I had hoped to be creating a Gentoo Linux Installed From Source!! 8-) thread, but unfortunately I'm having problems early on that the installation manual doesn't seem to cover... Yves' constant trolling has inspired me to install Gentoo.

I've read through the x86 Gentoo Handbook (actually I haven't finished reading through the Working With Portage/Gentoo Network Configuration sections yet, but I figured I would get more out of them from a working system so I decided to install Gentoo first (besides, I'm on a DHCP enabled LAN so it's not all that difficult to get myself connected).

Anyway, I booted the gentoo kernel from the x86 Installation CD with the hdx=stroke option (which is supposed to allow Gentoo to see large hard drives even with BIOS' that don't support them (although this system is only a few years old so I'd be surprised if the BIOS doesn't support large hard drives anyway... ).

boot: gentoo hdx=stroke

Upon realizing that fdisk wasn't happy I booted back into Windows, decided to try again, and upon reading the actual Gentoo CD's output gathered that I actually had to specify which drive to configure...

boot: gentoo sdb=stroke

Unfortunately, things still aren't going according to plan. The Gentoo Handbook uses fdisk to partition the drive, but fdisk is convinced that my SATA hard drive is only 8-10 GB...

# fdisk /dev/sdb
Command (m for help): p
(output of partition table - wrong drive size and it didn't seem to understand the
partition table Fedora had created)

In reality, the hard drive is actually rated as 250 GB. I got the impression that fdisk isn't intended for partitioning large drives and that parted is an alternative utility. Unfortunately, upon entering parted...

# parted /dev/sdb

...I get a message that my hard drive uses a sector size of 2048 (which fdisk agreed about), but that parted's support for 2048 byte sectors was HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL...

So where should I go from here? Does anybody know why fdisk doesn't recognize the partition table, why it shows the wrong hard drive capacity, and what the correct way to accomplish this is?

As I mentioned earlier, the hard drive is a SATA drive and for the record there is allegedly a RAID controller (though I don't use it - the primary drive is my Windows system and the slave drive has been my Linux system).

Assuming I can figure this out, I'm planning to put /boot and / in separate primary partitions with /home, /opt, /usr, and /var in separate partitions of an LVM. There will also be a swap partition.

/dev/sdb1    /boot                100 MB
/dev/sdb2    /                    20 GB
/dev/sdb3    LOGICALVOLUME001     180 GB
/dev/sdb4    swap                 2 GB

LOGICALVOLUME001
    /home                         100 GB
    /opt                          20 GB
    /usr                          40 GB
    /var                          20 GB

...:D???

Watch out for Yves.

Is your SATA drive empty so that you can format it? Try booting without the hdx=stroke option. As far as I know, the latest driver treats both ATA and SATA disks as if it were the same (that is why Ubuntu does not have hd* anymore, only sd*), and the default fdisk should be able to handle > 300gb disks (I have a 300gb ATA which was fdisk'ed without problem).

you did the right thing

Originally, no. It had a Fedora installation on it. While troubleshooting I deleted the partition table using fdisk so as far as the partition table and fdisk are concerned the drive should be empty.

The first time I booted the installation CD I forgot about the hdx=stroke option and just booted the default gentoo kernel without options. That's when I first noticed fdisk's inaccuracies. Tomorrow I will try again, however.

Does anybody know if the format of the kernel option is correct? Should it be hdx=stroke, hdb=stroke, or sdb=stroke?

Thanks. Don't you use Gentoo? I was kinda expecting you to have the answers (among others)...

Yves is an analyst. He gives opinions of things he has never tried

cfdisk is the user friendly version of fdisk. My opinion is that fdisk is trying to read the partition table instead of loading it "empty" (since you have already deleted it). Supposedly, if you have deleted the partition the disk can be formatted. If the disk has Windows in it, just try to build a partition and format it to FAT32 from Windows, to see if Gentoo can recognize it.

By the way, which version fdisk and parted are, and what they are reporting?

(Edited: If Windows can see the full disk, you don't need to supply the stroke parameter. And I think it is only for IDE disks. Theoretically, you should use sdb=stroke (or sda if it is your primary disk), but it may not work. Try checking dmesg after booting to see if the option was rejected by the boot loader.)

That is never the right thing.

