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Eagle

Eagle

aka Alshain
Moderator
Alright Ive decided to take a step and compile my own installation of Gentoo. So I'm wondering, if I'm going to compile the kernel myself which cd set should I download. Does it really matter? I mean if I'm compiling it for my computer is there an advantage to the athlon xp set over the x86 set?
 
Malcolm

Malcolm

Not a Moderator
there are different stages of the install.

stage 1 has the compiler installed already but you have to download all the other core packages and compile them, then recompile gcc

stage 2 has all the big core packages installed buy you need to compile the core (or system) packages.

stage 3 just need all the system/core packages updated.

after the stages you just compule the kernel, other system utilities (pcmcia, sys logger, cron), and do the basic configuration.

If i was you I'd go straight to stage 2, bootstrapping (stage 1) takes the longest :)

[edit]
oh yea, and about the cds, I just get the basic on (96mb). I just boots and detects hardware. The other CDs have GRP packages, pre-compiled versions of Xfree/GNOME/KDE and some other utils.
[/edit]
 
OP
Eagle

Eagle

aka Alshain
Moderator
Alright so are there advantages to starting with tarball 1? (I have been reading the manuals)
 
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OP
Eagle

Eagle

aka Alshain
Moderator
Malcolm said:
Some would say speed, I would say nothing.

I always start with stage 2, why? Well why not :)
Click to expand...


Cant do stage 2. As far as I can tell the stage 2 tarball isnt on the CD you told me to grab. Only stage 1 is there.
 
AlphaWolf

AlphaWolf

I prey, not pray.
I started from stage one *shrug*.

If you just follow the installation instructions from start to finish, you can't go wrong.
 
OP
Eagle

Eagle

aka Alshain
Moderator
Eagle said:
OK well Ive already learned more about linux then I did the whole time I had redhat iinstalled (and rarely used) and Ive only gotten the file systems set up. So I think for the learning experience I'm gonna start at stage 1.
Click to expand...

Speaking of the learning experience Ive gotten to a point where I'm not sure I completely understand what I need. Ive done the emerge sync and opened up the make.conf for editing. I know I need the i686 and i need to set an -march=athlon-xp cflag but what are the other cflags? I cant find any information on them. There is a -03 and a -funroll-loops in the file already but I dont know what these do or what the possibilities are.

Also is there any place that give a more detailed explanation of the USE variables other than the brief descriptions on the Gentoo site. Some of them say what they do but not what that means. I do know what a lot of them mean of course but some of the more technical ones could use some explanation for example "Adds OpenAFS support" but I dont know what OpenAFS is. This isnt the only one thats a bit confusing.
 
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OP
Eagle

Eagle

aka Alshain
Moderator
One other question, are the mcpu and march cflags meant to be used together or not at the same time. Should I have both of them in there, or just one or the other.
 
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OP
Eagle

Eagle

aka Alshain
Moderator
ok from what I read, this is the best flag setup for my processor. Someone tell me if I should do something different.

CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"
CXXFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"
 
S

Slougi

New member
I use -O2 myself, -O3 turns on some more loop optimisation, but produces bigger binaries. -O2 seems to be a good compromise.
 
OP
Eagle

Eagle

aka Alshain
Moderator
Slougi said:
I use -O2 myself, -O3 turns on some more loop optimisation, but produces bigger binaries. -O2 seems to be a good compromise.
Click to expand...

How big are we talking here? The hard drive is pretty big, if it runs faster with a slightly bigger binary, well I'd rather the speed.
 
AlphaWolf

AlphaWolf

I prey, not pray.
My make.conf essentialy looks like this:

Code: 
USE="X gtk samba qt cups foomaticdb ppds usb"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=athlon-tbird -O3 -pipe -fforce-addr -fomit-frame-pointer -funroll-loops -falign-functions=4 -maccumulate-outgoing-args -mmmx -m3dnow"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.ccccom.com [url]http://open-systems.ufl.edu/mirrors/gentoo[/url] [url]ftp://mirrors.tds.net/gentoo[/url] http://mirror.tucdemonic.org/gentoo/"

My gentoo computer is my personal server, and is equipped with an athlon thunderbird 800mhz, 120g HDD, and 256mb of ram. It functions primarily for samba file/printer sharing (hence the need for USB, cups, and foomaticdb.) It's also handy for the following: SSH, a BNC server, a VPN endpoint, video processing/conversion, and compressing/decompressing 1g plus files (these things save CPU resources so that my laptop is free for gaming while it's underway). I also have Xfree86, gtk, and qt installed for developmental purposes, although I only use them via VNC (there are only 3 wires plugged into this computer: a powe cable, an ethernet cable, and one USB cable for the printer.)

One of these days I might install an encrypted proxy server so that I can use the net from any location without anybody being able to track what I am doing (in case I get a job at a place that does that, but I am not under those circumstances at the moment) :p

With everything I have installed so far, only ~2 gigs has been used up, so the -O3 option doesn't waste that much space.
 
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S

Slougi

New member
Really the difference between -O2 and -O3 is not that big. But my harddrive is pretty slow and there is a big difference in loading time for some apps (openoffice especially).
 
Falcon4ever

Falcon4ever

Plugin coder / Betatester
hmm nice to see an other gentoo vicitm,
i've been trying to get my gentoo working proper (installed it 2 days ago from stage2)
now kinda stuck @ xfree (it won't work proper, window dragging = freeze linux).

Seems like a common problem for KT400 chipsets with 2.4.22 kernel ... =(
(http://odin.prohosting.com/wedge01/gentoo-radeon-faq.html)
(AGPGART, agp aperture size isn't detected proper => error msg "agpgart: unable to determine aperture size") and updating to kernel 2.6.2 gave me new errors (devfs not installed or smth BUT aperture size is now detected corectly :))

some advise ;) (from the expierence i got in these 2 days :D):

Don't use genkernel, the one on the latest cd has some bugs which prevent booting the kernel correctly (you could update your genkernel version to fix it, but use manual kernel config. it's not that hard)
Don't forget to add your network card and usb devices :p (module or inbuild). and add it to your autoload.d .

and yes, redhat and mandrake are really worse if you want to learn linux :) (you won't learn much at all)
 
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AlphaWolf

AlphaWolf

I prey, not pray.
Hmm...well, if it helps, I am rather novice when it comes to anything unix, yet gentoo is by far the easiest linux distribution I have ever used. I used to have all kinds of troubles with redhat and mandrake.
 
OP
Eagle

Eagle

aka Alshain
Moderator
Well, I just cant get this to work. Genkernel keeps failing to compile the kernel. It says it cant find some files or directories and Ive followed the installation guide precisely.
 
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