[gentoo-user] Acer Aspireone AO751h install hints

[gentoo-user] Acer Aspireone AO751h install hints

[Walter Dnes]

  It started off ugly, but I found the solutions, so here they are, to
hopefully save other people some time.

  The Gentoo minimal install image cannot see the harddrive at all.
"fdisk -l" only showed /dev/sda, i.e. the USB stick on which unetbootin
had installed the minimal install.  I've filed bug a report on this...
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=292346

  Knoppix, on the other hand, could see the hard drive, but wasn't able
to drive the RTL8101 network card.  I ended up installing under a
Knoppix "live CD" on a USB stick.  Notes regarding the installation
under Knoppix...

 1) Get *TWO* USB sticks, one of which has at least 1 gigabyte capacity,
    and make sure to back up any important data on them.  It will all be
    overwritten.

 2) On a machine with a CD or DVD download and burn the microKnoppix ISO.

 3) Boot the existing computer from the Knoppix CD/DVD.

 4) Plug in a USB stick with at least 1 gig capacity.

 5) From a console, execute "flash-knoppix" (without the quotes).  That's
    it.  Surprisingly easy.  For people who insist on menus, the path is
    [LXDE --> System Tools --> Install KNOPPIX to flash disk]

 6) Unmount and take out the USB stick, and reboot the linux machine.
    You will need it a lot.

 7) Do the following in the exact order.  I went around in circles over
    this one...
    - insert the bootable USB stick into the ACER netbook.
    - reboot the ACER while holding down the {F2} key.  This will bring
      you into the BIOS setup.
    - go into the boot menu and select the item which mentions your USB
      stick.  In my case it was "USB HD" (YES!!!) not "USB KEY".
    - save changes and boot.  This should bring up Knoppix

 8) Make sure that the other linux machine is up to date, and do *NOT*
    clean out the /usr/portage/distfiles directory.

 9) Follow the regular Gentoo install instructions with these changes
    - open 2 terminals after Knoppix boots, and "su -" in both.  Later
      on you'll be able to switch back and forth between chrooted and
      Knoppix environments
    - as per http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/altinstall.xml
      - after bootup execute "mkdir /mnt/gentoo" from one of the 2 terms
      - when setting up for chroot, mount proc system with the command
        mount -o bind /proc /mnt/gentoo/proc
        rather than the command given in the install documentation
    - if Knoppix can't use the network card (as in my case) you'll have
      to be prepared to download stage3 and portage snapshot files, etc
      to the other linux machine, and shuttle them over via USB stick.
      This gets painfull when the instructions tell you to emerge stuff
      and you don't have a network card.  If you followed instructions
      in step #8, you can shuttle the necessary tarballs over from the
      other machine's distfiles directory to the Acer's distfiles
      directory.

10) If you're going to be running "make menuconfig" manually *EXIT AND
    SAVE YOUR WORK EVERY FEW MINUTES*!!! I cannot emphasize this enough.
    There is some magic combination of keypress and dragging my fingers
    on the touchpad, which kills the terminal you're working in.  Of
    course you end up losing the entries you've made.  Save early and
    save often.  Here are the "make menuconfig" paths for installing
    working hard drive and network card drivers...

Device Drivers
  Serial ATA (prod) and Parallel ATA (experimental) drivers
    ATA SFF support 
      Intel SCH PATA support


Device Drivers
  Network Device support
    Ethernet (1000 mbit support)
      Realtek 8169 gigabit ethernet support

  It's now booting properly and seeing the internet.  The install is
done on GMT time, and then I set to local time.  Since I'm in EST
timezone (5 hours behind GMT), it complains on bootup about certain
config files having dates in the future.  That will disappear in a few
hours.  It's close to finishing an update.  Next is "emerge system" to
be followed by "emerge world".

