1.4 Install Problem *Solved*

sc00by71 · n00b Joined: 03 Mar 2003 Posts: 57 Location: Helena

Well I have searched and haven't found anyone else with this prob so here goes. I have had previous releases installed but changed some hardware so I decided to start fresh with 1.4 Final. The livecd boots fine autodetects fine but when I go to unzip the stage tarball ( I used stage3 Athlon-xp) It gets to the man files and errors then halts and brings me back to #. When I rebooted to try again it said "cat: no space left on device" Rebooting into windows and checking with partition magic confirms the available space is 100% full ?
Now the system specs:
Epox 8rda nforce2,Athlonxp2500,512 MB corsair xms3200,Radeon 9600 Pro, Ibm hitachi 41GB harddrives, master,slave on primary. Liteon 52x cdrw, 52x cdrom master,slave secondary. Hda partitioned 12gb hda1(windows-for now) hda2 32mb /boot , hda3 1024mb swap,hda4 26GB /

Strange or is there something I am missing? I have tried reiserfs,ext3 on hda4 no change. I am using the 1.4 athlon-xp livecd.

Any thoughts?
Thank you in advance
Shawn

scriptkiddie · l33t Joined: 30 Mar 2003 Posts: 955

amazingly I had the same problem with the P4 disc.. I had to erase my whole hard disc before the stupid thing would work.

Gejmer · Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2003 4:41 pm Post subject:

I see that with Stage3 tarballs are many problems. I had never had an problem with Stage1 tarball. You should try Stage2 and Stage1 tarballs..
Maybe that the problem is in FDISK on Gentoo 1.4 LiveCD.
_________________
Abit IS7, Pentium 4 2400Mhz, ATI Radeon 9500pro, WD 120gb 8mb, 1024mb of DDR 333mhz ram and NEC 1701 17" LCD

Windows XP Professional SP1
Linux Gentoo 1.4 RC4 (deleted installing 1.4)

scriptkiddie · l33t Joined: 30 Mar 2003 Posts: 955

i never thought of that.. maybe try using a old dos boot disc

Gejmer · Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2003 4:52 pm Post subject:

What if you format your partition and try again?
_________________
Abit IS7, Pentium 4 2400Mhz, ATI Radeon 9500pro, WD 120gb 8mb, 1024mb of DDR 333mhz ram and NEC 1701 17" LCD

Windows XP Professional SP1
Linux Gentoo 1.4 RC4 (deleted installing 1.4)

scriptkiddie · l33t Joined: 30 Mar 2003 Posts: 955

thats what I had to do.
I had to delete my old gentoo partition, then recreate the boot, / , and swap drives

Gejmer · Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2003 4:53 pm Post subject:

Then it must work!

_________________
Abit IS7, Pentium 4 2400Mhz, ATI Radeon 9500pro, WD 120gb 8mb, 1024mb of DDR 333mhz ram and NEC 1701 17" LCD

Windows XP Professional SP1
Linux Gentoo 1.4 RC4 (deleted installing 1.4)

sc00by71 · n00b Joined: 03 Mar 2003 Posts: 57 Location: Helena

I used fdisk the first time. then i went back into windoze and used partition magic 8 to reformat,tried again,no luck went back to partition magic and made my ntfs partition smaller deleted and remade /boot /swap /. still nothing. tried reformating from reiser to ext3 from within livecd. still nothing. maybe its a bug with the stage3 ? It is an nforce2 mobo so anything is possible :roll:

I will try a stage 1 or 2 build when I get home tonight. Thank you everyone for the thoughts.
Shawn

scriptkiddie · l33t Joined: 30 Mar 2003 Posts: 955

good luck and if you run into more problems, post them and I'll be glad to help (or try to help

)

Gejmer · Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2003 5:48 pm Post subject:

Yea good luck. I know you will gonna need it..
_________________
Abit IS7, Pentium 4 2400Mhz, ATI Radeon 9500pro, WD 120gb 8mb, 1024mb of DDR 333mhz ram and NEC 1701 17" LCD

Windows XP Professional SP1
Linux Gentoo 1.4 RC4 (deleted installing 1.4)

sc00by71 · n00b Joined: 03 Mar 2003 Posts: 57 Location: Helena

Thats what I like about the Gentoo community,a willingness to help without having attitude. :lol:

I will try a few things and report back later.

scriptkiddie · l33t Joined: 30 Mar 2003 Posts: 955

thats one of the reasons I switched to gentoo.. because of the willingness to help people around this forum

jlambert · n00b Joined: 02 Mar 2003 Posts: 32

I've built an athlon xp system using stage 3 no problem. not bragging, just saying I have not experienced that problem.

