[gentoo-dev] bug reports & impressions on first gentoo install

[gentoo-dev] bug reports & impressions on first gentoo install

[Mark Henderson]

Hi Gentoo Team,

I just completed my first gentoo install over the weekend, and have a 
few comments (or bug reports) that might make it easier for others in 
future. I realise that Gentoo is pre version 1, but of course it can't 
hurt to point out things that might be needed to get us there (if others 
agree).

1) Documentation
    ----------------
Firstly let me say that the standard of the documentation is excellent.
However, I ran into a few problems with http://www.gentoo.org/doc/build.html

a) many of the important notes and comments appear beneath the code 
listing they refer to, as apposed to before. This makes it too easy to 
only see them after running the commands in question (I got caught when 
compiling the kernel, and had to redo this when I read further down 
about items such as devfs that had to be included). This is easily 
fixed, and I'd be happy to take it on.
b) I think some of the notes and code listings might be slightly out of 
sync with the current build process. (e.g. fstab - code listing 25 - 
refers to /dev/hda1, dev/hda2, etc, while the fstab the build process 
created for me has "/dev/BOOT", "dev/ROOT", "/dev/SWAP". I left this as 
is, assuming it was a devfs way of doing things. I could be wrong though!)
c) The default "fstab" provided seems to assuming the use of ReiserFS 
for the boot and root partitions. This seems to be out of date, and is 
certainly confusing. I've used ext2 for /boot and ext3 for / and it 
would have been _very_ helpful to have the correct parameters included 
for each file system, allowing me to simply uncomment what I need. 
Something along the lines of:

    # Uncomment appropriate line, depending on required filesystem
    #/dev/BOOT     /boot    ext2        parameters????   1 1
    #/dev/BOOT     /boot    ext3        parameters????   1 1
    #/dev/BOOT     /boot    reisferfs   parameters????   1 1

    #/dev/ROOT     /           ext2        parameters????   1 1
    #/dev/ROOT     /           ext3        parameters????   1 1
    #/dev/ROOT     /           reisferfs   parameters????   1 1

d) Code listing 29: what is recommended - compiling network driver as 
module or not? This could be dealt w/ in the section on compiling the 
kernel, and could therefore be potentially made redundant
e) Code listing 32 seems to be redundant, as the same command is run in 
30 or 31.
f) Code lsiting 36 should comment out the NT Workstation option in the 
sample grub conf, and make it more clear that it is for people 
dual-booting. Once again, I got caught here with the naming of the file, 
only reading the note that followed after creating the file (but was 
able to rename it, of course).

2) Bootstrap
    ----------
a) I bootstrapped over a 56k modem, and it would have made a huge 
difference to the time taken if the required files could have been 
downloaded in the background while compilation continued in the 
forground, rather than having things happen in serial.
b) No mention was made regarding using mirrors in the documention for 
the bootstrap process, although I've now discovered this would have been 
possible (but would not have helped me in particular).

3) Errors
     ------
a) In code listing 37 I was not able to "umount /mnt/gentoo" as it said 
it was busy

4) Using Gentoo
    --------------
These comments might be due to my not being a Linux guru just yet, but 
anyway...

a) The SSH host keys had not been created, although SSH seemed to be 
installed. After consulting the man page, I fugured out how to create 
them, and was then able to start SSH and log into the box via SSH. I 
subsequently discovered by chance that there is a script 
("/etc/init.d/ssh") that would have created these keys for me. Should 
this not have been done as part of the installation process? (or at 
least documented?).
b) Packages such as SSH, Apache, MySQL, etc, that I have installed using 
emerge (sshd was already installed) do not start automatically when the 
machine reboots. I have also noticed that there is not inet.d or xinet.d 
installed by default. It's likely that this is all the desired 
behaviour, but coming from Redhat, it has me slight confused.
c) I'm getting some error messages during the boot process, but they 
scroll off the screen before I can see them, and I can't find them in 
any log files (I installed metalog).

Well, that's it for now. I hope some of this has been useful. I'm 
looking forward to getting to know Gentoo and its community better.

Cheers,
Mark

Re: [gentoo-dev] bug reports & impressions on first gentoo install

[Grant Goodyear]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 5264 bytes --]

> Firstly let me say that the standard of the documentation is excellent.

Thanks!  

> a) many of the important notes and comments appear beneath the code 
> listing they refer to, as apposed to before. This makes it too easy to 
> only see them after running the commands in question (I got caught when 
> compiling the kernel, and had to redo this when I read further down 
> about items such as devfs that had to be included). This is easily 
> fixed, and I'd be happy to take it on.

Didn't anybody ever tell you to read the documentation all-the-way-
through first?  *Grin*  Less flippantly, I think most of the Note/
Important/Warning blocks are placed correctly -- one generally wants
to put notes after the bare-bones commands.

