[gentoo-dev] Installation Gotchas

[gentoo-dev] Installation Gotchas

[Bruce A. Locke]

Hello...

I did my first non-vmware (aka on real hardware) install of Gentoo and was
wondering about the following:

- If DMA is going to be on by default in the kernel would it be possible to
include hdparm on the cd image so people with harddrives, etc that have
issues with DMA can turn it off after the cd boots?  I had to create a 10mb
partition and untar the hdparm package because the HD would freak out with
DMA turned on under lightload. (Yes I know, old cheap harddrive)

- Where are the kernel messages displayed once the cd has booted?  I checked
all the vt's and failed to see any of the DMA related kernel messages,
etc... would it be possible to redirect these messages to a VC to people
could use it for troubleshooting?

- On the cd image there are symlinks for zcat, gunzip, etc but no symlinks
for bzcat, bzunip2, etc

- Wget doesn't seem to be in the sys tarball...  not a big problem but I was
just wondering if it was an oversight

- The dhcp package is missing the needed directory /var/state/dhcp... the
directory should be created empty so dhclient can place the dhcp lease info,
etc in it

- The default dhcp package configuation points to various config files as
being under /etc, not /etc/dhcp

- The default kernel lacks either CONFIG_PACKET or CONFIG_FILTER which is
needed for dhclient.  I compiled a kernel myself and it works now but is
there any reason why one of those options is not compiled into the default
kernel?

- If you do a "make install" in the kernel source tree thats part of the
kernel source package, the makefile tries to play with /etc/lilo.conf (which
doesn't exist) and places the kernel image in the / (root) directory instead
of under /boot.  Also I don't see a System.map anywhere.  Is it still needed
for lsof on Linux w/ 2.4.x?

- I had to do some voodoo to get the most recent version of portage to work.
I did a ebuild merge on the most recent version, unmerged it, untar'd the
old version back, then remerged the most recent version and it started
working while after the original merge it was busted... go figure....

I have the box up and running with DHCP... I'm going to make a custom
version of the eth network template for DHCP and will probably submit it to
the list for the mailing list archive, etc.

Thanks for all your help so far...

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Bruce A. Locke
blocke@shivan.org

Re: [gentoo-dev] Installation Gotchas

[Achim Gottinger]

"Bruce A. Locke" wrote:

> Hello...
>
> I did my first non-vmware (aka on real hardware) install of Gentoo and was
> wondering about the following:
>
> - If DMA is going to be on by default in the kernel would it be possible to
> include hdparm on the cd image so people with harddrives, etc that have
> issues with DMA can turn it off after the cd boots?  I had to create a 10mb
> partition and untar the hdparm package because the HD would freak out with
> DMA turned on under lightload. (Yes I know, old cheap harddrive)

Ok hdparam will be there.

>
>
> - Where are the kernel messages displayed once the cd has booted?  I checked
> all the vt's and failed to see any of the DMA related kernel messages,
> etc... would it be possible to redirect these messages to a VC to people
> could use it for troubleshooting?

Good idea next time we will use vc/12 for kernel outputs instead of suppressing
them.

>
>
> - On the cd image there are symlinks for zcat, gunzip, etc but no symlinks
> for bzcat, bzunip2, etc

zcat gunzip symlinks are required for loadkeys bzcat bzunzip2 not. That's why
they are there /not there.
But symlinks do not hurt so they will be on the next boot-image.

>
>
> - Wget doesn't seem to be in the sys tarball...  not a big problem but I was
> just wondering if it was an oversight

Normaly we included some other non sys utilities in the sys-tarball. We did not
do it in this case.
Next time will have different profiles.

>
>
> - The dhcp package is missing the needed directory /var/state/dhcp... the
> directory should be created empty so dhclient can place the dhcp lease info,
> etc in it
>
> - The default dhcp package configuation points to various config files as
> being under /etc, not /etc/dhcp
>
> - The default kernel lacks either CONFIG_PACKET or CONFIG_FILTER which is
> needed for dhclient.  I compiled a kernel myself and it works now but is
> there any reason why one of those options is not compiled into the default
> kernel?

Simply because dhcp was not used by anyone before. I tested it last week and
found that problems too.

>
>
> - If you do a "make install" in the kernel source tree thats part of the
> kernel source package, the makefile tries to play with /etc/lilo.conf (which
> doesn't exist) and places the kernel image in the / (root) directory instead
> of under /boot.  Also I don't see a System.map anywhere.  Is it still needed
> for lsof on Linux w/ 2.4.x?
>

Well it'r rc and it's pre. :-)
There was a bug in the kernel-package. The make install thought to be run in
the alsa subdir runs in
the kernel dir. If ou run make install in /usr/src/linux it tries to update
lilo.

>
> - I had to do some voodoo to get the most recent version of portage to work.
> I did a ebuild merge on the most recent version, unmerged it, untar'd the
> old version back, then remerged the most recent version and it started
> working while after the original merge it was busted... go figure....
>
> I have the box up and running with DHCP... I'm going to make a custom
> version of the eth network template for DHCP and will probably submit it to
> the list for the mailing list archive, etc.
>
> Thanks for all your help so far...

Thank you for your reports.

achim~

>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> Bruce A. Locke
> blocke@shivan.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> gentoo-dev mailing list
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
> http://www.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev

Re: [gentoo-dev] Installation Gotchas

[Morgan Christiansson]

Achim Gottinger wrote:

> "Bruce A. Locke" wrote:
> 
>> Hello...
>> 
>> I did my first non-vmware (aka on real hardware) install of Gentoo and was
>> wondering about the following:
>> 
>> - If DMA is going to be on by default in the kernel would it be possible to
>> include hdparm on the cd image so people with harddrives, etc that have
>> issues with DMA can turn it off after the cd boots?  I had to create a 10mb
>> partition and untar the hdparm package because the HD would freak out with
>> DMA turned on under lightload. (Yes I know, old cheap harddrive)
> 
> 
> Ok hdparam will be there.

You could let the user enable/disable it before booting, like this:

grep no_dma /proc/cmdline>/dev/null || enable_dma()

or the opposite

grep no_dma /proc/cmdline >/dev/null && disable_dma()

Some more advanced syntax could be added too, such as no_dma=hda,hdb but 
that's problably overdoing it. Shouldn't there be a kernel option for 
this in the first place anyway?

-- 
Morgan Christiansson

Re: [gentoo-dev] Installation Gotchas

[drobbins]

On Wed, Feb 21, 2001 at 03:02:24PM +0100, Morgan Christiansson wrote:

> You could let the user enable/disable it before booting, like this:
> 
> grep no_dma /proc/cmdline>/dev/null || enable_dma()
> 
> or the opposite
> 
> grep no_dma /proc/cmdline >/dev/null && disable_dma()
> 
> Some more advanced syntax could be added too, such as no_dma=hda,hdb but 
> that's problably overdoing it. Shouldn't there be a kernel option for 
> this in the first place anyway?

I didn't know that you could parse kernel options like that.  Thanks for
the tip. :)

-- 
Daniel Robbins					<drobbins@gentoo.org>
President/CEO					http://www.gentoo.org 
Gentoo Technologies, Inc.