Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo installation on an old notebook with a little help from my desktop pc
Iain Buchanan wrote: Hi, I have a decent desktop with gentoo, and an old and slow Pentium-266Mhz notebook, where I would like to install Gentoo. Can anyone suggest me how to use my fast processor to do the installation, perhaps mounting a drive using NFS and doing a chroot, so the installation does not take a whole month? I'm concerned that if I follow the guidelines for the installation like this, the packages might be compiled for the current processor (athlon) instead of the old pentium (586), The other way of doing it is distcc. You set your desktop up as a distcc server, and install it on your laptop. customise /etc/distcc/hosts, something like desktop/2 localhost/1 or whatever the syntax is, and distcc will compile first on the desktop, and then on your laptop. (also look at MAKEOPTS=-j3, and FEATURES=distcc I think in make.conf). This may be slower than your first suggestion, as ./configure scripts and so on will still run locally. Depends on your network, etc. There are pointer to distcc in the gentoo install guide. Hopefully this gives you a starter. HTH, Thanks for your advise, I'm putting it now in practice. I'm installing a stage 1 Gentoo on the notebook, and I've been following the guidelines from the handbook, and its link to the use of distcc. It is now installing, but I've noticed that, viewing the desktop's top output, the desktop doesn't seem to be running gcc or cc. I spotted cc1 only once (I doubt it would have been by a local process at that time), but what I do see are a few instances of distccd popping in and out of existance every now and then, but using very little cpu power. Is it perhaps taking but rejecting the requests? Thanks, Ezequiel Tolnay -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo installation on an old notebook with a little help from my desktop pc
Ezequiel Tolnay wrote: Hi, I have a decent desktop with gentoo, and an old and slow Pentium-266Mhz notebook, where I would like to install Gentoo. Can anyone suggest me how to use my fast processor to do the installation, perhaps mounting a drive using NFS and doing a chroot, so the installation does not take a whole month? I'm concerned that if I follow the guidelines for the installation like this, the packages might be compiled for the current processor (athlon) instead of the old pentium (586), or pick some hardware features from the new machine and install binaries that will finally not work. I have a slower desktop beside my athlon, i just use to mount its root over nfs, and chroot to it, under chroot you'll be using everything from that slower conputer (/etc/make.conf, ..) so setting it right would just work as any other install I just use to do mount --bind /tmp/some_tmp_dir /mnt/other_machine_root/var/tmp/portage to avoid files during the compilation runnig thru the network over nfs, everything gets compiled on fast machine's disk and just then copied to the system on the slow machine if the slow machine has a small disk you can even do the same with /usr/portage but this way you won't be able to do anything with portage on the slower machine alone Thanks, Ezequiel Tolnay -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo installation on an old notebook with a little help from my desktop pc
On 5/4/05, Ezequiel Tolnay [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I have a decent desktop with gentoo, and an old and slow Pentium-266Mhz notebook, where I would like to install Gentoo. Can anyone suggest me how to use my fast processor to do the installation, perhaps mounting a drive using NFS and doing a chroot, so the installation does not take a whole month? I'm concerned that if I follow the guidelines for the installation like this, the packages might be compiled for the current processor (athlon) instead of the old pentium (586), or pick some hardware features from the new machine and install binaries that will finally not work. I've done gentoo install on P166 MMX 32RAM notebook. Here's what I did: 1. create a chroot from stageX on my amd64 helpful command: mount -o bind /usr/portage /chroot-pentium/usr/portage 2. set CHOST,CFLAGS,USE and bootstrap + build the system 3. compile a kernel for the old laptop 3. tar the whole chroot and copy it over PLIP to running windoze 98 4. copy over the gentoo liveCD 5. fiddle around with loadlin and boot linux from DOS MODE (my piece of junk doesn't have a CDROM) 6. set up partitions and untar the chroot 7. get it to boot with grub thats pretty much it. Its been a year or so since I did that so I don't remember any details :( I still keep c.a. 300MB of chroot on my amd64 to build upgrades. There's no /usr/portage on my laptop. Every package gets built by amd64 (emerge -b/-B), the portage tree is exported via samba (not NFS, cause I need samba anywayz). Every package I install directly is binary (emerge -K). Everything went VEEERY SMOOTH thx to all gentoo devs ;) PS: Take note , I had set up wrong CHOST (i386- instead i586-) and had little trouble later on with changing it to the corect one. -- Regards Karol Krzak -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo installation on an old notebook with a little help from my desktop pc
On Wed, 2005-05-04 at 13:08 +1000, Ezequiel Tolnay wrote: Hi, I have a decent desktop with gentoo, and an old and slow Pentium-266Mhz notebook, where I would like to install Gentoo. Can anyone suggest me how to use my fast processor to do the installation, perhaps mounting a drive using NFS and doing a chroot, thats one way... so the installation does not take a whole month? I'm concerned that if I follow the guidelines for the installation like this, the packages might be compiled for the current processor (athlon) instead of the old pentium (586), just make sure make.conf has the right CHOST, CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS. or pick some hardware features from the new machine and install binaries that will finally not work. One of the things that continues to amaze windoze people is how I can take my generic x86 linux hard drive (with my generic kernel!) and put in in any pc and it will run (after getting around any grub issues). I've ruined windows hard drives by trying to do the same thing... anyway I digress. The point is if you select the right options, you should be fine. (including making the kernel for the right arch). The other way of doing it is distcc. You set your desktop up as a distcc server, and install it on your laptop. customise /etc/distcc/hosts, something like desktop/2 localhost/1 or whatever the syntax is, and distcc will compile first on the desktop, and then on your laptop. (also look at MAKEOPTS=-j3, and FEATURES=distcc I think in make.conf). This may be slower than your first suggestion, as ./configure scripts and so on will still run locally. Depends on your network, etc. There are pointer to distcc in the gentoo install guide. Hopefully this gives you a starter. HTH, -- Iain Buchanan [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
