I would love to love gentoo.

HelenKeller · n00b Joined: 22 May 2006 Posts: 2

Ok, so I've installed a bunch of different distros and had a wonderful time playing with them and learning about linux and
also just how my computer, well, most computers, work. It's downright satisfying to read the documentation and have it
all click in your head, and there isn't some guy wearing a tweed coat with leather patches over the elbows to mark you
tardy or make fun of your thesis. It's an education, a relatively painless one.

Then came gentoo. Reading about it I was instantly intrigued, a system with that much customization? Fantastic.
However, gentoo is the /only/ system I have not been able to get running. I work IT, I work with a lot of systems.
RHE, Win2k3 Server, BSD, Cisco hardware, I mean, I've had to do a chunk of work on all of them, which
proves I'm not afraid of reading a lot of tech documents. Can't crack Gentoo. Can't get it working.

It isn't that I lack the patience to try, it's that, when you're talking about a stage 1 install, I just need my computer
long before it can be completed. And with the 2006.0, the install CD can't detect any of my hard drives. One thing after another
has stopped me from successfully installing and trying out gentoo. Time. I have work, I have one computer at home that I can't
let sit and compile unless I know that at the end of say a weekend, I'll have up and running again. I need access to email for family,
jobs, etc etc etc. So I go with Fedora Core 5 at the moment, but it's a middle ground. I /want/ that total power of my system.

I know, I know, "What about stage 3???" you'll say. And I have tried. The problem I've had most recently is a lack of hardware detection
and that I need to be up and running more often than not. I'm running a system that is completely pieced together out of parts stretching
across years. I swap things in and out constantly, sometimes for testing, sometimes for an upgrade, etc. Going through all this to see
me have to swap out a part for another arcane one is a massive pain.

Bottom line, I love the idea of Gentoo, and one day I will hopefully get to try it. The addition of a 64 bit live cd would be a bloody dream come true as I haven't
run a 32 bit system in a while, and I'm not about to buy a 32 bit system to test this all out on.

Other friends have piles of pc bits laying about and can build these things, I'm sure a lot of you guys do too. I don't. I'm not much of a pack rat and hindsight is 20/20. When I realize I could have done it on this or that I just slap my forehead.

Basically, I guess it's a plea to make the install much faster while still having the ability to customize it later, or make more architectures available in live cd form. That
would be fantastic. I don't care if it's compiling for days if I can still answer email and download documents. And I'm a technitian, not a programmer, so the learning curve for me
is a tad higher (Although I'm sure your careers are varied, I would hate to stereotype the average Gentoo user). Not sure how many are in a similar situation as me, but I think my rambling incoherent forum post more or less gets my point across.

I've heard a lot of nice things, hopefully at some point I'll also be one of the guys saying it.
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MEW · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 15 Dec 2005 Posts: 131

There is a way to make the installation faster and customizable later. The Gentoo Reference Platform. It's a set of binary packages that you can use to install at first (for big things like KDE).

The way it works is that you install your base system (stage3 + syslog, etc.), then download the packagecd image (/releases/amd64/2006.0/packagecd/ on a mirror), optionally burn it, and then mount it (from the cd or loopmount). http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/2006.0/handbook-amd64.xml?part=1&chap=11 explains how to use it.

EDIT: You may want to look into Kororaa as well. I haven't tried it, but it sounds nice.
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krigav · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 10 Nov 2005 Posts: 121

You can build a fresh gentoo system on the top of a running linux installation (for example FC).

All you need is one free partition on your system (because of the whole build process the partition should be large enough. Maybe around 2-3 GB. If you want to build xorg or mozilla maybe 1 or 2 GB more.) and the chroot command ("man chroot" is your friend).
Also it maybe would be usefull to have a second swap partition while build up your gentoo system (After that you, of course, can use only one swap partition).

Maybe you should read the installation docs again: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=6

HTH
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RBH · Apprentice Joined: 31 Oct 2004 Posts: 184

I must admit I'm routinely bewildered by these "I can't get Gentoo to work" posts. I came to Gentoo with next to no Linux knowledge, followed the handbook and had a system up and running (manually compiled kernel came on the second install) with no problems at all. I'm still a long way from mastering Gentoo or Linux itself, but I've still not had any problems installing or running Gentoo.

BlackEdder · Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 1:44 pm Post subject:

More info for how to install it from an existing linux install.
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/altinstall.xml#doc_chap6

at240 · l33t Joined: 12 Aug 2005 Posts: 603 Location: UK

There are a lot of different issues here:

1. time to install
2. hardware support
3. livecds for alternative architectures

So:

1. as krigav suggested, build a gentoo system from within fedora. A stage 3 should take no more than a few hours if all goes well, and then it's just a case of waiting for X and KDE (or whatever) to compile. Or do the GRP installation. Or Kororaa (as MEW suggested).

2. these forums can and will help.

3. a fair request, but, IMHO, if you're serious about control/customisation, you'll want to use the minimal CD anyway.

No need to give up!

sugar · Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 11:19 pm Post subject:

HelenKeller · n00b Joined: 22 May 2006 Posts: 2

First off wanted to thank you guys for positive replies and suggestions,

and also to report a partial success. I have a gentoo installation running now, via a bit of all the suggestions. Only problem is I guess
I missed compiling some modules I needed, so I have no windows system running. Ahh xorg config, how i missed you. Trying to find where I wrote down
the hz ratings for my monitor... Reminds me of my first linux install.

