[gentoo-user] Problems with installdiscs 2007.0 and 2008.0 when installing on a K6 computer

[gentoo-user] Problems with installdiscs 2007.0 and 2008.0 when installing on a K6 computer

[Liebich, Wolfgang]

Hi,
My computer at home is seriously old already. It has a K6 CPU, an motherboard with VIA chips (chipset (?) VT82C598), and about 10G total hard disk space (spread over 2 hd's - can possibly add a 3rd hd, too).
I've been using debian until now, BUT I'm less and less satisfied with that b/c of all that extra baggage I've to use here. Maybe with a trimmed down gentoo installation I can give the old
machine a new lease on life.
My main problem here is:
- I can't use the minimal install CDs. If I try to boot from them (using gentoo-nofb just in case, also acpi=off and nodma), the machine promptly reboots after loading the kernel. I have 
sneaking suspicion that this is because the kernel is built for i686 and above. Is this true? 
If yes, ... well, is there anywhere still a mirror holding an older install CD?

Puzzled in Vienna,
Wolfgang

Re: [gentoo-user] Problems with installdiscs 2007.0 and 2008.0 when installing on a K6 computer

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tuesday 16 September 2008 19:33:28 Liebich, Wolfgang wrote:
> Hi,
> My computer at home is seriously old already. It has a K6 CPU, an
> motherboard with VIA chips (chipset (?) VT82C598), and about 10G total hard
> disk space (spread over 2 hd's - can possibly add a 3rd hd, too). I've been
> using debian until now, BUT I'm less and less satisfied with that b/c of
> all that extra baggage I've to use here. Maybe with a trimmed down gentoo
> installation I can give the old machine a new lease on life.
> My main problem here is:
> - I can't use the minimal install CDs. If I try to boot from them (using
> gentoo-nofb just in case, also acpi=off and nodma), the machine promptly
> reboots after loading the kernel. I have sneaking suspicion that this is
> because the kernel is built for i686 and above. Is this true? If yes, ...
> well, is there anywhere still a mirror holding an older install CD?

I doubt it very much. My mirror at work long ago lost it's old images.

But all is not lost. You can install from Debian using a stage 3 install. In 
essence, you will free up enough disk space, unpack an i686 stage 3 into a 
chroot, configure and boot into that.

If that doesn't work, there's always the old stage1/2 technique, which is not 
supported anymore, but the docs still exist somewhere on the gentoo site.

Finally, if all else fails, I have these ancient isos on my home machine:

alan@develop ~/share/iso/gentoo/x86 $ find . -name *iso
./2005.0/gentoo-universal_2005.0.iso
./2005.0/gentoo-minimal_2005.0.iso
./2006.0/livecd-i686-installer-2006.0.iso
./2006.0/install-x86-minimal-2006.0.iso
./2006.1/livecd-i686-installer-2006.1.iso
./2007.0/livecd-amd64-installer-2007.0.iso

If you have an ftp server on your network configured for upload I could be 
persuaded to put a copy there



-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Problems with installdiscs 2007.0 and 2008.0 when installing on a K6 computer

[Wolfgang Liebich]

Hi,

Sorry for the long delay, but I've been sick for some time, had some
business trips etc... ugh.
Alan McKinnon schrieb:
> On Tuesday 16 September 2008 19:33:28 Liebich, Wolfgang wrote:
>   
>> Hi,
>> My computer at home is seriously old already. It has a K6 CPU, an
>> motherboard with VIA chips (chipset (?) VT82C598), and about 10G total hard
>> disk space (spread over 2 hd's - can possibly add a 3rd hd, too). I've been
>> using debian until now, BUT I'm less and less satisfied with that b/c of
>> all that extra baggage I've to use here. Maybe with a trimmed down gentoo
>> installation I can give the old machine a new lease on life.
>> My main problem here is:
>> - I can't use the minimal install CDs. If I try to boot from them (using
>> gentoo-nofb just in case, also acpi=off and nodma), the machine promptly
>> reboots after loading the kernel. I have sneaking suspicion that this is
>> because the kernel is built for i686 and above. Is this true? If yes, ...
>> well, is there anywhere still a mirror holding an older install CD?
>>     
>
> I doubt it very much. My mirror at work long ago lost it's old images.
>
> But all is not lost. You can install from Debian using a stage 3 install. In 
> essence, you will free up enough disk space, unpack an i686 stage 3 into a 
> chroot, configure and boot into that.
>   
That will be pretty hard to do. The partitioning is not very nice ---
and the biggest free space on any partitions is
about 500MB big. Additionally I had some troubles with my external hard
drive I wanted to use as a backup drive.
More about that in a later post.

> If that doesn't work, there's always the old stage1/2 technique, which is not 
> supported anymore, but the docs still exist somewhere on the gentoo site.
>
> Finally, if all else fails, I have these ancient isos on my home machine:
>
> alan@develop ~/share/iso/gentoo/x86 $ find . -name *iso
> ./2005.0/gentoo-universal_2005.0.iso
> ./2005.0/gentoo-minimal_2005.0.iso
> ./2006.0/livecd-i686-installer-2006.0.iso
> ./2006.0/install-x86-minimal-2006.0.iso
> ./2006.1/livecd-i686-installer-2006.1.iso
> ./2007.0/livecd-amd64-installer-2007.0.iso
>
> If you have an ftp server on your network configured for upload I could be 
> persuaded to put a copy there
>
>
>
>   

Hmmm... well, I've already bought a new computer now, so the question is
in some way not that relevant anymore :-)
Nevertheless - maybe I will come back to your offer, to keep maybe the
old codger around as a backup machine in case the
new! shiny! big! one fails.

Thanks for your offer -- I will try to setup an FTP server on my
computer (no network at home).
Ciao,
Wolfgang Liebich