Gentoo Works, Yay!

Hey guys, sorry about not posting in a day or two. I’ve been really busy with school. Here’s what happened since my last post though.

I reinstalled Kubuntu since my last post. I used the “expert mode” during the install. I love Kubuntu but that was the worst “Expert mode” I have ever seen. You get all of three choices that aren’t really offered in the regular install mode. So if you think using the Kubuntu Expert Install mode… don’t do it. The regular install mode in Slackware offers twice as many options. The Gentoo install of course offers so many options upon install that it could possibly make a non-guru (or at least guru-wanabes) sick to their stomach.

After using the expert install mode in Kubuntu I did something wrong. What? I have no clue. I didn’t select any options to screw it up, but something happened. Perhaps the expert install does things for you that I was not aware of, either way the install didn’t work. For one thing I could not get root privileges period. I couldn’t “su -”, I couldn’t use “sudo”, I couldn’t log in as root graphically, I don’t what I was supposed to do but I didn’t know what it was. So needless to say, but the title of this post, I dumped Kubuntu. Still a great distro for beginners, but please use the regular install method.

Of course, I then went back to Gentoo. I’ve been accused of being addicted to my Gentoo, but I don’t know about that. Every time I install Gentoo I learn something new, and find something I didn’t do the first time that I should of done. So this time I did a lot of steps I missed the first two or three time I’ve done this. For example I didn’t “emerge metadata” the first two or three times. Which I don’t think made a big difference, but I’m sure its better that you do it like instructed by the handbook. So this time everything went smoothly up until the emerge of gnome. I keep getting a compile error every time I do it and I don’t know why. I saw a post on the Gentoo Forums were some guys had the problem and they re-emerged a library package, but that didn’t help me any. So tired of fooling with Gnome I emerged KDE. KDE unpacked and compiled and then installed without any visible hitches. I still can’t figure out what is wrong with my nVidia drivers. They still don’t work. It tells me the module failed to load and then it gives me a no screen error because there are no usable configurations in my xorg.conf file. Which is understandable, the second error I mean, because if all your configurations use the nVidia driver and the nVidia driver doesn’t work then of course none of your configurations are going to work. So for now I’m using the “vesa” driver till I figure this one out. In the mean time I’ve encountered another error I’ve never seen before. For some reason emerge keeps dropping out with a fatal error because it claims there’s not enough space left on device. I think this just means the cache is full and it doesn’t have any more room. The problem is I don’t know how to clear the cache. So I’m off to the forums to investigate.

As usual, even if I don’t, Enjoy the Penguins!

Gentoo Works! … but then I broke it.

I finally got to boot into a GUI last night. Something is wrong with my nVidia module and/or driver. What, I don’t know, but something is broke. The only way I could get it to boot into GNOME was to change my driver from

nvidia

to

vesa

So, yeah I don’t know what’s wrong. I saw on the official Gentoo HowTo pages about the nVidia module that if you run a certain command you should get a certain response. Well I ran that command and I didn’t get said reopens, so now I’m off trying to fix it so I will get that reposing. Who ever would of guessed life could be so hard? Not I.

So after I got it to work, I set up a bunch of things the way I like it, then I broke it. I’m not sure what I did but I’m currently using the Gentoo LiveRun CD to change all my .conf files back to the way they were before I broke it. Something I was playing with in Gnome rewrote some of my files like:

• grub.conf
• rc.conf

I don’t know why, but those are the only two files so far that I have found. I’ll let you know how it goes after I finish this and my Shakespeare homework. Enjoy the penguins!

Oh Gentoo why do you do me the way you do!

I complain a lot on here about Gentoo, but the truth of it is, its all my fault . I really mean that. Its my own fault none of this works, I have no idea what’s going on, and sadly the only way to learn is to sit here and try to figure it out for myself, much like my math homework!

