[Solved]Stage3tarball

[CorruptPanda]

I asked a few days ago which live cd I needed to use. Upon recieving the answer, I was told to download the i686 stage 3 and rebuild it later for athlon-xp. I am currently installing Gentoo and I am not sure how to "rebuild" the stage 3..

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-848187.html

Above is the link to the post I mentioned.

Any help would be apreciated.

[psycho]

"rebuild" in this context ("for athlon-xp") means to recompile your entire system with something like -march=native in your CFLAGS (in /etc/make.conf)...unless of course, you would prefer not to take advantage of processor-specific optimizations (e.g. if you're planning to copy binary packages across to other boxes with different i686 processors).

the Gentoo Handbook explains the installation procedure in detail, including any specific commands or actions necessary to carry out the steps. just work through it carefully, one step at a time, and you will be fine.

[edit]p.s.: in case the link between CFLAGS and processors isn't clear, whenever you build any software (by compiling it from source code), the compiler can optimize the code to take advantage of new processor features (usually in order to run more quickly). the "march" directive tells the compiler to take full advantage of such optimizations: in this case it will run as quickly as possible on the processor in question; but (since it may now depend upon this processor's features) it may not run at all on other models. so, if the code you're compiling is *only* going to run on the athlon-xp box you're building it on, it makes sense to add "-march=athlon-xp" or "-march=k7" (which i think are synonymous) or (much easier to remember as this applies to any processor) "-march=native" (which simply tells the compiler to build code specifically for the processor it detects as the running processor).

when (in Gentoo) portage builds a package, it uses the settings in /etc/make.conf to guide various aspects of the process: what it reads in the "CFLAGS" line, it passes on to the compiler. so, to "rebuild" a package with new CFLAGS means (in Gentoo) to edit /etc/make.conf and then type something like "emerge foo" to rebuild that package. to rebuild *everything* with new CFLAGS therefore involves editing /etc/make.conf and typing "emerge world". on an athlon-xp, this will probably take a very long time (several hours).

[CorruptPanda]

Well, I am currently at the configuring step after downloading and untaring portage. Should I put march=athlon-xp?

[psycho]

yes, unless you want to copy the files you're building across to other boxes with different processors (in which case you may want to keep everything march=i686, at least for now, as most of them won't run a heck of a lot slower).

all of your existing (unpacked from the tarball) march=i686 packages will always run just fine on your athlon-xp, so it doesn't matter whether you rebuild the whole lot march=athlon-xp now, or leave it until later. generally speaking though (and since you've presumably put the time aside for installing now) it makes sense to get your /etc/make.conf how you want it right from the start and build everything accordingly...otherwise you're only going to have to rebuild them later on when you want to make the most of your athlon-xp.

[CorruptPanda]

Alright, I went ahead and used -march=athlon-xp after I read a few articles, just to make sure it was safe and whatnot. I'm currently updating Emerge.

[CorruptPanda]

Hmm..I'm now configuring the use flags. What would be a good example of use flags for a desktop environment? (I plan on using Fluxbox)

[psycho]

USE flags are probably the feature that most distinguishes Gentoo from other GNU/Linux distributions. it's possible (and some distros make it quite easy) to script a rebuild of your entire system using custom CFLAGS with any distro, because the source code is available, even if you typically install it as precompiled binaries. USE flags are a different story: unlike the CFLAGS environment variable, they're unique to Gentoo.

normally when you build a package from source, you configure it yourself by reading through all the options (something like "./configure --help | less" allows you to browse through them) and then specifically tuning it to your taste ("./configure --with-gtk --without-qt" or whatever). these configure options are package-specific and while there are lots of conventions, they're not standardised in such a way that you can make a single decision at some point ("--with-gtk") and have that applied consistently to hundreds of different packages. except in Gentoo, where your USE flags in /etc/make.conf achieve exactly that.

