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noob + gentoo + nforce2
- Thread starter Muir
- Start date
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Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2003
- Messages
- 246
Well I am running off of Gentoo now and dual booting with Windows XP. I decided to use LiLo, which seemed to be easier to configure than Grub. I originally installed it using the gentoo-sources (2.4.22 Kernel) and thinking about recompiling the kernel under gaming-sources (2.4.20-r6 Kernel) since I do alot of gaming.
In fact, I am typing this from Gentoo right now
.
In fact, I am typing this from Gentoo right now
.Kriegführung
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2003
- Messages
- 246
Good Luck . I did the Stage 3 install since I am so much of a noob. Everything went smooth and the thing I like most about Gentoo is that it teaches you the configuration files that handle system tasks (fstab, rc.conf, etc).
I had my first bad experience doing and "emerge -uD world" today. This updates all your installed products to current versions in the tree. That went smooth, but the problem came when I did an etc-update, it overwrote the fstab/rc.conf/hdparm files (my fault because it asks you if you want to overwrite these). It also took my user out of the wheel group so I couldn't do an su. Talk about a nightmare. Luckily I didn't reboot and was able to change those files. Don't let this scare you.
. I did the Stage 3 install since I am so much of a noob. Everything went smooth and the thing I like most about Gentoo is that it teaches you the configuration files that handle system tasks (fstab, rc.conf, etc). I had my first bad experience doing and "emerge -uD world" today. This updates all your installed products to current versions in the tree. That went smooth, but the problem came when I did an etc-update, it overwrote the fstab/rc.conf/hdparm files (my fault because it asks you if you want to overwrite these). It also took my user out of the wheel group so I couldn't do an su. Talk about a nightmare. Luckily I didn't reboot and was able to change those files
. Don't let this scare you.nah not scared at all. I have been through a stage one install but I screwed up the end of it. Only to find out that I could have fixed it without starting over. DOH!
I just take all these bumps as learning xp to better myself in the long run. I am sure I will be posting more experiences as they come up.
I just take all these bumps as learning xp to better myself in the long run. I am sure I will be posting more experiences as they come up.
MTB2Live Live4Comps
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Dec 27, 2002
- Messages
- 1,968
well, right now i'm running Gentoo on a nforce2 board, and i'm very happy with it. i don't have any other OS, but lilo is still my bootloader of choice.
my relavant hardware:
Abit NF7-S v2
Radeon 9000 Pro
2x160GB Maxtor Plus9 SATA
sil3112: The 2 hard drives are in software RAID 0, they are controlled by the Silicon Image 3112A which is onboard my motherboard. 100% stable as far as i can see.
Soundstorm: The ALSA intel8x0 included in the 2.6 kernel work fine for left/right channels, i haven't played any (yet) with getting surround sound to work. Quality is good. BUT, since nvidia refusues to release the hardware specs, hardware mixing is impossible, and therefore only one source of sound will work at a time (without using a software-mixer work-around). i haven't gotten around to setting up a software mixer, because for now, it works fine. But if you want Gaim and XMMS to both output sound at the same time, it's not gonna work without some extra software.
Network: My board uses the nvidia network controller, and i'm using the opensource forcedeth driver. It will be included in the upcoming 2.6.1 kernel (and maybe 2.4.24?) but as of now it's still included in the 2.6.0-mm2 patch set, which is what i'm running. the official nvidia driver also works (v0261-r2 in portage), but i'm happy without it.
AGP: both the 2.4 and 2.6 kernels have perfect support for the AGP controller in the nforce2.
IDE Controller: The kernel includes support for AMD and Nvidia IDE or something along those lines, it works without hiccups.
USB&USB2: both modes work fine with the included kernel drivers.
