LinuxQuestions.org
Help answer threads with 0 replies.
Go Back   LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Linux Forums > Linux - General
User Name
Password
Linux - General This Linux forum is for general Linux questions and discussion.
If it is Linux Related and doesn't seem to fit in any other forum then this is the place.

Notices


Reply
  Search this Thread
Old 12-24-2006, 06:54 AM   #16
bigjohn
Senior Member
 
Registered: Jun 2002
Location: UK .
Distribution: *buntu (usually Kubuntu)
Posts: 2,692

Original Poster
Blog Entries: 9

Rep: Reputation: 45

Quote:
Originally Posted by Emerson
As long as Gentoo is considered there is no reason to use Gentoo install disk whatsoever. I install from Knoppix and haven't even bothered to download "their" installation disks. (I always have a fresh Knoppix handy.)
But if you absolutely need (yeah, why?) to install from LiveCD just boot it with nox option.
Strange, because I know that this is possible, but I never managed to decipher the instructions myself. Though I seem to remember something about having enough space so that it will download into it's own / partition ???

Cos if thats the case I'm screwed with my current setup as I'm currently using /boot, /swap, / and /home which are all configured at primary partitions - and that's not gonna change until I can work out how in hells name I can make my external hdd work so I can make backups - it took me nearly 3 weeks to copy all my CD's again after I screwed up my system last time!. Or if I can't suss out the damn external hdd, I'll install the disc into my system and try to work out the best way to make use of it there! (maybe with a backup partition and a seperate / for gentoo and run both Sidux and Gentoo).

regards

John
 
Old 12-24-2006, 07:25 AM   #17
Emerson
LQ Sage
 
Registered: Nov 2004
Location: Saint Amant, Acadiana
Distribution: Gentoo ~amd64
Posts: 7,661

Rep: Reputation: Disabled
Your external HDD may work with Knoppix without any fiddle. Knoppix is real great if it comes to h/w recognition. So you may be able to boot from Knoppix, make that backup and carry on Gentoo installation. You may even retain your /home. Just make sure you create your new user with same UID then to avoid permission problems.
 
Old 12-24-2006, 06:10 PM   #18
bigjohn
Senior Member
 
Registered: Jun 2002
Location: UK .
Distribution: *buntu (usually Kubuntu)
Posts: 2,692

Original Poster
Blog Entries: 9

Rep: Reputation: 45
Quote:
Originally Posted by Emerson
Your external HDD may work with Knoppix without any fiddle. Knoppix is real great if it comes to h/w recognition. So you may be able to boot from Knoppix, make that backup and carry on Gentoo installation. You may even retain your /home. Just make sure you create your new user with same UID then to avoid permission problems.
Hum? not such a bad idea - I'll just have to make a few notes before hand then i.e. user ID's etc etc is there anything else I'd need to note down, because the /boot, /swap and / don't matter, it's only the /home stuff that I'd need to retain.

Though if I put the hdd out of the external case in the system, that'd "kill two birds with one stone" though it might take a bit more looking into/thinking about.

regards

John
 
Old 12-25-2006, 05:14 AM   #19
GTrax
Member
 
Registered: Oct 2005
Location: UK
Distribution: Mint
Posts: 258

Rep: Reputation: 37
From Ubuntu to Gentoo. This lovely rant almost turned into a distro beauty contest

Gentoo can be a real fiddle. The weak point has always been the install. It is the extraordinary needs of that install probably motivates the very excellent manual of install instructions. Once the beast is safely in there, life gets better, even if you have to wait for any new package to compile.

If you want nearly instant Gentoo (with attitude, codecs, closed source drivers, and hardware detection that even surpasses Knoppix), then consider to have it the lazy way with Sabayon Linux. I tried the 3.2 Mini version that fits on a 700Mb CD, but I understand the 3.2 DVD has software to suit most folk's desires. The point here is, afterward, you can use "emerge" and "unmerge" and all the other Gentoo ways to arrive at your choice setup. If also you have tweaked the USE flags, and configured your kernel optimised to your processor and hardware, the go-faster instructions and features will automatically compile into anything you install.

Knoppix is great for installing Gentoo when there is no other Linux system on the PC, but if you have one running, then there is nothing stopping you from opening a root terminal onto the desktop, and doing it all from within there. If you are really hardball, you can do it all in textmode without a GUI - but there is a better way...

