[Sderby] Gentoo Linux Installation

[Paul Grosse]

Not so much help as sympathy...

I bought a clean box and was looking for something to load onto it so I
tired slackware -- it stumbled on something (I can't remember what it was)
and I tried again but the same thing happened so then I tried Gentoo and
that took hours to compile the kernel and then that fell over at some point
so I tried that again (using a slightly different appeoach -- compiling less
the second time) and the same happened so then I tried SuSE Linux 8.2 and it
installed faster and easier than Windows XP. No problems with SuSE.

Gentoo certainly has a nice feel to having compiled something on your own
machine but if it falls down and having followed verbatim the instructions
on the website (I was using another machine to run the browser) both times
(ie following a different route for each time) and invested three days into
trying to get an OS onto the box, I got fed and too what is for some people
the easy way out. Maybe next time with a box that is totally compatible with
Gentoo.

It's now running SuSE without any problems and on a MS free box (is there a
sticker you can put on the box that says that?). At some point I'm going to
upgrade to 9.0 but I'm going to get this bit of work out of the way first.

Paul Grosse

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "ROGER SHONE" <roger.shone at btinternet.com>
To: <sderby at mailman.lug.org.uk>
Sent: Sunday, March 07, 2004 7:08 PM
Subject: [Sderby] Gentoo Linux Installation


> I've finally bit the bullet and got rid of microsoft
> Windows on my home pc in favour of running Fedora Core
> 1 - so far so good.
>
> I then thought (having had it suggested recently in
> one of the replies to my other posts) that I would try
> Gentoo. Having duly downloaded the livecd and gone
> through the instructions on the website (text based
> internet - took me back to the days of CIX in the
> early 90's!) I built the kernel / amended the
> grub.conf file, but can't get the system to boot up.
> All the necessary files are however there when I mount
> the partition under redhat.
>
> On boot the kernel dumps out saying couldn't mount
> root on /dev/hde4 - pass a valid argument to the
> kernel (or such like). My system has a cdrom on ide1
> master and a 120gb serial ata disk on the first serial
> channel.
>
> Suggestions gratefully received - I'm not sure I can
> face a third night of re-installing only to get the
> same messages.
>
> Regards,
>
> Roger Shone
>
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