Gentoo

[johngrinham]

Red hat and knoppix have installed ok, but neither is good with memory sticks. RH9 works partly, knoppix not at all.

I've been reading about Gentoo it looks like a good distro.
I've got Gentoo 1.4 off a dvd with linux format, but when I run the bootable cd it locks up midstream.
Leaves all the install info on the screen, more than a page of it, but stops without a prompt, no key combinations do anything.
Is there a trick to it.??

I've got an athlon xp 2400+, 512Meg Ram, a separate drive for the install, nvidia mx440, SB live platinum. Anyone see a problem there.?????

[sarumont]

Which screen does it stop at?

[johngrinham]

Which screen does it stop at?

I boot from cd
Press enter for normal install
it brings up a screen with a progress bar
I press f2 for verbose mode
roughly 2 pages of setting, checking, mounting etc

last six lines are

Hardware detection started
Processor 0 is AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2400+, 1999KHz, 256KB Cache....
autoconfiguring devices ****************done
*Not loading APM Bios suport
*Mouse is Generic 3 button mouse (PS2) at .....
*Starting USB and PCI hotplugging
_

a square cursor now flashes wher I put the underscore
no more activity. Following the directions, I have not yet got the the part where I should be able to open a help file in another shell.
CD is not active, hard drive is not active, have waited 10 mins but no more happens, any clues amonst that ???

ps to Sarumont, have you read all of Douglass Adams??

[jasonlambert]

my initial suggestion would be to physically remove anything plugged into any of your PC's USB ports, and give it another go...

[johngrinham]

my initial suggestion would be to physically remove anything plugged into any of your PC's USB ports, and give it another go...

Unfortunately I can't do that because there isn't anything plugged in.
The only USB device I have even attempted to use is a USB memory stick, I do have a USB attachment for my phone but I haven't attempted to connect it yet. My mouse is PS2, no printers, scanners or any other devices. My SB live drive is not USB(is it ?).

Any other suggestions.

[Giro]

Type this at the prompt then hit enter

gentoo nodhcp nousb nohotplug noraid

[johngrinham]

Type this at the prompt then hit enter

gentoo nodhcp nousb nohotplug noraid

Thanks, I'll try later tonight.
Will report results asap.

[johngrinham]

Type this at the prompt then hit enter

gentoo nodhcp nousb nohotplug noraid

Thanks, I'll try later tonight.
Will report results asap.

Thanks, got to the next stage, boy was that one big step.
Nope, Gentoo unfortunately is not for me. Three hours reading instructions that don't mean much, 2 mins of no such file or directory. There has to be something significant missing in the instructions (LXF46).
Back to knoppix
Does anyone know how to make a memory stick work.
uname -r gives me 2.4.21-xfs
Is this a kernel I can modify or add to??
Is there a knoppix forum??

[sarumont]

YOu have to have SCSI generic support enabled in your kernel to get USB drives working. Then you can plug it in and ls /var/log/messages to see where it's placed in /dev (should be /dev/sda1). After that, use this to mount it:

mount -t vfat -o users rw exec umask=002 /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb

P.S.- I've read all but "Mostly Harmless"

[johngrinham]

YOu have to have SCSI generic support enabled in your kernel to get USB drives working. Then you can plug it in and ls /var/log/messages to see where it's placed in /dev (should be /dev/sda1). After that, use this to mount it:

mount -t vfat -o users rw exec umask=002 /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb

P.S.- I've read all but "Mostly Harmless"

How do I determine whether it is or isn't enabled??
The closest entry in /dev is /dev/sd

ps. have't heard of 'Mostly harmless' I'll look for it
'The meaning of liff' is the only one I knew of that I haven't read. I've read six so far.