Native install on E?

Request new features that might make using Gentoox better.
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energyBB
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Joined: Mon Aug 11, 2003 6:16 pm

Native install on E?

Post by energyBB »

I'd like to install Gentoox on a stock HDD using the 'native' filesystem but unfortunately stock HDDs only have about 2Gb of space on partition 6 (F), while the E drive is about 5Gb of space. My intention is to only use this harddrive to run Gentoox - no game or DVD playing whatsoever.

The readme mentions that at least 2 Gb of free space on F is required for installation but unfortunately this does not apply for Home - I tried the Integrated Installer but it won't install - the rootfs is too big for the 2Gb F partition.

Is it feasible to include a native install option that uses the E drive? If so, would this affect performance or does it not matter? It does not matter to me if I lose my save functionality - this spare harddrive would only be used for Linux.

In case this doesn't make any sense, this is what I'd like to do:

My TSOP is flashed with the Xecuter 4977 BIOS. The TSOP is only 256Kb so no room for Cromwell, which means I'm going to use Xromwell. My plan is to built a switch so that I can switch between two harddrives - one of which would be solely dedicated to Gentoox. I'm planning on modifying the Xecuter 4977 BIOS with Xbtool and have it launch the Xromwell XBE from the harddrive at bootup as a secondary boot option, then reflash the TSOP with this new BIOS.

This way, I can still boot the 120gb harddrive with games and movies AND boot straight into Gentoox when I switch to the stock HDD.

The only other alternative for me would have to be to install it to either E or F (which is really too slow for me after having seen 'native') or perhaps use a bigger secondary harddrive. Losing the F drive of my primary harddrive is not really an option for me, so I'd like to use a secondary harddrive for this.

Hope I'm not asking for too much here.
ShALLaX
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Post by ShALLaX »

FYI, home DOES install native on F, it leaves you with 280MB of free space. As far as I can see, Gentoox will not support native installs on any other partitions or on the full drive. If you want to do this.. you can do it yourself (its not hard to do, just look inside the installer scripts). The reason for this is people will nuke their drives and blame me for it. One of the key elements of my mission statement is to provide a linux that doesnt interfere with normal Xbox usage, and so far I have achieved that. If i provide native E or whole disk installation then the Xbox will no longer function as a games console.

My advice to people is to get a bigger hdd. Think about it, if you get a 120GB hdd, that leaves you with about 110GB solely for linux AND you can still play games - you get the best of both worlds!
energyBB
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Joined: Mon Aug 11, 2003 6:16 pm

Post by energyBB »

Thanks ShAllax for the info. Would you mind if you could give me some indication of which files I need to edit (Just the files that need to be edited, the trial-and-error stuff will be done at my expense)? I've looked at the Home 2.1 Integrated RAR and the only thing that looks like an installer script file is the initrd file. I tried looking at the Stardust Subsection in the Developers Section but the Stardust installer script cannot be viewed - the link is probably down.
ShALLaX
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Post by ShALLaX »

Hmm, its not as simple as just editing a file.. what youll need to do is:

1) Boot your stardust cd
2) fdisk and format the drive
3) Mount the drive (mkdir /mnt/newdrive && mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/newdrive)
4) Mount the CD (mount /dev/hdb /mnt/temp)
5) Decompress the distro.rar file (on the cd) to your newly formatted drive (cd /mnt/newdrive && unrar /mnt/temp/distro.rar)
6) Mount the rootfs (mkdir /mnt/loopback && mount -o loop /mnt/newdrive/rootfs /mnt/loopback)
7) Copy the contents of the mounted rootfs to your new drive (cp -avx /mnt/loopback /mnt/newdrive)

Of course, this is alllll theoretical (may not work at all!). You may need to use specific partitions to make cromwell boot... you could always use xbeboot and boot from a CD. You may need to hack/ recompile cromwell etc etc... Under no circumstances should you try this unless you know what youre doing and can recover from an error!

On a side note.. thanks for pointing out the stardust files.. i forgot about those!!! Yeah, theyre obsolete now!
energyBB
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Joined: Mon Aug 11, 2003 6:16 pm

Post by energyBB »

Thanks again, I think I can manage that - I'll give it a try and let you know if it works.. I've got plenty of HDDs lying around here and the necessary tools to get it back to work when it's screwed so if one breaks it's no big deal.

I knew it wasn't as simple as just editing a single file - I was just wondering what installer script you were referring to in your previous post.
ShALLaX
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Post by ShALLaX »

The install script is inside initrd.gz (its called /etc/profile)
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