and type "wizard"
to enter the graphic desktop environment.
From there select GParted to resize windows partition and create one or more partitions for gentoo.

Here you can find some guides and advices on partitioning: http://www.sysresccd.org/Sysresccd-Guide-EN-Partitioning

[Aquous]

[Epiphany]

Thanks for the info guys. I've managed to get further in my Gentoo assembly.
Namely I've hit a little speedbump with portage snapshot.
I downloaded the latest snapshot, but when hitting the command:
tar xvjf /mnt/gentoo/portage-latest.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/gentoo/usr
I get:
tar (child): /mnt/gentoo/portage-latest.tar.bz2: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar (child): Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

I am so lost here...

[penguin swordmaster]

try

[Epiphany]

All I did is go to the website, pressed D to download the latest snapshop. I've no way of knowing where it actually went. How can I look? Not exactly used to a text interface here...

[bobspencer123]

I would recommend that you use systemrescue cd to install gentoo as you can do it from a graphical environment which allows you to view the handbook on the same computer and you can use firefox to browse for things like downloading portage snapshots.

if you want to stay where you are you could just do

[JESSEJJ89]

Be sure to mount the appropriate partitions (boot and root) before installing stage3 and portage. I missed this my first time installing Gentoo and I had to start all over

[Epiphany]

[bobspencer123]

for use flags you can read up on this: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=2&chap=2

you are somewhat lucky now that selecting a profile will take care of most general use flags on a system wide level and then you can utilize use flags on a per package basis in the file (but don't worry about this for now): /etc/portage/package.use

as suggested in the handbook this: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gcc-optimization.xml can help you out with gcc optimization.

unless you want to push the limits and potentially break things stick with something simple like:

[Epiphany]

Alright I think I've gotten the gist of making flags. Just a question:
At the bottom there is a flag called "USE="mmx sse sse2" (not written by me) I read in the handbook that these are for multimedia purpose optimizations, but I was wondering shouldn't it be in "CFLAGS="-mmx sse sse2" like that? Also if I want to optimize for 3DNow (I'm assuming this is for gaming optimization) where should I put these?

So basically my file at the moment looks like this:

CFLAGS="-02 -pipe -march=native"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" (haven't even touched this, too scared)
USE="mmx sse sse2"

[bigbangnet]

For the portage problem you had before the commands can be case sensitive. So if theres a capital letter in a file be sure to enter it because it will say file not found. Compared to windows, windows dont give a crap if its a capital C or a small c, linux does and can make a man cry if you make that small mistake.

for the make.conf problem. First make sure you read the section of the handbook about make.conf which should be chapter 5. In general, it want you to use your cpu to the maximum so you can compile very fast. You could also read the Compilation optimization guide so you can have a better understanding of it.

For example, I got a quad core amd cpu so i used amdfam10 for my cflag

[Epiphany]

[bobspencer123]

[Epiphany]

This is already giving me a headache.
So now I'm here:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-amd64.xml?part=1&chap=7#kernel_modules
configuring kernel modules but the code to view available modules doesn't seem to do anything, I'm talking about

[bobspencer123]

honestly you can probably skip that step for now as udev (i believe) will autoload most necessary modules.
_________________
Increasingly becoming a 2 channel audio nut!

[whiteghost]

cntrl+c to cancel your present operation.

[Epiphany]

EDIT: Oh I'm really loving this.
-bash: /sbin/reboot: Input/output error

[bobspencer123]

sounds like something got screwed up.

Don't feel bad it took me about three attempts to successfully install gentoo when I first started out. It gets easier and you really learn a lot from you mistakes. The handbook is great because it is really detailed but sometimes you need to screw up so you can start understanding what all the commands and steps mean and do instead of simply copy and pasting commands.

If you can't get past this error I would try installing with systemrescue cd as suggested earlier. If you are on a fairly modern computer the install doesn't take long once you get it figured out. I think I can get to a bootable system in under 2 hours now.
_________________
Increasingly becoming a 2 channel audio nut!

[Epiphany]

You're right, I knew this wasn't going to be easy. So how do I start over anyway?

I mean at this point my screen keeps repeating:

livecd login: root (automatic login)
INIT: id "c1" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes.

I can't type anything either. I've tried ctrl alt del but then it says

INIT: cannot execute "/sbin/shutdown".

Think I'm royally screwed.

For future reference, my specs are:
Intel Core2Duo 2.10Ghz
Intel GMA 4500MHD
3GB of RAM
HDD 320GB

So yeah, not state of the art but fairly modern I'd say.

[penguin swordmaster]

The power button works very nicely when nothing else will. Although, you might want to try alt + F2 or F3 to try and get a new terminal.
_________________
There are 10 kinds of people. Those who can think in binary and those who can't.

[Epiphany]

[penguin swordmaster]

In theory alt+<any F key> will switch between a number of shells. If you have a problem with the operating system this probably won't help, but it is useful to say run list your hardware specs on F1 and configure your kernel in F2. It will not erase what is going on in your original shell. You can get back using alt+F1.
_________________
There are 10 kinds of people. Those who can think in binary and those who can't.

[Epiphany]

So in an effort to try again with less mistakes, I've reached the part in the handbook where i'm supposed to "Configure the USE variable". Can someone explain or guide me a little in what I'm exactly supposed to be doing in this part. The handbook is leaving me in the dark a little.