local installfest which distro? - Page 2

Hmm.... Make sure you are running setup (hd0) and not (hd0,0). (hd0) put it in the boot sector, (hd0,0) puts it on the first partition. Those are two different places. Also make sure you are pointing the boot command to the Linux partition that contains the /boot folder, not the partition that is marked as active.

This is the way my machine is setup

hda1 - Win2K (20GB)
hda2 - /boot (10MB)
hda3 - Linux swap (1GB)
hda4 - / (the rest of the linux filesystem ~18GB)

hda1 is my active partition. To setup grub I ran "setup (hd0)" to install it on the boot sector of the HD, then "boot (hd0,1)" to tell it that the menu file (grub.conf) is located on the second partition of the first HD.

Based on your layout now, try these commands before you give up:

setup (hd0)
boot (hd0, 6)

If all else fails, you should be able to get XP back by booting from the XP setup cd, choosing REPAIR from the menu, and running the command FIXBOOT at the command prompt. Once that is finished, remove the disk and type EXIT to reboot.

No, hda1 should be marked as bootable if you are installing grub on the MBR. Grub will do the booting, then load the OS menu from hda6, then load the OS you choose.

Also, your Grub commands to get it installed will be:

setup (hd0)

boot (hd0,5)

No, changing the active flag ("bootable" flag in cfdisk) will not hurt anything. You are correct about the series of events.

Here is my grub.conf.

Yes, for me to get pcmcia-cs working I had to use the kernel drivers, which aren't supposed to work but do. Here is a copy of the post I put up on the Gentoo Forums for this. Much easier than retyping:

Here's a shot list of some software I have emerged. There are many more available, I just haven't yet run into a situation where I would need them. You can search the list using this command:

emerge -s searchstring

Software:
Gimp - Image manipulation
phoenix-cvs - The new Mozilla Firebird straight from the developement sources.
Licq - ICQ clone
cdbakoven - Cd burner
kmplayer - DVD player
superkaramba - neat little desktop toys, like an OSX dock clone and slashdot headline viewer
xmms - mp3 player
xmms-plugins - plugins for xmms
xmms-themes - collection of themes for xmms
ksplash-ml-themes - lets you change the kde statup splash screen
gdm-themes - I use gdm for my graphical login screen, this lets me choose the theme to use
gkrellm - system monitor and toys
gkrellm-plugins - plugins for gkrellm
gentoolkit - various tools for gentoo
sudo - allows you to run single commands as root without having to login as root
bluefish - nice html editor
mirrorselect - lets you select what mirrors emerge should try to download from
xchat - IRC client
alsa - better sound support than OSS, be sure to place your sound card in make.conf before you emerge so it just builds those drivers
distcc - if you have more than one gentoo machine, this will let another machine assist in compiling software
easytag - mp3 tag editor
links - command line browser with support for frames
netkit-telnet - tried and true command line telnet
netkit-ftp - tried and true command line ftp
perl - gotta have perl
tightvnc - vnc viewer and server with compression, also works with standard vnc
tuxracer - all work and no play ...

If you want to make sure you have 3d accelleration, here is my config file. This also has everything in it you need to get X to recognize a USB mouse after you have the kernel loading the modules for it. For this to work, emerge ati-drivers and place the module "flgrx" in the modules.autoload file.

If you are using Xfree 4, it looks for the -4 first, if it is not found, it looks for the old file. I totally forgot to tell you to try to use the beta software. Its faster. In your make.conf look for ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~arch" and change it to ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86". This will compile the beta version of everything. You probably will want to emerge -up world later tonight. As for your slowness problem, what does you /etc/conf.d/hdparm file look like?

