All is well in roXet-land

[roXet]

Last Friday night I began my adventure into the world of Gentoo 1.4(_rc1). I was dual-booting Win98 and Gentoo 1.2, but we just got DSL and my wife and I decided that when we did we would go full-on linux.

So, it begins. Friday we back all of our important stuff to the secondary hard drive and then I boot from the LiveCd and nuke the partitions. I make three partitions, (boot=ext2, swap, /=reiserfs). I wimped out and went from stage 3, becasue I didn't want our only computer to be down for that long. Compile the kernel, emege metalog and vcron, configure Grub, reboot and Huzzah! it works! Next step is to emerge fluxbox and X. I start that and go to bed.

Well around 4am I wake up, and remembering the problems I had compiling X on my 1.2 setup (more on this later) I go to check on it. Doh! I'ts locked up. When I was setting up 1.2 before I had a problem where compiling X would lock up. That time I changed to the vanilla sources (I think that is all, I might have changed to ext3 too) and all went well. So I think changing to vanilla again will fix it this time too. So I emerge the vanilla-sources and start the compile. It finishes, I install the kernel, reboot, start back at compiling X and go back to bed.

When I get up Saturday morning (around 8 or so, I can't sleep when my computer is not working) I go to find that the compile locked up again. CRAP! Thinking back to my 1.2 install and changing to ext3, I think that reiserFS could be causing the problem. So I start the install over again, with ext3 filesystems this time and the gentoo-sources kernel. No dice, same thing. So for the rest of the day I am setting up filesystems and compiling kernels, only to have the compalation of X lock up on me. I even tried going back to 1.2, still the same thing. How did I get this working before??

So Saturday night I get disgusted and break out the old Mandrake 8.2 cds. It installs easy enough, but when I get to the X configuration part I can't get it to test in a resolution higher than 800x600!! (I have a 19" samsung syncmaster and GeForce 4MX, I usually run at 1600x1200). Thnking it is just a probelm in the installer I reboot and attempt to fix it once the system is up. Same problem. I manually enter my monitor settings, tell it I have a GeForce, and try all the resolutions higher than 800x600. It tries to start, but then the light on the monitor just goes amber.

"Hrmmm, 8.2 might not have good support for the GeForce", I say to myself, "maybe I should download the 9.0 iso". "Good idea, self", I reply. Mandrake 9.0 iso is downloaded and burned. So I reboot, install 9. When I get to the X config part, same exact thing! Reboot into the system, try it again, still no dice.

By this point I am considering the unthinkable, and in the back of my mind the specter of hardware problems looms menacingly. Maybe my monitor is burning up. So as a last ditch effort I boot of the 1.4 LiveCd, configure X to use 1600x1200 and it works! No dead monitor!! And the pesants rejoice!!

This gives me renewed hope. So I start the 1.2 install ONE MORE TIME. Set it all up, start the X compile and go to bed. The next morning I awake to find that by some miracle it finished! Wow, stuff is finally starting to go my way. I set it up to use fluxbox at 1600x1200 and all is right with the world.

Knowing Mozilla is a heafty complie I emerge Opera first so that my wife can get her internet fix (traffic anyalysis for her site is her drug of choice). She does her thing then I start compiling Mozilla. Guess what, the compile fails, it's segfaulting! Signal 11! So I come on here and ask about this problem. dixomat and rac(thanks guys!!) lead me to believe that this could be caused by using an overclocked processor (which I am). I am running a Celeron 366 overclocked to 550.

That was Monday, so when I got home from work that day, I nuke the system again, knock it back to it's original clock settings. 366, ugh, that sucks. Start the 1.4 install process. Everything goes well. I get the system up and running. Here we go again, let's compile X. This time it takes a llloonnnggggg time. I didn't realize how much difference those 200 mhz would make. The next morning I have a fully functional fluxbox setup. I emerge Opera for the wife and go to work.

I'll stop the blow-by-blow here. I now have Gnome 2.0, Mozilla, the Gimp, Gaim, gftp and many other apps running well. And it's running fast despite my lame processor. I love Gentoo!!!