Lot's o' simple questions.

mrmunkily · n00b Joined: 30 Jul 2002 Posts: 11

heya guys, just got started with gentoo and I'm loving it. Took me a while to get the kernel compiled properly and install grub on a floppy (not allowed to have any sign of linux visible to parents

) but otherwise a fine install. This place seems friendly enough for me to ask some dumb questions.

Now i've got some questions.

I was compiling KDE and ran out of disk space.

1. How would I move the entire OS to a new HD, are there any commands I have to keep in mid when copying to the new root partition?

2. I'm buying a new HD tonight and I want to partition it, but I can't really understand how fdisk works. is there another tool I can use? or clear instructions for making the partitions with fdisk?

3. After I move what I've got to the new disk, will I be able to continue KDE's compilation from wher I left off or am I going to lose the entire (almost finished, just a few minutes left) compilation effort. It took all night so I want to keep what's been done if possible. Is there a flag I can add to emerge to do that?

4. I want to emerge a whole bunch o' stuff automatically. Can I just make a command like this?

emerge thingy ma bob foo bar

this seems to work but I want to know if that's the right way to do it.

5. Is there a tool that will let me set up an XF86Config-4 file? the utilities included with xfree make a <=3.x style file.

6. Has anyone compiled erlang for gentoo? I hear it's hard as hell to compile. if neccesary, could I use a binary rpm of it?

Thanks a lot for dealing with the n00b.

ciao

-Munky

Oyarsa · n00b Joined: 01 Jul 2002 Posts: 73 Location: Mars

BonezTheGoon · Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2002 3:26 pm Post subject:

mrmunkily · n00b Joined: 30 Jul 2002 Posts: 11

I know what my disk setup ought to be:

it's like this;

60 GB disk
15 GB FAT32 Partition - Win2K boot
30 GB Fat32 Partition - Documents
15 GB extended partition
100 MB Boot
1024 MB Swap
28.8 GB Root

I'll make the fat32's first inside windows, and the rest, I guess, I could do with the red hat installer, and then kill it once it starts plopping rpms

that would be taking the easy way out though.

BonezTheGoon · Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2002 3:56 pm Post subject:

How many disks is that supposed to represent? It looks like you are intending to have the disk setup on one 60GB disk like so:

mrmunkily · n00b Joined: 30 Jul 2002 Posts: 11

I have to give the other disks away.

and yes, i made a mistake. it should be

mrmunkily · n00b Joined: 30 Jul 2002 Posts: 11

got it!

norton ghost 2002 can move and image ext2 partitions. it borked my journal, but that was easily fixed.

now I just need to get kde running. The compile borked everything up. it finished but didn't configure or whatever so I'm just going to remove it and reinstall.

beast · n00b Joined: 29 Jul 2002 Posts: 6 Location: Nova Scotia

mrmunkily · n00b Joined: 30 Jul 2002 Posts: 11

yes, xfree comes up with it's godawful default wm.

I can't boot kde though, there was originally no entry in the "session type" of kdm and when i edited the kdmrc to make one, it loadds kde properly and thn inexplicably resets the X server.

ugh.

When I get home I'll see if it worked better this time.

I hope 10 GB is enough disk space.

fmalabre · Guru Joined: 19 Jun 2002 Posts: 376 Location: Chicago

10 Gb is what I have.
It's enough.
I have KDE, Kdevelop, a bunch of other stuff...
And still plenty of room!

beast · n00b Joined: 29 Jul 2002 Posts: 6 Location: Nova Scotia

Okay, I'll need to know a few things before I can help:

1. What error messages (if any) are you getting when you start kde?

2. Have you edited rc.conf to set up your default wm as kde?

3. What USE variable are you using in your make.conf file?

Any other info about the compile would help as well.

mrmunkily · n00b Joined: 30 Jul 2002 Posts: 11

1. I get no error messages when trying to start kde through kdm, it merely restarts the X server and takes me back to kdm

2. no

3. i'm using default use variables. nothing fancy, I think global optimization is set to 3... maybe not. I jsut selected the default for PIIs

beast · n00b Joined: 29 Jul 2002 Posts: 6 Location: Nova Scotia

The first thing I would try is to edit your /etc/rc.conf file.

Mr_Myaghi · Posted: Thu Aug 01, 2002 2:01 pm Post subject:

You should never have larger partitions than 8Gb with fat32. The reason for this is either you get to big clusters which will wast alot of space. Several Gb can be lost. Or either your allocation table gets to large and you loose alot in speed. Fat32 isn't a very good filesystem. Unfortunately NTFS doesn't have write support under linux.
One thing more. There is a tool called LVM (logical volume management) which is really useful. It's not hard to use (I'm planning on using it and I'm not very advanced), you can resise your partitions so if you fill up your disk or if one partition gets pretty full while you don't have much on the other partitions it's easy to change size. It's also very easy to move your whole partition to a new drive if you have to.
Read this:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=1897
_________________
Wax on, Wax off, Gentoo-san.

beast · n00b Joined: 29 Jul 2002 Posts: 6 Location: Nova Scotia

I'd be careful with the LVM that's included with Win. It has some known problems and can cause data corruption.

You have been warned.

Mr_Myaghi · Posted: Thu Aug 01, 2002 4:37 pm Post subject:

Included with win? What are you talking about. I wasn't saying use LVM with windows...no way (the win filesystem gets messed up anyway)!
Of course I meant using it with linux. It's been implemented in the kernel for quite some time now. It's been available for commercial unix's for I don't know how long.
Even though it has great advantages on a small system the fact is that it has it's greatest advantage on a large system such as a server, so it can't afford to be unstable.
_________________
Wax on, Wax off, Gentoo-san.