Advice please?(Re: [Sussex] Getting brave ?, perhaps not.)

[John D.]

On Saturday 06 Dec 2003 4:27 pm, John D. wrote:
> I am still having problems getting gentoo installed.

Well, I've managed to get the gentoo installed (I think).

> It appears that I can install it, though when I look in mandrake to see
> what's actually gone onto the partition that I'm trying to install to
> (/dev/hda4), I don't seem to be able to see anything.

I have tried this again, but I can't mount /dev/hda4 - I've looked at both the 
fstab and the mtab, but haven't got a clue as to what I should put in to 
modify them (would I need to modify one or both ?)

> I did look into using partition magic under windows to re-partition, so
> instead of having xp, mandrake, swap, gentoo, it would be set as xp,
> mandrake, swap, gentoo boot, gentoo root - but I can't get my head round
> how I would accomplish this - and don't seem to be able to find anywhere
> that would/could explain the differences between primary, logical and
> extended partitions.

This was a total failure. It didn't mater what I tried with partition magic, 
It wouldn't let me do any changes - It kept telling me stuf about only having 
4 primary partitions. so after managing to make /dev/hda4 and extended 
partition, it wouldn't let me do anything with it, so I've had to return it 
to the original config of having WindowsXP/Mandrake/swap/gentoo (which seems 
to be there, because I can see it with the PM8 file browser)

> Can I then just modify the lilo.conf under mandrake to make the gentoo boot
> from hard drive ?
>
> Or
>
> How would I make a gentoo boot floppy that doesn't halt my system saying
> that it's "invalid compressed format" ?

I tried modifying the /etc/lilo.conf like this

boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
vga=normal
default="windowsXP"
keytable=/boot/uk.klt
prompt
nowarn
timeout=100
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
image=/boot/vmlinuz
	label="Mandrake"
	root=/dev/hda2
	initrd=/boot/initrd.img
	append="quiet devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi acpi=off"
	vga=788
	read-only
#image=/boot/kernel-2.4.20-gentoo-r6
#	label="Gentoo"
#	root=/dev/hda4
#	initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.20-gentoo-r6
#	append="devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi"
#	read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
	label="linux-nonfb"
	root=/dev/hda2
	initrd=/boot/initrd.img
	append="devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi acpi=off"
	read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
	label="failsafe"
	root=/dev/hda2
	initrd=/boot/initrd.img
	append="failsafe devfs=nomount hdc=ide-scsi acpi=off"
	read-only
other=/dev/hda1
	label="windowsXP"
	table=/dev/hda
other=/dev/fd0
	label="floppy"
	unsafe

but as you can see, I had to cancel out the mod for the gentoo with #'s (is 
this what's known as commenting out??) because lilo didn't like it when I 
tried to incorporate the change with "lilo -v".

Also, even though I made a fresh boot floppy for gentoo with 
"#dd if=/boot/kernel-2.4.20-gentoo-r6 of=/dev/fd0" (the kernel being what the 
install routine told me was the "genkernel"), I'm still getting the invalid 
compressed format (ERR1) error when trying to boot from the floppy, also, I 
don't seem to be able to check what's actually on the floppy through 
konqueror in mandrake?

Can anyone advise me how I can get the gentoo booting, so I can finish the 
installation and get the packages from the second CD please?

regards

John