Gentoo 2007.0 GUI Installer is buggy

Message

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Fri Oct 26, 2007 7:03 pm

wildhorse,

The DVD provides a self consistant set of files. Its portage tree matches the version of software it provides, which is now some 7 months old.
You cannot run emerge --sync, then go looking for the distfiles you need on the DVD. You will be using a current portage tree and old distfiles, which will break. Likewise, using a 7 month old portage snapshot will cause problems.
Most of the source tarballs are as provided by the upstream projects, there are a few Gentoo specific things what you can get from gentoo.org but even after the sources have gone from the gentoo mirrors, they will be available from the originating projects.

prague14 · Post by **prague14** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 9:33 pm

First, let me say I have every reason to take the easy road and use some other distro. My gentoo installation experience has been nasty so far. However, given my experience with FreeBSD, I feel compelled to get a "compiled" distro working.

I am (still) working on an installation on a (HP) Compaq nc6230 that I started almost 3 days ago. The live cd hangs during the boot process no matter which options you give it. The best result I have been able to get to was 70% of the boot process using the 'nodetect' option. The error dialog received at this stage indicated something was wrong with the boot disk, but several burns later I cannot seem to get around this failure. I HAVE been able to get a base install completed using the minimal CD and also did a quick install under Debian, which (IMO) rules out any issue with the drive.

Simply put, the liveCD needs work. I am curious as to why this is given the age of this post and how old the content on the CD is. Is no one working on this anymore? If gentoo hopes to capture some of the linux newbie crowd hooked by the live install process in Ubuntu and other live distros, more work needs to be done. Perhaps it would be better to stop offering it altogether if it's going out with so many problems.

Personally, I don't think gentoo needs to go that route anyway. There's nothing wrong with having to do a command line install. Most people seem to be attracted to gentoo in the first place because they want to learn more about linux and how computers work as a whole. They are expecting to run into issues, but probably more so because of their own lack of experience and knowledge, not because the installation files are poor.

Anyway, that's my $0.02. Here's hoping I can get my install completed this evening.

-p

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 9:49 pm

prague14,

Gentoo 'releases' are really only updated install media and tarballs. Gentoo install CDs are not required to install Gentoo.
Anything that allows your to partition your drive, fetch fromthe net and chroot will do.

Gentoo aims to do two 'releases' a year the installation media is not updated more frequently than that.

prague14 · Post by **prague14** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 9:55 pm

NeddySeagoon,

Nice to see responses so quickly!

So, I have to ask, if that's the case with gentoo, why even bother trying to push the live cd? Why not just focus on those "more simple" methods of installing gentoo? I think the fact that it has so many issues is turning people away from gentoo completely. Why risk losing the fan base?

-p

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 10:26 pm

prague14,

Gentoo is a loose organisation of developers doing the things that interest them.

Some devs are interested in making gentoo easier to install, for beginners, so we have an installer that is a work in progress.
It does work for many users too. I advise new users to do the command line stage 3 install, so that they understand how to maintain their Gentoo before it contains a lot of valuable data. After all, if you have an accident with an install thats only a few days old, very little is lost.
If it happens at your first update after 3 months use ...
Yes you should update more often than that but you get the idea.

As another poster suggested, there is all the fanfare and publicity associated with a 'release'.

prague14 · Post by **prague14** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 11:01 pm

As another poster suggested, there is all the fanfare and publicity associated with a 'release'.

OK, I can see the value in that.

sanath · Post by **sanath** » Mon Nov 26, 2007 10:26 am

hi

Reason: while installing gentoo my monitor going black and apper message <Hz?>
My machine is Intel Pentium IV, 64MB AGP vedio card, 256 RAM and sumsung syanmaster 591s monitor

how can i slove this problem?

sanath

E-TARD · Post by **E-TARD** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 6:18 am

what the hell is up with the GUI install
this is 100% crap

i have tryed everything with it & cant get it to install
so i have to go with an older ISO or what

this GUI installer gentoo has came out is

this is the best that gentoo can do??????????????????????????????????

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 8:28 pm

E-TARD,

Try the command line install and follow this handbook
The kernels on the Gentoo liveCDs are getting a bit old now, so you may need to use another liveCD for the install.
If you take that path, you will need the extra Knoppix steps in this HOWTO

Don't let the installer put you off.

chainsawbike · Post by **chainsawbike** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 5:15 am

sanath wrote:hi

Reason: while installing gentoo my monitor going black and apper message <Hz?>
My machine is Intel Pentium IV, 64MB AGP vedio card, 256 RAM and sumsung syanmaster 591s monitor

how can i slove this problem?

sanath

my guess would be its trying to use a screen resolution or refresh rate the screen cant handle

start with "gentoo nox"

and use the command line installer "installer"

... but i really have no idea what im talking about

pappy_mcfae · Post by **pappy_mcfae** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 11:44 pm

Firstly, I want to say hello to everyone here.

