Hello! I heard people saying that Gentoo is difficult to install, but I find that the Philosophie and the Documentation are great, so I wanted to try it. However, my experience shows that people are quite right: the installation 'per se' is not at all difficult, but the Installer gives too many errors and it is almost impossible to get a running kernel in a couple of hours (or days, may be?). This is a story about my attempts. I have two Hard Disks (/dev/hda & /dev/hdg) and a USB Memory Stick (see file fdisk.l) and I used a 'Gentoo Live CD 2006.1' (allways with 'normal' and simple settings - no network). First I tried the 'GTK+' Installer. a.) The keymap '10' has no effect in GUI (and in Dialog windows); in console environment (Ctrl + Alt + F2) it works. b.) I wanted to use 'hda3' for 'root', 'hda6' for 'swap' and 'hda5' (39 MB) for '/boot', but the partitioner insisted to use by all means 66 MB (or more) for '/boot' and -27 MB (or more) as 'unalloc' (see file "iprofil1.xml"). I didn't find any possibility to change his mind and I thought that '-' (minus) is a 'bad thing', so I switched to 'Command line installer'. c.) Here the Installer started ('sallowing' the 39 MB for /boot - see the file "iprofil3.xml") but at 3% (step 1 of 28) come the 'bad thing' news 'partition not found' and my partition on the second HD was destroyed - see the file "instal0.log". After all, why ought the installer to touch the second HD?. d.) I recovered most of my data on the /dev/hdg (using Partition Magic and cfdisk) and tried again. This time it went till 89% and then come a new 'bad thing' message: 'Can't copy' (see file 'instal3.log'). A scond try had the same result. e.) The Grub entries (see file 'instal3.log') are quite ridiculous: they have no sense and the right ones (for Windows - (hd0,0) and for SuSE - (hd1,2)) are missing. I will be glad to recieve your comments. With best regards, ChrisBerg@freenet.de Reproducible: Always 1.) Instal0.log. GLI: January 09 2007 18:14:05 - Partition 2 has 38044MB GLI: January 09 2007 18:14:05 - Old start sector 16065 retrieved GLI: January 09 2007 18:14:05 - Old end sector 77931314 retrieved GLI: January 09 2007 18:14:05 - Adding extended partition 2 from 16065 to 77931314 GLI: January 09 2007 18:14:06 - This is a bad thing. An exception occured outside of the normal install errors. The error was: 'partition not found' GLI: January 09 2007 18:14:06 - Traceback (most recent call last): GLI: January 09 2007 18:14:06 - File "/opt/installer/GLIClientController.py", line 197, in run self._install_steps[self._install_step]['function']() GLI: January 09 2007 18:14:06 - File "/opt/installer/templates/x86ArchitectureTemplate.py", line 461, in partition self._partition_recreate_step(parted_disk, newparts) GLI: January 09 2007 18:14:06 - File "/opt/installer/templates/x86ArchitectureTemplate.py", line 324, in _partition_recreate_step if parted_disk.get_partition(part).is_flag_available(flag): GLI: January 09 2007 18:14:06 - error: partition not found 2.) Instal3.log GLI: January 10 2007 05:56:47 - Config files updated using etc-update. make.conf/fstab/rc.conf restored. GLI: January 10 2007 05:56:48 - User crisb was added. GLI: January 10 2007 05:57:58 - Exception received during 'Installing additional packages.': CopyPackageToChrootError :FATAL: copy_pkg_to_chroot: Could not copy files from /var/tmp/portage/xextproto-7.0.2/image to / for x11-proto/xextproto-7.0.2 GLI: January 10 2007 05:57:58 - Traceback (most recent call last): GLI: January 10 2007 05:57:58 - File "/opt/installer/GLIClientController.py", line 197, in run self._install_steps[self._install_step]['function']() GLI: January 10 2007 05:57:58 - File "/opt/installer/GLIArchitectureTemplate.py", line 357, in install_packages self._portage.emerge(installpackages) GLI: January 10 2007 05:57:58 - File "/opt/installer/GLIPortage.py", line 268, in emerge self.copy_pkg_to_chroot(pkg) GLI: January 10 2007 05:57:58 - File "/opt/installer/GLIPortage.py", line 201, in copy_pkg_to_chroot raise GLIException("CopyPackageToChrootError", 'fatal', 'copy_pkg_to_chroot', "Could not copy files from " + image_dir + " to / for " + package) GLI: January 10 2007 05:57:58 - GLIException: CopyPackageToChrootError :FATAL: copy_pkg_to_chroot: Could not copy files from /var/tmp/portage/xextproto-7.0.2/image to / for x11-proto/xextproto-7.0.2 3.) fdisk.l Disk /dev/hda: 46.1 GB, 46115758080 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 5606 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 * 1 684 5494198+ b W95 FAT32 /dev/hda2 685 4588 31358880 f W95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/hda3 4589 5606 8177085 83 Linux /dev/hda5 685 689 40131 83 Linux /dev/hda6 690 735 369463+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/hda7 736 1266 4265226 83 Linux /dev/hda8 1267 1809 4361616 b W95 FAT32 /dev/hda9 1810 2855 8401963+ b W95 FAT32 /dev/hda10 2856 3321 3743113+ b W95 FAT32 /dev/hda11 3322 4341 8193118+ b W95 FAT32 /dev/hda12 4342 4588 1983996 b W95 FAT32 Disk /dev/hdg: 46.1 GB, 46115758080 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 5606 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hdg1 2 4851 38957625 f W95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/hdg2 4852 4915 514080 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/hdg3 4916 5606 5550457+ 83 Linux /dev/hdg5 2 261 2088418+ 6 FAT16 /dev/hdg6 262 1536 10241406 1b Hidden W95 FAT32 /dev/hdg7 1537 3831 18434556 1b Hidden W95 FAT32 /dev/hdg8 3832 4851 8193118+ 1b Hidden W95 FAT32 Disk /dev/sda: 131 MB, 131072000 bytes 50 heads, 32 sectors/track, 160 cylinders Units = cylinders of 1600 * 512 = 819200 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 160 127952 6 FAT16 Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings: phys=(926, 49, 32) logical=(159, 47, 32)
We are sorry to hear of your troubles with the partitioning in the installer. These issues have been addressed in the new version of the installer that will be released soon. Internationalization support is not yet available for gtkfe, but hopefully should be available in a few languages for gli-dialog (the command-line frontend to the installer). the problems you saw in install3.log were likely because you either ran out of disk space on the partition or did not set the mountpoint correctly.
