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Gentoo on a CL56 (noob questions)

post #1 of 34
10/8/04 at 9:45pm
Thread Starter 
Hey guys I've got a project and I hope you can help. I was using this site a lot when I was trying to figure out which laptop to get. Ended up with a Chembbok 2056 (CL56). Loving it so far. Now I want to install Gentoo on this thing. I have used various Mandrake versions since 9.0 but never really committed the time to learn. I figure starting from scratch like Gentoo will make m do will make me learn a lot and make me want to stick to Linux afer all the hard work.

So then few questions:
1. You guys who are involved in the sticky guides above seem to recompile a lot, add things one at a time, etc. Does this result in a lot of "dirt" in the system like it would in the other OS from Redmund? I want to use Gentoo to get a completely optimized for me system so I don't want to be killing that goal if recompiling all the time is gonna leave me with nasties that undermind my optimizations.

2. I have the standard CL56 config that most others on this site have: 1.7 Dothan, 128MB M11, CD-RW/DVD, 10/100, intel wireless,etc. I notice a lot of you guys getting linux working also have a lot of the same hardware. What CFLAGS are you using for the Pentium-M. I heard gcc 3.4 was supposed to have a built in pentium-m so do you still use march=pentium3 or whatever the code is? I have so much trouble finding out what is actually in those linux packages Is ati support getting any better? I see one guy saying to not configure dri or drm in the kernel to get ati to work better and another says to do use those to modules. What is the answer? Any other hardware pitfalls to be aware of.

3. Ok I have figured out that all these people who use gnome only take out kde and qt with the use command. What is the exct opposite to do? I.E. I want kde only, so I will have a USE command with -gnome can I take out gtk also? Is that the gnome equivalent of qt? Like I said I want optimized so I only want to compile for what I will use. Any other use flags you guys would suggest to add or take out? I want all my hardware to work even if I might now use it right away.

4. mmarkin and the others that have been doing those sager guides have done an awesome job. Too bad you gave so much info that I m even more confused now. I hope that I can get this good and working and post what I did here. I haven't found much info as far as gentoo and cl56 together yet so I figure I might as well share whatever I learn.

5. By that way I am planning to get this all done in one months time since I will be going to OTS and will have my computer but no more internet for 3 months (no internet=sad mattbert). If that is a lot of time or not I don't know yet since this is foreign land to me. But I am real good with the other OS so I hope I can catch on quick.

Sorry that was so long but I like to go into things knowing as much as possible. I have the live CD already and have a free 13GB for Gentoo all ready. Do I need to set up my extended partition for Gentoo in XP or can I do this with fdisk from the LIve CD? (Already have 3 primaries on the drive) And I have my desktop that I will boot up with Knoppix to read the Gentoo install guide on while I compile on the lappy. I hope I can start soon. So help me out

Thanks Guys!!!!
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post #2 of 34
10/9/04 at 2:52am
(1 & 2) I strongly suggest you check out Flying with Gentoo (http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.p...&highlight=fly), which contains lots of tips regarding gentoo optimization. ATI support is a little hard to get, don't be afraid of recompiling. Also, for the P-M, the flags "-march=pentium-m -mtune=pentium-m" jump to mind when using gcc 3.4.

(3) You can probably use the -gtk flag. It is the equivalent of qt. However, all that depends on the programs you want to install.

(5) One month is more than enough time to learn the basics of Gentoo. BTW, OTS=Officer Training School? If so, it'll be interesting to see if you can find the time for Gentoo...

Regards,

zakaluka2.
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post #3 of 34
10/9/04 at 9:51am
Thread Starter 
Yes I will be going to become an officer in a month. I have plenty of free time until then and plenty after Feb. Gentoo will just have to become my new mistress

Thanks for the response keep em coming.
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post #4 of 34
10/9/04 at 12:06pm
Thread Starter 
Ok, maybe this is silly question, but 1st step in the install will be to pull a stage package off of the internet. I have the 2004.2 LiveCD which has gcc <3.4. Is this first step actuall when the LiveCD pulls the latest compiler off the net or is it going to use what is on the CD only?

Is the CD really just to boot and if you don't have a net connection? And zakaluka that site had some real great info but I think maybe I will just get the main thing done first and then go for those super tweaks.

Am I biting off more than I can chew? Probably, but we won't know until I try.
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post #5 of 34
10/9/04 at 3:39pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mattbert
Yes I will be going to become an officer in a month. I have plenty of free time until then and plenty after Feb. Gentoo will just have to become my new mistress
Congratulations!

Quote:
Originally Posted by mattbert
Ok, maybe this is silly question, but 1st step in the install will be to pull a stage package off of the internet. I have the 2004.2 LiveCD which has gcc <3.4. Is this first step actuall when the LiveCD pulls the latest compiler off the net or is it going to use what is on the CD only?

Is the CD really just to boot and if you don't have a net connection? And zakaluka that site had some real great info but I think maybe I will just get the main thing done first and then go for those super tweaks.

Am I biting off more than I can chew? Probably, but we won't know until I try.
Don't worry about biting off more than you can chew. If you haven't done a lot of detailed linux administration type stuff, it might be a little hard at first, but you'll get it eventually.