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>

Re: [gentoo-user] Acer Aspireone AO751h install hints

[Mick]

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Thank you Walter!  I'm about to buy a new laptop and these instructions will 
save me a lot of time and effort.  :-)

On Sunday 08 November 2009 08:11:15 Walter Dnes wrote:
>   It started off ugly, but I found the solutions, so here they are, to
> hopefully save other people some time.
> 
>   The Gentoo minimal install image cannot see the harddrive at all.
> "fdisk -l" only showed /dev/sda, i.e. the USB stick on which unetbootin
> had installed the minimal install.  I've filed bug a report on this...
> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=292346
> 
>   Knoppix, on the other hand, could see the hard drive, but wasn't able
> to drive the RTL8101 network card.  I ended up installing under a
> Knoppix "live CD" on a USB stick.  Notes regarding the installation
> under Knoppix...
> 
>  1) Get *TWO* USB sticks, one of which has at least 1 gigabyte capacity,
>     and make sure to back up any important data on them.  It will all be
>     overwritten.
> 
>  2) On a machine with a CD or DVD download and burn the microKnoppix ISO.
> 
>  3) Boot the existing computer from the Knoppix CD/DVD.
> 
>  4) Plug in a USB stick with at least 1 gig capacity.
> 
>  5) From a console, execute "flash-knoppix" (without the quotes).  That's
>     it.  Surprisingly easy.  For people who insist on menus, the path is
>     [LXDE --> System Tools --> Install KNOPPIX to flash disk]
> 
>  6) Unmount and take out the USB stick, and reboot the linux machine.
>     You will need it a lot.
> 
>  7) Do the following in the exact order.  I went around in circles over
>     this one...
>     - insert the bootable USB stick into the ACER netbook.
>     - reboot the ACER while holding down the {F2} key.  This will bring
>       you into the BIOS setup.
>     - go into the boot menu and select the item which mentions your USB
>       stick.  In my case it was "USB HD" (YES!!!) not "USB KEY".
>     - save changes and boot.  This should bring up Knoppix
> 
>  8) Make sure that the other linux machine is up to date, and do *NOT*
>     clean out the /usr/portage/distfiles directory.
> 
>  9) Follow the regular Gentoo install instructions with these changes
>     - open 2 terminals after Knoppix boots, and "su -" in both.  Later
>       on you'll be able to switch back and forth between chrooted and
>       Knoppix environments
>     - as per http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/altinstall.xml
>       - after bootup execute "mkdir /mnt/gentoo" from one of the 2 terms
>       - when setting up for chroot, mount proc system with the command
>         mount -o bind /proc /mnt/gentoo/proc
>         rather than the command given in the install documentation
>     - if Knoppix can't use the network card (as in my case) you'll have
>       to be prepared to download stage3 and portage snapshot files, etc
>       to the other linux machine, and shuttle them over via USB stick.
>       This gets painfull when the instructions tell you to emerge stuff
>       and you don't have a network card.  If you followed instructions
>       in step #8, you can shuttle the necessary tarballs over from the
>       other machine's distfiles directory to the Acer's distfiles
>       directory.
> 
> 10) If you're going to be running "make menuconfig" manually *EXIT AND
>     SAVE YOUR WORK EVERY FEW MINUTES*!!! I cannot emphasize this enough.
>     There is some magic combination of keypress and dragging my fingers
>     on the touchpad, which kills the terminal you're working in.  Of
>     course you end up losing the entries you've made.  Save early and
>     save often.  Here are the "make menuconfig" paths for installing
>     working hard drive and network card drivers...
> 
> Device Drivers
>   Serial ATA (prod) and Parallel ATA (experimental) drivers
>     ATA SFF support
>       Intel SCH PATA support
> 
> 
> Device Drivers
>   Network Device support
>     Ethernet (1000 mbit support)
>       Realtek 8169 gigabit ethernet support
> 
>   It's now booting properly and seeing the internet.  The install is
> done on GMT time, and then I set to local time.  Since I'm in EST
> timezone (5 hours behind GMT), it complains on bootup about certain
> config files having dates in the future.  That will disappear in a few
> hours.  It's close to finishing an update.  Next is "emerge system" to
> be followed by "emerge world".
> 

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] Acer Aspireone AO751h install hints

[Walter Dnes]

On Sun, Nov 08, 2009 at 09:15:00AM +0000, Mick wrote
> Thank you Walter!  I'm about to buy a new laptop and these
> instructions will save me a lot of time and effort.  :-)

  If we're lucky, my bug report will prompt the maintainers to insert
the pata_sch driver module into the install image, and make things a
lot easier for people down the road.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>