I am trying to practice installing Gentoo on a 2 gig hardrive so i dont lose all my info on my 40gig. just to get the hang of installing it. but i get stuck on formatting. I follow the instructions, it says format complete and all, but it does''nt work because i try the mk command and it says it cannot find partition. I am using the install guide but do not like it much even though i really want to try gentoo. The install guide isn''t very specific and there are errors. How did all you gentoo people install it? I am not a real experienced linux user to let you know. I am great w/ windows and mandrake, knoppix, but thats about it. I have a book on linux code so i can do it if i know what its called and use the index. Thanks

bjmumblingmiles

122

September 12, 2003 11:05 PM

Are you sure the hard drive is set up properly? If so, you could use partition magic to create a new partition to install Gentoo on. I''ve installed it before and never had this problem, so it''s probably a non-linux related problem.

Brian J
DL Vacuum - A media file organizer I made | MM

Brian J

HTML

Author

151

September 12, 2003 11:43 PM

If the hard drive werent so small that might work. Hmm, ill try installing pm8 on it even thoug it is tiny, and i just wanted linux on it and not windows...

jdhardy

469

September 13, 2003 02:59 AM

If the drive isn''t set up properly you have to run ''fdisk'' on it to create a partition. (I can''t remember if this in the Gentoo docs).

Just run it from the live CD (not the DOS/Windows fdisk).

NaliXL

120

September 13, 2003 05:15 AM

No offence, but if you''re really serious about useing Gentoo, and don''t know how to set up partitions yourself, you might wanna try a more user-friendly distribution first. Sometimes, Gentoo still requires quite a lot of knowledge you know.

On the other hand, if you''re prepared to read LOADS of manuals etc, gentoo can be a very powerful distro....

Newbie programmers think programming is hard.Amature programmers think programming is easy.Professional programmers know programming is hard.

od1n

121

September 13, 2003 06:54 PM

Try using cfdisk instead of fdisk. Its a bit more user friendly. Are you sure your partitions are mounted btw?

HTML

Author

151

September 13, 2003 09:20 PM

no, they arnt mounted..I am not sure how, but I have decided to use red hat instead. My neighbor is really good with linux and he says gentoo is too buggy to do anything with. He got it running and everything but he said that i would probably like redhat better soo, now i just have to figure out why i keep getting burning errors...its a post in this topic called k3b burning errors iso or something. If you know, plz let me know. I am trying to burn red hat.

Thanks

Drakonite

215

September 15, 2003 02:27 AM

quote: Original post by HTML
no, they arnt mounted..I am not sure how, but I have decided to use red hat instead. My neighbor is really good with linux and he says gentoo is too buggy to do anything with. He got it running and everything but he said that i would probably like redhat better soo, now i just have to figure out why i keep getting burning errors...its a post in this topic called k3b burning errors iso or something. If you know, plz let me know. I am trying to burn red hat.

Thanks

I''ve been using gentoo for quite a while now and I find it much more usable than redhat... I strongly suggest agaist redhat.. Go with Mandrake or Debian instead. Redhat is becoming less and less of a good desktop distro.. One of the most noticable examples is their decision to stop including mp3 software a while back.

Drakonite

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Shoot Pixels Not People

Interim

122

September 15, 2003 09:03 AM

They didn't stop including MP3 software, they stopped building the packages with MP3 support to avoid licensing and legal issues. I wouldn't be surprised if things continue as they do, you'll see that happening more and more with binary distributions of XMMS and others.

You just need to get the source, and recompile it with MP3 support. You can probably use the SRPM from the SRPM CDs or just download it.

While I have a love-hate relationship with Red Hat, it would be the second Unix I recommend behind OS X for useability (*grin*). While BlueCurve (the Red Hat UI) isn't perfect, it adds more consistency and more UI tools for management than most other distributions I know, making it probably one of the better distributions to drive from the UI instead of the command line. Which is why I say it probably makes one of the better desktops.

I think Suse and Mandrake probably fill this role as well, but to be honest, I don't get enough time on either of those two to really do a strong comparision, but I hear good things from the Suse users on YAST, and sort of love-hate things about the Drakes? (Mandrake wizards?).

Int.

[edited by - Interim on September 15, 2003 10:04:29 AM]