gentoo install issues

off of the top of my head, i think the next step is to get the networking up, and then partition and format your disk. but you should probably follow the gentoo install guide at

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-install.xml

it's an extremely good and easy to follow guide. i still reference it from time to time.

not really; i remember it because i've done it several times. i think a copy of the install document is on the gentoo install cd, but i don't remember where.

If it's the new 1.4 cd's, just type manever into /mnt/cdrom/, look for the file named install.html, and type links /path/to/file/install.html. Then you can read it on a single terminal, then alt-fkey to another terminal to install. It's a very useful little guide...

I printed out a copy it's handy to have. If you want a .pdf or .doc copy head over to my ISP provided webspace.

File Size:
pdf 3.7mb
doc 384kb

beakmyn's web storage

I saved the html then saved it to .doc with word then
converted the .doc to pdf using 602 Software's print pack pro. I gave it a quick once over it looked o.k.

Excellent, Beakmyn! I just d/l'd the 2-CD P4 iso's today and am looking to add Gentoo in a dual-boot.

One question, I have 10GB at the end of my primary HD, wondering if I put it there, can I use the NT loader to point to it? I recall this being possible back in the NT4.0 days, but I'm not up to speed with WinXP and NTLOADER.

-myrkat

As for the manual here's the steps
passwd root <enter>
blah <enter>
then alt+fkey then login.
at the command prompt
links /mnt/cdrom/Install.html
you may need to do a find / -name Install. But if memory serves it will tell you where the file is located. if you read up the page. If you need to scroll back use shift+pageup. It will at least get you started to get to the one on the web. I mean you will be doing a stage 1 build right.


@myrkat
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=10588 That should get you going. I have no problems booting my kernel it's well past the 1024 "limit"

you mean can you use the windows boot loader to boot linux? unfortunately, you can't. (like microsoft would really allow that - linux is their second biggest enemy)

but the linux boot loaders can boot windows, and are generally more powerful anyway.

Gentoo Install Issues

Well, I fired up the Gentoo P4 1.4 and it hangs on USB/PCI hotplugging. I re-tried with "gentoo nousb" and same thing.

Any pointers?

-myrkat

What??? I've been using the XP/2k bootloader for months. check the link I posted for myrkat. It technicaly doesn't directly boot linux but it does give ita dummy boot loader that inturn invokes your'e loader of choice.

I could have sworn that there was a utility that created a .bin or some type of file that the NTLOADER "saw" and pointed to the linux partition.

Thought I did something like this back with Caldera 3.1 (?) - it was about 6 or more years ago, so I could be all screwed up.

-myrkat

EDIT: doh! bsmith has it!

Myrkat try gentoo nohotplug
Oh yeah http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=10588 that will give you the dd command. to create the .bin file.

bsmith, you da man! I knew I wasn't screwy... well, at least on this point...

-myrkat

i suppose that's a way to do it, but it's essentially an image file in the vein of an initrd. have you ever created initrds from scratch? they are an extreme pain to deal with. i mean, grub can boot linux and chainload windows natively, without the extra step of having to create an image file; why go through the effort to make the windows bootloader do it? i hate using initrds and go to great lengths to avoid using them.

Because most times Win is already on the box and XP/2k bootloader doesn't play nice if it's not in the MBR. It's 6 of one half-dozen of the other. You either chainload to NT loader or you create a .bin to call Grub/Lilo.
To each their own I suppose. Either way works. I actualy do both. on diferent machines.

actually, the nt bootloader is not installed in the mbr. it's installed in the windows partition, and the mbr is given a pointer to direct the computer to that partition's boot sector. that's the purpose of the whole 'active' partition thing that windows has (i think it's called the 'bootable' flag in fdisk. well, that's not its only function, but that's what windows uses), which doesn't apply to linux at all. that's why you can, for example, install windows, install linux and grub into the mbr, and have grub chainload and pull up the nt bootloader; if it was in the mbr, it would have been overwritten by grub. and the advantage of using grub is that the windows partition doesn't have to be active to be booted from.

i also like the other more advanced features of grub, such as command-line editing of your boot entry; so if there's an error in my grub.conf that's making my comp unbootable, i can just fix it and then boot; whereas to fix the nt bootloader, i'd have to boot some other way (boot floppy, maybe) to edit boot.ini.