I probably should have mentioned that after deleting the partition table fdisk accepts that the partition table is empty (on the slave drive - /dev/sdb). However, it still thinks the drive is only 8-10 GB. Sadly, I have to work in the morning so any more troubleshooting will have to wait until tomorrow...

I'm not sure (though I will check tomorrow). Whatever version is on the Gentoo x86 Installation CD.

If Windows can see the full disk, you don't need to supply the stroke parameter. And I think it is only for IDE disks. Theoretically, you should use sdb=stroke (or sda if it is your primary disk), but it may not work. Try checking dmesg after booting to see if the option was rejected by the boot loader.

If stroke did work with sdb, then I stand corrected.

For most of the time, systems and users, it is the right thing.

Some comments on your partitioning plans:

/boot 100MB: OK but you can do with much less. My 100M partition has around 20 different kernels on it because I haven't bothered to clean it up during the last 3 years or so

/ 20GB: That's quite a bit. My entire / without /home and /usr/portage takes 8GB with a whole lot of stuff installed. Of course I don't have lots of latest games installed.
swap 2GB: I'd put swap right after /boot as drive is faster at the beginning. Also 2GB seems like an awful overkill if you have 1GB+ of RAM. I'd go with 0.5-1GB max.

/home 100 GB: Ok, but I like to have my data on somewhere else by home directory. Something like /mmt/data
/opt 20GB: you could probably get by with much less. Even 5GB would be overkill
/usr 40GB: it'll be hard to fill even half of that.
/var 20GB: unless you have huge databases and web pages stored on your PC you can get by with much less. Though compiling OOo will take around 6GB of free space in that dir (/var/tmp to be exact)

I'd go with something like that:
/boot 30M
swap 1G
logical volume of the rest of the disk
/ 15G just in case
smallstuff: contains /tmp, /usr/portage, /var/tmp and /var/db (portage cache) with symlinks or bind-mounted to their correct places. Those dirs contain lots of tiny files that are often changing. Separating them from the rest of the system will help avoid disk fragmenting. Around 10-15GB should be enough for pretty much everything and you won't have to clean downloaded portage files too often.
/var depending on how bit DB's you have but a couple of gigs should be enough
/home 10G is enough for holding smalls stuff
With the resti I'd create a data partition to hold all sorts of big stuff like music, home videos and others.

Another thing you might want to do is to create a partition of few gigs in size as a backup OS in case you screw up your original install. For basic KDE/Gnome install 2-3GB is enough and you don't need to have it in pieces as the main install. Just enough to be able to boot into a GUI environment in order to fix things when they get broken.

Hehe. I was kinda looking forward to what Yves's response to this thread was

I'd like to try Gentoo someday, but I find myself running out of computers to put various linuxes on.

Unfortunately, my iPod was corrupted (allegedly from the BIOS attempting to boot from it) so I have to restore it to factory defaults and resync it with my library (I'll take Microsoft over Apple any day)... That's gonna take most of the night to do so this will probably have to wait until tomorrow.

@ReyBrujo: I will try after. I appreciate the help.

@HoHo: Thanks for the advice. I will come back to this if I ever manage to partition my hard drive. Mostly though, I'm not too worried about the dimensions of my LVM2 partitions because in theory they are resizeable. We'll see whether or not I can even get LVM2 working when the time comes.

bamccaig, to be honest, although your threads were kinda silly at times, i had some respect for you as you did show to have a higher testosterone level than most of these numb nuts, but now that you're installing gentoo.....god....i just hope you don't start compiling gentoo over irc and camping outside stores for 20+ hours:-/

So bamccaig, how many times has your iPod been corrupted? It's at least twice by my count.

I feel your pain somewhat. My mp3 player got corrupted when I tried to use it from Linux. (I've since managed to use it in linux with no problems)

When you get booted up, post your:

lspci -v

I had weird problems with my SATA drive under Linux when I first got it. My BIOS and motherboard suck for the SATA controller. I had to set the SATA controller to RAID for it to recognize the second drive. I have two SATA drives, one for windows and my large one for Linux. The large drive is 500GB and I never had to run any hda=stroke or sda=stroke for fdisk to see my drive correctly. I think this has something to do with the kernel using the wrong module for your SATA controller. Also, please post:

lsmod

I will try to help you get the correct module loaded for your SATA drive.::) It has been hit or miss for me with the different distros on this computer. Fedora Core 5 did not work at all...the kernel simply panicked at boot! Fedora Core 6 and later worked fine. I also noticed that on this computer, I have to exit KDE to run OpenGL programs without stutter. I have to run X without KDE. I have made a few scripts to run the programs I am wanting to, but it is annoying that this does not work correctly. This motherboard does not really follow the standards too well.>:( Also, I do not recall if you mentioned it or not, but is the windows drive a SATA drive as well? Also, please post the EXACT message that fdisk gives you, such as:

