genkernel 3.0.1 How-to

Suicidal · l33t Joined: 30 Jul 2003 Posts: 959 Location: /dev/null

Thnaks for clearing up the mount issue s0m3body, I guess that is why the bug hasnt been responded to.

OhSh33t · Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2004 11:04 am Post subject:

hughesjr · n00b Joined: 10 Aug 2003 Posts: 51

Why would you make a major change like this stable ... when the genkernel section of the installation manual still has genkernel 1.4 in it and there is no mention of kernel loopback or other required settings in the installation manual?

There is no way that a new gentoo user is going to be able to follow the manual and get a new kernel....

payne · n00b Joined: 19 Jan 2004 Posts: 1

Yeah... like me. First kernel compilation ever. First gentoo install.

Followed the install manual to the letter for the gentoo kernel and ended up with the "root block device unspecified or not detected". I've gone back and tried to follow everything in this thread... setting the mentioned settings in genkernel (loopback, ramdisk... and removing drm modules for all but my video cards--which otherwise would hang the kernel compile). Three days later, I still don't have a bootable machine.

I enter my boot partition /dev/hda1 when it asks to "please specify a device to boot" and I get the error "mount : Mounting /dev/hda1 on /newroot failed: Invalid argument".

Being the 1st-timer I am, I have no idea how to proceed. Can someone help me or do I just need to install Fedora... with its self-running installation?

kiko555 · n00b Joined: 13 Sep 2003 Posts: 6

After I use genkernel to install gentoo-dev-source-2.6.1...
everything is ok but after rebooting...
got the error message....

hughesjr · n00b Joined: 10 Aug 2003 Posts: 51

wizard69 · Apprentice Joined: 22 Sep 2003 Posts: 178 Location: Berlin

THX alot for this great howto eventually i succeeded with genkernel 3.01_beta6 and my new kernel is up and running

Gentoo Rocks

mhodak · Veteran Joined: 15 Nov 2003 Posts: 1218

kiko555 · n00b Joined: 13 Sep 2003 Posts: 6

mbobak · Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2004 1:50 am Post subject: ext2 required!!

D'oh! I've been struggling w/ this. Since my system is 100%
LVM/XFS, I didn't bother to compile EXT2 support into my
kernel. Well, when you don't do that, initrd breaks, since it
goes looking for ext2, since that's how the initrd image is
created! D'oh!

Now rebuilding kernel w/ ext2 support, so that I can reboot,
so I can rebuild one more time to get initrd!

Anyhow, hope that helps out someone else,

-Mark

Suicidal · l33t Joined: 30 Jul 2003 Posts: 959 Location: /dev/null

shwamster · Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2004 8:38 pm Post subject: Need help with my grub.conf

I have been trying to install gentoo for the last couple of days. I am using the ck sources v2.4.23 and got through the install and compilation without any problems. When I try to boot the bootlader loads fine. I select Gentoo and get the following error:

OhSh33t · Posted: Tue Jan 20, 2004 10:30 pm Post subject:

Im getting the same exact error as "shwamster".

I feel like I've gone over this a million times.

My grub.conf is different though. I Don't think there's much of a difference here:

dopey · Apprentice Joined: 10 Feb 2003 Posts: 235

This new genkernel really sucks. The old one was much better. I think I'm going back to the way I did things in the past (100% manual kernel configuration).

So far I've run into the following:
1) linuxrc's usage of MY_HWOPTS is incorrect. It should be attempting to recurse with ${MY_HWOPTS} not MY_HWOPTS on line 51 (gentoo bug opened for this)
2) the modprobe script doesn't handle module dependencies very well at all. For example, when attempting to load ehci-hcd it loads the usbcore.o dependency then quits. This happens with every module that has a dependency to load
3) adding "single" as a kernel argument no longer forces the system to boot into single user mode. I have yet to figure out a way to force boot into single user mode.

Additionally, the entire genkernel system seems way too bloated and complicated.

Time to file gentoo bugs for 2 and 3.

windex82 · Apprentice Joined: 05 Jun 2003 Posts: 181

jpalko

Well, got my gentoo once again working with this genkernel. Don't know though whether it was relevant to install also mkinitrd for to get genkernel working... Though I did do that as well before getting this working... If it was, then I could only ask why genkernel does not depend on mkinitrd...

