Stage 1/3 Installation Support - Gentoo 2004.3 & GCC 343

[Bob P]

This thread should be used to ask support questions about the Stage 1 NPTL on a 2004.3 Stage 3 Tarball installation method. Please post your support requests here and not in the Documentation, Tips & Tricks forum.

When following the Guide, please bear in mind that it is an advanced installation method, and it requires the user to make subtle, yet important changes in some of the steps that will significantly change the behavior of your GCC compiler. For this reason, it is imperative that you resist the temptation to "improve" your installation by making changes to the compiler settings in make.conf at any time other than when they are recommended.

Rebuilding the GCC compiler and your toolkit folowing a major GCC version upgrade can be tricky business. The perils of doing this improperly have been well documented in the GCC 3.4.3 is Upon Us thread.

The vast majority of support problems to date have been encountered by experienced linux users who are new to Gentoo. These users invariably choose to deviate from the guide in an effort to "improve" their installation by adding/changing compiler settings or removing some of the redundant compilation steps.

If you are not an advanced Gentoo user who is familiar with rebuilding the toolkit and you're not absolutely certain what you are doing, then try to resist the temptation to make changes to the Guide's installation method. Many people have fubar'd their installations by adding bits and pieces from other installation methods, or by streamlining the installation method by skipping steps. DON'T DO IT! You'll be much more successful if you choose one installation method and follow it dogmatically.

When posting, please remember that the Stage 1/3 guide is not officially supported, but if you need help, this is the best place to ask for support. Please bear in mind that if you have deviated from the installation guide in any way, support may not be available and your best option may be to start over.

As of the time that I open this thread, I will no longer repond to any Personal Messages requesting support for the Stage 1 on 3 Installation Guide. All Personal Messages sent to me will be deleted without a reply, so please post your support requests here. Thanks, and have fun!

Here are some of the more common problems that people have encountered, and hyperlinks to the solutions:

C Compiler Cannot Create Executables: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-294109.html

Glibc Will Not Compile: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-314985-start-42.html

Failure on First Boot: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-299646-start-31.html

Gensplash and Bootsplash Problems: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-299646-start-19.html

Genkernel - Unsupported: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-299646-start-176.html

Reiser 4 - Unsupported: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-299646-start-51.html


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Stage 1/3 | Jackass! | Rockhopper! | Thanks | Google Sucks

[dedeaux]

binutils borks telling me compiler can't created executables....

gcc-config won't switch to gcc-3.4.3

here is where I am at:
gcc-config -l states that I am configured for gcc-3.3.4

gcc-cinfig 2 tells me I am switching to gcc-3.4.3 and to source /etc/profile

source /etc/profile

gcc-config -l states I am back at gcc-3.3.4

[kimchi_sg]

[dedeaux]

don't feel like retyping all that thought I had described it well enough:

host, target, build system type all i686-pc-linux-gnu
ln and ln -s work
gcc

then:
checking whether C compiler (gcc -march=pentium4 -mtune=pentium4 -pipe -O2 ) works... no
configure: error: installation or configuration problem: C compiler cannot create executables.

[kimchi_sg]

Quick fix: Take -mtune out of your CFLAGS.

I do not understand why gcc-config is refusing to change the compiler profile though.

[dedeaux]

that defeats the whole purpose here... why rebuild the binutils with gcc-3.3.4...

[Bob P]

[kimchi_sg]

-mtune is actually redundant when you have -march.

-march will optimise code without considering backward compatibility with older processors, while -mtune will try to be backwards compatible. From your error output, it seems that gcc is still being passed the -march option, so your compiled code will still be optimised. In short, you will lose nothing by removing -mtune here.

[dedeaux]

I am lost.

My point here is that I should be using the new GCC 3.4.3. The output from gcc-config -l and gcc --version tell me that it is still using gcc-3.3.4 which was already used to compile binutils. I am saying that step 7.2.4 is rebuilding the toolchain with 3.4.3 -- since I can't do this, then why go on... obviously there is a problem somewhere.....

[kimchi_sg]

Did you do env-update after running gcc-config 2?

[dedeaux]

for starters:

Bob P:
I made a post before seeing the support thread:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-299706.html

All the details were given in that post. As for indicating the critical errors -- I did this... instead of helping me you began to flame me... I was not being critical of you in any way. I appreciate your work in the guide or I wouldn't even be here.

kimchi_sg:
thanks for the help... yes, I was following the guide step by step and had accomplished 7.2.3 which indicates an env-update.

