Run, Skye!
I’ve not quite done this before, so I wasn’t sure if the rules were the same or not. There have been times that I’ve relied on chroot to fix a dual-booted machine, but not to install an OS from a booted Operating System.
So, what I did was install Gentoo on a spare hard drive from my existing OS, Ubuntu. I used the same method that I would have had I used the minimal installer, which seems to be the only method that works, despite the graphical installer on the 2007.0 CD.
What prompted me to do this? I’ve missed the snappiness that I had with my Gentoo system before (this system, actually) and i wanted to try Gnome on Gentoo, as I’ve never done so. I did try the CD installer but it really messed things up big time, and the screen was nearly unusable on that super slow frame buffer driver that the Live CD used. So, surfing the net, etc, was unbearable while doing the install. Once installed, X was not working (apparently the video drivers aren’t even on the CD) and the system was full of unneeded packages. The only way that I’ve been able to quickly get a Gentoo system up and running was to do it from the command prompt, which was fine with me.
After finding a little tidbit in the Gentoo Alternate Install Doc regarding installing from another operating system. It turns out that if you have the normal toolchain required to compile code and the chroot tool, you’re in business.
This is a basic install so far, just to see if I remembered the right modules to compile into my kernel. I could have used Genkernel, but I wanted to go leaner than that. My old P-III doesn’t have SATA or SCSI, for example. So, I didn’t compile them in. I know that there’s still more to yank out, but I wanted to get it up and running first.
I chose to use the bootloader that I had installed already (which was actually on the drive I installed Gentoo to), so I added a stanza to my /boot/grub/menu.lst to include Gentoo and I was off.
Perhaps, I’ll update the news when I have more installed. I’m curious as to how much I can do in the chroot.
It’s been a looooooong time since I looked at Gentoo. It’s always a cool distribution to flaunt around, but it’s a pain for regular use.
I love chroot too. In fact when I first installed Gentoo using the manual step-by-step method, I used a chroot environment from Debian to do it (so that I could read the documentation online at the same time).
I abandoned Gentoo (it’s still lying in my harddisk though) because I simply couldn’t bear the compile times required for keeping the system up-to-date and installing new software.
Darn it! I was actually home when you dropped by my chatserver WORKING ON MY OWN GENTOO install but for some reason my chat pop up notification box failed to materialize. It does that once in a blue moon but very rarely and its hard to debug because it occurs so infrequently.
Well first off, I am going the manual low level root from a live disc but I am not using their graphical installer. I just switch between a console shell and the graphical environment (using CTL-ALT-F7 and CTL-ALT-F1) and use the graphical environment for nice web browsing. I did find a way around the intolerable slow VESA framebuffer problem. Just edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and replace the VESA driver with “nv” driver and reboot X windows with CTL-ALT-BACKSPACE. Voila! You’ve got quick web-browsing!
But maybe you can help me out with my problem! I can’t get a successful kernel build of the gentoo-sources kernel which is currently “kernel-2.6.23-gentoo-r3″. It doesn’t matter if I make my own modifications or just use the default .config that menuconfig gives it still fatally kernel panics no matter what. So then I went out and just straight downloaded from kernel.org a vanilla 2.6.21.3 kernel and it worked fine! So what to do?
I guess my battle is really just finding a way to get a nice up to date kernel to compile! And its darn hard! The struggle will continue!!!
Any ideas, anyone? Corey? Hari?
I have to admit I am losing faith in Gentoo. First off, I have run into circular dependency issues due to my use of USE flags and now upon attempting an emerge –update world my “net-tools” package dies with an ebuild error. It seems that the package management system is somewhat flakey and derails easily. Maybe it can be dealt with but I have to wonder if I am better off going with something more stable though less powerful. On the other extreme, there is Linux for Scratch which offers no package management system at all but at least I wouldn’t be disappointed with all the derailings!
Oh well. Gentoo is a struggle I might not be able to overcome. I did a read a website review that said one of the disadvantages of Linux is that there is some infighting among the team and a lack of direction which does causes things to break. Maybe they were right.
Hey, Corey! I am writing this comment in a console only links browser on my Gentoo system running a 2.6.23 kernel. I got it to work by updating the gcc compiler from 4.1.1 to 4.2 on a desperate whim! I didn’t think it would work but apparently the gcc 4.1.1 compiler can’t hack the latest linux kernel! Anyway I hope this comment gets posted! If so, give credit to your site and the links text browser!