If you're not going to have internet access (like you said earlier), you should get the Universal LiveCD (maybe the Packages CD also, but only if you don't want to compile your own KDE, Gnome, OpenOffice, ...). It contains most of what you need. If you go with a Minimal LiveCD, it will download your stage tarballs of the net.

EDIT: If you know which programs you want to install and their tarballs are not on the Universal LiveCD, just download their tarballs and burn them to CD. That way, you can compile/install them later.

It will start off using it's pre-compiled compiler, which you should recompile during the normal course of installation.

Hopefully, mmarkin will pop up in here too. He's the resident Gentoo expert, as far as I'm concerned.

Regards,

zakaluka2.
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post #6 of 34
10/9/04 at 8:32pm
The install manual is fairly indepth. I've had to reload Gentoo several times, not because of Gentoo. When I have the time to devote to it I like to run lots of experimental packages. As zakaluka2 has said if you know what you want to run grab those packages and put them on cd. It won't be the latest stuff but it will work.

As to recompiling alot. It happens. Unless you are running from a stage 2 or 3 you will compile alot. You can go with a stage 3 install untill you get more familiar with the process. I have settled on Gentoo as my distro of choice simply by reason of it can be as simple and minimalistic or complex and bloated as you want. Check out the Gentoo forums as well. They have lots of knowledgable people on there as well.

Partition wise 13G is plenty of space. The install guide will point you in the correct direction. The only issue you may run into is Win will not be happy about having the boot sector toyed with. I actualy use the windows boot loader to call grub. It is a little convoluted but it works. If you have more questions as you go along feel free to post them up. Collectively we have a broad knowledge base here.
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post #7 of 34
10/10/04 at 1:02am
Thread Starter 
Well I am bootstraping right now. Took 35 minutes just to emerge --sync the portage tree. Followed some instructions from DrFishstik and set it up to install the latest gcc instead of the standard gcc 3.2 so I should be able to take advantage of the current pentium M optimizations. Of course I will have to redo the bootstrap tomorrow after I have set the right optimizations.

Only problem so far is that the Live CD image I downloaded had a corrupt make.conf so I had to start over and download a new stage 1 during the install. Just looked over and gcc is going good so far. Guess I have some hours to kill now. Laters

Edit: Ok guess I was wrong. Bootstrapping was nothing. But when I try to emerge system, it dies with the following lines:

configure: error: C++ preprocessor "/lib/cpp" fails sanity check
See 'config.log' for more details
configure:error: /bin/sh './configure' failed for autoconf-lib-link

!!!ERROR: sys-devel/gettext-0.12.rc1-r2 failed
!!!Function econf, Line 362, Exitcode 1
!!!econf failed

Of course I can't find any config.log so I have no idea what it would say. I was just following instructions so far
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post #8 of 34
10/10/04 at 1:58am
Thread Starter 
Ok ignore that post above for now. I just decided to run the bootstrap script again and things are being done now that didn't happen the first time I ran it so hopefully this will be working this time. See I am already learning stuff
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post #9 of 34
10/10/04 at 3:08pm
Thread Starter 
Ok things have gone so much better today. Its amazing what a fresh look at something can do. Here is what I have done so far.

1. When I installed XP on this new lappy I left ~13GB free to install Linux on.

2. The /etc/make.conf on the Live CD I burned was currupt so that gave me problems for a while. Just said screw it and downloaded a new stage 1 using links2 like it says in the gentoo.org install guide.

3. Followed guide until to emerge --sync

4. Got these instructions from the great DrFishstik:
using nano -w
a) edit: /usr/portage/profiles/default-x86-2004.2/packages to read =sys-devel/gcc-3.4.1-r2 so
when bootstrapping you install GCC-3.4.1-r2. In the GCC section.

b.) edit: /usr/portage/sys-devel/gcc/gcc-3.4.1-r2.ebuild remove in the Keywords section -* and take away the ~ in front of x86.

c.) edit: /usr/portage/sys-libs/libstdc++-v3/libstdc++-v3-3.3.3-r1.ebuild remove -* and the ~ in front of x86. This package helps retain backwards compatibility with gcc 3.3 apps.

5. Follow guide to bootstrap. It died on me after 2 hours. That was 2:12 AM and I decided I needed to sleep.

6. This morning being all calm and refreshed, realize that bootstrap had made it through gcc so I tried a little experiment. Search my directory and realize gcc looked like it was there So do this:
gcc-config <CHOST>-3.4.2 <-----for me I had CHOST=i686-pc-linux-gnu in my make.conf so that is what I typed there instead of <CHOST>, you insert whatever you are using

source /etc/profile

Just to check: gcc --version ----->Tells me that gcc 3.4.2-r2 is installed SWEET!!!!

7.Then I edit /etc/make.conf to reflect the new CFLAG, CFLAGS="-O3 -march=pentium-m -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe" Also in make.conf, add mmx sse acpi dvd cdr -gnome alsa to my use flag.

