anthonyi

Hi, I got it to boot! I got back into Gentoo using the Live CD and recompiled the kernel with the deprecated SATA/IDE support option enabled and this seems to have 'persuaded' Gentoo to 'see' my devices the same way Fedora does and I can now but into both Fedora and my new Gentoo build from the Fedora installed GRUB on the first SATA drive's MBR. Now, I just have to figure out how to setup my wireless NIC in Gentoo - works great with Driverloader in Fedora but is unrecognized by Driverloader in Gentoo. And this was supposed to be a suck-it-and-see trial install of Gentoo to see if I wanted to replace FC2 with it. It's been fun installing it but I'm starting to think I would spend more time configuring and tweaking Gentoo than actually doing stuff! Cheers, Anthony

I did a Gentoo stage 1 install yesterday on my second SATA drive (/dev/hdg). My first SATA drive has FC2 on it booted via GRUB as follows: title Fedora Core (2.6.7-cko8) root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.7-cko8 ro root=/dev/hde3 rhgb quiet initrd /initrd-2.6.7-cko8 When I got to the point in the Gentoo install where GRUB is installed I did *not* do so - assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that my existing GRUB install on the first SATA drive (/dev/hde) would boot Gentoo with appropriate entries in /etc/grub.conf. I'm using title Gentoo (2.6.8-gentoo-r3) root (hd2,0) kernel /kernel-2.6.8-gentoo-r3 root=/dev/hdg3 to attempt to boot GRUB. The boot starts but stops with a kernel panic stating that it cannot mount /dev/hdg3 as a root device. I have also tried /dev/sdb3 (as the Gentoo kernel is compiled to 'see' SATA devices as SCSI disks) to no avail. I'm also surprised that I need to use (hd2,0) as I had assumed I would need (hd1,0) - however that appears to be my WinXP drive (which, physically, is an ATA drive - primary/master). I'm also unsure why I was not instructed to create an initial ram disk by the Gentoo handbook (I did not use genkernel). Having spent the last 12 hours 'emerging' it's frustrating to fall at this hurdle...but my level of knowledge is insufficient to get me a booted Gentoo system. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks, blackpage. I guess I'm pretty happy with the performance of the majority of the packages on my FC2 box...but there are a number of optimizations I'd like to do... Kernel (done) GIMP (done) X (not done and looks a bit more complex than the above) GNOME/Metacity/KDE ...basically the user look and feel impacting components and GIMP because I manipulate a lot of digital images. The thing with FC2's rpm system is that it's not made that easy to compile a multi-package beast like X or KDE. I'm thinking I may go with a stage 1 Gentoo install. I take the points about more time being wasted waiting for user input...but my reasons for wanting to do this are kind of like yours anyway...I'm just a lot further down the learning curve! Thanks for the help, guys.

Any opinions?

I use Fedora Core 2 (recent Linux convert, so be patient...). I'm wondering why so much of FC2 comes compiled for i386 machines...specifically, if the kernel benefits from being compiled to suit a particular CPU wouldn't other major system components benefit also? I can see that compiling something like gedit to suit an i686 might not yield any tangible benefit...but why not something like X? Would it make a difference or am I misunderstanding something here? Thx...

2.6.9-rc1 didn't help either... Looks like I'm stuck with 2.6.7 for the time being...not that that is a problem, I just want to know why I have this problem! Thanks all for the input.

Nope, the Linuxant driver upgrade did zip. Back to looking at my kernel config!

I guess I'm just trying to educate myself a little about the process of compiling a kernel that best matches my hardware. I see that Linuxant have released version 2.05 of their driver today, so I'll try that first. Thanks for the input. Anthony

Thanks for the suggestion...no joy with it, unfortunately. Anything else I should be looking at? Anthony

Hi, I can get to those...an example site that I have problems with is http://www.majorgeeks.com It loads fine when running 2.6.7 but is extremely slow under 2.6.8.1 - it does appear *eventually* but something is clearly not right. Some time ago I added the following lines to /etc/modprobe.conf alias net-pf-10 off alias ipv6 off which was supposed to fix the ipv6 DNS address resolution issue (and did seem to for 2.6.7). I've tried remming out these lines and booting 2.6.8.1 again but it made no difference. I can't see this as anything other than a config issue but I've reached the limit of my linux knowledge (converted a couple of months ago so still very new to this stuff). Cheers, Anthony

Hi, I'm running FC2 and using a Belkin 54g wireless card/router connected to my cable modem (NTL). I use the Linuxant Driverloader software (latest version) to load Windows drivers for my wireless card. Under Kernel 2.6.7 and earlier, everything is fine. However, under 2.6.8.1 and above (both kerbel packages from kernel.org and the vanilla FC2 kernel rpm) I have problems accessing *some* and only *some* websites. The issue appears as very, very slow loading. When I boot back to a 2.6.7 kernel the issue disappears; it also disappears when I boot into WinXP. The issue is entirely reproducable and affects the same websites each time. I'm guessing it's a kernel configuration issue, but having stepped through the config options I can't find the one that's causing me a problem... Any ideas? It's driving me nuts... :-) Anthony

Guys, Excellent. Thanks again for the help; just what I needed to know! Cheers, Anthony

Excellent, thank you for that. My programming experience is limited to BASIC, Fortran and Pascal and I'd never come across this before. I did use -O3 to compile xmms - just for fun and to see the results! I don't have the enivronment variables you mention (ie they don't show in an 'env | sort' either as a user or root). Is that default behaviour for FC2? Thanks to all for the assistance. Anthony [Edited by anthonyi on 2004-07-30 11:39:38]

Thanks martouf. 'strip xmms' did the trick...although I'm not quite sure what 'strip' does, even after reading the man page? Should 'strip' be applied to all executables that I compile on my machine?

Hmmm...I don't seem to have a /etc/make.conf file and a quick look didn't turn one up elsewhere. So either I'm missing one that I should have, the make config is handled elsewhere or I'm just looking in the wrong place. Would a fellow FC2 user be able to point the way? Thanks!