Getting tired of my comments yet? hehhe See you inadverntly posted on a topic that was extremly relevant to my life and I am allowed to post as long as it is relevant to the topic which it is! hahaah If it wasn’t I would email you instead. Anyway, I got my joystick working and obviously it can be deduced from my last post that I got my internet connection (using pppoe) working. It was actually rather difficult to get it working on my main permanent system than using the temporary pppoe-setup script that I believe is part of the old roaring penguin way. Now, according to the Gentoo documentation I am using the new modular network setup and I am also using a kernel ppppoe driver versus the user space one. Now if only I could get X windows and a Window Manager though I must confess these console “links” comments are a whole lot of fun!!
hari, that’s one of the reasons that I’ve let Gentoo have such a long vacation on my machine - and I ran ~x86.
devin, you may be experiencing some issues that are specific to the AMD64 platform, which I wouldn’t have otherwise encountered. Getting X to work shouldn’t be too bad, if you follow the docs for X configuration. Here’s the documentation list: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/list.xml
Check out the section: Installing your Desktop, which is a subsection of: Gentoo Desktop Documentation Resources. There’s one for X and one for NVidia.
Don’t give up. Live in the chroot!
I haven’t given up yet Corey! But I’m luckily out of the chroot environment because I finally have a stable kernel 2.6.23 build! And the system, though very bare bones loads up lightning fast. It takes 22 seconds to go from a GAG Boot Manager screen to a “bach login:” prompt. (I decided to pick hostnames of some of my favorite baroque & classical music composers)
Awesome! I might install more software in chroot before I enter the real environment for any length of time.
zzzzzzzzzzzz
I tried it but I didn’t like it, about 3 years ago. It didn’t like my new audio and video cards.
Hehehe You’re funny Sky!!
RT Cunningham, if you ever try to install Gentoo again, just make sure you know which modules in the kernel are responsible for providing sound. By default, the ALSA sound system is integrated into the 2.6 kernels so sound and audio shouldn’t give too much trouble when travelling like a gypsy between various distributions!
Off-topic I know, but what’s up over at MacBros? His account is suspended. Did he get dugg or something?
Never mind. It’s back up. Curious.
Mac’s host, Hostmonster, grossly oversells and has to limit CPU cycles in order to host all the sites. You’ll get that page any time he has more than a few visitors. There are tons of javascript ads on his site, as well, which, as you found out, really slow things down, as well. He’s doing a rewrite some day, I bet.
Cool, Simple Spam Filter works with Lynx!
Actually, it’s high traffic, not a few visitors. The spammers usually are to blame . I can usually go into my running processes and see that It’s getting flooded by spammers and my spamm filter gets filled up until the CPU usage reaches it’s limits.
It goes away after a couple of minutes (2 to 5 minutes) until the flooding stops. I’ve asked to get a better CPU exceeded error page with something like “”Oooops the site is getting overwhelmed with to many visitors.” or something instead. But they said nope.
There isn’t a lot of java that’s run on my server, most is on another site. So the scripts are not to blame.
It’s true that Hostmonster does host a lot of sites, but that has nothing to do with the CPU Usage error. It’s actually in place for a very good reason IMO. Here’s a post I wrote on the whole thing in case you’re interested on the reason.
A rewrite is in the near future though Corey.
I ran into a snag or two getting X set up, but I am now posting this from within a graphical interface on the Fluxbox window manager at the moment. The Firefox fonts are a bit crappy, but, otherwise, its a start. I’ll post my tribulations soon.
My firefox fonts are okay except for some of the fonts ironically found at the Official Gentoo Docs web pages! My opera is perfect! So right now I have a nice customized WindowMaker environment. I am very disappointed that Gentoo has decided to abandon XMMS because in their eyes it was a pain to maintain. Audacious may be a fine music player but it doesn’t have the “libquixpat” spatialization Effect plugin that I have become very enamored of.
But all in all, I am really starting to like Gentoo and the fact that everything is compiled from source. On top of that the data inside the ebuild packages are very informative. They point to specific threads of various forums which discuss the creation of specific drivers which I find very enlightning! But Gentoo has offered many challenges as well. Numerous times already the build process during an emerge comes to a halt and the reason is not always evident. In one instance when it failed, on a blind guess I decided to perform a “env-update & source /etc/profile” and it amazingly worked! I think what has gotten me into difficulty is the sheer number of USE flags I use which does complicate the dependencies trees somewhat and Gentoo’s package management can’t deal with all the complexity!