Firewire: untested, i have no devices, but from what i've heard, the kernel drivers work fine (they load without errors on my machine, i simply can't test them)
Radeon 8500 and up: My experiences with this card, as of now, are positive. Especially after hearing all the ATI horror stories. Emerge ati-drivers, and followed the directions in the forums, and wallah, it worked fine (tv-out works only in "clone" mode - but it does work). This is using the 3.2.8 drivers, i just emerged the 3.7.0 ... but i haven't had time to play with them. My only complaint is 2D quality is, well, fucked up. There are these weird patterns that run down my screen, they show up anywhere a non-grey color is solid for a while (you can't see them in small graphics, text, anywhere grey. but if there's a big chunk of white somewhere, aka background of a webpage, they show up.) it's hard to describe, they're not intrusive, just doesn't look right. Also, moving windows sometimes creates a purple heu over the entire thing. rolling up and then down the window fixes this, i'm not sure what the problem is. Do note i haven't played with the drivers much (ok all i cared about was getting 3D acceleration to work, which it does - quite well i might add), i have a feeling it might be a FSAA problem or something. i get just over 1900fps in glxgears, and around 280fps in fgl_glxgears. for a $70 card, i'm happy.
This is all using the 2.6.0-mm2 kernel. If you don't need the sil 3112 support, the standard stable 2.6.0 kernel is sufficient. I haven't cared to play with the 2.4 on my system, it doesn't have the 3112 support i need, plus why use it? 2.6 is much cooler. Stage 2 install, it was performed from a 3rd hard drive booting into an already built gentoo system. essentially the same thing as a liveCD, just i needed the 3112 and RAID support which the liveCD doesn't offer (afaik).
CFLAGS="-O2 -march=athlon-xp -mmmx -msse -m3dnow -ffast-math
-fomit-frame-pointer -pipe"
They've been entirely stable, altho for some reason nautilus won't compile (i'm not sure if it's related to the cflags, i haven't played with it at all) they also need to be lowered for OpenOffice to compile, but that's expected. other than the nautilus problem, everything else is fast and stable.
Good luck!
my relavant hardware:
Abit NF7-S v2
Radeon 9000 Pro
2x160GB Maxtor Plus9 SATA
sil3112: The 2 hard drives are in software RAID 0, they are controlled by the Silicon Image 3112A which is onboard my motherboard. 100% stable as far as i can see.
Soundstorm: The ALSA intel8x0 included in the 2.6 kernel work fine for left/right channels, i haven't played any (yet) with getting surround sound to work. Quality is good. BUT, since nvidia refusues to release the hardware specs, hardware mixing is impossible, and therefore only one source of sound will work at a time (without using a software-mixer work-around). i haven't gotten around to setting up a software mixer, because for now, it works fine. But if you want Gaim and XMMS to both output sound at the same time, it's not gonna work without some extra software.
Network: My board uses the nvidia network controller, and i'm using the opensource forcedeth driver. It will be included in the upcoming 2.6.1 kernel (and maybe 2.4.24?) but as of now it's still included in the 2.6.0-mm2 patch set, which is what i'm running. the official nvidia driver also works (v0261-r2 in portage), but i'm happy without it.
AGP: both the 2.4 and 2.6 kernels have perfect support for the AGP controller in the nforce2.
IDE Controller: The kernel includes support for AMD and Nvidia IDE or something along those lines, it works without hiccups.
USB&USB2: both modes work fine with the included kernel drivers.
Firewire: untested, i have no devices, but from what i've heard, the kernel drivers work fine (they load without errors on my machine, i simply can't test them)
Radeon 8500 and up: My experiences with this card, as of now, are positive. Especially after hearing all the ATI horror stories. Emerge ati-drivers, and followed the directions in the forums, and wallah, it worked fine (tv-out works only in "clone" mode - but it does work). This is using the 3.2.8 drivers, i just emerged the 3.7.0 ... but i haven't had time to play with them. My only complaint is 2D quality is, well, fucked up. There are these weird patterns that run down my screen, they show up anywhere a non-grey color is solid for a while (you can't see them in small graphics, text, anywhere grey. but if there's a big chunk of white somewhere, aka background of a webpage, they show up.) it's hard to describe, they're not intrusive, just doesn't look right. Also, moving windows sometimes creates a purple heu over the entire thing. rolling up and then down the window fixes this, i'm not sure what the problem is. Do note i haven't played with the drivers much (ok all i cared about was getting 3D acceleration to work, which it does - quite well i might add), i have a feeling it might be a FSAA problem or something. i get just over 1900fps in glxgears, and around 280fps in fgl_glxgears. for a $70 card, i'm happy.