> Something along the lines of:
> 
>     # Uncomment appropriate line, depending on required filesystem
>     #/dev/BOOT     /boot    ext2        parameters????   1 1
>     #/dev/BOOT     /boot    ext3        parameters????   1 1
>     #/dev/BOOT     /boot    reisferfs   parameters????   1 1
> 
>     #/dev/ROOT     /           ext2        parameters????   1 1
>     #/dev/ROOT     /           ext3        parameters????   1 1
>     #/dev/ROOT     /           reisferfs   parameters????   1 1

I'll let drobbins make that decision.  I did update the docs to 
accurately reflect the current fstab, however.  Thanks!

> d) Code listing 29: what is recommended - compiling network driver as 
> module or not? This could be dealt w/ in the section on compiling the 
> kernel, and could therefore be potentially made redundant

We don't make a recommendation; it depends on the needs/desires of
the users.

> e) Code listing 32 seems to be redundant, as the same command is run in 
> 30 or 31.

Yep.  Thanks.  I've zapped it.

> f) Code lsiting 36 should comment out the NT Workstation option in the 
> sample grub conf, and make it more clear that it is for people 
> dual-booting. Once again, I got caught here with the naming of the file, 
> only reading the note that followed after creating the file (but was 
> able to rename it, of course).

Note about dual booting added.

> 2) Bootstrap
>     ----------
> a) I bootstrapped over a 56k modem, and it would have made a huge 
> difference to the time taken if the required files could have been 
> downloaded in the background while compilation continued in the 
> forground, rather than having things happen in serial.

We're working on this functionality.  For the moment you can do 
"emerge --fetchonly"; see "emerge --help" (I _really_ need to update
our portage man pages one of these days.)

> b) No mention was made regarding using mirrors in the documention for 
> the bootstrap process, although I've now discovered this would have been 
> possible (but would not have helped me in particular).

True.  I'm not quite sure what to say about it, however. Nonetheless,
I've added a note about make.globals to the docs.

> a) In code listing 37 I was not able to "umount /mnt/gentoo" as it said 
> it was busy

Fixed.

> a) The SSH host keys had not been created, although SSH seemed to be 
> installed. After consulting the man page, I fugured out how to create 
> them, and was then able to start SSH and log into the box via SSH. I 
> subsequently discovered by chance that there is a script 
> ("/etc/init.d/ssh") that would have created these keys for me. Should 
> this not have been done as part of the installation process? (or at 
> least documented?).

Nope.  Running the start-up script will create the host keys, but people
may have their own way of doing things, so host keys are _not_ created
at installation.  

> b) Packages such as SSH, Apache, MySQL, etc, that I have installed using 
> emerge (sshd was already installed) do not start automatically when the 
> machine reboots. I have also noticed that there is not inet.d or xinet.d 
> installed by default. It's likely that this is all the desired 
> behaviour, but coming from Redhat, it has me slight confused.

That behaviour is, indeed, by design.  We try to turn on as little as
possible by default, thereby minimizing security risks.

> c) I'm getting some error messages during the boot process, but they 
> scroll off the screen before I can see them, and I can't find them in 
> any log files (I installed metalog).

We don't really have a good way of capturing error info.  Such a huge
amount of info is generated during bootstrap + emerge system that
it doesn't seem useful to try to dump all of that into a log.

Welcome to Gentoo!

-g2boojum-
-- 
___________________________________________________________________
|     Grant Goodyear                  |  The Secrets of Physics:   |
|     Dept. of Chemistry - Clemson U  |1. Add zero.                |
|     Clemson, SC  29634              |2. Multiply by one.         |
|-------------------------------------|3. Expand in a Taylor series|
|e-mail: goodyea@clemson.edu          |4. Integrate by parts.      |
|www:g2.ces.clemson.edu/~grant        |5. Fourier transform.       |
|                                     |6. Add auxiliary variables  |
|_____________________________________|____________________________|
 

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 232 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-dev] bug reports & impressions on first gentoo install

[Chad M. Huneycutt]

Mark Henderson wrote:

> c) I'm getting some error messages during the boot process, but they 
> scroll off the screen before I can see them, and I can't find them in 
> any log files (I installed metalog).

Grant covered most of your other issues, but I give a little hint for 
this one.  You can use shift-uparrow to scroll back a little bit (enough 
  for boot messages) until you change to another vc.  Once you switch to 
another vc, your scroll history is blown away.

Chad

Re: [gentoo-dev] bug reports & impressions on first gentoo install

[Mikael Hallendal]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 889 bytes --]

mån 2002-01-14 klockan 22.11 skrev Grant Goodyear:

> > d) Code listing 29: what is recommended - compiling network driver as 
> > module or not? This could be dealt w/ in the section on compiling the 
> > kernel, and could therefore be potentially made redundant
> 
> We don't make a recommendation; it depends on the needs/desires of
> the users.

Well, we could state what we recommend for different usages. This way
users will not have to try to find that information out themselfs (in
case they are new to installing this kind of distribution). People that
have just run Red Hat or similar distributions might never have compiled
a kernel themselfs and doesn't know that most stuff in Red Hat stock
kernel is compiled as modules.

Regards,
  Mikael Hallendal

-- 
Mikael Hallendal
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop Team Leader
CodeFactory AB, Stockholm, Sweden


[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 232 bytes --]