So now that I have Xorg, Windowmaker, my Nvidia Graphical acceleration card working, mplayer with its DVD encryption and W32codecs up and running, I have now begun on focusing on the most important part of computing! Emulating Console systems starting with N64. I am proud to announce that after a complete half of day of trying to optimize Mupen64 without any great success, in the very wee hours of last night I got it to run better than I have ever gotten it to run before! The sound isn’t stuttering anymore in the CPU and Graphical intensive games like ‘Conkers Bad Fur Day’ and ‘Banjo Tooie’. What is really neat is that the the core emulator and all its respective plugins have been compiled from source. No secrets at all. I rejected the “Glide 64″ plugin in portage and did some web searching to find the newly created Glide Wonder driver which does some fancy stuff like add realistic shadows to Banjoo Tooies figure and the drunk blurring of the screen in Conkers Bad Fur Day. It also got rid of the some of the defects and weird pixalations and odd artificats that pop up when polygons are moving in Mario Super 64 and Diddy Kong racing! It also seems more rich and clear! My heart nearly stopped when I witnessed the heavy rain, distraught shadows and reflections in the pools of water in the opening scene of Conker. AMAZING, and the actual N64 never looked that good! Think I’m crazy for saying that? Go read “What do you do when your girlfriend wants to play N64 games on Linux?” at http://www.fsckin.com/2007/09/05/what-do-you-do-when-your-girlfriend-wants-to-play-n64-games-on-linux/ and you will see that the emulator does beat the real thing!
Okay, so what else do I have to do to be happy with my newly minted Gentoo System? Well, the job is never done but I plan on getting a Playstation I, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Gameboy Advance, and XMame emulators up and running with optimizations performed to the max! And this includes the wonderful Naturval Vision GLSL shaders which are available for epsxe! Think I will settle for the runs out of the box PSX emulator? Well I’ll try it for laughs but in the long run, no.
In non emulation, I want to get prettier fonts, and get XMMS working again despite the fact that Gentoo and Slackware have abandoned it. After that, I will relax. I am in no hurry to install KDE or GNOME or try out Beryl but one day I probably will because I need to explore some new territories. But how much Eye Candy do I need when Windowmaker and a 2D Desktop fits my needs fine? So many choices and I love it! Gentoo is all about compiling from source and choices.
Ok, I finally got the epsxe, a Playstation I emulator with the Natural Vision shaders working so I now have installed, configured, and optimized two of the most advanced game emulators for linux! Tomorrow I work on the lower end (but not lower in terms of game quality - only CPU power
) emulators. Namely the Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Arcade, and gameboy emulators! Gentoo is kicking some butt!!
Gentoo is addictive, like a drug! Or, more accurately, like a tough relationship. You keep craving a bit more each time and you’re willing to put up with the abuse.
Hahahaha! That’s awesome Corey!! I’m sure Gentoo will appreciate their new adline/slogan: “Gentoo - Yeah you suffered battered spouse syndrome but who else is going to compile everything for you? So deal it with it, b#@ch!” hahahahahaha Oh I’m bad..bad..bad..
Okay, I solved my NES woe corey two times over!!! First off, I can use Nestopia to get great HQ3X filtering that can run on the opensource “nv” drivers. And for my proprietary solution, I am using Mednafen, a multisystem emulator which works just as well as FCEU with OpenGL bilinear filtering and it scaled to use my full screen! On top of that since it is a mult-emulator it supposedly runs Wonderswan, Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, Atari Lynx, PC Engine/TurboGrafx, and Neo Geo Pocket Color so I will have to check those out as well. And all this from a 3.5 MB Zip file?
Who knows if this is really true? But I am confident about the NES support. They had a ton (i.e. about 140) mappers and it runs micromachines perfectly which most NES emulators don’t because it has some very special characteristics associated with it! Good luck in getting everything configured on your Gentoo system!!
If it works out nicely, I’ll have something “alternative” and special to report…
Oh I want to know so badly! Well, my emulation phase is now officially over! As it turns out, failing to compile FCEU brought with it a blessing in disguise. I say this because it led me to Mednafen which in turn resulted in my gaining not ONLY a marvelous NES emulator but a working TurboGrafx 16 and Gameboy Advance emulator as well! I test drove it with Mario Tennis Advance Power and the graphics and fireworks blew me away and proved that a multisystem emulator like Mednafen can pound a dedicated proggie like Visual Boy Advance into the ground! To celebrate the end of this protracted emulator bonanza, I downloaded Tekken 3 for the Playstation and was even more blown away by the effects. I hate fighters but I have to try this one out!
My Gentoo system is about to see the light. I need Xmms, Azureus, Amule, nicer truetype fonts, and a simple Calculator program. Setting up my printer and scanner wouldn’t hurt either but I can still easily use Windows for that and frankly, I’m not really impressed with the quality of my HP inkjet. Kind of stifles the motivation in that department. “Oh so Linux can now print splochy ink jobs too. Yeahhh!”