This is all using the 2.6.0-mm2 kernel. If you don't need the sil 3112 support, the standard stable 2.6.0 kernel is sufficient. I haven't cared to play with the 2.4 on my system, it doesn't have the 3112 support i need, plus why use it? 2.6 is much cooler. Stage 2 install, it was performed from a 3rd hard drive booting into an already built gentoo system. essentially the same thing as a liveCD, just i needed the 3112 and RAID support which the liveCD doesn't offer (afaik).
CFLAGS="-O2 -march=athlon-xp -mmmx -msse -m3dnow -ffast-math
-fomit-frame-pointer -pipe"
They've been entirely stable, altho for some reason nautilus won't compile (i'm not sure if it's related to the cflags, i haven't played with it at all) they also need to be lowered for OpenOffice to compile, but that's expected. other than the nautilus problem, everything else is fast and stable.
Good luck!
Kriegführung
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2003
- Messages
- 246
I have a question. I don't know how this happened, but my nvnet driver is no longer compiled in with the kernel. I had to had it to /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.4. I have been only using genkernel to compile the kernel and I am really to step into manually compiling the kernel. How would I go about getting the nvnet driver back into the kernel? Thanks.
MTB2Live Live4Comps
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Dec 27, 2002
- Messages
- 1,968
the nvnet driver released by nvidia is binary, and will only work as a module. every time you recompile your kernel, you need to 'recompile' this driver too .
manual kernel configuration isn't that hard, you might mess up the first few times, but you'll get the hang of it soon. i recommend keeping the kernel genkernel compiled and putting your new kernel next to it. this way, if your kernel messes up you still the genkernel to boot into (make sure you make grub/lilo prompt you for which kernel you want).
if you don't want any modules, and would rather have the support built directly into the kernel, go to this page and download a relevant patch.
how to patch your kernel source:
cd /usr/src/the/kernel/version/you're/patching
patch -p1 < /path/to/the/patch
make mrproper (cleans the kernel source)
make menuconfig (or kconfig or xconfig if you want to do it graphically)
make dep && make clean bzImage modules modules_install (compiles the kernel and modules)
afaik genkernel makes everything a module and then hotplug loads those relavent to your system, which is probably why you didn't have to have nvnet in /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.4 before.
. manual kernel configuration isn't that hard, you might mess up the first few times, but you'll get the hang of it soon. i recommend keeping the kernel genkernel compiled and putting your new kernel next to it. this way, if your kernel messes up you still the genkernel to boot into (make sure you make grub/lilo prompt you for which kernel you want).
if you don't want any modules, and would rather have the support built directly into the kernel, go to this page and download a relevant patch.
how to patch your kernel source:
cd /usr/src/the/kernel/version/you're/patching
patch -p1 < /path/to/the/patch
make mrproper (cleans the kernel source)
make menuconfig (or kconfig or xconfig if you want to do it graphically)
make dep && make clean bzImage modules modules_install (compiles the kernel and modules)
afaik genkernel makes everything a module and then hotplug loads those relavent to your system, which is probably why you didn't have to have nvnet in /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.4 before.
Kriegführung
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2003
- Messages
- 246
First off, thanks for the help
Couple of questions and I will probably be set.
1) I can only run make menuconfig (get errors with kconfig and xconfig)
2) What file gets modified when you save out of menuconfig.
