[Sussex] gentoo - pre-install questions

[Matthew Macdonald-Wallace]

Ok,

A few possible answers:

On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 13:55:08 -0500
"John D." <big-john at dsl.pipex.com> enlightened us with:

> Hi list,
> 
> I'm trying to be more methodical (unlike me, I usually go charging in,
> where angels fear to tread, then wonder why I've made another "balls
> up" !). Hence, I'm going through the "Handbook" and hop to clarify any
> stuff that I don't follow!
> 
> When it comes to re-install, I wanted to keep the same partitions etc 
> i.e. /boot, /swap, /root and /home.

I'm assuming these are on /dev/hda1 - 4 or similar?

> So I proceed to work my way through the handbook until I get to the 
> filesystems/blockdevices section, when it comes to mounting partitions
> etc, do I need to mount the /home partition as well as the /boot,
> /swap and /root ???

If the above assumption is correct, then Yes (see below about fstab)

> Then I can get on with the next bit OK, but when it's time to
> "Configure Compile Options", and I have to put the USE (or is it
> cflags - the bit where I put in the little name/word listings, which
> would be USE flags further into learning the system, I just don't
> follow if the name is the same when I'm putting them into the
> make.conf at this early stage of install), do I put in all the ones
> that I think I'll need? In fact as I don't know too much about all
> this and I'll be taking "the easy way out" with a stage 3 +GRP
> install, using genkernel (yes I've managed to pick up a small bit of
> knowledge about kernels and stuff, I just don't think I know enough to
> do that manually) do the USE flags etc etc make any difference in the
> make.conf if I'm using genkernel ???

ok, as I understand it, USE="foo bar" is the equivalent to "./configure
--enable-foo--enable-bar" when it comes to installing things.  If it is
set in/etc/make.conf, then it will be applied to all packages, if you
set the use variable before you emerge, i.e. USE="java" emerge
mozilla-firefox-bin then it will only use java for that package. (Geoff
and others feel free to correct if I'm wrong!)

As for cflags, I leave it as it is, I don't know what they mean and I'm
not going to start playing with them yet! :)

> Oh yeah, that's what I've been meaning to ask, Whats the difference
> between hostname/domainname and nisdomainname ??? So I know what the
> system and/or machine is going to be called??

Ummm, pass. I'd ask the audience but looking at this lot... :p

> Sorry if my questions seem to be jumping a bit backwards and forwards
> (that's how I think of them in the first place - and I've got a memory
> like a sieve!), so,FSTAB's. When writing my fstab, I know that I need
> to include the /boot, /swap and /root, I suspect that I must also have
> an entry for my /home, but that's why I put the question in above
> about mounting my /home when doing the filesystems/block devices part
> of the install i.e. should I have already mounted the /home ? or does
> it automatically mount when I've put the entry for it in the
> /etc/fstab ???
> 
> The point of that, being that I would like to make sure that when I'm
> logging in as user, I'm logging into the user account at the /home
> partition as opposed to a /home directory in the /root partition ??


OK, iirc, your fstab should look similar to this:

/dev/hda1	/boot	fstype	opts
/dev/hda2	/	fstype	opts
/dev/hda3	/home	fstype	opts
/dev/hda4	none	swap	sw
/other/devices	here	with	options


so yes, it should all automagically mount as long as your fstab reads
accordingly.

Cheers,

Matt

--
+-------------------------------+
| Matthew Macdonald-Wallace     |
| matthew at truthisfreedom.org.uk |
| www.eighthnerve.co.uk         |
+-------------------------------+


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