So am I in love with Gentoo? No, but I’m not dismayed either. I DO feel better about Gentoo right now than I did about Debian. And a majour problem has been rectified. My system hasn’t fatally kernel panicked yet…like when I used to change the blitter options in fullscreen mode while playing a game on Gens for example. I don’t know if my SKY2 onboard ethernet driver is still broken, but I have to download some major torrents for a couple of hours to find out. But so far, Gentoo is starting to grow on me. And you know what? The compile times were the absolute LEAST of my problems!
Well, I’m not finished with everything yet. My latest victory was to get both xmms and audacious working with the FLAC and APE lossless formats which pushed me to the edge. I literally wanted to go to root directory and perform a ‘rm -rf .’ and right an awful rant here using fowl language but then I remembered Coreys nice polite policy and by golly I’m not going to mess with those! hehe
I ended up learning how to perform an ebuild (namely the monkeys audio plugin) that was not in the official portage tree. Despite thier being a Gentoo Wiki about this, it didn’t contain ALL the information I needed to make it work so I did a lot of googling for other sources before I figured out exactly what to enter in my up to that point non-existent /etc/portage/package.keywords file. 
And yes I was angry at this point. I ended up having to go to the Debian and other backport archives to install binary files to get some of the audacious and xmms flac / ape plugins to work. Oh what a pain! The good news was that after all these obstacles had been overcome I happily discovereded that the spatialization plugin that has kept me hooked to XMMS, namely ‘libquixpat.so’ miracalously works in audacious as well! There is no source code for that plugin because the guy who made it is a rude person in my humble opinion so you either accept the binary or nothing at all. Usually plugins meant for xmms don’t normally work in Audacious and vice versa but I happened to luck out in this instance. The upshot of all this is that I now get to use Audacious as my main music player though I will still use XMMS from time to time. I also managed to get the crystality plugin for audacious to work as well but that was because a port of that plugin with source code had been done. (I tried the xmms binary but it choked unlike libquixpat.so)
Now I haven’t finished off my checklist for having a Gentoo system that I am stable with but already this distribution is kicking Debians butt in terms of stability and heres why:
1) No more kernel panics when changing blitter formats on the fly in the Gens emulator.
2) When I load up, my Alsa libraries always recoginize that I have two soundcards - namely my SB Live and the onboard AC97. In Debian, it was hit or miss. It always recognized the PCI SB live card but about 1 out of every 2
times it missed my onboard sound card which means I had to reboot the machine…somtimes more than once until they did register. Believe it or not I like my onboard sound more than expensive SB live. Why? Bacause it used a ditial SPDIF whereas my ol SB Live is purely analog.
3) When I want to play a lossless format in audacious or xmms, it doesn’t give a popup and complain. Believe it or not, in Debian I had to load and played an mp3 or ogg before playing a lossless file lest my player would complain! This was only when using the SPDIF though. I don’t have that problem anymore (and yes it is a weird problem but true nonetheless)
4) More up to date software! I managed to play a live and free Windows based MMORPH caled “Tales of Pirates” in linux using WINE 0.9.46 and it ran well despite not seeing the background in the opening ’select a character’ phase. Upgrading to WINE 0.9.50 solved that problem though that version is masked in my stable Portage Tree. Will using my knowledge of how to unmask packages I was on my way, and the missing opening background problem was solved!
5) My N64 emulator is running faster. Is this because the application itself and all the libraries it depends on were optimized specifically for my machine? It must be because it is the same version of Mupen64 and all the plugins are the exact same too! Cheers for speed and Debian. (No noticable change in my Playstation emulator but it still runs as good)
6) Gentoo finally forced my lazy self to upgrade my kernel with handpicked configuration options that makes my machine run and load fast! I could have done this in Debian but I was too lazy. In truth I did compile the kernel before but with the exact same .config that the default stock kernel used meaning it used every module under the sun and probed my devices slowly during bootup! (Remember you have to compile your kernel if you used the Nvidia hardware accelerated drivers)
7) Forced me to explore some new programs that are just as good. Take my nintendo emulator FCEU which I couldn’t get to run well. This was bad news but it led me to Mednafen which not only provided me with an equivalent NES emulator but provided me with a Visual Boy Advance emulator that surpassed my old VBA emulator I used in Debian!
8*) I have a star after 8 because this is unconfirmed. But I hope it will stop the kernel panic when I download too many bittorrent files at once. This has not been verified yet though in the Broken Sky2 driver forum in Gentoo the people seem to be happy with the latest drivers in Gentoo-Source 2.6.23 kernel versions so here I am crossing my fingers. I do have faith!