Malakai · Apprentice Joined: 24 Dec 2002 Posts: 299

maalth · Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2003 11:56 pm Post subject:

The reason why it's 100% full is because the / partition is an extended parition, check fdisk to verify. You need to create a parition within that extended parition.

There is a limit when paritioning hard drives. Change the / partition to an extended partition, then create another / partition which will make it /dev/hda5. You're limited to 4 partitons.. here are some combinations:

a) 4 primary
b) 3 primary and 1 extended
c) 2 primary and 2 extended
d) 1 primary and 1 extended

You have to have at a minimum 1 primary partition. This limitation has been around for years.

After you run fdisk /dev/hda, type in p and it will display a table. the last partition should be an extended unless you didn't do that in which case you may have to.

sc00by71 · n00b Joined: 03 Mar 2003 Posts: 57 Location: Helena

Funny thing, I tried it again after reformatting for the fourth or fifth time and it worked ! The rest of the install went fine until grub. For some reason I cant boot. I am using the same method to dual boot as I have previously(in the faq). If I try to dual boot windoze says there is something wrong with the disk. If I try the boot floppy all I get is a grub prompt. I am sure its something small and simple I am missing. But I have done this many times before . Oh well if at first you don't succeed..................
Shawn

sc00by71 · n00b Joined: 03 Mar 2003 Posts: 57 Location: Helena

oops double post.

anyway, Maalth I have had it partitioned this way before with four primary hda1 ntfs, hda2 /boot , hda3 /swap , hda4 /. Would I be better off having ntfs and /bbot primary and swap, / extended ?
I am off to try and repair whatever I may have messed up.

cyrillic · Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2003 2:04 am Post subject:

sc00by71 · n00b Joined: 03 Mar 2003 Posts: 57 Location: Helena

Yes, I tried the suggestions you mentioned,nothing was found. Is grub different between 1.4 rc 4 and 1.4 final ? the install and setup is similar but I cant seem to get it. I have dual boot and set: root (hd0,1) setup (hd0,1) thats my /boot partition. I then make a linux.bin file to drop on my C: drive and use the nt boot loader. I couldnt get the boot floppy to work either so I am sure its something I have incorrect. I used genkernel this time if that helps.
Shawn

cyrillic · Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2003 2:31 am Post subject:

If you used genkernel, the name of your kernel will be different (use GRUB's tab-completion feature to find it), and you will also need to load initrd in GRUB.

maalth · Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2003 3:27 am Post subject:

I would advise making / in the extended partition. It actually will be better in the long run if you decided to branch out into another partition (like making /home) a completely separate partition.

sc00by71 · n00b Joined: 03 Mar 2003 Posts: 57 Location: Helena

cyrillic that must be it i didnt specify initrd other than in grub.conf

maalth I just might do that i have enough space 41GB, 12gb to windoze, if i can get a few things running under gentoo i might get rid of windows.

I cant seem to leave my partitons alone that way if its not on the mbr i can redo it and drop the linux.bin file and not have to redo windows ,but i may try it different this time and leave it alone

Thanks guys for the help,
i will be redoing it again maybe this time i'll get it right ill keep you posted

sc00by71 · n00b Joined: 03 Mar 2003 Posts: 57 Location: Helena

Solved!
Operator error. That would explain why it would unzip stage3 tarball sometimes. Ready for the stupid mistake?
forget to cd /mnt/gentoo
so I guess it stopped when I ran out of memory.
Almost have it running now. Well it is running. I haven't got xfree working yet with my radeon 9600 and nforce2 board. Anyway I said I would keep posted so thats it.
Thanks all
Shawn