Gentoo!

burns · 3 Aug 2004 at 15:23

W0-****ing-0t finally got the installer booting. Aparently according to the forums the livecds only boot on about half of computers. So I've booted off floppy instead and it apears to be working. I'll try and remember to keep a journal

.

Deadly Ferret · 3 Aug 2004 at 15:31

Originally posted by robmiller
I'm going to throw myself in at the deep end and go with a Gentoo system.

I'm on a Barton 2500+ with a gig of RAM

I've chosen the "universal" boot CD

Snap! I'm burning the CD right now.

"I'm feeling brave, so I plan on going right from step 1 and compiling everything myself." - You win!

Mpemba Effect · 3 Aug 2004 at 15:32

Hmmm, I better brace myself for all the questions to come

Deadly Ferret · 3 Aug 2004 at 15:46

I'm installing it so there should a question any moment now...

/Bugger! I didn't RTFM and so had no idea that I needed to have the packages CD to get a pre-compiled GUI! Looks like installation will be delayed by 634MB @ 60KBps.

Mpemba Effect · 3 Aug 2004 at 15:48

Oooo I feel an extended coffee break coming along

MiggyMan · 3 Aug 2004 at 16:01

Originally posted by Mpemba Effect
Hmmm, I better brace myself for all the questions to come

Pfftt, try working tech support

Mind you, havinf FishFluff on msn is just as bad

Mpemba Effect · 3 Aug 2004 at 16:09

Originally posted by MiggyMan
Pfftt, try working tech support

Mind you, havinf FishFluff on msn is just as bad

I could imagine

I used to get swamped with peeps on MSN. But I've solved it, I don't go on as often as I used to

riven · 3 Aug 2004 at 16:37

lol, msn goodness, Deadly Ferret, robmiller or anyone! if you get bored or stuck then feel free to add me to your msn assuming you have a spare pc. I may not be as much of a pro as mpemba but i have the gentoo install guide on my desk somewhere and ive done it quite a few times now. plus im bored! my emails in trust i think

robmiller · 3 Aug 2004 at 16:40

I'll just have to spam the forum with Gentoo-noobness then

I'm about to go on a hunt for a CD-R, then I'll start as soon as my sister gets off her laptop

burns · 3 Aug 2004 at 16:42

One of the Gentoo installers reporting back

. I'm sorting out the partitions atm, but it doesn't really explain how to decide what sizes they should be...

I'm sticking with 32mb for the boot, sounds sensible, but what about the swap partition? They say to just make it 512MB, but don't say why

. It's a 20Gb disk in a system with 256MB RAM. Any ideas?

riven · 3 Aug 2004 at 16:45

i would use 512 for that size ram, the swap partition is kinda comparable to the windows page file, i think.

Mpemba Effect · 3 Aug 2004 at 16:49

Originally posted by burns
One of the Gentoo installers reporting back. I'm sorting out the partitions atm, but it doesn't really explain how to decide what sizes they should be...

I'm sticking with 32mb for the boot, sounds sensible, but what about the swap partition? They say to just make it 512MB, but don't say why. It's a 20Gb disk in a system with 256MB RAM. Any ideas?

Yup 512MB for swap should be enough

I use a 15MB /boot (10MB on my server) and I have 4 or 5 kernels in there. I really don't see any reason to use any more than that.

riven · 3 Aug 2004 at 16:50

Originally posted by Mpemba Effect
Yup 512MB for swap should be enough I use a 15MB /boot (10MB on my server) and I have 4 or 5 kernels in there. I really don't see any reason to use any more than that.

does a smaller boot partiiton give any speed advantage?

dav1d · 3 Aug 2004 at 16:51

Originally posted by burns
I'm sticking with 32mb for the boot, sounds sensible, but what about the swap partition? They say to just make it 512MB, but don't say why. It's a 20Gb disk in a system with 256MB RAM. Any ideas?

It used to be normal (and might still be) that you had the swap partition twice as big as your RAM. However, having more and more RAM nowadays, I have never bothered with a swap partition larger than 512MB - so just make it that.

robmiller · 3 Aug 2004 at 16:51

Right, I'm going in, wish me luck

I've got 1gb of RAM, and so was planning on going

32mb Boot
256mb swap
rest of the disk as /root

Sound ok?

Deadly Ferret · 3 Aug 2004 at 16:52

I can't remember whether it was linux.org or gentoo.org, but I read earlier today that the swap partition should be equal to twice the physical memory.

/Rob, are you not going to have any other partitions? I'm going with one for boot, one for root, one for home, and one for swap. I read that those are normal and in addition, a lot of people have one for usr, but I'm the only person who will be using the computer it's installed on so that seems redundant to me.

robmiller · 3 Aug 2004 at 16:53

Originally posted by Deadly Ferret
I can't remember whether it was linux.org or gentoo.org, but I read earlier today that the swap partition should be equal to twice the physical memory.

Yeah, but I doubt it'll ever use more than 1,280mb of RAM :eek:

dav1d · 3 Aug 2004 at 16:53

Originally posted by robmiller
Right, I'm going in, wish me luck

I've got 1gb of RAM, and so was planning on going

32mb Boot
256mb swap
rest of the disk as /root

Sound ok?

What about making a /home partition. That was problem one of the best ideas for gentoo installs I came across. As you will probably find you want to do the install again, or for any backup purposes, having all the files in your /home on a seperate partition means they don't have to be deleted when you reinstall the os.

burns · 3 Aug 2004 at 16:53

Groovey, 512 it is then I'm tempted to use ReiserFS, it sounds like it's going to be faster than ext3?

riven · 3 Aug 2004 at 16:53

Originally posted by robmiller
Right, I'm going in, wish me luck

I've got 1gb of RAM, and so was planning on going

32mb Boot
256mb swap
rest of the disk as /root

Sound ok?

i would stick with 512 swap tbh. even with a huge amount of ram i think swap is used for software suspend to disk (if you want to do that), so it might be worth having plenty. Its easy not to use it all, but hard if you run and out need to resize partitions