# Older Laptop & Installing Gentoo

## gboutwel

Hi All,

  I have an older laptop Intel P-166 w/40MB of RAM.  I know it'll take forever and isn't the ideal machine for this, but I want to install Gentoo cause when I'm done I want this laptop to 'scream'.  This laptop currently has Mandrake 8.2 running on it with essentially all hardware working, but is horribly slow.

  Now for the tough part.  This laptop does not have an network card only a PCMCIA modem and I don't have a dial-up account.  It has a 16x CD drive which is bootable (I don't know if it's mutli-read or not, but it seems to be ok with reading burnt CDs.)

  This will be my first Gentoo Linux install, so could someone please help me out here.  What do I need to burn to a CD (or CDs) in order to do a install starting with Stage 1 and ending with booting the basic Gentoo Linux from the laptop?

  I'll worry about how to get additional apps (X, KDE, Gnome, etc) on this laptop after I have sucessfully gotten the basic Gentoo Linux to boot.  Thanks.

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## gboutwel

 *gboutwel wrote:*   

> 
> 
>   I have an older laptop Intel P-166 w/40MB of RAM.  I know it'll take forever and isn't the ideal machine for this, but I want to install Gentoo cause when I'm done I want this laptop to 'scream'.  This laptop currently has Mandrake 8.2 running on it with essentially all hardware working, but is horribly slow.
> 
>   Now for the tough part.  This laptop does not have an network card only a PCMCIA modem and I don't have a dial-up account.  It has a 16x CD drive which is bootable (I don't know if it's mutli-read or not, but it seems to be ok with reading burnt CDs.)
> ...

 

  From chats on IRC I came to the conclusion it was pretty impossible to bootstrap gentoo for my i586 without another gentoo machine or network connection.   So I borrowed a friends PCMCIA NIC (Netgear FA 410TX)  the pcnet driver 'seems' to recognize the card.  Only it won't stay active.  Somewhere during the bootstrap it fails to d/l a file and aborts the whole bootstrap cause it's unable to talk to the network through this card.

  I've even gone so far as to exit the chroot, rmmod every module (which genereated an error BTW, something about read of unallocated resource or something lke that) and insmod all the drivers again and go back to the chroot and start again.    Same thing, eventually the card becomes unstable and so I'm unable to fetch a sourcefile that I need to bootstrap.  :Sad: 

  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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## gboutwel

 *gboutwel wrote:*   

> 
> 
>   From chats on IRC I came to the conclusion it was pretty impossible to bootstrap gentoo for my i586 without another gentoo machine or network connection.   So I borrowed a friends PCMCIA NIC (Netgear FA 410TX)  the pcnet driver 'seems' to recognize the card.  Only it won't stay active.  Somewhere during the bootstrap it fails to d/l a file and aborts the whole bootstrap cause it's unable to talk to the network through this card.
> 
>   I've even gone so far as to exit the chroot, rmmod every module (which genereated an error BTW, something about read of unallocated resource or something lke that) and insmod all the drivers again and go back to the chroot and start again.    Same thing, eventually the card becomes unstable and so I'm unable to fetch a sourcefile that I need to bootstrap. 

 

  I'm starting to think it's not just my NIC....  It fails when it attempts to d/l gcc source code for bootstrapping...  From what I can tell it's trying to get gcc-2.95.3-r7.tar.gz, only I've gone to several gentoo mirror sites and I can't find this file either.  I found gcc-2.95.3.tar.gz, but not gcc-2.95.3-r7.tar.gz.  Should I even bother to try and d/l this file into distfiles and rename it gcc-2.95.3-r7.tar.gz?

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## gboutwel

 *gboutwel wrote:*   

> 
> 
>   I'm starting to think it's not just my NIC....  It fails when it attempts to d/l gcc source code for bootstrapping...  From what I can tell it's trying to get gcc-2.95.3-r7.tar.gz, only I've gone to several gentoo mirror sites and I can't find this file either.  I found gcc-2.95.3.tar.gz, but not gcc-2.95.3-r7.tar.gz.  Should I even bother to try and d/l this file into distfiles and rename it gcc-2.95.3-r7.tar.gz?

