# My quest for laptop running Gentoo...

## entity

Ok, the ease of installing Gentoo to my desktop computer encouraged me to try laptop install as well, and I managed to do it. eventually...

First of all my laptop is used on daily basis, so standard installation procedure would have taken too much time - after all, we're talking about 266 Mhz Pentium I with 48 Mb of ram. So I figured that the best way to install gentoo would be pre-compile it on my desktop computer, tgz it and afterwards just transfer the package to my laptop using scp. This part was easy. 

Then I tried booting installation cd,  it threw "invalid compression format (err=2)". details

then I tried tomsrtbt - no go, since my pcmcia network card is IBM EtherJet-something and there's compatible driver for it. You'd have to use 2.2 -series kernel or patch the driver and compile it again for 2.4 -series. 

Since I had previous RedHat install still working, I transferred kernel and rescue.gz from installation cd to HD, created GRUB boot disk and off we went, reading files from HD. (This still somewhat strange WHY the damn cd drive won't boot the cd... )

Gentoo install couldn't do any more than tomsrtbt, still no network.  Then I  had to borrow another pcmcia card  from my friend and finally, I've got a Gentoo running on my laptop. (Probably I should have borrowed that card earlier...  :Very Happy:  )

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## boyo

How did you go about precompiling stuff without it merging?

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## metalhedd

boyo - not sure on the finer details but You have to use the ebuild command instead of emerge.  then specify the specific steps.

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## boyo

That's a start.  Thanks, I appreciate it.  OK, so here's my real agenda...  Can I just copy the ebuild binary and its respective config files to a cluster running a different distro and execute it without problems?  Does ebuild stand alone or does it need a monster supporting cast of libraries?  If so what are the dependancies?

I'd like to do some speedy compiles my school's Beowulf cluster optimized for my desktop then merge the completed binaries to it.

I'd try to find out as much as possible on my own but I've had to fall back to an old mandrake install on my old hard drive due to some unexpected disk failures  :Sad:  So, I don't have a gentoo build to test this stuff out or read man pages on.

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## entity

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> How did you go about precompiling stuff without it merging?
> 
> 

 

Actually I created a subdirectory, extracted baselayout into it, chrooted to it and eventually installed gentoo inside another installation   :Very Happy: 

When you've done with emerge system, you can create an archive from the sub-installation you've just created and transfer it via network or cd. 

If you don't have to worry about disk quotas with that cluster, install one gentoo inside it and there you have it.

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## boyo

 :Shocked:   :Very Happy:  NICE!  Smooth entity, very smooth.  I like that idea alot.  You rule.

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