the tricky part (for you, trying to chose which ones to use) is that there are so many of them with so many different effects upon different packages that there really is no "correct USE flags for a desktop" or even "correct USE flags for a KDE desktop" or whatever that you can simply copy across. the descriptions are in /usr/portage/profiles/use.desc and /usr/portage/profiles/use.local.desc. definitely have a look through these to get a general idea of what USE flags do, and if you're patient and have time, you could even go through them systematically, building up a USE= line that anticipates all the stuff you want to do with your system and how you want things to work. in my experience though, you will inevitably tweak your USE flags over time: something that sounded useless will turn out to remove functionality you actually want from a couple of packages, or vice versa. this being the case, i'd keep it quite simple at the start: if in doubt, leave things alone and trust the ebuild defaults to get things more or less right. when you're *not* happy with something, then fiddle with your USE flags to change it to your taste. doing it the other way around (being a control freak and fiddling with everything at the beginning) is likely to cause you lots of headaches, especially if you're not familiar with the packages and the effects of the USE flags you're specifying. rather than building a heavily customized system with lots of custom USE flags and then wondering why so many things are broken, i suggest you err on the side of under-specification (not enough after USE=) leaving things to build with default options, and then rebuilding things with custom USE flags as you encounter specific things you want to change.

having said that, if you're sure you don't want (for example) kde-specific stuff built in packages that support it, now's a good time to specify "-kde", because if you do it later on you may need to rebuild lots of packages to take your new use flags into account. keep it simple (the simpler the better), but if you spot a USE flag that you really want to specify now, go ahead and try it. Gentoo is very tolerant of fiddling with stuff: you can always change it later and build the affected packages again!

[cach0rr0]

Hmm..I'm now configuring the use flags. What would be a good example of use flags for a desktop environment? (I plan on using Fluxbox)

since you're building a desktop system, you would probably be better off starting by just simply selecting the correct profile (eselect profile list, then eselect profile set <somenumber> where <somenumber> is the 'desktop' profile)

That should set sane defaults.

I use xorg 1.8, without hal, and KDE 4.5.2. My USE flags contain nothing but:

Code: Select all

USE="-hal dbus -ldap mmx sse sse2 opengl injection policykit wicd"

Just to get your initial system up and running setting your profile correctly should be a fine starting point.
Of course using this for getting Fluxbox set up - http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/fluxbox-config.xml

From there I typically build up my USE flags as I go, instead of trying to set everything in advance, and end up setting up loads of 'em on a per-package basis in /etc/portage/package.use

I do this by doing emerge -pv <pkgname> before I build a package, and see what USE flags it has available.
If I see something that makes sense to have enabled globally, I add it to make.conf
If I see something I think makes sense to have enabled only for that package, I add it to /etc/portage/package.use

I find this an easier way to do things than trying to read all of the USE flag documentation and attempting to have every USE flag I want configured before I set anything up.

[CorruptPanda]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I spent something like 5-7 hours trying to install, when I rebooted, I got a kernel panic about boot= being in the wrong place or something. However, the install process alone taught me quite a bit. I especially liked using fdisk ^^ I've went back to Debian for the time being, but I still have my gentoo disc and will eventually have another go at it. Thanks again.

[cwr]

I started with a minimal set of flags in make.conf, and over the years I've built up the following set,
using an x86/Gnome system:

# The base sub-profile has USE="bzip2"
# The arch profile has no flags.
# The 2010.0 profile has
# USE="acl cups gdbm gpm nptl nptlonly sysfs unicode"
# Added firefox to keep out seamonkey.
# Added esd (esound), needed for system sounds.
# Added jpeg and png, or Gnome can't deal with them.
# Added qt3support, since it has to be a global flag.
# Added java5, to suppress Java 1.4.
# Added nautilus, or Gnome 2.30 won't emerge it?
USE="acl acpi alsa cairo cdr dbus doc esd firefox java5 jpeg gnome gstreamer gtk hal nautilus ogg opengl pcmcia png qt3support samba tiff unicode v4l2 X -apm -bindist -kde"

Most of this is to handle various media formats. whose USE flags tend to crop up in unexpected places.
Furthermore, you should disable the doc flag, which has to be suppressed for specific packages to get
a clean emerge. That sort of tinkering can be left for later.