Anyone for all the wonders of Gentoo’s documentation (their claim is that their the best documented Linux distribution) they somehow failed to mention that after you finish and install and setup Xorg and such that you should use emerge to update your computer! I know, why did this occur to me and not a master programmer from the Gentoo Foundation the world will never know, but I did. So anyway, I’m in the process of doing exactly that and turns out I had at least 60 outdated packages. So I now I have a good feeling, and maybe even a little hope, that this will fix my xorg problem with nothing but a blank screen. I’ve made it this far with Gentoo I don’t want to give up now. I’m so close to getting everything just the way I want it, its almost scary!

Well no matter what happens to my custom rig guys, Enjoy the Penguins!

Gentoo Continues to frustrate

Ah, the pain of a Gentoo installation. This makes either the third or fourth attempt at an installation of Gentoo, I can’t honestly remember now. Either way I’ve never seen a single icon, or picture, or even a internet site outside of the command line interface Linux is so famous for. I just want to see GNOME or KDE once on my Gentoo install, and as of now I can’t get to either. The Gentoo Forums have been helpful though, there are a lot of knowledgeable people though. As far as the progress of current install goes, I’ve Xorg installed, Gnome installed, and my nVidia drivers installed. But all of that means nothing if X won’t boot up Gnome using my nVidia drivers. So that’s where I’m at now, trying to get everything to run together. Grub is doing great at the moment. No problems out of it right now. My XFS file system is doing good too. The only problem with XFS that I have encountered is that if you ever have to do a hard reset of you computer (where you push the power button on the case as opposed to typing shutdown -h now at the command line) it’ll ruin your whole file system, so be warned if you decided to use XFS. Other than that I have everything pretty much set up the way I like it. My make.conf, rc.conf, etc., are all setup nicely and streamlined to look like I think they should at this point. I’ll let you know if you something bad happens there. Until next time, Enjoy the Penguins!

Gentoo Update

I’ve now moved back into school here at Marshall University and I can’t get Gentoo to work. How so? Well I can’t get the Gentoo LiveRun CD to properly configure my internet. Which is very odd to me. I assume as far as the internet goes, almost all distributions have pretty much the same scripts as to how to detect and set it up. I say this because my Knoppix LiveRun CD sets up the internet perfectly. I can’t figure out why one distribution would do it and the other one won’t. I have had one suggestion that maybe Gentoo is using the wrong drivers for my Ethernet card, but I’m not so sure that’s the correct answer. I don’t know how to figure out which driver either distribution is using though. I’ve run the commands

/sbin/ifconfig

and

ping -c 3 www.yahoo.com

These two return very reasonable answers using Knoppix, but just return gibberish and errors with Gentoo, so right now I’m posting on LinuxQuestions.org in order to help find a solution. If your reading this and have one, I’d be more than happy to hear it. Post if you’d like, and in the mean time, Enjoy the Penguins!

Back to Gentoo for another round

I’ve cleared my system. The only thing left on the harddrive is a half installed version of Gentoo. For some reason the Gentoo install won’t configure my Ethernet card automatically here at school, even though it did at home. My live CD of Knoppix still does so I’m sort of at an impasse. I don’t know how to finish the Gentoo installation without the internet, and I don’t know if I can get through this final step which involves the internet without it. I thought maybe I could use the Knoppix live CD to get through it, but I’m sure if that’s possible. I’m going to register on the Gentoo forum probably and try and get some answers there. I have a lot of questions. LinuxQuestions.org is great but there is no forum just for Gentoo Linux, which really blows, so when I post a Gentoo question there, I’m left wondering if any Gentoo readers will see it or if I’ll just receive answers from people guessing assuming all Linux distros are similar. The guesses are better than nothing, and a lot of time the guesses are even correct in their assumptions, but I won’t a Gentoo Linux users opinion this time. No offence to the rest of the Linux world.

One by one, and then all over again

I’ve spent the past day since my last post continuing to make Ubuntu look and feel the way I like it too. I’ve since figured out how to get my trash icon up on the desktop, found a new splash screen for Gnome to load with, and found a new window border for my theme that resembles Apple’s but still keeps that Linux feel to it.