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 60801.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

I will be working for most of the day tomorrow, but I will check this later. Feel free to PM me, as I have installed Gentoo several times on this computer and my lappy:P

[Off Topic]
I know with windows vista, you have to download an update so that windows does not corrupt the iPOD if you use the remove hardware option. I don't know if this applies to other versions of windows.
What versions of Linux have people tried their iPODs with here? And to what luck/success?

I have a 250GB SATA drive as well, for me everything worked out of the box (in Linux that is, Windows XP doesn't even see the SATA drives, which is fine by me). Not sure how that's going to be helpful though.

Yikes! I'm quite happy with the stability and upgradability of my system, though compile times annoy me somewhat. I've also had package upgrades break other packages a few times too often (over summer) but overall the annoyances are not worth reinstalling a whole new system. However, if I had to install a new Linux system, I would probably not install Gentoo.

I don't own an iPod, but my mother does. She uses it with SuSe Linux 9.3 and gtkpod without any problems.

It was only 14 hours, and considering I got a 22" widescreen LCD, a 17" widescreen LCD (gift), cheap desktop computer (maybe I'll put gentoo on it. ), laptop (gift), a couple external 500GB hard drives, two free printers for $700 (after earning $100 by getting someone for someone else), I'd say I didn't make out too bad.

ALL that for $700? Wow!

Awesome. When I get home I will reply to your questions.

Out of curiosity, what do you guys think of buying an Everex gPC for $200-300 and installing a real Linux distribution on it (if Gentoo goes well I was thinking Gentoo) and using it as a GUI-less dedicated server (mostly for myself)? I'd like to develop a personal Web site and register a domain name, etc.

I've tried several versions of Linux, but I always seem to go back to Gentoo. You can just customize so much stuff with Gentoo. Post those items and I will try to help you when I get home.;D

It'll take the everex a looong time to compile stuff, but if its cpu is "quirky" enough (like the Via C3-II aka Nemiah) it can make a huge difference if the right opts are used. Otherwise, save the time and go with an i686 distro.

The only thing that really took a long time to compile on my machine was open office...I didn't think that package would EVER get done! But the nice thing about Gentoo is you can opt to use binary packages as well, and all the tools that are needed to compile most packages are already on your system. You can tell emerge to make bin packages so it is easier, and faster, to clone your Gentoo system onto another box.;)

If you really get into Gentoo, I would recommend using paludis. It takes some getting used to, but it is much faster than portage. It can also separate the config files out to make it easier on you. Check out the features section on it.8-)

I just tried fdisk again and it is now able to see all 250.0 GB of the drive!!! The only major differences between now and the other day is that the partition table was empty on boot, and I booted with the dolvm2 kernel option (although since the partition table is empty this shouldn't have really mattered this time - though it might have last time).

boot: gentoo sdb=stroke dolvm2

Anyway... Yayz! On with the installation...

Thanks everybody for the assistance. Hopefully my next Gentoo thread is more positive. For now I'm going to hold off with the cookies until I've gotten the partition table successfully created.

Cool beans!;D Just keep us posted:D

Off topic:
It would be great if there was a menu bar at the bottom of the page as well.
The same as the one in the top right corner, with the login, search, etc options. Just a thought...::) Well, there is, but I do not see a login option on the bottom...:'(

have fun compiling gentoo for the next couple of days, soon you'll be hanging outside stores and boring movie theaters for 20+ hours.

I just spend time with my GF while stuff compiles
Though I'm afraid she is taking over, I haven't actually updated my install in weeks

it's ok, emerge -uD world only takes about a week to finish and is a complete waste of time.

I have a PlayStation 3 to play while stuff compiles.

I don't know if I'd be willing to camp outside a store for hours... I hate shopping. I suppose if it was the only way I could afford something that I really wanted I might do it, but otherwise I'd probably just wait.

