Gentoo help.....Bootloader

[Crusty]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
It doesn't guarantee learning, infact all it shows is that the person can read and follow directions.

It tought me how to compile my own kernel and choose what I want built in and what I wanted as modules, so I did learn something.

 

[Nothinman]

It tought me how to compile my own kernel and choose what I want built in and what I wanted as modules, so I did learn something.

I never said you didn't learn anything, and no offense but there are tons of docs on doing that because it's possible with any distro, the real question is: did it tell you what any of the options meant? Being able to go through 'make menuconfig' is one thing, but knowing what "Packet socket" means and that it's required for the dhcp client are totally different.

Personally I only compile my own kernel if I need to, most distro supplied kernels are fine because everything is built as a module and loaded on demand anyway.

 

[CTho9305]

People who say they're saving bandwidth are missing something. Firebird binary package: <10mb. Firebird source? 197MB. Then while you're compiling, you need another 300. I could save TWENTY binary firebirds for one source.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
It doesn't guarantee learning, infact all it shows is that the person can read and follow directions.

You'd be suprised. How much of what you do, you figured out from scratch? You don't use any reference books or read any howto's? Didn't learn anything from that?

From going from a operating system were all you do is click on a icon and it works, and if it doesn't there isn't usually anything you can do other then reinstall/reboot. Then going to a point were you can compile your own kernel and use fdisk to intellegently partition your harddrive.

You learn terms, and what you can and can't do from the command line. You learn about tar and what source code is. You learn about gcc and bash and all sorts of other stuff that a normal long time Linux user takes for granted.

 

[Crusty]

Allright, I got Lilo to work for my dual boot. Except one problem...Linux wont boot. This is what it tells me...

boot

I think it might have to do with my SCSI drives. The kernel doesn't show anything about them being detected while the distro's did. I made sure that I compiled the drivers into the kernel, using the AIC7xxx drivers because my SCSI controller is the Adaptec AIC-7899. Should I have made it as a module and loaded it at boot time?

 

[drag]

If you compiled it as a module you would have to have some way to load the module before being able to read the data off of the disk. But if you compiled it into the kernel you don't have to worry about that.

My first guess is that you just pointed the boot loader to the wrong partition. That error means that it can't find the root stuff on what it thinks is the root partition and can't continue.

You were able to boot from lilo into linux before right?

Actually now that I look at your fstab file.

/dev/sdb1 / ext3 noatime 0 0

It looks like you should have it
root=/dev/sdb1

IS that right???

So if you coppied my version of your lilo config it would of been wrong.
(I warned ya I was out of it.)

I also think that you can get rid of the root=/dev/* part in the append="" entry. I believe that it only needs to be declared once.

What is the root= pointed at right now?

 

[Crusty]

Originally posted by: drag
If you compiled it as a module you would have to have some way to load the module before being able to read the data off of the disk. But if you compiled it into the kernel you don't have to worry about that.

My first guess is that you just pointed the boot loader to the wrong partition. That error means that it can't find the root stuff on what it thinks is the root partition and can't continue.

You were able to boot from lilo into linux before right?

Actually now that I look at your fstab file.

/dev/sdb1 / ext3 noatime 0 0

It looks like you should have it
root=/dev/sdb1

IS that right???

So if you coppied my version of your lilo config it would of been wrong.
(I warned ya I was out of it.)

I also think that you can get rid of the root=/dev/* part in the append="" entry. I believe that it only needs to be declared once.

What is the root= pointed at right now?

I just redid my partitions in an effort to make lilo work sooo...here goes.

/dev/sda1 = WinXP
/dev/sda2 / ext3 noatime 0 0 *linux boot*
/dev/sdb2 /boot reiserfs noauto,noatime,notail 1 1


in my lilo.conf file
root = /dev/sdb2 (I believe, im gonna boot using the cd and reprint those files check back in a few with an update)

 

[Crusty]

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
# $Header: /home/cvsroot/gentoo-src/rc-scripts/etc/fstab,v 1.13 2003/07/17 19:55:18 azarah Exp $
# <fs> <mountpoint> <type> <opts> <dump/pass>

/dev/sda2 /boot ext3 noauto 1 1
/dev/sdb2 / reiserfs noatime,notail 0 0
/dev/sdb1 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/cdroms/cdrom0 /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,ro 0 0

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0


#lilo.conf
lba32
boot = /dev/sda
map = /boot/.map
install = /boot/boot-menu.b
menu-scheme=Wb
prompt
timeout=150
delay = 50
#vga = normal (this is commented because the graphics were giving me grief, and you cant go wrong with text mode!)


#Linux part
image = /boot/bzImage
root = /dev/sdb2
read-only
#append "root=/dev/sdb2 init=/linuxrc" (this is commented because when I would run /sbin/lilo to update my MBR it was complaining about this line.....)
label = Gentoo

# Windows part
other=/dev/sda1
table=/dev/sda
loader=/boot/any_d.b
label=WinXP

 

[drag]

Do you still have the original kernel-2.4.20-gentoo-r7 stuff? You said that worked and detected it and all that goodness, right?