I'm not clear exactly which flags the base system supplies: I'm using the actual 10.0 profile, not 10.0/desktop,
but even so it's very difficult to track through the profile tree and be absolutely certain what's set and what's
not. Still, the above list is a reasonable starting point.

Good luck - Will

[psycho]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I spent something like 5-7 hours trying to install, when I rebooted, I got a kernel panic about boot= being in the wrong place or something. However, the install process alone taught me quite a bit. I especially liked using fdisk ^^ I've went back to Debian for the time being, but I still have my gentoo disc and will eventually have another go at it. Thanks again.

it sounds like you may have been very close (perhaps even just a single edit to grub.conf) to being up and running! then again, if you built your own kernel (and it was your first attempt at doing so) then you may have built it without support for your disks or the filesystems on them or something else critical, in which case perhaps there was still a bit of work to do.

it's good that you learned things from the Gentoo install: one thing you could do now you're back in Debian is have a look around and see how your Debian system is doing things, and maybe use that to inform your next go at Gentoo. for instance, you can have a look at your /boot/grub/grub.conf (or /boot/grub/menu.lst) file and see how Debian has set it up; also your /etc/fstab file in Debian could be useful as a guide to how you could set up /etc/fstab in Gentoo.

Debian is an excellent distribution anyway. Gentoo runs a bit faster and the packages are a bit more up-to-date, but Debian is so reliable and you can try out new software so quickly and easily (after years of dealing with overnight builds of openoffice on Gentoo, i remember feeling a bit stunned the first time i typed "apt-get install openoffice.org" and the whole thing was downloaded, installed and configured in a matter of seconds), it's probably a gentler learning curve if you get comfortable with Debian first (maybe build a few custom kernels etc.) and then give Gentoo another try when the concepts in the installation handbook are a bit more familiar. Gentoo will always be here

[cach0rr0]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I spent something like 5-7 hours trying to install, when I rebooted, I got a kernel panic about boot= being in the wrong place or something. However, the install process alone taught me quite a bit. I especially liked using fdisk ^^ I've went back to Debian for the time being, but I still have my gentoo disc and will eventually have another go at it. Thanks again.

use one of Pappy's kernel seeds, and his guide, and go through the manual kernel configuration process.
check my signature for details.

The third link is a video where i did a screencast showing how one uses the first two tools to make a working lean functional kernel.

I need to update that video. Badly. I have learned an insane amount since then, and the confusion you see in it, as well some of the dead space where I'm thinking and am unsure what to select, I've since learned what to select to the point it no longer requires the thinking time.

Either way, if you go with one of pappy's seeds, and follow that guide, you should not get a kernel panic. You might misconfigure grub.conf to point at the wrong spot, but the kernel itself will be top class functional.

[CorruptPanda]

I'll be sure to give it a try again soon. I'm not sure if it was a kernel config problem or boot, or both. Honestly, I didn't change much in the kernel, because it was my my first time doing it. >.> I almost decided to use genkernel, but I figured it would make it slower to boot up. I'll have a look around and learn some more things so that my next try will be a success ^^

[CorruptPanda]

Out of curiosity, what are the differences between Pappy's different kernel sources? (Vanilla, Hardened, tuxonix, Gentoo, etc)

[CorruptPanda]

Blaaahhhh. I tried installing again. I didn't get a grub error this time. It was purely a kernel problem. I used pappy's seed this time too. I just suck at configuring kernels, I guess.

[psycho]

remember that you don't *have* to build a custom kernel. whatever kernel allowed you to start the installation obviously works, so you could just copy that one into your new /boot and point grub at that (and assuming the livecd uses modules you'll probably also need to copy /lib/modules/whatever_the_kernel_is across from the livecd system, too).

kernel configuration is hard to get exactly right, but it shouldn't be too difficult to get it to boot. it's just a matter of making sure your essential hardware is supported: the right processor and bus options, and whatever kind of hard disks you have (probably something under the "serial ata and parallel ata drivers"). if you're really struggling, a somewhat painful but fairly reliable way to get a working custom kernel would be to boot into a modular kernel from a livecd (or maybe your debian kernel) and then lsmod to see what modules the kernel is loading. then when you're configuring your custom kernel, make sure all those modules are enabled. later you could disable some of them (or build them in to a monolithic kernel) if you wanted to, but for now your best bet is probably (as usual) just to leave things relatively untouched: copy a setup that works.