I think I will rewind and start all over... I do have a question tho:

I am using the 2004.3 boot cd. In step 6.5 when I go to make my changes to /etc/make.conf I should change the CHOST or not? It comes up with i386-pc-linux-gnu. I am on a P4 M laptop.

Thanks.

[qbad]

Hi everyone!
Here's what I got after trying to emerge glibc-2.3.4 (using 3.3.4 toolkit):

[Bob P]

[Enlight]

GPM is on the live-cd, no??? So he can copy-paste in links using the middle clic...

[Bob P]

[Enlight]

[Bob P]

[Bob P]

HOW-TO Post the Contents of Emerge Info:

In order to assist in troubleshooting, its almost always necessary to review the output from your machine's "emerge info". This command produces enough output that it is too cumbersome to retype it, and in most circumstances people that are working from the Live CD don't know how to move data from one PC to another.

This can be done very easily by redirecting your screen output to a text file on a floppy disc, and then moving the floppy to the PC that you use to surf the web:

[96140]

I hate to say this, Bob, as I've been a very vocal supporter of your method, but....well, by the time I finished (3-4 days of work), I did not have a working Gentoo installation. This may or may not be related to the fact that on the first emerge -e system I quit 1/3 of the way through to add more USE flags to make.conf, as I mentioned awhile ago in the official thread. Though I rebuilt my toolchain just fine after that, when I restarted my computer, I got the nice Grub splash screen, but no bootsplash.

That was the least of my worries...shortly after this, after watching the normal mesages flash past, I hit the big error: hda3 (where everything but /boot is, as per the Guide) wasn't found. I found this ironic, because the previous boot lines talked about mounting it, reading files from it, etc. Heck, I'm pretty sure the system has to pull files from it. I think this might be a ReiserFS problem; I've noticed that with any Linux distribution I put on my computer, I have much more grief when using ReiserFS. That's why, for my first installation, I ended up using the slower ext3 FS; I will be retrying in the next couple of days using ext3--I only hope that I don't lose much of the speed that this method is supposed to bring.

I'm not sure exactly why bootsplash didn't work; I was very careful to follow the guide verbatum after the first slight mistake I made; I triple-checked everything after that. I only used the 1024x768 splash image, since that's my native resolution, and I saw no errors during the boot process. And yes, I had everything enabled in my kernel that should be there, and I was using vesa-tng, etc. I can't troubleshoot any of this right offhand as, I'm sorry to say, I had to put Window$ XP on the first partition of the drive in order to get a working OS for the short term.

What really bothers me is that ReiserFS couldn't find the very partitions it was booting from; I got a bash prompt asking for a Ctrl-D restart or admin password for maintenance, neither of which worked. A whole day monkeying around in Knoppix, examining each critical config file didn't solve anything, either. THe only thing I can think of that's slightly odd are the directions for Grub to find the kernel; most Grub config tutorials for a 2.6 kernel specify /boot/kernel-2.6.10-gentoo-r6 (or whatever) instead of /vmlinuz (or whatever). But then, my kernel had to be working since it loaded my system to that one point...and it's not like I didn't have FS support compiled into the kernel, which I did.

I'll be trying again tonight or tomorrow night using ext3. Maybe ReiserFS offers better performance, but I can never get it to work for me. I wish I remembered more details about the exact error message, but it's been a few days, so I'd have to have a little prompting, and it's all moot anyways; I have to wipe the rest of the disk and start over.

But, Bob, your method does speed things up by the time the last emerge -e system rolls around; I can feel the increased speed once the toolchain builds itself a couple of times, even before rebooting.

[Bob P]

Gensplash vs. Bootsplash

[Bob P]

[96140]

[96140]

[dedeaux]

Bob_P and Kimchi_sq:

I scrapped the guide from the point I was at and started over. Instead of using the stage3 listed in the guide I went ahead and downloaded the stage3 for i686 instead of x86 and all is fine. When I got to the steps where I was having the issue with gcc-config, the issue no longer existed. The install is moving along fine now. If I have any other problems I will post here. I just started the system rebuild ( 2nd part of step 7.2.4 ) about 40 minutes ago and its about 1/3 of the way through re-emerging the packages.

[Bob P]