[Lancaster] Fwd: boot from a external hard drive

[jonath]

AH HA!

I've worked it out! I was sending messages from j at jonath.co.uk and not
from lug at jonath.co.uk, which is what I was subscribed as. It all makes
sense now.

Still not sure whether my previous messages are gonna be 'approved' or
not. Anyway . . . moving on.

The moment's probably long since gone regarding Rik and his query
about Gentoo but, nonetheless, I don't think anyone's yet touched on
the difficulties of Gentoo. Not to put anyone off, mind, but rather as
a reminder that nothing worth having ever came easy . . .

jonathan


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: jonath <j at jonath.co.uk>
Date: 2009/4/26
Subject: Re: [Lancaster] boot from a external hard drive
To: lancaster at mailman.lug.org.uk


Rik,

I've been using Gentoo for over 6 years now and have it installed on my main
PC (which, poor thing, is used as a desktop machine, a database server and a
web server), my lap-top (which doesn't do a lot these day but works fine with
its wireless ethernet and what-not) and my living room 'shuttle' PC (or
whatever you call them, basically a quiet, tiny, inobstrustive,
AMD-based 'multimedia' PC).

I say all this not as some idle boast but rather to lend credence to the
following: I have some experience with Gentoo.

The thing with Gentoo is that it can be a bitch to set-up right but, once it's
working, you'll have a pretty rock-solid system, configured exactly as you
want it. From experience, I would say that this level of configuration comes
at a cost: your time. You need to invest a lot of your time to get Gentoo
set-up right.

Thing is, though, if you want to install Gentoo, as with any Linux
distribution, you'll need either a dedicated virtual or physical PC. Live CDs
don't really cut it, not if you want a proper installation of Linux.

It is possible to install Gentoo virtually using any decent virtualisation
application, such as VMware (although, I believe, only available on a free
30-day evaluation license) or VirtualBox. As may be obvious from the above,
I've only installed Gentoo on physical PCs but there's no reason why it
shouldn't work fine on a virtual PC. I'm a big fan of VirtualBox, so I would
personally give that one a try. I've been able to run virtual instances of
Windows XP and Debian fine through VirtualBox.

Once you've got a physical/virtual PC available, boot from a Gentoo CD . . . a
x86 version is available here:

http://distfiles.gentoo.org/releases/x86/current/install-x86-minimal-20090422.iso

and then it's 'just' (he laughed) a matter of following the installation
instructions:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml

Seriously. Read and follow the instructions. It's the only way. I've learnt
this from bitter experience and many wasted hours.

I would also say, if you're happy with RedHat/Fedora/SuSe/Ubuntu/Debian then I
wouldn't bother with Gentoo. Life's too short. Personally, I tried all of
them, hated them, and then found what I was after in Gentoo, but to use that
tired old cliche, your milage may vary.

Regards,

Jonathan Machell

On Saturday 25 April 2009, Rik Boland wrote:
> Hi
>
> I want to get started on Gento but I don't have another machine to work
> with, nor do I want on, so is it all possible to use a external hard
> drive in a caddy and to boot it up that way?
>
> I hope that makes sense and I hope you can.
>
> If you can how easy is it to do it?
>
> Shalom
>
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