in fact if you're lucky, the running kernel may actually have its config built into it (i have no idea whether or not the Gentoo install cd's kernel does or not): you might find it in /proc/config.gz, or you might be able to extract it with the /usr/src/linux/scripts/extract-ikconfig script. if all else fails you could try "make oldconfig" with Debian's config: clearly the Debian kernel works for you, and i'm pretty sure Debian always keeps a copy of the running kernel's config file in the /boot directory with the kernel. you could copy that across to your Gentoo's /usr/src/linux, backup the .config you've been working on [edit: obviously backup .config BEFORE replacing it with the Debian config!], run "make oldconfig", and pray that it's not so heavily patched that it spits the dummy. if all goes well you may be able to build a rough equivalent of your working Debian kernel using the Gentoo sources. apologies if this doesn't work (maybe someone knows it won't work and can advise you not to bother trying?): i haven't actually tried it myself, but it's something i'd be giving a go if i couldn't get a kernel working myself.

when you're fiddling around in "make menuconfig" or whatever, remember that as a general rule it's safer to *include* a module than disable it. if you're absolutely sure you know what kind of hardware (sound card, for example) you have, then you can safely disable all the others...but in most cases things will still work if you enable various other cards as modules...the kernel will just load what it needs and ignore what it doesn't. this isn't *always* so and there are bits and pieces that conflict with each other so that you have to choose the right option, but as a general rule it's safer to leave things in than remove them.

finally, read the built-in documentation! lots of options, if you choose "help", will say something like, "if you're not sure what to do here, say yes" or "if you don't know what this is, you don't need it" and so on. most of the time what the help says is good advice

[CorruptPanda]

Well, I followed pappy's thing and used lscpi -n and entered the info on that site, but when I searched for the drivers in make menuconfig, either nothing was returned or I got so many results it was daunting. :S Also, I use the minimal cd for installation..I'm not sure how to get the live cd. O.o (Being stuck in the command line for 5-7 hours is rough >.>)

Edit:

Code: Select all

corrupt@localhost:~$ lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
savage                 23394  2 
drm                   112088  3 savage
fuse                   43762  1 
loop                    9765  0 
snd_via82xx            15256  1 
gameport                6061  1 snd_via82xx
snd_ac97_codec         79148  1 snd_via82xx
ac97_bus                 710  1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_mpu401_uart         4067  1 snd_via82xx
via_ircc               13311  0 
irda                   75920  1 via_ircc
crc_ccitt               1039  1 irda
snd_pcm                47226  3 snd_via82xx,snd_ac97_codec
snd_rawmidi            12513  1 snd_mpu401_uart
i2c_viapro              4419  0 
snd_seq_device          3673  1 snd_rawmidi
snd_timer              12258  1 snd_pcm
parport_pc             15799  0 
shpchp                 21220  0 
evdev                   5609  7 
i2c_core               12696  2 drm,i2c_viapro
parport                22554  1 parport_pc
button                  3598  0 
processor              26671  1 
snd                    34363  8 snd_via82xx,snd_ac97_codec,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_device,snd_timer
snd_page_alloc          5045  2 snd_via82xx,snd_pcm
pci_hotplug            18065  1 shpchp
soundcore               3450  1 snd
pcspkr                  1207  0 
ext3                   94204  2 
jbd                    32177  1 ext3
mbcache                 3762  1 ext3
sg                     15968  0 
sr_mod                 10770  0 
cdrom                  26487  1 sr_mod
sd_mod                 25869  4 
crc_t10dif              1012  1 sd_mod
usbhid                 27984  0 
ata_generic             2019  0 
hid                    50653  1 usbhid
fan                     2586  0 
pata_via                5701  3 
8139cp                 13421  0 
uhci_hcd               16057  0 
thermal                 9206  0 
libata                115721  2 ata_generic,pata_via
8139too                14949  0 
floppy                 40923  0 
thermal_sys             9378  3 processor,fan,thermal
ehci_hcd               27851  0 
scsi_mod              101401  4 sg,sr_mod,sd_mod,libata
mii                     2714  2 8139cp,8139too
usbcore                98397  4 usbhid,uhci_hcd,ehci_hcd
nls_base                4541  1 usbcore