This was however necessary to be different on my choice in genkernel.conf:

drumz · Apprentice Joined: 10 Nov 2002 Posts: 213

can someone take a look-see at my grub.conf and tell me if I have the settings for the gentoo r5 kernel entered correctly. I'm afraid I'm getting the dreaded error:

OhSh33t · Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2004 4:24 am Post subject:

Nice post "drumz".

I wish I had an answer. Obviously the "Documentation tips and Tricks" forum isn't the place for our problems because no-one is answering. You, others and myself have all had the same error message and no one, has any clue as to whats going on or how to trouble shoot this. I feel like I've tried just about everything. Still no-go..

Would you be willing to submitt your info to bugs.gentoo.org? I have no idea what the engineers will need besides the basic info. I don't see anything in my logs at all to help me with this.

Obviously no-one has any answers for why this is happening. I've scoured through the forums as well as bugs.gentoo.org to no avail. I've recompiled the kernel every which way possible and I can't figure out what the problem is.

HOW DO WE MAKE A "GENKERNEL STICKY" MODERATOR? Would others reading through these postings like to see a Genkernel Sticky?

Obviously this "Genkernel how-to" has turned into a "everyone dump your genkernel problems in this thread". The "Documentation Tips and Tricks" forum isn't exactly the appropriate place for genkernel problems. I feel that if we can atleast get a "STICKY"-thread going that we can air out why people are having these problems, share kernel settings and come up with a mini "how-to trouble shoot genkernel issues".

This will only help everyone including the DEV's. They seem pretty frustrated when bugs are brought to them with little or no info. The end-users really don't have any genkernel documentation to go off of even if they wanted to be pro-active in getting DEV's said needed info.

As a noob, I know how to get around the file system. If there was a howto with an outline of what "said info" needs to be submitted before posting then I would surely following that. Right now all that I have to go off of is my common sense.

A) A copy of the error that I'm receiving
B) A copy of grub.conf
C) A copy of fstab
D) A copy of my kernel settings

Not trying to be pesimistic because I luv gentoo, but how can Gentoo toot there horn the way they do in the x86 install documentation when talking about how nice genkernel and the gentoo sources are. Heh.. Heh... If they don't work at all and your forced to debug a kernel problem for days on end without any resolution...... why bother. The new Genkernel is completely blotted/Fat-Ass, undocumented and totally buggy.

This is an "ls" of the new genkernel default config and then the same for the former genkernel. Can YOu say "FAT-ASS".. Even the New default 2.6 kernel is half the size.

Can you say.... "Totally Undocumented and Totally Unfriendly"

Back to manual kernel installs again. This was a convienent kernel help/builder in its former glory but its nothing but a big pig thats over complicated and doesn't have any documentation except for the /usr/share/genkernel README file... Which is what this thread uses to try and help people initially.

drumz · Apprentice Joined: 10 Nov 2002 Posts: 213

Hey:

There's this https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38274 bug posting that the gentlemen lists that he''ll be posting an update to genkernel 'in a few days':

OhSh33t · Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2004 11:39 pm Post subject:

Drumz,

For some reason I don't think that our issue is related to modules. The reason I say so is because, if it were I think that genkernel actually fails to compile completely, thus never finishing. I've ran into the same problem and genkernel dies before compiling the kernel. But when I actually go into menuconfig and take out all the junk that I don't need is when Genkernel actually compiles without error. Its only after bootup that we see the errror you, I and many others are getting.

Were getting past this point. But something we've compiled into the kernel isn't jiving with what we have listed in grub. Which is completely beyond me at this point because we've both got grub setup per the directions.

And its at this point that I have no clue why there isn't a log that we can look at that would help us further diagnose why this is happening. Neither Genkernel.log or Kern.log have anything usefull to tell. Is there somewhere else to look besides these area's that I'm unaware of?
_________________
JB

jpalko · Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2004 5:47 am Post subject:

Personally I have gotten that sort of results that even without changing anything in menuconfig on the two runs, genkernel sometimes goes through completely, sometimes it just dies at modules_install... Weird...
_________________
Jukka Palko
Piispanristi, Finland
Linux Counter ID #219161

Suicidal · l33t Joined: 30 Jul 2003 Posts: 959 Location: /dev/null

allancairns · Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2004 2:32 am Post subject:

qeldroma · Guru Joined: 17 Oct 2002 Posts: 370

After a struggle with the initrd-image to work correctly i gave up and made one myself.
Isn't very hard, though. Just take one of the dozends of HowTos for bootable CDs, there is initrd mostly integrated.

And then, just make following script: