Gentoo install issues

drasnor

Well, I've been installing Gentoo on my dual Opteron system and just completed the manual. Problem is, I can't get it to boot.

GRUB will load my kernel, but I get a kernel panic that it can't mount the root filesystem. I checked my root declaration in grub.conf and unless the drive ordering changed between when I was booted with the LiveCD and when I'm trying to boot it now, it looks good.

Any chance I mis-compiled the kernel?

The other thing is that my default fstab showed my root filesystem as being XFS, though I'm pretty sure I formatted it as ext3 (mke2fs -j /dev/hda4). I changed the fstab entry to ext3 though.

If y'all need more info, just let me know.

-drasnor

Doonga

drasnor wrote:

Well, I've been installing Gentoo on my dual Opteron system and just completed the manual. Problem is, I can't get it to boot.

GRUB will load my kernel, but I get a kernel panic that it can't mount the root filesystem. I checked my root declaration in grub.conf and unless the drive ordering changed between when I was booted with the LiveCD and when I'm trying to boot it now, it looks good.

Any chance I mis-compiled the kernel?

The other thing is that my default fstab showed my root filesystem as being XFS, though I'm pretty sure I formatted it as ext3 (mke2fs -j /dev/hda4). I changed the fstab entry to ext3 though.

If y'all need more info, just let me know.

-drasnor

A few things to check...

Make sure ext3 is compiled into your kernel (not as a module). Are there any other errors above the most obvious one at the bottom of the screen? Also, that default fstab is purely a sample. It just has xfs in there as an example, there no sort of detection going on to generate it.

If that doesn't fix it, please post your grub.conf and your partition scheme, I'll see if I notice anything glaringly wrong.

drasnor

Pretty sure I compiled all my filesystem support into the kernel.

Here's grub.conf

# Which listing to boot as default. 0 is the first, 1 is the second, etc.
default 0
# How many seconds to wait before the default listing is booted.
timeout 10
# What image to use as the GRUB splashscreen.
# splashimage=(hd2,3)/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title=Gentoo Linux 2.6.3
# Partition where the kernel image (or operating system) is located.
root (hd0,1)
kernel (hd0,1)/kernel-2.6.3-gentoo-r2 root=/dev/hda4

# This section is commented until I figure out how to make my VIA 8237 RAID work.
# title=Windows XP Professional
# root (hd3,0)
# chainloader +1

title=Windows 2000 Professional
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

The partition scheme for that drive looks like this:
1) 120GB NTFS (Windows 2000 Professional)
2) 32MB ext2 (/boot)
3) 4GB swap (Linux swap)
4) 115 GB ext3 (/)

There is also a SATA RAID in the system with two 160GB drives. The LiveCD detects them as individual drives (hde and hdf), with the partitions on one and nothing on the other. I decided not to screw with them until I figured out what was going on.

The partitions for the RAID are like so:
1) 40GB NTFS (Windows XP root)
2) 111GB NTFS extended (Windows XP user directories)
151GB unallocated (should have been Linux, but the LiveCD wasn't cooperating)

-drasnor

Doonga

drasnor wrote:

Here's grub.conf

# Which listing to boot as default. 0 is the first, 1 is the second, etc.
default 0
# How many seconds to wait before the default listing is booted.
timeout 10
# What image to use as the GRUB splashscreen.
# splashimage=(hd2,3)/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title=Gentoo Linux 2.6.3
# Partition where the kernel image (or operating system) is located.
root (hd0,1)
kernel (hd0,1)/kernel-2.6.3-gentoo-r2 root=/dev/hda4

# This section is commented until I figure out how to make my VIA 8237 RAID work.
# title=Windows XP Professional
# root (hd3,0)
# chainloader +1

title=Windows 2000 Professional
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

The partition scheme for that drive looks like this:
1) 120GB NTFS (Windows 2000 Professional)
2) 32MB ext2 (/boot)
3) 4GB swap (Linux swap)
4) 115 GB ext3 (/)

There is also a SATA RAID in the system with two 160GB drives. The LiveCD detects them as individual drives (hde and hdf), with the partitions on one and nothing on the other. I decided not to screw with them until I figured out what was going on.

The partitions for the RAID are like so:
1) 40GB NTFS (Windows XP root)
2) 111GB NTFS extended (Windows XP user directories)
151GB unallocated (should have been Linux, but the LiveCD wasn't cooperating)

-drasnor

Hmmm...That all looks ok. There must be something screwy in the kernel. The sata raid won't be detected in linux, the typical sata motherboard raid is actually done in software. I don't know of any that work *yet* in linux. I think the silicon image one is being worked on, possibly in an early beta state?

