Does anyone here have any experience with this distro? It sounds awesome with it''s portage build system. I have no experience with BSD ports or Debian apt, but from what Gentoo describes of it''s portage system, I think this is really cool. Unfortunately, I only have a slow modem connection, and I can''t use the build from scratch method. I downloaded the "fast binary" install iso image from their site, but I can''t seem to get it to install. Take a look at Gentoo

Hey, I just saw this on Slashdot: A Walk Through the Gentoo Linux Install Process. I''ve loving Debian, if that indirectly helps any .

quote: Original post by Dauntless
Does anyone here have any experience with this distro? It sounds awesome with it''s portage build system. I have no experience with BSD ports or Debian apt, but from what Gentoo describes of it''s portage system, I think this is really cool.

Unfortunately, I only have a slow modem connection, and I can''t use the build from scratch method. I downloaded the "fast binary" install iso image from their site, but I can''t seem to get it to install.

Take a look at Gentoo

I''ve read the install process that Null and Void wrote about and from what I can understand it seems pretty cool. Especially the autoupdate part. Sounds interesting to me. I might try it on my second machine. I''ll need to find someone with high speed Inet so it doesn''t take me 3 days to download on my 56K modem but that shouldn''t be a problem...

Anyhow, if I manage to get it, I will post my comments in this forum...



"And that''s the bottom line cause I said so!"

Cyberdrek
cyberdrek@gdnmail.net
Founder Laval Linux

/(bb|[^b]{2})/ that is the Question -- ThinkGeek.com
Hash Bang Slash bin Slash Bash -- #!/bin/bash

I downloaded the new 1.1a .iso build but I ran into some problems. I used the Stage3 tarball method but unfortunately their documentation is not very good so I wasn''t sure if I did several things right. I managed to compile the kernel, although they say you have to enable devfs support. I did this with make menuconfig, but when I rebooted, I got a message saying that devfs wasn''t enabled, and some features in gentoo might be disabled.

But my main problem was with packages. Now I''m not exactly sure what that stage3 tarball extracts, but when I looked in /usr/portage/packages....nothing was there.

I tried running:

emerge xfree

to try to install xfree86 4.2.0, but it looked like my system was trying to connect to a CVS repository...presumably to pick up the source. If so, I''m not really sure what the whole point of downloading the full .iso build is. I thought the whole point was to get a base package with at least a few goodies for us slow poke modem users. As it stands now, I may as well have downloaded the small 16M bootable .iso image, and configured everything from scratch through my modem. And I''m not even sure that''s possible, since I''m not sure if they have any modules loaded for modems, since the directions are all for ethernet PCI cards or PCMCIA cards.

quote: Original post by Dauntless
I downloaded the new 1.1a .iso build but I ran into some problems. I used the Stage3 tarball method but unfortunately their documentation is not very good so I wasn''t sure if I did several things right. I managed to compile the kernel, although they say you have to enable devfs support. I did this with make menuconfig, but when I rebooted, I got a message saying that devfs wasn''t enabled, and some features in gentoo might be disabled.

But my main problem was with packages. Now I''m not exactly sure what that stage3 tarball extracts, but when I looked in /usr/portage/packages....nothing was there.

I tried running:

emerge xfree

to try to install xfree86 4.2.0, but it looked like my system was trying to connect to a CVS repository...presumably to pick up the source. If so, I''m not really sure what the whole point of downloading the full .iso build is. I thought the whole point was to get a base package with at least a few goodies for us slow poke modem users. As it stands now, I may as well have downloaded the small 16M bootable .iso image, and configured everything from scratch through my modem. And I''m not even sure that''s possible, since I''m not sure if they have any modules loaded for modems, since the directions are all for ethernet PCI cards or PCMCIA cards.

Gentoo is a distro that allows easy customization of the system for your needs. The iso is nothing but a small part of what is required to run Linux, I mean 150MB or 15MB depending on the ISO you d/led, isn''t even half of linux, it''s just a basic kernel and a couple of commands so you can get the files needed. When you used emerge xfree, it did try to connect to CVS( the distro basicly works better if you have cable modem, since they don''t explain how to do it with modem connections.) But even though, I managed to get it to work without even connecting to the internet on the linux box( my modem wasn''t detected by WVDIALCONF ) that''s how Gentoo allows you to stay up to date. "emerge" is a simple package manager written in shell, it''s purpose is to make upgrading as easy as possible. When your system is to your liking after all the installs, all you have to do to update is type emerge --update, this will get the latest version of the tree and allow you to emerge the latest version of your software. Oh and it also takes care of any dependencies by downloading, unpacking, compiling and installing them before installing the package you requested.

Anyhow,


"And that''s the bottom line cause I said so!"

Cyberdrek
danielc@iquebec.com
Founder
Laval Linux

/(bb|[^b]{2})/ that is the Question -- ThinkGeek.com
Hash Bang Slash bin Slash Bash -- #!/bin/bash

quote: Original post by Dauntless
Does anyone here have any experience with this distro? It sounds awesome with it''s portage build system. I have no experience with BSD ports or Debian apt, but from what Gentoo describes of it''s portage system, I think this is really cool.

