Gentoo Forums

It doesn't work

I've been talking to me friend about Gentoo for a while - he's been using Ubuntu till now. So we were slightly merry on the old ales, and he decided it would be good to install Gentoo as well. So we download the CD, burn it, reboot the machine. Now I last installed Gentoo a couple of weeks ago using the AMD64 installation instructions, which is the ones I've been brought up with for the few years I've been using Gentoo. So imagine my surprise when Gnome opened and wanted me to show it what to do to install Gentoo!

This looks intriguing I thought, and my friend was quite impressed as well.

So we go through. First stage, partitioning. Wonderful, says I, we'll just delete your old Ubuntu partitions and we'll be done. So I select the first partition in the graphical thing, and hit delete. And lo and behold, his 28gig data partition on the same drive reports as being marked for deletion as well. Confused, we closed the installer and started again, tried the same thing. It happened again, and for the next 3 times we tried it. But he was so keen on installing Gentoo that he eventually decided there wasn't that much on the disk he hadn't seen, so it was ok to get rid of it. So we sort everything through, go through the rest of the install, and sets it going. We restart, and there's nothing. Nada. Zip. Grub coughs and dies. So I boot the Live CD up again, have a look at the partitions.

Gentoo had deleted his 114gig windows partition, with his uni work, programs, data, all that stuff kicking around.

WTF?

So, it was a case of installing windows into the space he had (and now no longer) reserves for linux, installed Partition Magic, which through some divine intervention managed to undelete and rescue the partition.

Seriously though, I thought the graphical install was going to make things easier? I've been hearing about it for years. I was hoping so much it would work so I could say that Gentoo isn't just the most configurable and customizable system ever, but it's just as easy to install as other distros. But I think I had less stress, and made more sense of my system doing it the old way. (I'm guessing it can still be done that way, right?)

Needless to say he's not impressed at all with Gentoo and probably won't ever try it again, no matter me telling him I'll bring along the decent 2005 disc I have. Not a good first impression!

-K

Moved from Installing Gentoo to Gentoo Chat.
Not a support question, so moved here.

The graphical installer is, in my humble opinion, a huge cluster fuck. For starters, I don't believe it's needed. And the fact that it's buggy beyond belief just does not help..

I really was shocked when I did it. Every other thing about Gentoo is exactly what I want and like about linux - to me it's what linux really is, none of this Windows-esque bloatware distros you can get. Each stage in the process is relatively simple to do if you know what you're doing, and from what I gathered the graphical installer was supposed to interpret what the user wanted and do it for them. Bah, bah I say!

At the very least until the graphical installer is fixed, you should be able to download an image without it.

Kasyx wrote:I really was shocked when I did it. Every other thing about Gentoo is exactly what I want and like about linux - to me it's what linux really is, none of this Windows-esque bloatware distros you can get. Each stage in the process is relatively simple to do if you know what you're doing, and from what I gathered the graphical installer was supposed to interpret what the user wanted and do it for them. Bah, bah I say!

At the very least until the graphical installer is fixed, you should be able to download an image without it.

http://gentoo.blueyonder.co.uk/releases ... installcd/?

Monkeh wrote:

Kasyx wrote:I really was shocked when I did it. Every other thing about Gentoo is exactly what I want and like about linux - to me it's what linux really is, none of this Windows-esque bloatware distros you can get. Each stage in the process is relatively simple to do if you know what you're doing, and from what I gathered the graphical installer was supposed to interpret what the user wanted and do it for them. Bah, bah I say!

At the very least until the graphical installer is fixed, you should be able to download an image without it.

http://gentoo.blueyonder.co.uk/releases ... installcd/?

Is there a universal cd of it?

As I understand it, even using the livecd that has the graphical installer, there's no absolute need to use it - you can so the installation through the graphical or even CLI environments using the handbook method.

I like the idea of a livecd graphical environment for installing Gentoo, mainly because it makes it easier to do thing like get on IRC and copy and paste errors onto pastebins, but I personally thing that a GUI installer is a step too far. Not to be elitist, but I don't feel Gentoo is a distro first time users should be using generally. It's not a particularly easy distro to use if you're a first time user, and I don't think it should try to be.