Err..let's see here...Is that drive it is booting off of a sata drive? If so, your devices should be /dev/sdXX instead of /dev/hdXX. The sata stuff was in the scsi low level driver section of the kernel config. I also enabled the ide equivalents so I could set DMA on my cdroms. (I have a ic7-max3 board with the ICH5 chipset.) So what I did was use the SCSI/SATA drivers for my raptor and the IDE drivers to run the cdrw and dvdrom.

Hope that helps a bit?

drasnor

Gentoo is on my primary master IDE hard drive, so it should be hda. The odd thing is that I know the SATA stuff should show up as sdX drives, but they don't. No idea why. According to the AMD64 Gentoo notes, the VIA 8237 is supported but the software RAID autoconfigure hasn't been ported from the 2.4 kernels yet, and it strongly discourages using a 2.4 kernel with AMD64.

I'm going to try recompiling the kernel tomorrow. I don't feel like doing it right now.

-drasnor

kanezfan

not that we can't help you here or anything, but have you checked out the gentoo forums. I've only a couple problems that I had to ask questions on, the rest I found answers to just by reading their forums.

LIQuid

this is what i have in mine...

default 1
timeout 20
splashimage=(hd1,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title=Gentoo 1.4 (kernel 2.6.2)
root (hd1,0)
kernel (hd1,0)/kernel-2.6.2 root=/dev/hde3 vga=795

title=Gentoo 1.4 (kernel 2.6.3)
root (hd1,0)
kernel (hd1,0)/kernel-2.6.3 root=/dev/hde3 vga=795

its (hd1,0) because its the second device on my SATA controller the first device on it is (hd0,0), which is set to boot first( i guess thats why it matters) before my SCSI drive, which is (hd2,0)

drasnor

You probably have a different partition setup, but that begs another question of mine. This is going to sound completely n00b, but since it is, here goes: is framebuffer support in the kernel necessary? I seem to remember reading that it's only necessary for laptops, but it might be important I guess.

-drasnor

LIQuid

its not necessary at all as far as i know

LIQuid

btw,
hde1=boot
hde2=swap
hde3=root

res0r9lm

No framebuffer is not needed it just makes it look a lot sweeter you also need it if you plan on using bootsplash.

I wrote up a little guide to getting gentoo running with xp's and kernel 2.6.x it might be of use to you. http://amdusers.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=5

One thing you could do is try genkernel don't quote me but off the top of my head it's genkernel --menuconfig all.

ginipig

Those of you running 2.6.x kernels: How's it going?

res0r9lm

they run great see about 25% increase in memory bandwidth. Presently I have k12ltsp on second harddrive running some diskless workstation but have got almost everything setup to run ltsp from gentoo. All that I think is left is to get ypserv set so they can resolve hostnames. Atleast I think thats the problem I get YPBIND_PROC domain not bound error.

enderwgn

Check out David Dollar's guide on SATA raid in linux at

http://www.grepninja.com/sil3112a-md-raid0.html

Straight_Man

ginipig wrote:

Those of you running 2.6.x kernels: How's it going?

2.6.3.7 and up is pretty dang golden-- real nice. Besides RAID and bunches of newer more modern chipset support, some folks actually worked on USB Hotplug functionality and seem to have gotten that right-- hotplug is what lets a USB device unhook and rehook when plugged back in, and the latter has been why so many removable storage things, printers on USB switches, and mice randoml;y dissappeared until reboot or manual restart of the USB root hub in soem cases.

FAIR WARNING, and this is a big dependency, some of the builders of the compiled 2.6.3+ kernels used gcc 3.2 to build with. Changing gcc has all sorts of dep h*** cascades associated with it, so get a whole system set to move from 2.4 tree to 2.6 tree, or expect to be repiecing things together for a long time. If you have a stable install now, would be better to get latest 2.4 tree kernel release for your distro, some distros, SuSE included, ported things from the 2.6 kernel tree back to an older gcc base and into the 2.4 tree for better functionality.

Because gcc and kernel BOTH changed at roughly same timeframe in months, you get to change both to get an easily custom compiled kernel in 2.6 kernel tree-- the exceptions have been where someone backported kernel modules to an older gcc source set from a 2.6 kernel module source set (SuSE, in 9.0, for example). Have at it if you want but back up first (the Mondo\Mindi pair is a good script set to start with for that), best advice, if you really want a brick-and-mortar under the hood education for Linux-- then plan to rebuild many other things also, which I am not gonna talk about here.