So, at least now I can work in it, and once I get my kernel compile spot on I think it should work.

Oh and before my post I did try the installing the files through another working installation, chrooting, the like. I may
have run into a problem with properly mounting the proc system, however I won't blame the OS for that. Seems the copy of the manual I printed out,
while for x64, was for the 2005.1 install. Nothing like proving you are the idiot that tests the "idiot-proofing" of a given endeavor.
So I went back through and tried again, and now, other than minor grub and kernel placement issues, (my grub didn't like looking for boot images/kernels
on a different boot partition... or the same boot partition...) I can now boot in if I switch boot order of HDDs in my BIOS.

So far it's a bit convuluted. Yet, it's the farthest I've gone, and for 2 days of reading and testing, I'd say it could be far worse. Emerge does seem
to be excellent, and ultimately once everything is working I can't wait to do the compiling (while asleep or at work...) to see the performance increases. Gentoo has a
whole 250 gig drive it will probably never fill, but I wanted to give it a wide berth.

Who knows, maybe after all this I'll figure out how to install it in my sleep. And I can go back and find that professor who said that if you could boot 40 OS's in one machine he'd
give you an A, and make him eat his words. Lord knows I could find as many on distrowatch.org...

Anyone know if compiling a new kernel would have any issues with GRP packages? Overall I doubt it, since well, it wouldn't make a ton of sense if they did, but no hurt in asking.

Best Wishes;

p.s. I know most of you probably think 250 gigs is a LOT of room, and you're right, I have hard drives laying around as hand me downs, from a friend who runs a terabyte raid array to preserve every episode of Dr. Who they can still find. All. 28. Seasons. HDD room is the one thing I have a ton of.
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dol-sen · Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 1:34 pm Post subject:

The only kernel problems you may have is not enabling the correct options for some packages to work with your harware such as lmsensors, webcam drivers and such. In that case it is only a matter of re-configuring your kernel, recompile, edit grub.config, reboot.

It usually takes a few to get it right.

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jawsdaws · n00b Joined: 03 Nov 2005 Posts: 42 Location: Michigan USA

You sound a lot like me a few months ago. I'll tell you what workded for me. I had to make a list (with pen and paper) of my problems, and solve them one by one. I was used to a nice GUI installer and had a number of things that held up my install. Some problems were my fault but some were hardware related. I hope this helps!

mikegpitt · Advocate Joined: 22 May 2004 Posts: 3224

The thing that perplexes me the most is that you claim gentoo is having a hard time detecting your hardware, including hard drives. I have installed gentoo on many differnet computers/laptops ranging from very old to very new to different archetectures. The base gentoo system installed on all without much effort and detected all the internal hardware. My two biggest hardware problems were a stubborn printer a few years ago, and a Wireless USB stick on a differnt arch (meanign I coudln't use ndiswrapper).

Of course I've had many other little questions and problems throughout my time with Gentoo, but hardware detection was probably the least of it, especially with genkernel/hotplug/coldplug.

Headrush · Posted: Thu May 25, 2006 5:40 am Post subject:

HelenKeller, you mentioned that you were a technician, is that a computer technician? Just curious.

jhunholz · Posted: Thu May 25, 2006 7:47 pm Post subject:

HelenKeller: Don't lose hope! It took me 4 attempts of installing Gentoo before I got it figured out correctly. But I learned something new from each failed attempt, and was eventually able to get it going. Through that I've learned more than I ever would have if I'd stuck with Fedora. Yes, its a strugle, but its also worth every bit of it!
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Kaso_da_Zmok · Posted: Thu May 25, 2006 10:14 pm Post subject: virtualize

what you need is a second computer ... you can virtualize it on that fc5 and run you gentoo inside ... vmware server beta is for free.

just today i have installed two stage3 machines and at work i do stage1 every week on a virtual machine just for fun. use the compiling screen as a screensaver :roll:

NaturalRandom · Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2006 9:27 pm Post subject:

runningwithscissors · Posted: Sat Oct 07, 2006 3:50 am Post subject:

Am I the only one who has never had trouble installing Gentoo? Not once.

If any other Linux distro can detect and run hardware, you bet Gentoo can too, as it is Linux after all.

Perhaps I've found it easy as I am not one of those "stage 1 fanatics".

Fruitwoot · Posted: Sat Oct 07, 2006 2:49 pm Post subject:

We do have different arch, and it's why we do have forums to help each other with specific sections for ALT/platform ...

Gentoo worth the effort for me, if you are able to read and asked questions, you shouldn't encured a death end point.
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RISadler · Posted: Sun Oct 08, 2006 4:05 pm Post subject:

I have experienced several failed installs and having read about the same on forums and from friends, come to the following conclusions;

the manual install always works, but you have to know how to configure the kernel;
the ncurses & GUI installers are utterly useless if your hardware isn't supported by the default Gentoo kernel;
people try to do too much too fast, like wanting a KDE system within 20 minutes.

I thus have this suggestion for the Gentoo developers, based on my experiences with this and other distros (like SuSE, LFS and Slackware): Get a decent installer, by

dropping the Gnome-based GUI installer, as it's a waste of time;
get the ncurses installer to actually work like the manual does;
add more support for basic hardware in the kernel itself, like SCSI controllers. (We can always recompile later...)

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