Success at installing Gentoox 100% natively !!

Talk about anything related to Gentoox or Gentoo.
Tsuroerusu
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Success at installing Gentoox 100% natively !!

Post by Tsuroerusu »

I don't know if anyone did this before, but I just thought I'd like to say that I got Gentoox Pro 1.5 running on my Linux dedicated Xbox without any sorts of Microsoft stuff remaining in the system. No M$ bios, No M$ partitions... Everything penguin! :P

I only had a little issues with magic when updating the kernel, but that wasn't a big deal since I had a Gentoo LiveCD laying around which I used to copy bzImage from /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot to /boot

My partitioning looks like this:

/dev/hda1 - 64 MB - EXT3 - /boot
/dev/hda2 - 2 GB - Swap - none
/dev/hda3 - 20 GB - EXT3 - /
/dev/hda4 - (About) 56 GB - EXT3 - /home

And yes, this is a Linux dedicated Xbox.

Until now, besides the very small magic issue, everything works flawlessly. Thanks for a great distro ShALLaX !! 8)

By the way, I was wondering if it would be a good idea to set the portage profile to "xbox" ? Since it by default in Gentoox is set to, if I remember correctly, one of the default-linux ones.
rounz
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Post by rounz »

if your fully native then nothing is stopping you switching to xbox-sources, which gives you the option to run 2.6.* kernels.

best ask around on gentoo`s forums before you dive in though :)
Krause
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Post by Krause »

Did you do it by doing a normal native install then copying the files to a directory in your main PC, then repartition/format the drive and place the files in the new proper partitions?

Or did you trick the installer to use the partition scheme you use?
kinkin
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Post by kinkin »

That's a great work and interesting.
How did you do that?
Tsuroerusu
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Post by Tsuroerusu »

Krause wrote:Did you do it by doing a normal native install then copying the files to a directory in your main PC, then repartition/format the drive and place the files in the new proper partitions?

Or did you trick the installer to use the partition scheme you use?
I just extracted the rootfs from the RARs/ISO files and set up an FTP server on my main computer and put the rootfs file in the FTP servers home directory.

I put my Xbox harddrive in my old Pentium3 PC and booted up KNOPPIX and partitioned and formatted the drive, then I used Konqueror to pull the big daddy rootfs file over to the Xbox drive's root partition (/dev/hda3 mounted as /mnt/hda3) and then I mounted it under KNOPPIX as /mnt/gentooxrootfs and copied all the files from /mnt/gentooxrootfs over to /mnt/hda3.

Then I edited the fstab using KWrite, and then I took the linuxboot.cfg from the RARs/ISO and put in /dev/hda1 so that Cromwell could boot Gentoox. I didn't do much more than that only tweaked a few files before I put in my Xbox.

That method is a little bit of pain to do since you have to swap drives in and out. I found a better way, so I'm reinstalling to see how it works. I took my XBMC dedicated Xbox and installed Gentoox as you normally would into the E drive. Then I set up my distro as I wanted it, what I plan to do is to create a stage4 file (http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Custom_Stage4) which means to pack the entire root partition into a tar file. Then I would extract it into the partitions of my Linux dedicated Xbox using a "Gentoo-For-Xbox"-LiveCD, edit the fstab and reboot. This is eaisier, for a bundle of reasons. The primary reason is that I can use magic to install Xorg and other stuff without worrying about errors regarding the way the paths and partitions are set up, and then I have a full back of my entire system so that if I ever need to reinstall I just pull a 300 MB file over to my Xbox and extract it, then I don't have to deal with the 4 GB rootfs file.

kinkin wrote:That's a great work and interesting.
How did you do that?
Gee, thanks a lot. :D
Richard M. Stallman: "Freedom to redistribute and change software is a human right that must be protected."
justincx3
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Post by justincx3 »

i am new to gentoox, why people have to install the system in /mnt ?? instead why not mount /, /home, /usr, /tmp and others partitions on its own partitions with reiser4? fastest linux xbox arround. I dont know how to do that though but i guess it's possible.
orochi
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Post by orochi »

justincx3 wrote:i am new to gentoox, why people have to install the system in /mnt ?? instead why not mount /, /home, /usr, /tmp and others partitions on its own partitions with reiser4? fastest linux xbox arround. I dont know how to do that though but i guess it's possible.
because, most people dont want to use up most their hard drive for xbox partitions, they just want to run linux like another app/game for the xbox which is being done via fatx
atoms
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Post by atoms »

@ Tsuroerusu

i was wondering if you ever made the gentoox-for-xbox-livecd you were talking about and if it worked. i'm still in the early learning stages of linux so the simpler the better. I want to make my 3rd xbox a linux only file server with the least amount of hassle. any further help you could give would be appreciated.
Tsuroerusu
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Post by Tsuroerusu »

atoms wrote:@ Tsuroerusu

i was wondering if you ever made the gentoox-for-xbox-livecd you were talking about and if it worked. i'm still in the early learning stages of linux so the simpler the better. I want to make my 3rd xbox a linux only file server with the least amount of hassle. any further help you could give would be appreciated.
The LiveCD I'ms talking about has nothing to do with ShALLaX's Gentoox, it's from the Gentoo guys at gentoo.org for use with their Xbox stuff. O just use it on ecation since it provides a nice clean way of accessing a shell and do things like partitioning and stuff.

