luckily enough I found a URL with a good guide to installing gentoo on a VM. Please check out: http://home.mesastate.edu/~wmacevoy/classes/Spring-2004/csci333-1300-mwf/gentoo.txt You should either update your installation docs to include Gentoo on vmware or include an alternative installation for vmware. I had numerous problems using the current installation docs - that includes a couple of Kernel Panic errors: 1 for USB Hardware detection and one for not being able to load my SCSI /dev/sda3 root partition. Apart from this - Im loving gentoo keep up the good work Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3.
Created attachment 28212 [details] Linked document attaching just in case the link goes down
I'm not sure this is something for the alternative installation guide, perhaps more suited for the tips 'n tricks document that needs to be set up?
I don't see any differences in the installation instructions provided by the document and the Gentoo/x86 installation instructions. The differences I see are trivial (using SCSI disks - /dev/sda - instead of IDE disks) and shouldn't explicitely be mentioned. Can you elaborate on what you needed to do to get Gentoo on VMWare working properly that you don't have to do on a regular Gentoo system?
ok these are changes that would be helpful to know: -- START SNIPPET -- 12 Configure kernel //no! emerge-webrsync export PKGDIR=/mnt/cdrom/packages ... emerge --usepkg gentoo-sources # emerge --usepkg vanilla-sources ... edit /etc/modules.d/aliases and *add* eth0 pcnet32 18 create /boot/grub/grub.conf file: default 0 timeout 30 splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz title=Gentoo Linux 2.4.20 root (hd0,0) kernel (hd0,0)/kernel-2.4.20-gentoo-r6 root=/dev/sda3 initrd (hd0,0)/initrd-2.4.20-gentoo-r6 -- END SNIPPET -- Also I got a couple of kernel panic errors when using the vanilla-sources (current default) to compile my kernel, using the gentoo-sources seems to fix this.
export PKGDIR=/mnt/cdrom/packages this should already be part of the document in general ive never had a problem personally with vmware / vanilla-sources ... just another YMMV situation i think adding a note to the network detection that the network card in vmware is pcnet32 based would be nice the grub config is like swift said ... changing /dev/hda to /dev/sda is not worth recreating a whole bunch of example configs ... about the only thing i might add is a note in the 'Preparing the Disks' section about how vmware uses scsi disks ... if that ...
Well, My two cents on this would be that loading the module for the driver is also a YMMV thing. Gentoo relies on the on the user having a good knowledge of their system and hardware to make the choices and decisions about configuring their kernel. The fact that VMWare uses the AMD PCNet driver through it's emulator really shouldn't be something the general documentation should get into, IMO. It almost sounds like genkernel isn't doing it's job if there is a step necessary beyond building your sources via genkernel. Isn't the purpose of genkernel to configure and load all the correct drivers without needing to dive into the kernel config or hack through a modules aliasing?
Afaik the main differences here are (1) knowing that you need pcnet32 (which is in VMWare's docs) and (2) knowing that devices are seen as SCSI disks (which is also in VMWare's docs). In general, all information is in VMWare's docs and I'm sure VMWare is better suited to update their docs when needed. I'm marking this as WONTFIX.
Also make a special mention that you must use gentoo-sources kernel unless someone can get it working with the vanilla-sources without kernel panic errors
ive always used vanilla sources (2.4.x and 2.6.x) and never had a problem