That's the output of lsmod. :s

Further Edit:

http://pastebin.com/A9TUpd1R

Above is my kernel configuration for Debian, I think? O.o Maybe this can help? :s

[cwr]

A lot of people seem to have this kernel configuration; would it be possible to
have the Gentoo DVD kernel configuration posted somewhere (accessible via
emerge?) to give a reliable starting point for configuration? That config
file, and genkernel, should make building a first kernel pretty bomb-proof.

Then comes the optimisation ...

Will

[CorruptPanda]

Meh. I guess I am just going to have to read more about compiling kernels. xD I'm sure I left out some things in make menuconfig when I last tried. :p

[cach0rr0]

Out of curiosity, what are the differences between Pappy's different kernel sources? (Vanilla, Hardened, tuxonix, Gentoo, etc)

when you run 'make' in your kernel sources directory, it uses the '.config' file to determine what all to build

Pappy's seeds are .config templates where a lot of the "what the hell does this setting mean?" decisions are already made for you. You simply go in, select the drivers you need for your hardware, select the file system support you need, and you're good to go - note that you still end up doing that through menuconfig.

Have a read through his webpage, it explains all of this.

[cach0rr0]

A lot of people seem to have this kernel configuration; would it be possible to
have the Gentoo DVD kernel configuration posted somewhere (accessible via
emerge?) to give a reliable starting point for configuration? That config
file, and genkernel, should make building a first kernel pretty bomb-proof.

Then comes the optimisation ...

Will

boot DVD or CD
zcat /proc/config.gz > /wherever/you/want/to/save

there's also the matter of the initramfs if one is used, as that needs to be copied over as well. that's a less straightforward thing to pilfer.

[CorruptPanda]

I'll give it another try in a week or so, but this time I'm going to make sure to do it on a seperate partition from my Debian so that I don't have to reinstall debian. :S (5-7 hours failed Gentoo + 2-3 hours install+customize debian) >.>

However, I did learn a bit more the second time I tried to install gentoo. Just not in the menuconfig department :S I selected the Athalon cpu thing, instead of the default presario and made sure the filesystems were correct. Then I searched through the menus and if I thought I needed something, I turned it on. I even used lspci -n and that site. :S Still got a kernel panic. Though, I made sure the grub.conf was correct that time. ^^ So, I am learning a bit more each time. I just need to sit down and learn what most of the options in the kernel do, I guess. :S

[cwr]

A lot of people seem to have this kernel configuration _problem_ [edit]; would it be possible to
have the Gentoo DVD kernel configuration posted somewhere (accessible via
emerge?) to give a reliable starting point for configuration? That config
file, and genkernel, should make building a first kernel pretty bomb-proof.

Then comes the optimisation ...

Will

boot DVD or CD
zcat /proc/config.gz > /wherever/you/want/to/save

there's also the matter of the initramfs if one is used, as that needs to be copied over as well. that's a less straightforward thing to pilfer.

Genkernel does that for you. Perhaps just documenting this approach in the manual would help.

Will

[gentooP4]

It might be a plan to install with the genkernel and then once you are up and running start building a custom kernel. This way if both kerenels are in grub you can at least boot to a working gentoo system if you get a kernel panic? That's how I ended up doing it as I was back and forth between my kernel and this website numerous times.

I guess you can boot to debian for web access, etc, but some things like emerge you won't get there.

[psycho]

It might be a plan to install with the genkernel and then once you are up and running start building a custom kernel. This way if both kerenels are in grub you can at least boot to a working gentoo system if you get a kernel panic

amen! first priority is to get *something* in your grub menu that will always boot you into a working Gentoo; once that's sorted, then you're in a much more comfortable position to start testing custom kernel configurations.