Then make a second linux entry into lilo.conf using that stuff.

something like:


#Linux part
image = /boot/bzImage
root = /dev/sdb2
read-only
#append "root=/dev/sdb2 init=/linuxrc" (this is commented because when I would run /sbin/lilo to update my MBR it was complaining about this line.....)
label = Gentoo

# linux part 2
image = /boot/kernel-2.4.20-gentoo-r7
initrd = /boot/initrd-2.4.20-gentoo-r7
root = /dev/sdb2
read-only
append "init=/linuxrc"
label = Gentoo2

# Windows part
other=/dev/sda1
table=/dev/sda
loader=/boot/any_d.b
label=WinXP


Then re-run lilo. See if that works.

 

[Crusty]

No, I dont have the kernel-2.4.20-gentoo-r7 stuff anymore. That was made with genkernel and since I did a low-level format on my drives to get rid of the MBRs on them I dont have it.

 

[drag]

Well unfortunatly I dont' have much experiance with SCSI stuff.

Could be that you mis-configured the kernel or configured part of the SCSI support as modules.

Heres what I'd try to do. Go into your kernel sources and mv the .config and (if any) .config.old files out of there and into you ~/ folder. These are were your custom kernel configs are stored when you make a kernel the completely manual way.

Then check the /etc/kernels/ area and see if you have any configurations put in there. When it comes new you should have only a default-config and a settings file. If you have any extra configurations mv those too, but keep the default-config and settings. This is were genkernel puts you custom configs (if any).

Then go back to /usr/src/linux and use the command
genkernel --config

then go in there and turn off support for acpi (just in case) and make sure that it has support for your scsi controllers. If it is in module form, don't worry, since the gentoo kernel uses initrd (initial ram disk --pretend root so that the kernel can load modules before getting access to the HD). Then put that 3rd entry into lilo.conf

That's just to get the silly thing working. Once you get that done and all booted up then you can play around with making custom kernels and stuff. Even make some 2.6.0.rc* kernels just for fun. You can have as many as you'd like and if you keep just one version you know would work as a boot entry it makes it much easier to play around with that stuff with out worry.

 

[Crusty]

Yeah I was thinking about doing some 2.6.0 kernels. How well has the NTFS support been developed so far? Is it safe enough to do writes yet, or still only reads?

 

[drag]

Also instead of making the 3rd lilo entry with the append "init=/linuxrc" make it with the gentoo suggested append="root=/dev/sda2 init=/linuxrc", it may be important for the initrd stuff to work, I am not sure.

from gentoo's install docs.

image=/boot/kernel-KV
label=gk_linux
root=/dev/hda3
initrd=/boot/initrd-KV
append="root=/dev/hda3 init=/linuxrc"

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: MCrusty
Yeah I was thinking about doing some 2.6.0 kernels. How well has the NTFS support been developed so far? Is it safe enough to do writes yet, or still only reads?

hmm.. I don't know. Good question.

 

[Kadarin]

Originally posted by: drag

Originally posted by: MCrusty
Yeah I was thinking about doing some 2.6.0 kernels. How well has the NTFS support been developed so far? Is it safe enough to do writes yet, or still only reads?

hmm.. I don't know. Good question.

I did some checking on this a couple of weeks back, and I found nothing to indicate that NTFS write support is anything other than experimental and dangerous. In fact, I took a look at the options today for compiling 2.4.20 under Gentoo, and there it said dangerous.

 

[Crusty]

Originally posted by: Astaroth33

Originally posted by: drag

Originally posted by: MCrusty
Yeah I was thinking about doing some 2.6.0 kernels. How well has the NTFS support been developed so far? Is it safe enough to do writes yet, or still only reads?

hmm.. I don't know. Good question.

I did some checking on this a couple of weeks back, and I found nothing to indicate that NTFS write support is anything other than experimental and dangerous. In fact, I took a look at the options today for compiling 2.4.20 under Gentoo, and there it said dangerous.

Yeah, I know Kernel 2.4.* NTFS support is only experimental but I was under the impression that it was supposed to be fully supported in 2.6.* so I was only wondering how far along in the devel. it was.

 

[drag]

I don't know about the kernel, but their are several applications that can provide ntfs support for linux. In there next-to-be-released-release (or maybe already released) SuSE advertised full NTFS support in their operating system. They also offered a option for 2.6 testing kernels for people who would like to experiment.

But I don't think that had anything to do with NTFS support or not.


They (the kernel hackers) aren't going to release the experimental status of NTFS support until they are ABSOLUTELY sure that it is safe. Linux biggest supporters are small/medium and various departments in large businesses, rather then just home users. They would have the most need for NTFS support, but if it starts corrupting 1 in 1000 files, it's going to look really bad. And at this stage of the game Linux can't afford that.

 

[sciencewhiz]

If you want to do anything with NTFS, you either need to use a 2.6 series kernel or patch your 2.4 series kernel. Go to http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/

NTFS read support is stable, and so is resizing NTFS partitions. NTFS write support is stable in certain limited situations. At one point, you could write a file, as long as you didn't change it's location or size. Don't know if it is any better now.

 

[Crusty]

Allright, I get the GenKernel to boot, but my network card doesnt work...I guess I didn't load that module...hehehe. I'll fix that. Thanks for the help so far!