Isn't the whole NTLOADER / BIN thing because one may have NTFS on their first partition (win2k/xp) and NOT be able to install GRUB/LILO there? I know their put in the MBR, but I thought it wanted a non-NTFS partition for the boot?

'Scuse my ignorance, I am still a linux newbie after all these years (just can't seem to get serious with it...)

-myrkat

sorry, i don't quite catch what you mean, but i'll try:

there are two possible places for a boot loader to be installed; in the master boot record, and in the boot sector of a particular partition (primary partition, that is). windows will always install the nt bootloader in the front of the partition that windows is installed in. after all, that loader is needed to boot windows itself. then, that partition will be marked 'active.' if there is no boot mechanism (boot loader) found in the mbr, it will automatically attempt to boot from the active partition. however, i do know that there are times when windows has written to the mbr, taken over it, and made the computer go directly to that windows partition, instead of booting any other os. (is that all the time? i think so)

i know that if you install windows on a secondary hard disk (i.e. not the primary boot hard drive), it will install windows and ntloader onto that second hard drive, but it _still_ writes to the mbr on that primary boot hard drive; so when the drive is booted, it will 'forward' the computer to the right ntloader on the right drive. (happened on my old laptop that had a heat damaged primary hard drive)

when you install grub (i haven't used lilo in a long time, but i assume the same applies), you have a choice to install it in the mbr, or in a particular partition. so, if i had, say, the freebsd boot loader in my mbr and still wanted to use that as my main loader, i could install grub right into its linux partition and have the freebsd loader chainload it. (or actually, the freebsd loader may even be able to natively boot linux. dunno; never used the freebsd loader in the mbr)

grub has to boot a windows partition by chainloading (booting into the boot loader on a particular partition)... one reason being that it can't read ntfs. but the main reason is that grub itself can't boot a win32 kernel. it doesn't know how to; so it has to call on ntloader to do it.

and on the other side, ntloader cannot directly boot linux. (naturally. it's microsoft...) so with that bin file, you're creating an image of the boot sector of your linux partition - where grub is installed - and having ntloader boot that, which will trick it into loading up grub. and grub knows how to boot linux.

so if you're doing any cross-win32-os booting (grub->windows, ntloader->linux, etc), you will have to chainload from one boot loader into another. that's due to the incompatibilities of the two different OSes, not because of the location of the installs.

even if you have ntfs and xp in your first partition, and linux in the second, the ntloader is in the boot sector of the first partition. so you could leave ntloader in control (meaning the mbr automatically forwards booting to ntloader in the boot sector of the first partition), and use it to boot windows directly, and have it use a bin to connect to your linux partition. or, you could put grub in the mbr, have that boot linux natively, and have it chainload from the mbr to the ntloader that resides in the boot sector of your first ntfs partition.

erm... i hope i didn't confuse anybody. (most importantly, i hope i didn't confuse myself and mix something up...)

Thanks for the informative post, Xiphux. To be clear, I wasn't expecting NTLOADER to actually "boot" into linux, just point to it (or a grub install). That is what bsmith came up with in his earlier post, and what I used to do w/ NT4 back some years ago.

I do not recall grub or lilo asking to be installed in the MBR or the partition, as an option, but I could easily have missed that.

If grub can fit completeley in the MBR (provided the MBR isn't formatted NTFS when winXP/2K is installed) than that would be just fine! I don't know much about grub or lilo (or freeBSD's loader) so I'll leave this at that.

Thanks again for the good info, was educational for me.
-myrkat