Couple of questions and I will probably be set.
1) I can only run make menuconfig (get errors with kconfig and xconfig)
2) What file gets modified when you save out of menuconfig.
I want to toss in a quick note about bootloaders.
Those using Lilo may want to take the time to switch to Grub. With Lilo it's easy to get a non-booting system--for instance if you forget to install it after making changes, or misconfigure it. Then you reboot and see:
With Grub you can totally erase or otherwise mangle your configuration, but it will always at least boot into the Grub command line. Then you can manually bring up the system
When something goes wrong, it's much easier to recover with grub. Not to mention that updating the system is also much easier with grub. Just update the menu.lst or grub.conf (depending on your distro) and reboot. No need to remember to reinstall it.
Just some advice from someone who's had a couple years' experience with both.
Those using Lilo may want to take the time to switch to Grub. With Lilo it's easy to get a non-booting system--for instance if you forget to install it after making changes, or misconfigure it. Then you reboot and see:
And that's it.
With Grub you can totally erase or otherwise mangle your configuration, but it will always at least boot into the Grub command line. Then you can manually bring up the system
And then you can fix the problem at your leisure; instead of being left with a non-booting system until you have time to boot with a seperate recovery cd/disk and fix Lilo.
When something goes wrong, it's much easier to recover with grub. Not to mention that updating the system is also much easier with grub. Just update the menu.lst or grub.conf (depending on your distro) and reboot. No need to remember to reinstall it.
Just some advice from someone who's had a couple years' experience with both.
Kriegführung
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2003
- Messages
- 246
ok.. I have been thinking about it and want to switch to grub (since it seems to be the latest and greatest).
My setup is this:
Primary hard drive - Windows XP partitioned to C/D
Seconday hard drive - Gentoo (/boot; /swap, /root)
so if I installed grub, the root partition (hd1,2) correct and boot would be (hd1,0)?
Then i would do a root (hd1,2) and setup (hd0) to set it up on the Windows XP drive since that is where my MBR is?
Also, I noticed in the loader example in the install for Grub on Gentoo they had a parameter under the Windows XP boot called chainloader (hd0,5)+1. What the hell is that?
My setup is this:
Primary hard drive - Windows XP partitioned to C/D
Seconday hard drive - Gentoo (/boot; /swap, /root)
Code:
Sample grub.conf
default 0
timeout 30
splashimage=(hd1,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title=Linux Gentoo (Genkernel Compile)
root (hd1,0)
kernel (hd1,0)/boot/kernel-2.4.22-gentoo-r2 root=/dev/hdb3
initrd (hd1,0)/boot/initrd-2.4.22-gentoo-r2
title=Windows XP
root (hd0,0)
chainloader ????so if I installed grub, the root partition (hd1,2) correct and boot would be (hd1,0)?
Then i would do a root (hd1,2) and setup (hd0) to set it up on the Windows XP drive since that is where my MBR is?
Also, I noticed in the loader example in the install for Grub on Gentoo they had a parameter under the Windows XP boot called chainloader (hd0,5)+1. What the hell is that?
Yes, if I'm understanding you, you are correct.
I usually avoid installing to the MBR since some things can mess up if you over-write the MBR (for instance, HPT RAID controllers don't like this). I usually write it to the active partition (in my case "(hd0,0)"). But I don't run Windows anymore, so I don't know if this plays well with windows or not. However, if LILO is working fine installed on the MBR then you won't run into any problems installing grub on the MBR.
Here's the grub manual for booting DOS/Windows. It also explains what chain-loading is.
Good luck with grub!
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Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2003
- Messages
- 246
Thanks, I got it working under grub. I think I like it better than lilo. Even though the grub.config is a little harder to generate than the lilo.conf. I also like the fact that I can just modify the grub.conf and not have to execute anything afterwards for the updates to take effect. Under lilo, I always forgot to do /sbin/lilo.