Unfortunately, I only have a slow modem connection, and I can''t use the build from scratch method. I downloaded the "fast binary" install iso image from their site, but I can''t seem to get it to install.

Take a look at Gentoo

Well, as I was saying, I finally managed to get the time to install gentoo on my Linux box. I scrapped my Mandrake 8.1 which was working in perfect order so that I could try gentoo, I have to say that it''s not that bad. Setting up took me about +/- 2 hours including some compile but I worked with a stage 3 install and had to download 2 files from the net in order to get the distro up. Oh yeah and that includes the kernel compile. Which I''m redoing now since I hadn''t compiled devfs into the kernel. After the install, the first reboot went pretty fast and I was amazed at how little time it took to boot. I was in my system in less than 1 minute. Mandrake took about 2.5 to 4 minutes depending on my different installs. Gentoo is as it says, a fast distro since it doesn''t clutter up the system with unneeded services. Anyhow, sorry if I rant a bit, I''m just happy. Heck, I think I''m going to build my distro around Gentoo. Again, sorry about ranting but I had a really tough day, my cd-burner died on me or at least, I think it did. I was having Windows problems on my Windows Box. But finally, a simple thing as installing Gentoo made everything OK. ( I think I might be going geek or something, somebody call 911!... )

"And that''s the bottom line cause I said so!"

Cyberdrek
danielc@iquebec.com
Founder
Laval Linux

/(bb|[^b]{2})/ that is the Question -- ThinkGeek.com
Hash Bang Slash bin Slash Bash -- #!/bin/bash

I still haven''t had any luck with my Gentoo install unfortunately. I''m trying to figure out how to include ppp support for my dial up modem, but I don''t know exactly how to go about doing this, and unfortunately the mailing list doesn''t seem to offer much help in that regard either.

I''m not sure how to enable my old ISA modem. Like I said, I''m pretty much a Linux noob, and I jumped at an advanced distro just so I could learn more. I''m actually not disappointed because it''s gotten me even more excited to learn about Linux. I''ve learned more about Linux in the last week than in the last 6 months combined trying to get Gentoo up and running.

Do I have to do a modprobe for ISA modems? I vaguely recall some kind of command like getserial or something like that to configure the /dev/ttyS0 device. Oh well, looks like some more hunting for linux how-to''s

I''m curious about Mandrake 8.2, because of something called URPMI. They say its supposed to be apt-like, so I hope that eases some of my dependency hunting problems.

quote: Original post by Dauntless
I still haven''t had any luck with my Gentoo install unfortunately. I''m trying to figure out how to include ppp support for my dial up modem, but I don''t know exactly how to go about doing this, and unfortunately the mailing list doesn''t seem to offer much help in that regard either.

I''m not sure how to enable my old ISA modem. Like I said, I''m pretty much a Linux noob, and I jumped at an advanced distro just so I could learn more. I''m actually not disappointed because it''s gotten me even more excited to learn about Linux. I''ve learned more about Linux in the last week than in the last 6 months combined trying to get Gentoo up and running.

Do I have to do a modprobe for ISA modems? I vaguely recall some kind of command like getserial or something like that to configure the /dev/ttyS0 device. Oh well, looks like some more hunting for linux how-to''s

I''m curious about Mandrake 8.2, because of something called URPMI. They say its supposed to be apt-like, so I hope that eases some of my dependency hunting problems.

The answer to your question about doing a modprobe is yes but you need to configure the file isapnp or something like that which is in /etc. Or, if you have 2 systems, I found out something which I was affraid to try at first, I set my windows box to do Internet Connection Sharing( with XP, it''s pretty simple, set a check, specify which network to use ) and the system is set. Then I set my linux box to use dhcp with dhcpcd eth0( after I got back to prompt, I did a ''ifconfig -a'' to make sure I got an IP from windows and I did ), configured /etc/resolv.conf with my ISPs DNS, added a route for my default gateway being my Windows box( ie: 192.168.0.1, which is set automaticly by Windows ).
like so:

route add -net default gw 192.168.0.1 netmask 0.0.0.0 metric 1

Finally, I tried emerge x11-base/xfree... To my suprise, my Windows box started to dial and once it connected, the files started to download on my Gentoo box. I have to say, I was suprised that it worked... Well, an hour later, I had the XFree86 server installed and simply needed to download my fav. wm fluxbox which is pretty small and I was ready to config X and get the apps I need.

As for Mandrake 8.2 and URPMI, I can''t say, I haven''t had the chance to D/L the ISOs yet. If I do get the chance, I will post some more... Anyhow, I just had to let people know about that ICS and Linux.

Anyhow, if you have 2 machines, that''s a nifty little trick you can try( ICS I mean ). Other than that, keep on using Linux.

"And that''s the bottom line cause I said so!"

Cyberdrek
danielc@iquebec.com
Founder
Laval Linux

/(bb|[^b]{2})/ that is the Question -- ThinkGeek.com
Hash Bang Slash bin Slash Bash -- #!/bin/bash