8. While I was trying to find out what went wrong with my original bootstrap I found a thread on forums.gentoo.org that gave me this:

emerge -c linux-headers
emerge --oneshot --nodeps linux26-headers

That installs 2.6 kernel headers on system so when I bootstrap, I am bootstrapping with 2.6 instead of 2.4.

9. Run bootstrap again. Runs for about 30 minutes. I head to McDonald's to grab a bite. Come back and about 5 minutes later. SUCCESS!!!! Got me a bootstrap with gcc 3.4 and kernel 2.6. My estimate is it took about 1.5 hours for this last command to run.

I am currently doing emerge system. Currently on package 42 or 46 after ~30 minutes. It took me a whopping 10 hours to get here so far. Main thing learned so far CHECK YOUR SPELLING!!!!!
Most of my problems so far came from mispelling commands. When I first editted make.conf for my chip I typed "march=pentium-m" instead of "-march=pentium-m" Of course it took me forever to figure that out.

Well then wish me luck
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post #10 of 34
10/10/04 at 9:34pm
Yes Linux is very picky about spelling and case does matter. Glad to hear it going fairly smoothly. Just think the next time you do it you will have it down. Also what are you going to do with the dual boot? Grub calling nt boot loader or the other way around?
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post #11 of 34
10/10/04 at 11:16pm
Thread Starter 
Well the emerge finished up right after I posted that last message. So 35 minutes to emerge.

10. Updated timezone to Central Standard (US) and updated date.

11. Emerged kernel 2.6.8-r7 took about 5 minutes.

12. Manually configured kernel. Took out SMP, set Pentium M as processor family, removed lots of legacy stuff like parallel ports, added firewire, USB2, pcmcia support. Added other stuff that looked necessary I hope. Is there a way to print out my whole kernel config so I have a list of what I did?

13. Followed guide to the end.

14. Used Grub for bootloader exactly as in install guide but changed mount drive configuration to match mine (XP owns hda1 2 and 3, Gentoo owns hda 5 6 and 7) Loaded Grub into MBR on hda and let it call Gentoo or XP. Test booted into both and it is all good

So then all in all I could have done this in one day including all my mistakes and time it took to find the right answers. Tomorrow going to install KDE and figure out how to make that stuff work. Installed X during one of my many emerges today.

And for the person sitting next to me---->
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post #12 of 34
10/11/04 at 8:35am
I would keep GTK in even if your using KDE. A lot of apps use GTK as their API like firefox. Its also not going to make kde run any slower because AFAIK nothing in the base of KDE uses GTK.
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post #13 of 34
10/11/04 at 8:25pm
You have plenty of space so it's better to go with more stuff you don't need right now then you either unemerge it or reload when you are more comfotable with what is and is not required. Good job so far though.
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post #14 of 34
10/13/04 at 10:09am
Thread Starter 
Well got Xorg working using the fglrxconfig. Had to fake a few settings and take the default values on a lot of stuff that I had no idea what does. I will fix that all soon. Emerged KDE overnight. Set KDE to start with startx. Nothing. Did some research and you also have to do this to get KDE to work (not in guidance docs)

rc-update add xfs default
env-update
source /etc/profile

So did that and KDE works!!!! I can't believe I am already using 2 gigs for Gentoo with only KDE installed though

Set up KDE to load automatically with kdm but haven't tried that yet. Had to go to work

Well I must say this has been fun.
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post #15 of 34
10/13/04 at 8:40pm
good job, See you're learning. Linux is still very much a self help operation. You're doing well.
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post #16 of 34
10/15/04 at 4:10am
Did you get the wireless option for your CL56? If so, let me know if you need some help setting it up, I just got mine working tdoay.
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post #17 of 34
10/15/04 at 9:57am
Thread Starter 
Yeah I have no way to test it so I haven't even bothered trying to get it to work. But DrFishstik looks like he got his working or very close so maybe you two compare notes and make a definitive guide to doing it. That would be awesome for everyone I believe.
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post #18 of 34
10/15/04 at 2:29pm
I'll try to post up a writeup of how I did it, it actually turned out to be fairly easy.

Anyways, some helpful websites:
http://rfswitch.sourceforge.net/?page=laptop_matrix
http://www.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~tauber/acerhk/
http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/
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post #19 of 34
10/17/04 at 9:27pm
Thread Starter 
OK have any of you learned linuxians gotten you touchpad to work 100%? All I want is a little tap to click functionality but every suggestion I have found through google has been a complete bust. Seems there should be some type of config with the synptics driver but I have yet to find it. Question 2: Anybody got bootsplash working? Have emerged bootsplash and followed all instructions on gentoo-wiki but get nothing but same old 800x600 no res nothingness. GRRRRRRRR
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post #20 of 34
10/18/04 at 9:40am
You indeed need the extra Synaptics for driver for X. Its in Portage already (if you want the absolute latest version, you might want to check the developer's home page, just in case). Once you install it, there are detailed instructions on how to modify your XF86Config or xorg.conf file.

Meanwhile, I have never bothered with bootsplash as I (finally) have a nice 1600x1200 framebuffer on boot.
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