Have the luxury of your GUI (KDE, whatever). Be on the internet, (even from a dialup if you have a Gentoo CD handy to avoid a huge download). Have open the Gentoo install instructions manual in a browser. You can create a boot, root and /home partition even next to the ones you already have, and copy into them the Gentoo stage files, already extracted from tarballs. CD or internet, whichever is handiest. You can use KWrite or GEdit or any editor to make the the /etc/fstab and other files you need, mostly by highlighting in the manual, then middle-click in the editor. You can chroot into the new environment in that terminal window. I watched it go on the internet, and update Portage, while I was playing Sudoku in the existing KDE. (yeah .. sad!) Fun too it is to watch a major compile going on in Konsole, while getting on with other stuff in the main screen.

If you want the Gentoo install to be the only one remaining, then Knoppix is the obvious choice, and the instructions for Knoppix are described in..
"The Gentoo Alternative Install Guide"
One glance, and you realise there is very little there that is Knoppix specific. Almost any liveCD or running distro will do. Note also that you do not have to be an expert! I just cut & pasted instructions. Be aware that the most awkward bit is getting a GUI to go at the right resolution at the start. Hand editing the cumbersome and confusing xorg.conf, and booting to test if each edit worked can be a right royal pain! Even with the Sabayon CD, you have to take care at the beginning to put in the screen resolution maximum as a boot option, or you get 1024x768, 800x600, and 640x480 as choices. Either edit xorg.conf, or start again :| Given my talent for messing up xorg.conf, I took the easy way.

I did not have it boot straight into Gentoo. Instead, I skipped running grub in Gentoo, and simply added Gentoo as a boot-up choice in my existing grub bootloader script (/boot/grub/menu.lst in this case). In the face of Ubuntu (which your Granny could install!) Mepis 6.0 (Ubuntu with some of the awkwards knocked off), SUSE 10.2 (fully repaired now, and comes with the priceless "Microsoft seal of approval" ), Debian (any day now.. promise!), and the venerable Red Hat/Fedora, why do some of us continue to tangle with Gentoo? Maybe because when pressed home, the result is the performance pinnacle of a Linux installation crafted to one's own choice. Blazing fast, it makes even older machines feel modern. Yes - I would do this again, all over the ex-Ubuntu partitions!
 
Old 12-25-2006, 10:59 PM   #20
addux
Member
 
Registered: Dec 2006
Location: In the middle of the ocean.
Distribution: Ubuntu 12.04, Debian Squeeze, Windows 7
Posts: 67

Rep: Reputation: 16
First off I'm a complete novice with basically any *nix distro; I recently installed Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy eft with great success and ease. I've had it up and running for about two weeks, until last night....I was seeding a file on Azureus so I left my puter on the web with port 6881 open (unless Azureus opens other ports!). This morning I noticed Azureus crashed and some connections to port 6881 were still open and some logging about a few attempts at possible system attacks (logging viewed via firestarter). Whatever, I ran Azureus, it crashed, my HD made a 'beep' noise. I tried a few more apps, and with all working properly I restarted my session and could not log on, no failsafe no gnome..nothing. I know for a fact I entered the info right because I received no error messages and because the normal startup process began only to quit and send me back to the login screen....I have virtually no other info about this situation.

Have any other had a similar problem?
Any ideas? My paranoia says hacked!!! But maybe its a bug?!

Now using: SUSE 10.1
 
Old 12-26-2006, 04:28 AM   #21
bigjohn
Senior Member
 
Registered: Jun 2002
Location: UK .
Distribution: *buntu (usually Kubuntu)
Posts: 2,692

Original Poster
Blog Entries: 9

Rep: Reputation: 45
Quote:
Originally Posted by addux
First off I'm a complete novice with basically any *nix distro; I recently installed Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy eft with great success and ease. I've had it up and running for about two weeks, until last night....I was seeding a file on Azureus so I left my puter on the web with port 6881 open (unless Azureus opens other ports!). This morning I noticed Azureus crashed and some connections to port 6881 were still open and some logging about a few attempts at possible system attacks (logging viewed via firestarter). Whatever, I ran Azureus, it crashed, my HD made a 'beep' noise. I tried a few more apps, and with all working properly I restarted my session and could not log on, no failsafe no gnome..nothing. I know for a fact I entered the info right because I received no error messages and because the normal startup process began only to quit and send me back to the login screen....I have virtually no other info about this situation.