 

  Ok.  All you who read this and laughed at me I deserve it.  gcc-2.95.3-r7 refers to the portage 'package', not the actual file that is needed to compile from source.  I got gcc-2.95.3.tar.gz, glibc-2.2.5.tar.bz2, glibc-linuxthreads-2.2.5.tar.bz2, and glibc-manpages-2.2.5.tar.bz2 and am finishing-up bootstrapping.  Now on to stage 2 and the not so easy system & kernel steps.  Wish me luck (in case you've been following this thread wondering when I was going to give-up you might as well know I don't give up easy.)

  BTW, the developers of the portage system deserve a kudos for someone who knows very little about it's structure I'm still managing to get around & find the files I need to put in distfiles to get through things.   :Smile: 

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## gboutwel

Wow.  Lots of people have viewed this thread.  Well...  I've managed to get throught emerge system step.  I've even d/led the Vanilla Linux source.  My first attempt to compile it failed on some  sis????? file's compile during the make.  Oh well.    Any one with a suggestion on how I can get an already configured 2.4.18 config to 'start with'?  Anyone with any advice on what are 'smart' options ensure are selected/built-in for an laptop?  I spent way too much time trying to poor through the multitude of options in make menuconfig and ended up with an unsuccessful compile.  :Sad: 

Thanks,

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## insomniac

How large is your harddrive? you probably need some space in order to compile all the programs you want, especially X, Mozilla and OpenOffice... So it _could_ be you ran out of space, or not?

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## gboutwel

 *insomniac wrote:*   

> How large is your harddrive? you probably need some space in order to compile all the programs you want, especially X, Mozilla and OpenOffice... So it _could_ be you ran out of space, or not?

 

The kernel problem is that it's looking for some kind of math something or rather.  Cause I don't have that video card in the laptop I just disbaled it in menuconfig and everything went fine, until I tried to compile X.  Then I ran out of HD space.   :Sad: 

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## plate

 *gboutwel wrote:*   

> until I tried to compile X.  Then I ran out of HD space.  

 

Classic. Can you netmount a drive on a different PC that has a minimum of 800 MB free space? That should be on the safe side of how much X will need during the emerge. Change the PORTAGE_TMPDIR to that mountpoint, make sure you've read this thread, and X will probably compile flawlessly. And by the looks of your configuration it'll only take about 20 hours or so, too, isn't that great?   :Shocked: 

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## gboutwel

 *plate wrote:*   

>  *gboutwel wrote:*   until I tried to compile X.  Then I ran out of HD space.   
> 
> Classic. Can you netmount a drive on a different PC that has a minimum of 800 MB free space? That should be on the safe side of how much X will need during the emerge. Change the PORTAGE_TMPDIR to that mountpoint, make sure you've read this thread, and X will probably compile flawlessly. And by the looks of your configuration it'll only take about 20 hours or so, too, isn't that great?  

 

 :Smile: .  I hadn't thought of 'borrowing another machines HD via network.  Ingenius.  20 hours...  Local HD it was taking what seems liked most the day (I think - at least to the point where it ran out of HD).  I can't imagine what it would take with an 'remote'/networked drive as the temp...  But I can see where that would be what it would take.  It is possible to mount a Windows machine (that's the only kind of machine I have around that has 880 megs or better free)

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## plate

 *gboutwel wrote:*   

> It is possible to mount a Windows machine (that's the only kind of machine I have around that has 880 megs or better free)

 

That's a question, not a statement, I presume? I've never actually tried this, but I think you should be able to pull it off, provided the disk in the Windows PC uses FAT rather than NTFS, you do NOT want to touch NTFS.

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## delta407

 *plate wrote:*   

>  *gboutwel wrote:*   It is possible to mount a Windows machine (that's the only kind of machine I have around that has 880 megs or better free) 
> 
> That's a question, not a statement, I presume? I've never actually tried this, but I think you should be able to pull it off, provided the disk in the Windows PC uses FAT rather than NTFS, you do NOT want to touch NTFS.

 

I think he was talking about using smbmount (mounting a Windows share), in which case the remote filesystem doesn't matter.

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## plate

 *delta407 wrote:*   

> I think he was talking about using smbmount (mounting a Windows share), in which case the remote filesystem doesn't matter.

 

So if one goes and does something like, say:

```
mount -t smbfs //windowspc/portage_tmpdir /mnt/windowspc

export PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/mnt/windowspc"
```

it will work no matter which filesystem is being used on the remote PC? Beautiful!

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## insomniac

When i mount a remote windows share with smbmount, sometimes the connection just drops. This happens both if I mount it on a windows machine or on a linux box... All machines are configured by dhcp - could that be the problem?

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