Kasyx wrote:

Monkeh wrote:

Kasyx wrote:I really was shocked when I did it. Every other thing about Gentoo is exactly what I want and like about linux - to me it's what linux really is, none of this Windows-esque bloatware distros you can get. Each stage in the process is relatively simple to do if you know what you're doing, and from what I gathered the graphical installer was supposed to interpret what the user wanted and do it for them. Bah, bah I say!

At the very least until the graphical installer is fixed, you should be able to download an image without it.

http://gentoo.blueyonder.co.uk/releases ... installcd/?

Is there a universal cd of it?

Not that I know of. I have no need of them..

AllenJB wrote:As I understand it, even using the livecd that has the graphical installer, there's no absolute need to use it - you can so the installation through the graphical or even CLI environments using the handbook method.

I like the idea of a livecd graphical environment for installing Gentoo, mainly because it makes it easier to do thing like get on IRC and copy and paste errors onto pastebins, but I personally thing that a GUI installer is a step too far. Not to be elitist, but I don't feel Gentoo is a distro first time users should be using generally. It's not a particularly easy distro to use if you're a first time user, and I don't think it should try to be.

I agree completely! And I thought that afterwards, I could just shutdown X and do it the old way

Kasyx wrote:It doesn't work

I've been talking to me friend about Gentoo for a while - he's been using Ubuntu till now. So we were slightly merry on the old ales, and he decided it would be good to install Gentoo as well. So we download the CD, burn it, reboot the machine. Now I last installed Gentoo a couple of weeks ago using the AMD64 installation instructions, which is the ones I've been brought up with for the few years I've been using Gentoo. So imagine my surprise when Gnome opened and wanted me to show it what to do to install Gentoo!

This looks intriguing I thought, and my friend was quite impressed as well.

So we go through. First stage, partitioning. Wonderful, says I, we'll just delete your old Ubuntu partitions and we'll be done. So I select the first partition in the graphical thing, and hit delete. And lo and behold, his 28gig data partition on the same drive reports as being marked for deletion as well. Confused, we closed the installer and started again, tried the same thing. It happened again, and for the next 3 times we tried it. But he was so keen on installing Gentoo that he eventually decided there wasn't that much on the disk he hadn't seen, so it was ok to get rid of it. So we sort everything through, go through the rest of the install, and sets it going. We restart, and there's nothing. Nada. Zip. Grub coughs and dies. So I boot the Live CD up again, have a look at the partitions.

Gentoo had deleted his 114gig windows partition, with his uni work, programs, data, all that stuff kicking around.

WTF?

So, it was a case of installing windows into the space he had (and now no longer) reserves for linux, installed Partition Magic, which through some divine intervention managed to undelete and rescue the partition.

Seriously though, I thought the graphical install was going to make things easier? I've been hearing about it for years. I was hoping so much it would work so I could say that Gentoo isn't just the most configurable and customizable system ever, but it's just as easy to install as other distros. But I think I had less stress, and made more sense of my system doing it the old way. (I'm guessing it can still be done that way, right?)

Needless to say he's not impressed at all with Gentoo and probably won't ever try it again, no matter me telling him I'll bring along the decent 2005 disc I have. Not a good first impression!

-K

The same here...
i have lost every thing i have in my disk! EVERY THING!!!
And i just have choose to format a 20G partition to mount has /root, nothing more...

I personally think it just boils down to hardware selection if you have the hardware of its desire it's thumbs up and the install will have no problems running smoothly.

pixolex wrote:

Kasyx wrote:It doesn't work

I've been talking to me friend about Gentoo for a while - he's been using Ubuntu till now. So we were slightly merry on the old ales, and he decided it would be good to install Gentoo as well. So we download the CD, burn it, reboot the machine. Now I last installed Gentoo a couple of weeks ago using the AMD64 installation instructions, which is the ones I've been brought up with for the few years I've been using Gentoo. So imagine my surprise when Gnome opened and wanted me to show it what to do to install Gentoo!

This looks intriguing I thought, and my friend was quite impressed as well.