There really is no point in waiting outside stores like that anyway...I would probably shank someone if I waited that long and they ran out because they only stocked 3 or 4 of the item on sale!::)

Smart people read the advertisement and compare the minimum guaranteed amount of items to their position in line.

"smart people"'s time is worth money

As far as time being worth money, I feel I got my money's worth out of my time. I saved $772 on the stuff I had to camp out for, not to mention the additional savings on buying stuff that I would have paid full price for. Also, I earned $70, so strictly benefits from the 14 hours I was there, I got $842, which equates to $60.14/hour. Considering I did it for fun and the savings were a side effect, and that I wouldn't have been earning money during that time otherwise, I'd say those 14 hours were worth $60.14/hour.

case closed.

lesson learned, gentoo is for people with too much time on their hands

Geeze, if that's the case, you must be very very stupid.

and the irc gentoo duo strikes again8-)

bamccaig, this thread turned out exactly as you wanted;)

Wow, you really are stupid.

aren't we emo today:'(

it's ok, gentoo will finish compiling on your pc as well one day

Yup, I was right.

FYI, emo is about "Woe is me".

Well, it takes <24h to make a complete reinstall so I kind of doubt it. Even P1@266MHz was capable of getting KDE desktop working from scrach in less than a week

My guess would be he is just jealous

My mobo doesn't seem to recharge the CMOS battery, so when I power down I have to fiddle with CMOS settings. If I forget to disable the SATA option then Windows XP yammers about installing device drivers. I only have IDE drives.

No, he's just Yves.

I guess there will be a lot more Gentoo users out there soon after the sub-$300 laptop relese

Without any kind of ball-and-chain plan the laptop costs $475 which is quite a lot considering the low-spec hardware.

yeah, it's going to be a failure, most people don't want to wait around for hours for their computer to finish compiling an application. Great business model.

Good job yves, of course you don't know this, or care to know, but gentoo supports binary packages as well.

People will wait for hours for Windows to install apps, but won't wait for it to compile?

I realized how agonizingly slow some stuff is on Windows now that I'm running OSX on a cheap spare box. OSX on this 1.6ghz Celeron with a gig of ram feels a lot faster than a fresh Windows install on my Athlon64 3200+ with a gig of ram. The whole freaking OS installed in about 12 minutes. XCode, which takes a couple gigs of space (more than Visual Studio IIRC) installed in about 5-10 minutes, whereas Visual Studio took close to an hour on my fresh XP install. Go figure.

It is as I have already said.:D
There are a lot of programs on windoze that takes forever to install. Another thing that is so LOVELY about windows...the I/O code is not optimized. It will never be as fast as the same program (if it where possible) compiled on my computer under Linux.::)

I haven't noticed any "slowness" about Winduhs file access speed, but I have noticed some really stupid ways of going about file access.

For instance, on a Winduhs install onto a freshly fdisk'ed hard drive, why does it take 10-15 seconds to "check for available disk space"? The damned thing's EMPTY!

And I've tried to install the 2008 Express C++ and VBasic stuff, only to find out I've downloaded multimegabyte installer programs that need to access the web to get the actual programs. Or are they "check to make sure it's not a pirated copy of Winduhs" programs? I copied Media Player 9 installer to CD, brought it home, it said it had to access the Web to make sure I had a valid copy of Winduhs, when it couldn't do it (because I'm NOT ON THE INTERNET) it tried to access the Internet AGAIN to find out what the problem was! I'd better shut up now...

VS Express has do download... what it tells you it's downloading. You can download an iso of the whole VS Express suite and install w/o internet access.

What I mean by non optimized I/O code...Try the same file copy in Windoze and Linux. Nuf said. CD drive access speed is one such area that is not optimized under Windoze. You get that nice long CD/DVD drive spin up that takes for every to spin back down, and even then it acts retarded with looking at or copying files. I can look at and copy files from my DVD drive ALOT faster in Linux than on Windoze, with ALOT less spin up from the drive. Not to mention Windoze fabulous memory handling...it is a fucking joke!::) One thing I have always hated on Windoze...those stupid fucking games that do that CD check>:(...You know the ones. They spin the disk up and down like thirty times before realizing it is indeed the correct cd! I want these bastards to buy me a replacement DVD drive! That shit is totally uncalled for.>:(

Or maybe you could get a working CD drive so the program doesn't have to retry so many times to pass the CD check? (I speak from experience.)