Have any other had a similar problem?
Any ideas? My paranoia says hacked!!! But maybe its a bug?!

Now using: SUSE 10.1
From what I understand, It's actually quite unlikely that you "have been hacked". Even with "properly nailed down" windows boxes, if you start following the logs closely, you will see intrusion attempts i.e. all those windows bot's and port scans etc, to look for easy targets, open relays, etc etc.

I'm not overly worried by that sort of thing, but it's one reason that I'm not a fan of sudo. Any only has to crack 1 password, whereas with root/user it's two (and therefore easier to adopt escalating strengths of password etc).

Plus, because the *buntu's policy of apparent ease of install (admirable in their efforts) I also found that there are some things that they don't, or rather wouldn't (and hence make it difficult) want you to do.

You also mention that you've moved to SuSE10.1 - which, don't get me wrong, is good, but I got bored with dependency errors, when it came to RPM based distros (I used them for the first 3 years of "doing" linux). I would only use packages from official (OK, some "semi" official, as well) repositories and it still used to cause me some problems - which could be sorted out but were a complete PITA.

So far from it being (as GTrax alleges) a "distro beauty contest", this is more about why certain aspects of some distros have pissed me off.

Theres no doubt in my mind, that both debians apt and gentoos portage are vastly superior package management systems. Though my efforts with the *buntus, have taught me that when it comes to debian based systems, "some" of the derivative distros try to enforce policies that "some" users won't be happy with, however easy it is to install.

This Sidux, that I'm now using is one of the "newest boys in town" (for a number of reasons). It wasn't as smooth a transition as I'd hoped but I didn't use the easiest way of changing the Kanotix that I was using. Now it's installed, it's very good, it uses almost completely "proper" debian repo's/mirrors and apt seems to work in the "proper" debian way - which for the moment is fine by me.

It did cross my mind when my transition was going on, to say "bollocks" to it and go straight for gentoo (IMO, gentoos portage is better than apt - lots would disagree). Overall it was gentoo that I've found is the easiest distro to manage of all the ones I've tried in the last 5 years.

Hence I'm agreement with most of what GTrax posted. It's fair to say that "it" might not be for everyone, but if you take some time to look into the pro's and con's, plus you set your system up so that it used a separate /home (I still use the partitioning scheme I settled on when I first tried Gentoo i.e. /boot, /swap, / and /home) it means that you can pretty much change distros at will and as long as you don't allow an installer to overwrite/format/mess up the /home (and maybe take a few backups of /home just in case) then you're just installing the newer distro into / and you still have any data stuff safely located in /home.

Erm as for your Azureus issue, I'd say, probably not. i.e. lots of things can cause an app to crash. logs may well have shown you that something (bots etc) have been sniffing round your "in leg". You might get more info if you saved the log/error messages and googled with them though. Azureus is something I saw for the first time the other day. My brother (family linux bore and Linux based IT professional) was getting some TV programmes or something, and even he said that he felt that Azureus isn't as stable as it might seem, he was moaning about some weird lock up/hang issues he'd encountered when downloading multiple "things" and if a couple of the torrents (I think thats how he referred to the in feeds) paused or hung or dropped off, then sometimes it meant restarting the app.

As it's his home system I'm not sure if he's that bothered about finding out whether it's a bug or something, or not!

You could of course, also have a look at the Azureus site and see if they have a bug tracker/listing and check to see if the symptoms you experienced are listed under any bug reports?

ttfn

John
 
  


Reply


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off



Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
My rant. DDoS YourseLF General 2 08-04-2005 02:45 PM
My rant Joey.Dale General 10 09-28-2004 07:22 PM
rant, rant, rant (dselect) fenderman11111 Debian 2 07-06-2004 06:03 PM
A rant Thorkyl General 17 06-30-2004 08:22 AM
rant emetib General 4 04-16-2004 09:38 PM

LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Linux Forums > Linux - General

All times are GMT -5. The time now is 10:13 AM.

Main Menu
Advertisement
My LQ
Write for LQ
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute content, let us know.
Main Menu
Syndicate
RSS1  Latest Threads
RSS1  LQ News
Twitter: @linuxquestions
Open Source Consulting | Domain Registration