So we go through. First stage, partitioning. Wonderful, says I, we'll just delete your old Ubuntu partitions and we'll be done. So I select the first partition in the graphical thing, and hit delete. And lo and behold, his 28gig data partition on the same drive reports as being marked for deletion as well. Confused, we closed the installer and started again, tried the same thing. It happened again, and for the next 3 times we tried it. But he was so keen on installing Gentoo that he eventually decided there wasn't that much on the disk he hadn't seen, so it was ok to get rid of it. So we sort everything through, go through the rest of the install, and sets it going. We restart, and there's nothing. Nada. Zip. Grub coughs and dies. So I boot the Live CD up again, have a look at the partitions.

Gentoo had deleted his 114gig windows partition, with his uni work, programs, data, all that stuff kicking around.

WTF?

So, it was a case of installing windows into the space he had (and now no longer) reserves for linux, installed Partition Magic, which through some divine intervention managed to undelete and rescue the partition.

Seriously though, I thought the graphical install was going to make things easier? I've been hearing about it for years. I was hoping so much it would work so I could say that Gentoo isn't just the most configurable and customizable system ever, but it's just as easy to install as other distros. But I think I had less stress, and made more sense of my system doing it the old way. (I'm guessing it can still be done that way, right?)

Needless to say he's not impressed at all with Gentoo and probably won't ever try it again, no matter me telling him I'll bring along the decent 2005 disc I have. Not a good first impression!

-K

The same here...
i have lost every thing i have in my disk! EVERY THING!!!
And i just have choose to format a 20G partition to mount has /root, nothing more...

I think this is a known bug in the 2006 livecd. But why this id not fixed yet? Or why theres no BIG warnings about this? Countless people has lost important data because of this! Unacceptable!

omg... I "strongly dislike" (trying not to use the word "hate") the graphical installer. It does not allow you to do anything. Like "Larry the Cow" once said, the whole point of gentoo and portage is that you can do things the way you like it.

The graphical installer doesn't even allow you to customize your partitions extensively (unlike good 'ol fdisk)

alright there's my rant.

PaveQ wrote: I think this is a known bug in the 2006 livecd. But why this id not fixed yet? Or why theres no BIG warnings about this? Countless people has lost important data because of this! Unacceptable!

QUOTE. Even if I'm on the first line for purposing WYSIWYG software and graphical interfaces
(it's 2006! DOS is dead from more than 10 years, don't be sickly nostalgic! )
I think there should be BIG warning, if not on the liveCD itself, at least in the gentoo.org page
where you find the link to download it.

The graphical installer sucks. I was just giving it a shot and after configuring everything, I clicked install. Installation started. Changed the root password and the system hung (for about 15 min - no response).

I still cherish the good old stage-1 install (or for that matter stage 3, which I prefer more).

My bet is, that graphical installer has somewhere a notice at least, that says: "This is beta-alfa-gamma release and you when you want to use it, back up all your data!" Is there?

If we want to automate the entire process, use pre-built binaries etc. I think ubuntu does that job better than anyone else and is an excellent choice for a newbie user or for a person who is not that great at linux and does not have time to tinker around with every damn setting.

Gentoo provides a feel of do it yourself (your own way) and every minute detail is customized to one's liking. I have an obsession with the way things should work on my machine, and I can get that feel only in gentoo.

Though, the graphical installer is a step ahead in making gentoo available to a wider public and should be pursued further. It's just not for me.

First things first - you do not want to install any distribution or operating system on a live system with precious data without backup. That's just silly and everyone doing it deserves no better than a complete disaster. Backup is the keyword here...

To the installer - I installed Gentoo on a new ThinkPad T60. It wasn't my first Gentoo installation but the first in a long time (I deserted to Ubuntu about a year ago). When I saw the icon for the GUI installer on the LiveCD's desktop, I thought, well let's give it a shot. And it was a breeze. I clicked through the installation in perhaps 20-30 minutes, let it compile a few hours and booted into a fully working Gentoo Linux (of course I had to get all the obscure new hardware work, but that's not the installer's job anyway as far as I see it). My Windows and data partition remained untouched. All in all a very nice experience.

Of course the installer is still alpha software and YMMV. But good experiences like mine show that this thing has a lot of potential and could save all of us a lot of time in the future.