Well one, I don't get any of the issues you speak of when copying files or dealing with DVD/CD access. Second, what's wrong with memory handling? Third, no-cd patches are the fix to that. And do you really think those games will wear out your drive that much faster?

I know this...also from experience.8-) My point is why should we be subjected to this crap?!?;)

Are you speaking of experience and have actually measured the time it takes each system?;)

Are you serious?:o

Exactly! So why in the hell do we have to be subjected with this shit!::)

Granted, Windoze has come a long way with it's memory handling, but not it is still no near as good as Linux. And no real access control to speak of...even under Vista's new system. I do like the new approach, but there is still much to be done. I am not saying I totally hate Windows...I just know that it could be so much better. I am all for combining the best of both worlds...Windows for games and hardware support and Linux for everything else. Both systems have major selling points and weaknesses. I would really like to see vendors making more open source drivers. If not that, then at least everyone should support the standard for accessing their hardware.;)

No, but if the difference is too small to be casually noticed, I wouldn't worry about it.

I would blame that on the game maker, not on Microsoft.

Yes I'm serious. I doubt you will ever see the end of your drive before you move on to something better.

Note that I am NOT blaming Microsoft.;) I AM pissed at these game companies for this crap.>:(

You DO have a valid point...::)
WE might upgrade to something new and better, but there are some people that can't afford to upgrade every year or so.::) I do believe that this could cause premature wear on the drive, yes. Any time you are using it, especially intentionally reading invalid sectors, you are wearing out the drive.

With hard drives as huge as they are...the only reason we should HAVE to have the CD/DVD is to install the damn program/game! It doesn't stop the cheaters or people that are determined to have a "free" copy.:-/ I also hate when you read the license agreement that states you can make one backup copy for archive purposes...and then the drive can't read the disk to make this backup because they intentionally write bad sectors!:o>:(

On a side note:
What is the requirements to get the free student copy of Vista? I had Vista on my lappy, but I gave it to a friend as a gift. I am currently taking classes online at the University of Phoenix...just wonder if I can get a copy. I actually just need the unlock key, as I still have the DVD install disk, home basic I believe it was.::)

Yeah but I doubt the drive will fail in anywhere close to a year from that, even if done every day.

Also note that the only thing their copy protection does is make it more difficult for legit users. The crackers and pirates will find their own way around it anyway.

You have to get a license from your university, and they have to be enrolled in MSDNAA. You should be able to get a copy, unless your university doesn't offer it or doesn't offer it to online only students. My community college offers Vista Business or something like that under MSDNAA.

I am continuing with the installation process. We'll see how far I can get tonight. Thus far, I seemingly have created the partition table (including LVM), created filesystems on each partition and enabled swap, and have mounted each partition... Just figured I would post an update. Since the partition table appears to be complete I would like to assign cookies now, but I'm afraid of having difficulties doing so (for multiple members) from links so I'll wait until I'm in a graphical browser again.

** EDIT **

@Don Freeman: No, it doesn't stop dedicated crackers, etc., but it does deter Joe Blow off the street from doing it. That's really what any anti-piracy software is for - it prevents average users and n00bs from exploiting software - it's difficult or impossible to prevent dedicated crackers and hackers from getting to intellectual property, but there is definitely advantages to slowing them down and/or preventing average users from doing the same.

No, that's not what the anti-piracy software is for, or else they wouldn't keep making it more and more intrusive. At this point, about all it is good for is deterring legitimate users from using the software.

Just check your PM and let us know if you need any help.::)

bamcaig, congratulations on still not having a working linux desktop, go gentoo:D

I do not see why le_y_mistar should have been given credit.:o All (s)he has done is complain and whine about using Gentoo.:-/ I may start to get a complex about helping for cookies.:'( No, seriously...I don't care if I get credit for helping out...I would still help regardless if I knew something about the topic.::) Keep us posted about your progress.:D

Starts Gentoo...hacked into le_y_mistar's box...found all his gay porn.::);D8-)

I gave him credit because I think he's funny. He gets under people's skin when in reality they should know him by now and just ignore it. His trolling is also why I got interested in Gentoo in the first place.

Yeah, about that...

Now that is irony.

What was the saying? "Any publicity is good publicity"