After flirting with the idea for the past year, I have taken the bull by the horns, and I am setting up Gentoo on one of my machines. Either I have more perseverance than I credit to myself, or I am a card-carrying masochist. I'll find out soon enough. 80 pakages out of 119 installed...NICE!

And yes, the 2007.0 liveCD GUI installer sucks, big time. However, the GUI installer on the 2006.1 liveCD I have worked enough to put the system on the machine...not well, but it is there.

I say not well because when the "screensaver" popped up during the install, it wiped out all the feedback from the GUI screen. I wound up looking at a blank screen, trying to guess when everything was going to be set up and finished. After a little over twenty-four hours of the initial booting from the CD, I stopped the install.

Fortunately, I set it up on a system that already dual boots between Windoze XP and Debian. I rebooted into Debian and redid the menu.lst under Debian to include the Gentoo partition. I rebooted, and there I was, with a functional Gentoo install. Because I shut down the original install, I had to tell it to emerge --sync (which brought up another bug) and emerge --emptytree system. Right now, it is in the process of doing the emerge --emptytree system. At least doing it this way, I can see what it's compiling, and when it's done.

The fact that I am putting it on a PII 450 means it's going to be a while before it's up to the level I want it (KDE, samba, cups). That's no thing, though.

I have finally gotten Gentoo to take. After about ten tries using various methods, and three different machines, it is actually seeming to work as it is supposed to. Nice

So, LiveCD 2007.0...not worth a tinker's damn. LiveCD 2006.1...works as long as you don't let it go into blank screen mode while doing the GUI install. Manual install...went ok until I tried to emerge the sources....then it died a horrid death...not too impressed with that. I might try it again on a different system, assuming I find out that Gentoo is the greatest thing since sliced bread. For now, I am, at last, a Gentoo user.

Blessed be!
Pappy

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 10:39 am

pappy_mcfae,

Welcome to Gentoo.

It sounds like you got off to a shaky start but you are almost there.
Your manual install was pretty close too.

You will hate KDE or any full desktop on a 450MHz box, even stuffed with RAM so it doesn't swap.
Still, you can just emerge another lighter window manager.

pappy_mcfae · Post by **pappy_mcfae** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 8:56 pm

NeddySeagoon wrote:pappy_mcfae,

Welcome to Gentoo.

It sounds like you got off to a shaky start but you are almost there.
Your manual install was pretty close too.

You will hate KDE or any full desktop on a 450MHz box, even stuffed with RAM so it doesn't swap.
Still, you can just emerge another lighter window manager.

Thanks...and you're right, the machine does suffer a bit from a case of the terminally slows. It currently also has XP and Debian installed, so I know more or less what is going to happen to it once all is said, done and compiled. As a matter of fact, samba is ALMOST done. Not quite sure why it had to emerge 150 packages just to install samba. However, since most of what it seemed to install was X libraries (and ghostscript?? does that mean I don't have to emerge cups? Why yes, it does...NICE!), I assume installing any desktop will be that much easier to do.

Once samba is installed, I can then let it install whichever desktop (perhaps fluxbox) I finally decide upon installing...cool...147 of 150 packages installed for samba. NICE! Time to move my smb.conf over from the Debian side.

I can't wait for everything to be installed so I can see how compiling the entirety of the operating system on the machine affects functionality. I'll be sure to post my results. And, if it works well, I will set up this laptop with it, too. I'm looking to get away from Slackware...not so much that I dislike the distro, I just can't stomach some of the folks that hang around the linuxquestions.org's Slackware forum.

In the words of sugar, one of the gurus here,

Also, with open source, all the software is the same, and comes from the same developers. Assuming the repo's are large enough, then the only real difference between distro X and Y becomes the communities behind them.

From my experience, truer words have never been spoken. As much as I love Slackware for so many reasons, the community that I see behind it is, well, less than friendly, especially if you tend to be a maverick, or someone who experiments. I have been flamed numerous times for numerous reasons, and I'm over it. Enforced compliance by way of flaming? Whatever!

So here I am, testing out Gentoo...both the system and the community behind it. So far, so good.

Now that I am where I am in the install process, I'm sure the software is right for me. I just hope the community is!