PaveQ wrote:I think this is a known bug in the 2006 livecd. But why this id not fixed yet? Or why theres no BIG warnings about this? Countless people has lost important data because of this! Unacceptable!

Indeed. IIRC, it happens if you try to install Gentoo to an extended partition on anything other than the 4th partition. FWIW, it's been fixed for some time now in the CVS versions of the installer.

I and some others have been hoping for a media refresh similar to that of 2005.1-r1, but that hasn't happened so far. We might just have to wait until 2006.1 in August.

I've never even thought about downloading the Graphical installer, but from what i can hear, it sounds crap...
I think a grapical CD is a good idea - to the extent that you can get on IRC and the web easier. but that's as far as it goes. I think it sould start up into the Gentoo Installation Handbook and a root terminal - the actual grapical installation utility should be an option in the menu or whatever (I've never used it so...)

That's just my opinion...

welp

nightmorph wrote:

PaveQ wrote:I think this is a known bug in the 2006 livecd. But why this id not fixed yet? Or why theres no BIG warnings about this? Countless people has lost important data because of this! Unacceptable!

Indeed. IIRC, it happens if you try to install Gentoo to an extended partition on anything other than the 4th partition. FWIW, it's been fixed for some time now in the CVS versions of the installer.

I and some others have been hoping for a media refresh similar to that of 2005.1-r1, but that hasn't happened so far. We might just have to wait until 2006.1 in August.

IMO there should atleast be some sort of big fat warning on the "Get Gentoo" page about these known bugs. Continuing to allow new users to download and attempt to install with such major bugs is just dumb and likely to get Gentoo nothing but bad rep and lost potential users. I was put right off another distro when their "upgrade" functionality failed to work and I had to reinstall - when I want to their IRC channel mostof the communtiy were liek "yeah - known problem, tough luck" (I fortunately did have full backups, but they're not something you should have to use because you weren't warned about major bugs)

nightmorph wrote:

PaveQ wrote:I think this is a known bug in the 2006 livecd. But why this id not fixed yet? Or why theres no BIG warnings about this? Countless people has lost important data because of this! Unacceptable!

Indeed. IIRC, it happens if you try to install Gentoo to an extended partition on anything other than the 4th partition. FWIW, it's been fixed for some time now in the CVS versions of the installer.

I and some others have been hoping for a media refresh similar to that of 2005.1-r1, but that hasn't happened so far. We might just have to wait until 2006.1 in August.

IMHO something like "gentoo_2006.0b_with_patched_installer.iso" should circulate through p2p (torrent) before the 2006.1 release, putting the MD5 sum
on www.gentoo.org or directly here, to be sure that in 2006.1 is widely tested before being released......

When I last installed Gentoo I used a Knoppix-like CD to get t'internet and ability to easy see what's going on and that was great.

Let's face it, Gentoo is designed to be used by the more advanced or willing to learn user. If people want an install straight away then Ubuntu or Debian is what they go for. There's no real need to have this GUI installer really. Maybe something which guides through the install, like having a command line which displays the documentation in aswell or something. At least then people would know what they're doing as they go along...

I've been using Ubuntu for a long time and it's just to slow.. I have tried many install of Gentoo before the live cd was released to no avail. But everytime I was able to get a little bit further. Never had a successful install yet. But decided to try the live cd and bam!! Worked like a charm for me. I am pretty familiar with console after numerous gentoo installs but I guess I am more of a gui person. To each his own is my take on the different types of installs. I wish Gentoo would become more mainstream because it is so much more faster then other distros.

i dont like the gui installer. IMHO i think the standard CLI was one of the defining characteristics of gentoo, along with making customization that much easier. i also feel that it will desuade people from trying the CLI approach and learning. i feel somewhat fortunate to have started with gentoo when there was no option for a GUI install. the CLI install tought me so much. and besides, if you dont want to use the CLI install, wouldnt you rather just install ArchLinux? i dont know, i think the gui installer could be the start of a bad trend, with gentoo trying to be more like other distros, which is exactly the reason why we dont use other distros! if gentoo keeps heading in the same direction as the gui installer, tryna make things pretty and easy for end-users, im gonna drop gentoo like a ho on the roadside.