It can be found at the download page at xbox-linux.org

Since you're still learning Linux I would recommend that you try and learn on the PC first because the Xbox aren't exactly a fast machine and running Xorg on it just for configuring Samba or NFS is just a waste of RAM and CPU power IMO. If you already run Linux on a PC (I use SuSE because it's nice and convienient) you could try and hook up an older PC and install Gentoo on it, there a good documentation available at gentoo.org, this way you'll get to know a little more advanced side of Linux and you'll find it much eaisier to do a file server on the Xbox.
Richard M. Stallman: "Freedom to redistribute and change software is a human right that must be protected."
atoms
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Post by atoms »

thank you for the quick response. i understand what you're talking about now with the live-cd. i thought you ment you were making a live-cd that was focused specifically for gentoox. but i understand you're just talking about the gentoo install live-cd.

i was originally going to use my old pc as the file server running gentoo but the case is huge, the fan is loud, and i was only putting in 2 hdds right now anyway. so i thought i would try pro gentoox on my "extra" xbox would be quieter, more compact, and it's just plain cool to say that you're file server is running on an xbox.

so i think i'll be doing some more research before trying to make my xbox linux only. thanks again for you help Tsuroerusu!
Tsuroerusu
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Post by Tsuroerusu »

atoms wrote:thank you for the quick response. i understand what you're talking about now with the live-cd. i thought you ment you were making a live-cd that was focused specifically for gentoox. but i understand you're just talking about the gentoo install live-cd.

i was originally going to use my old pc as the file server running gentoo but the case is huge, the fan is loud, and i was only putting in 2 hdds right now anyway. so i thought i would try pro gentoox on my "extra" xbox would be quieter, more compact, and it's just plain cool to say that you're file server is running on an xbox.

so i think i'll be doing some more research before trying to make my xbox linux only. thanks again for you help Tsuroerusu!
Hey n0 pr0blem0 :P
I've got two Xbox'es, what I'm up to with the Linux dedicated one is that I wanna make it a BitTorrent download station, mainly because I like downloading a lot of Linux distros, but my main PC, which I usually use, is just too loud and too expensive to run 24/7, I believe my mom's last electricity bill was about 1500 US dollars :P
Richard M. Stallman: "Freedom to redistribute and change software is a human right that must be protected."
clpalmer
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Post by clpalmer »

If your mom's last bill was $1500, then she's got a grow op or something in the basement and she's trying to pawn off the high bill on you =) Xbox box won't use much less electricity than your normal PC and neither of em should cost more than $10 or $15 a month to run 24/7.
Tsuroerusu
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Post by Tsuroerusu »

clpalmer wrote:If your mom's last bill was $1500, then she's got a grow op or something in the basement and she's trying to pawn off the high bill on you =) Xbox box won't use much less electricity than your normal PC and neither of em should cost more than $10 or $15 a month to run 24/7.
Well, not all of those 1500$ were me, remember the freezer and stuff like that run 24/7. But my PC is definitly one of the great power-suckers, though it seems a little odd to me, but the Xbox consumes a lot less power, in my PC I have an Athlon 3200+, nForce2 motherboard, 4 HDs, 2 optical drives. The Xbox nearly has a HD and I could take the DVD out.
Richard M. Stallman: "Freedom to redistribute and change software is a human right that must be protected."
orochi
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Post by orochi »

your computer isnt gonna draw that much more power than your power supply is rated, a fridge/freezer ususaly (even if its not power eff.) runs like $250/year
Tsuroerusu
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Post by Tsuroerusu »

orochi wrote:your computer isnt gonna draw that much more power than your power supply is rated, a fridge/freezer ususaly (even if its not power eff.) runs like $250/year
Yeah, but still, I'd like to save a little where I can, and another reason to use my Xbox to download stuff (Debian is HHUUGGEE!! is that it's pretty quiet, my PC has 5 case fans and it's actually a little loud :P
Richard M. Stallman: "Freedom to redistribute and change software is a human right that must be protected."
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