Blessed be!
Pappy

EDIT: Update! Apparently, emerging samba also gave me TWM as a bonus...and it works. So, even before I installed KDE, I have x-windows up and working...and I didn't even tell it to emerge that stuff. Damn, that's pretty cool! So, now I have a GUI. Also, samba is working properly, so I no longer have to monitor the system as it moves towards it's final finished form. I guess it's worth it if you can find the patience to deal with watching your computer setting up its operating system. Personally, I found the process fascinating!

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 9:24 pm

pappy_mcfae,

Gentoo isn't really a distro at all. Gentoo provides a set of tools which you use to build your own distro.
This leads to everyones Gentoo being different, which in turn leads to the acceptance of several ways of solving the same problem, all equally right.
In turn that leads to tolerance in the community.

Enjoy your Gentoo.

pappy_mcfae · Post by **pappy_mcfae** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 6:35 am

NeddySeagoon wrote:pappy_mcfae,

Gentoo isn't really a distro at all. Gentoo provides a set of tools which you use to build your own distro.
This leads to everyones Gentoo being different, which in turn leads to the acceptance of several ways of solving the same problem, all equally right.
In turn that leads to tolerance in the community.

Enjoy your Gentoo.

Awesome, I already am enjoying it...if only for the fact that after ten different attempts, I finally stuck with it long enough for Gentoo to actually wind up on the system in a functional manner. Now I get to really geek out!

Blessed be!
Pappy

Tokabola · Post by **Tokabola** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 2:35 am

I've tried both the regular download and the bittorrent verson, got an .iso, MD5 checks out. I've tried burning both copies using K3b on Gentoo, and Sonic's RecordNow on WinXP and all four tries failed. RecordNow shows a "bad sector" error on the iso (not the blank CD)

Very disappointing.

I just have to voice my opinion that Gentoo really took a crap over the last couple years since Robbins left.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Tue Jan 15, 2008 8:42 pm

Tokabola,

Well, its not the ISOs, or nobody could use them. As you already have Gentoo why do you need another installer.
My install was done about 5 years ago but its up to date as of 03:00 UTC, when my rsync server synced its copy of the portage tree.

You can try - o loop mounting the ISOs and reading the contents to /dev/null but the md5sum checking process has already done a complete read of the ISO.

That really only leaves your media or your hardware.

klammatter · Post by **klammatter** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 1:34 pm

I have been trying to get it working of the live DVD all day. Every single time is a different error. Why does installing this have to resemble pulling teeth.

Crooksey · Post by **Crooksey** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 9:54 pm

Just do a proper install? If its causing you that much upset then maybe a normal install would be better.

pappy_mcfae · Post by **pappy_mcfae** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 7:05 am

Crooksey wrote:Just do a proper install? If its causing you that much upset then maybe a normal install would be better.

Absolutely. I used the DVD twice, and it worked wonderfully. True, I did a manual install, but it worked. The fact that I am typing this message is proof. Also, maybe there might be hardware problems as well. My old laptop barely made it through the install process before the DVD ROM drive died, and I was forced to resurrect it...thank the goddess for valve grinding compound!

Anyway, hope your luck turns, because Gentoo rocks!

Blessed be!
Pappy

ModifiedReality · Post by **ModifiedReality** » Sat Feb 16, 2008 2:59 am

So the best option would be installing via command line in the live cd?

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Sat Feb 16, 2008 2:53 pm

ModifiedReality,

That will always be the best option.
It familiarises you with the commands needed to maintain your Gentoo while you don't have any valuable user data installed.
The worst that can happen is you trash your install and lose an hour.
Better now than you trash you data later ... but thats backed up, isn't it ?

ModifiedReality · Post by **ModifiedReality** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 1:54 pm

Yeah, I want really learn how to use the command line. I will go with that route.

mike42 · Post by **mike42** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 10:05 pm

A bad sector in an ISO?
An ISO is just a data file. I'm not familiar with the software, but this sounds like either a problem with the HD you have the ISO on, or with the CD burning software.
Either one could be giving you a bad CD - which might not be obvious until later in the install.

kasperl · Post by **kasperl** » Fri Apr 25, 2008 1:23 pm

as a matter of fact,i've never succeeded in entering x environment via liveCD either...neither on my old 32-bit acer travelmate 632 nor new 64-bit dell d630

NeddySeagoon wrote:anton123,

Please post a bug on bugs.gentoo.org.

You need to list your hardware, the file name of the ISO you are using, a concise description of the problem and the steps to recreate it.

Gentoo 2007.0 GUI Installer is buggy

My experience with the i686 LiveCD

tmp

Re: tmp

Yes, it is

can't burn LiveCD ISO