Gentoo 2004.2 Minimal CD Doesn't Boot

I just got back off of dial-up and decided to go back to Gentoo but I need wireless support(My comp is in the basement and the gateway is on the 2nd floor) Anyhow, I have the 2004.1 Minimal CD but that doesn't have WiFi. I grabbed the 2004.2 Minimal ISO and tried burning it using Nero Express Image Burning and ISO Recorder v2beta. I can't boot from either burn. I saw that a few others have this problem... but the only resolution I've found is to grab the Universal ISO... Any sujestions? I'd rather not d/l the universal ISO if I don't have to because I'm gonna start with the stage 1 tarball from the net anyhow. Oh, if it makes any diff. I can't remember where I grabbed the ISO from the first time(California I think) and the first time was using Nero... But the second time(when I used ISO Burner) I grabbed it from ibiblio.org

does it give any errors? does it get to the boot loader?, is your bios setup to boot from cd-rom?

Alright. It doesn't even TRY to boot. And yes, my bios is set to boot from CD first then HDD0... And I don't even have any other bootable devices...

if it doesn't try to boot ill assume the bios gave an error about no OS found? (maybe make the cd the only boot method for the bios to use, just in case its buggy)

but have you tried to see if it could boot other bootable cd's

also when you burned it, did you copy the image onto the cd (opening up the .iso file with nero will do this) or did it burn the image as a regular file (putting it on an iso file system, and thus have no boot sector, and no bootable cd)

I booted from the 2004.1 Minimal CD Right before d/ling the 2004.2 ISO so my CDROM/BIOS are fine. And I already said, I burned the ISO right. I used NERO Xpress ISO feature the first time with the ISO i d/led from somewhere in Calif. and I used ISO Burner - Which can ONLY burn ISOs the second time with the image from ibiblio.org.

Of all the gay... I found out that the bug is in the CD Image and has been recognized by the Gentoo team. There is an experimental ISO out that should work but I can only boot using the smp kernel which should be OK... I hope. I'm d/ling it now and I'll post back with the results.

Ok. I grabbed the CD and burnt it... It loaded. I only have the smp kernel but that's ok. However it doesn't see my Blitzz BWI605 802.11b WiFi Card(its an ADMTek Chipset) And I don't know enough about the wireless modules and stuff to know if the CD even HAS the driver...

i had a similar problem, the driver for my card (just a simple cheap network card) wasn't loaded at boot time

do a search on line for the driver you need, then look thru and see if any modules have a similar name (or just load each on one at a time ... id recommend the first choice tho, as it took hours to load each one at a time, and still didn't work till i looked at the cards docs for the driver name )

I looked. It's VERY poorly supported. ADMTek had a linux driver but the binaries are only for RH 7.3 and 8. And to compile the driver I think I have to recompile the kernel. At least that's what I gathered from reading the uber crappy readme file included in the source zip. Yeah, that readme is the only Linux documentation I've found for the card...

You might want to look at this GPL driver for the ADMTek 8211b chipset. It seems to be under intensive development - releases are out almost every day. Disclaimer: I don't have one myself so I can't really comment on usability or if it even works.


Håk

Thanks... but still no help... The live cd doesn't have 'make'... which I need to compile that driver... Which leaves me with one real option... pack my computer upstairs and plug into the gateway with a CAT5... then I can setup the driver after install... At any rate I've gotta get rid of this stupid winblows installation... it freezes up on me like every 10 minutes... ok more like every hour... but still...

That might be a solution too.


Håkan

I have the same problem with the boot-fail.

My system is PII 350 slot 1 on a ASUS BE6 mainboard with a Plextor cd-burner
It boots a winXPproSP1 CD, but not the Gentoo 2004.2 Minimal Live CD

Pretty standard hardware, but old...

Will the Gentoo 2004.2 Universal CD boot, or does it have the same bug??

I don't know. The experimental (but fully functional, only comes with the "SMP" 2.6 kernel though) 2004.2-r1 minimal CD works fine.


Håkan

The universal CD is ok!

I downloaded it, and tried tu run it, but the cd failed. So I downloaded the experimental one. When I took out the cd (supposed to be the universal CD) I realized that I've used an other copy of 2004.2 minimal.... So i changed the cd to the REAL 2004.2 Universal, and the PC booted