Also, what browser are you using?

i don't recommend switching profiles from stable to unstable or vice versa on an existing system. this can cause problems, especially with system packages that depend on a specific version of a library. for example, glibc 2.3.1-r4 is stable now while glibc-2.3.2 is unstable. glibc-2.3.2 uses an almost completely different threading method, which can break vital system packages.

case in point: back when xfree-4.3.0 just came out and was unstable, i installed it to try out the new open radeon drivers. i ended up installing a couple unstable packages, including glibc-2.3.2. after a while, through various updates, i ended up with several system packages dependent on 2.3.2 - including python. later, upon deciding to revert back to glibc-2.3.1 (unstable system packages get to be a pain on a stable system), i found that after emerging the old glibc, my python was completely broken - it explicitly depended on the newer glibc and its threading. and of course, emerge is written in python, which meant my portage was completely b0rked. i had to compile glibc from scratch (a pain, especially while having to incorporate extra tar's and files having to do with the new threading method), and my system is _still_ not completely recovered.

yes, the unstable software is generally faster - it's newer, after all. but of course, there has to be a reason why the software is marked unstable - just because it was stable enough on the developer's computers to be released doesn't mean that it'll be stable on everyone else's computer. the unstable phase is for finding the bugs that break systems and fixing them so that the package can be stable for everyday use. i mean, glibc-2.3.2 has been unstable for over three _months_ - because casual users changing glibc's could be disasterous, considering glibc is the core of the system.

of course, it's your computer, not mine. feel free to do whatever you like. i'm just giving you a friendly warning, from experience, that it may not be the smartest thing to work with unstable packages. i don't recommend it if you value your gentoo install - or, for that matter, the time you took to compile your system.

as to the other issues, hdparm may help a little, but it's not really related to network access. technically, browsing the web should barely access the hard drive at all.

XF86Config-4 is a remnant of when people used to use xfree 3 and had upgraded to 4, or kept 3 and 4 on the same computer - 4's configuration file was a completely different format than 3.

konqueror is the crappiest browser in the world. they tried to emulate internet explorer, with the whole web and file browsing integrated... and failed miserably. opera is pretty good, but because it's a precompiled static version, it might not be as fast as a lightweight compiled browser, such as phoenix or links or something.

oh hell, i ended up rambling again.

2.5 is a bad idea. it's a development kernel for a reason. ide support is shaky, so data loss is not an uncommon thing. it's even more unstable than unstable packages. not only that, but in a lot of cases it's not a reversible thing - 2.5 changes and upgrades a lot of things which could make downgrade impossible. (a couple examples off of the top of my head are LVM1>LVM2, glibc with nptl - native posix thread library, etc) you have to be prepared to rebuild your system at any time if you use a dev kernel.

the tv tuner is supported in the 2.4 kernel now. you need the kernel module bttv.o - in the kernel config, you need to enable video4linux (v4l) in multimedia devices (CONFIG_VIDEO_DEV), and the "BT848 Video for Linux" driver (CONFIG_VIDEO_BT848). you also need i2c support (CONFIG_I2C) and i2c bit-banging interfaces (CONFIG_I2C_ALGOBIT) under Character devices>I2C support. i don't remember if you need anything else under there - i just modularized everything under 'i2c support.' that worked for me, at least. i took my tv tuner out to add a third hard drive so i can't say for sure anymore, but that's what i remember from before. and of course, if that fails, you could just head over to the bttv page and get the newest kernel module. the bttv tarball is also good for build instructions: http://bytesex.org/bttv/

oh yes, and obviously a tv-tuner aware video program such as mplayer or xawtv.

bt848 includes bt878.

('BT848 Video for Linux' indicates the bttv.o module - which includes support for bt878. and they're similar enough that you'll often see the two mentioned together as Brooktree 848/878 or bt848/bt878.)

there's some good info in this article: http://linux.omnipotent.net/article.php?article_id=6969

and on the same note, before i forget, if you want to get the remote working with lirc, the type is "AVerMedia TVCapture 98."

dunno, i never used v4l2 - i just used the original v4l.

it's kinda hard to say what's wrong, but i'll suggest a couple things to check...

does the full device info show up with lspci -v?

do you have the v4l devices in dev?

and if you enabled v4l info in /proc (a good idea), is everything ok there?

i know that the bttv module makes calls to load the i2c and sound modules if they aren't loaded... perhaps try setting those as modules and see if they load without errors one at a time? (regardless, having soundcore as a module anyway is a good thing - for things like alsa)

try to insmod the module manually.

and, of course, check your syslog.

did you follow the guide in that linux.omnipotent.net link? i followed that exactly and it worked fine.

i'll look around and see what i can dig up about bttv and this specific tuner card...