Thank you Walter! I'm about to buy a new laptop and these instructions will save me a lot of time and effort. :-)
On Sunday 08 November 2009 08:11:15 Walter Dnes wrote: > It started off ugly, but I found the solutions, so here they are, to > hopefully save other people some time. > > The Gentoo minimal install image cannot see the harddrive at all. > "fdisk -l" only showed /dev/sda, i.e. the USB stick on which unetbootin > had installed the minimal install. I've filed bug a report on this... > http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=292346 > > Knoppix, on the other hand, could see the hard drive, but wasn't able > to drive the RTL8101 network card. I ended up installing under a > Knoppix "live CD" on a USB stick. Notes regarding the installation > under Knoppix... > > 1) Get *TWO* USB sticks, one of which has at least 1 gigabyte capacity, > and make sure to back up any important data on them. It will all be > overwritten. > > 2) On a machine with a CD or DVD download and burn the microKnoppix ISO. > > 3) Boot the existing computer from the Knoppix CD/DVD. > > 4) Plug in a USB stick with at least 1 gig capacity. > > 5) From a console, execute "flash-knoppix" (without the quotes). That's > it. Surprisingly easy. For people who insist on menus, the path is > [LXDE --> System Tools --> Install KNOPPIX to flash disk] > > 6) Unmount and take out the USB stick, and reboot the linux machine. > You will need it a lot. > > 7) Do the following in the exact order. I went around in circles over > this one... > - insert the bootable USB stick into the ACER netbook. > - reboot the ACER while holding down the {F2} key. This will bring > you into the BIOS setup. > - go into the boot menu and select the item which mentions your USB > stick. In my case it was "USB HD" (YES!!!) not "USB KEY". > - save changes and boot. This should bring up Knoppix > > 8) Make sure that the other linux machine is up to date, and do *NOT* > clean out the /usr/portage/distfiles directory. > > 9) Follow the regular Gentoo install instructions with these changes > - open 2 terminals after Knoppix boots, and "su -" in both. Later > on you'll be able to switch back and forth between chrooted and > Knoppix environments > - as per http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/altinstall.xml > - after bootup execute "mkdir /mnt/gentoo" from one of the 2 terms > - when setting up for chroot, mount proc system with the command > mount -o bind /proc /mnt/gentoo/proc > rather than the command given in the install documentation > - if Knoppix can't use the network card (as in my case) you'll have > to be prepared to download stage3 and portage snapshot files, etc > to the other linux machine, and shuttle them over via USB stick. > This gets painfull when the instructions tell you to emerge stuff > and you don't have a network card. If you followed instructions > in step #8, you can shuttle the necessary tarballs over from the > other machine's distfiles directory to the Acer's distfiles > directory. > > 10) If you're going to be running "make menuconfig" manually *EXIT AND > SAVE YOUR WORK EVERY FEW MINUTES*!!! I cannot emphasize this enough. > There is some magic combination of keypress and dragging my fingers > on the touchpad, which kills the terminal you're working in. Of > course you end up losing the entries you've made. Save early and > save often. Here are the "make menuconfig" paths for installing > working hard drive and network card drivers... > > Device Drivers > Serial ATA (prod) and Parallel ATA (experimental) drivers > ATA SFF support > Intel SCH PATA support > > > Device Drivers > Network Device support > Ethernet (1000 mbit support) > Realtek 8169 gigabit ethernet support > > It's now booting properly and seeing the internet. The install is > done on GMT time, and then I set to local time. Since I'm in EST > timezone (5 hours behind GMT), it complains on bootup about certain > config files having dates in the future. That will disappear in a few > hours. It's close to finishing an update. Next is "emerge system" to > be followed by "emerge world". > -- Regards, Mick
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