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Gentoo install help

post #1 of 23
12/20/04 at 12:46pm
Thread Starter 
hey.

so i want to try gentoo. i downloaded the live cd (universal for amd64) and when i ran it, it froze on "Scanning for ehci-hcd..." , i ran it again, same thing. so then i tried a different live cd (i686 minimum) and got the same problem. any ideas?

and if i do find a way to bypass this problem, what is teh best way to install considering i want to do the LEAST amount of work?

yes, i did check out vidalinux (using anaconda installer) but bitcommet won't d/l it and i can't find any mirrors.
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post #2 of 23
12/20/04 at 12:59pm

Hmm...

Try using some of the different boot options. If you press F2 at the boot: screen when the cd is first loading, you will get a list of the options. You might find more success if you try to boot without loading usb.

Also, try posting on the gentoo forums if you haven't already... it's an amazing community and there are more experienced individuals there who can lend some experience
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post #3 of 23
12/20/04 at 5:42pm
Thread Starter 
i tried different options...no luck.
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post #4 of 23
12/21/04 at 1:10am
Thread Starter 
hey. so an update on my situation. i am in a middle of a gentoo install right now. i am actualy using the links2 browser right now...everything looks so freaky on this site when it is black and white.. i am telling you man! compiling ATI drivers as we speak, just finished the kernel compile. still need a lot of stuff to do before i go to bed.
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post #5 of 23
12/21/04 at 1:13am
You had a USB detection problem. Booting the livecd with nousb would have solve that problem. Links is a command-line browser, so it's not supposed to have colors. It's similar to the classic lynx browser, whose sole purpose is to display text. Hence, it renders absolutely the fastest of all. ATI-drivers, and all associated X applications will take a long time to compile- be patient.
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post #6 of 23
12/21/04 at 4:27am
Thread Starter 
so i just completed all the required tasks. including LILO setup (sorry..grub just doesn't appeal)

i failed in a few things

1) pcmcia-cs doesn't start at boot (even though i did set it up)
2) it doesn't know what partition to mount to boot (even though i think i specified it)
3) my network does not start meaning i can't emerge kde-base and other files

total outcome: good learning experience. still do decide if i want to tweak this to be more useful (at least solve the 3 problems above) OR just ditch it all get get some other distro.
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post #7 of 23
12/21/04 at 10:07am
abf, you never even posted your hardware specs.

1) Tell us what PCMCIA card you have. You may not need pcmcia-cs. I have a Linksys WAP54G and I never needed it.
2) Post your /etc/fstab file
3) Post your /etc/conf.d/net. Also, are you sure you're just not starting it (eg '/etc/init.d/net.eth0 start')?

Mikhail

P.S. My uber Gentoo thread might help; http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=11755
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post #8 of 23
12/21/04 at 2:01pm
Thread Starter 
my specs:
Uniwill 258KAO
512mb Kingston PC2700
Hitachi 7k60 (3 partitions hda1-ntfs hda5-swap hda6-ext3)
15.4" WXGA
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 128mb (yes i did do emerge ati-drivers)
Gigabyte GN-WPEAG 54g built in wifi (needs madwifi drivers)
PCMCIA Card: Linsys WPC11 802.11b (uses PrismII)
Slimline 24x CD-RW/DVD
AMD64 3200+ (but i am doing an x86 install...for lack of flash support on 64bit)
And yes, my mobo uses a SIS chipset


don't think i missed anything.
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post #9 of 23
12/21/04 at 2:06pm
Thread Starter 
my fstab file config:

/dev/hda1 / NTFS noauto,noatime 1 1
/dev/hda6 /boot ext3 defaults 0 0
/dev/hda5 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/cdroms/cdrom0 /mnt/cdrom auto noauto,user 0 0

none /proc/openprom openpromfs defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
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post #10 of 23
12/21/04 at 2:09pm
Thread Starter 
in conf.d/net there is only one line that is NOT commented, and it reads

iface_eth0="dhcp"
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post #11 of 23
12/21/04 at 4:00pm
Interesting. Nothing really peculiar. Anyone else?
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post #12 of 23
12/21/04 at 4:37pm
Thread Starter 
i dont know if it matters but i used Stage 3 from a universal live cd 2004.3
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post #13 of 23
12/21/04 at 11:47pm
I found that the initscript for pcmica doesn't start sometimes if you put that into the default runlevel. Try putting that in your boot runlevel, and see if that works.
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post #14 of 23
12/22/04 at 12:13am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesshuang
I found that the initscript for pcmica doesn't start sometimes if you put that into the default runlevel. Try putting that in your boot runlevel, and see if that works.
can you give me the comands for that (i hate to think of myself as a linux noob...but i am a gentoo noob for sure)
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post #15 of 23
12/22/04 at 2:10am
Thread Starter 
bumpy
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post #16 of 23
12/22/04 at 7:47am
just wondering, why do you have the openprom line in your fstab? Openprom is for only for SPARC users.
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post #17 of 23
12/22/04 at 12:58pm
rc-update del pcmcia-cs
rc-update add pcmcia-cs boot
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post #18 of 23
12/22/04 at 3:21pm
Thread Starter 
ok..went back, made some changes and came back with this:

the good news is that the pcmcia now gets started at boot time, the bad news, it can't connect to network.

this is the output:
cardmgr[9360]: +* Bringing eth0 up via DHCP... /sbin/runscript.sh: line 109: /sbin/dhcpcd: no such file or direcotry
cardmgr[9360]: + [!!]

one thing that really bothers me is that when it starts to boot it doesn't mount the /root partition (/dev/hda6) here is the output:
>>Determining root device...
>>The root block device is unspecified or not detected. Please specify a device to boot, or "shell" for a shell.


i have a packages cd and i wanted to mount my cd drive so i can install some packages (kde..and so forth) but when i do " mount /dev/cdroms/cdrom0" it outputs:
mount: you must specify the filesystem type.

so i went to the file where you specify all of that, checked, and it had "auto" written under <type> column. That is what the gentoo manual told me to do, but it doesn't recognize a command. what should i do about this?

and another networking question. it is clear i have the non-working (yet) wifi card.... i still need to setup eth1 for my wired network (so i can emerge some packages) any help on that?
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post #19 of 23
12/22/04 at 3:40pm
Thread Starter 
ok guys. thanks for the help, but i am a quitter. i gave up on gentoo. i put in an order for vidalinux, so it should be arriving shortly. with vida i am hoping to achieve the greatness of gentoo with the easy installl of using RedHat's anaconda installer.
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post #20 of 23
12/22/04 at 3:43pm
Sorry to hear that
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