Why the “all over again” in the title then? Then weekend I’ve decided to turn my computer into a dual boot machine. My 80G hard drive is about to hold two operating systems. Naturally both will be different flavors of Linux. I’m going to keep my Ubuntu Linux on the first half, and start Gentoo on the second half. If you read this site regularly then you know I decided to give up on Gentoo for awhile while I learned more about how Linux works and such. Well after I said that the idea of dual booting came to me. If I dual boot then I can have both at the same time and not worry about it. The only problem is I’ve never dual booted a computer before, so I’m not very sure how to do it. This is of course going to take a lot of research but I’m very excited about the idea.

That’s all the exciting news for now, comment if you wish, and enjoy the penguins!

Ubuntu is slowly coming together

Since I’ve last posted I’ve moved back into my college dorm. A pain in the butt, but none the less something I have to do. By the way, I’m not a computer science major if you were wondering. Odds are you could tell I wasn’t by reading this bloc. Because Ubuntu is very easy on the user, it basically does just about everything it can for you while still allowing the user to go back in and adjust it manually if he wants, I’ve spent the past several days configuring her to be just the way I like her. In all honesty I downloaded and installed Kubuntu, but I’ve since grown tired of KDE and I’ve downloaded and installed Gnome. Since the switch my startup screen now says Ubuntu, though the loading screen as my computer boots still says Kubuntu… I think she’s confused. It took me an hour or two, but I think I have my Nvidia graphics card configured properly, or as close as I know how to get it. I get the Nvidia logo screen on boot up now. The most common thing I see about Nvidia on Linux forums is the how to remove that screen on boot up, but I enjoy seeing it there personally. I like being reminded of the power under the hood so to speak. Other than that I’ve figured out how to download and install themes for Gnome. I like Gnome, but its default theme is ugly. I think most people will agree with me to some extent on that. Which probably explains the vast amount of themes out there for Gnome. I might post a screen shot one day, especially if someone requests it. Other than that, I think that is all for today. After all I do have some homework to do! Enjoy the Penguins!

I have given up on Gentoo

Well sadly, Gentoo Linux is beyond my level. I cannot get it work on my setup at all. I have not given up on it totally yet though. Its still a great OS I think, its just to much for me right now. Kubuntu is easy to setup and use, so I’m going back to it while I learn more about Linux, and when I feel like I’m ready, I’ll go back to Gentoo and try again. So I still strongly recommend Gentoo to anyone who is Linux-savvy enough to use it. I am not quite that savvy. Cheers to Kubuntu though for keeping it easy for those out there who aren’t educated enough in the ways of Linux to do it ourselves. Enjoy guys! I know I’m going too!

Installing Gentoo: Part 2

Well, to get us started, I have bad news and good news. First the good news, I finally got a version of Linux to successfully installed on my computer. In my case Gentoo Linux has completed its task and installed on my computer. The bad news is I gave up the 30G hard drive and stuck with just the 80G. Along with that, after finishing the install and then installing Xorg, I began to install the Nvidia drivers for my video card. Well apparently I’ve compiled my custom kernel wrong and now I can’t load the Nvidia driver module into the kernel. This is something I was not aware of doing when I compiled the kernel the first time.

After I removed the 30G hard drive and reinstalled Gentoo I opted for the optional LILO boot loader as opposed to the default GRUB boot loader. Switching boot loaders isn’t “bad news,” for me I personally like the LILO loader better anyway. LILO is very simple, and supposedly very powerful, like most things though its only powerful in the right hands. For me it works, and that’s all that matters. I might try to install the second hard drive, the 30G one, later after I finally get the Nvidia drivers installed.

Now after trying to install Kubuntu twice, both times unsuccessfully, and trying to install Gentoo twice, with it only working the second time and at that only after giving up a hard drive an switching boot loaders. So now I’m off to learn how to recompile a kernel, and then after that, I’m going to have to reload all of my drivers for my Nvidia 6200 graphics card. Am I frustrated? Of course, but this is part of computers. This is the kind of problem that computer enthusiasts love because every problem leads them down a new road of discovery in which their knowledge of computers can only be enhanced. So I’m actually looking forward to it. So enjoy guys, I’m off to research kernels!