win2k doesn't boot and gentoo kernel options

[Will Rickards]

So this weekend I installed (still installing) gentoo 2005.0 starting with the minimal install disk and x86 stage 1. That seems to be going well. Although now I'm at the kernel configuration (make menuconfig) step and I need advice as to what to enable/disable/modularize. I picked reiserfs as my filesystem and I have one swap partition /dev/hda1 and one linux partition /dev/hdc2.

Speaking of partitions:
I used to have an extended partition as the first partition on my primary hard drive. My win2k partition is on /dev/hda2, a primary partition which is marked as boot. In the extended partition was a logical one to hold swap space. I removed this extended partition and added a primary partition to replace it and use as my linux swap.
On my second hard drive /dev/hdc I have a 2GB primary partition for my windows swap and the rest is another primary partition for linux which I marked as boot.

But know when I boot the system the Nt loader complains it can't find ntoskernel or something like that (I only tried to boot back into windows once and didn't write the message down). It did give me the choices in my boot.ini. At first I thought this is a boot.ini problem as it is pointing to the wrong partition but it is pointing to partition 1, which is correct. So now I don't know what I screwed up.

 

[sechs]

If the first partition on your drive was extended and now its primary, the second partition (primary, as before) has changed from partition 1 to partition 2.

If that's the issue, I'm not sure that it'd lead to the message that your getting, however.

 

[Will Rickards]

I thought partitions designations in boot.ini were 0 based indexes?
So the first primary partition would be
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(0)\WINNT
and the second primary partition
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT

But checking the laptop I'm on, it has two primary partitions and sure enough it has
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS

So I'll try 2 and see what happens.

 

[Will Rickards]

I would edit it if I could.
Even though I mounted it rw it stills says read-only filesystem.
mount says rw
I tried chmod 777 /mnt/win2k/boot.ini.
What do I need to do to get this ntfs filesystem mounted truly read-write?

 

[Gilbo]

Just a warning, NTFS write support is experimental. It would be better to try and fix this problem with the Windows install media.

NTFS write support requires that a seperate kernel option be enabled. You may not have enabled it initially.

Check, in menuconfig:
File Systems -- DOS/FAT/NT Filesystems -- NTFS Filesystem support (enable) -- Write support (enable)

 

[Will Rickards]

So if I put my win2k install disk in, how to I get to edit boot.ini?
Is this the recovery console option?

 

[Gilbo]

Interestingly, the NTFS write support in the latest kernels appears to only be accompanied by a 'NEW' warning --not the 'EXPERIMENTAL' warning it used to have. I would still be very careful with it though --use the Windows installation media if you can.


*A word of warning if you are used to previous Gentoo versions Will, they've changed the default use configuration drastically. Support for virtually everything is enabled by default. It will take judicious usage of 'emerge --tree --pretend mypackage' to keep your system under control with the 2005.0 configuration --if you aren't enabling a desktop anyway. This is better for inexperienced people who want a desktop, but caused me some grief recently.

I emerged mpd (the Music Player Daemon) for another headless jukebox I was setting up. I noticed that thiigs were taking longer than the usual couple minutes for the compilation, so I killed it ran 'emerge --pretend mpd' only to find out that Portage had decided MPD needed xorg, kde, and gnome! Not to mention some random, little things like xterm and a bunch of codecs I didn't ask for. For a CLI daemon that only needs to play Ogg, and FLAC files...

 

[Gilbo]

So if I put my win2k install disk in, how to I get to edit boot.ini?
Is this the recovery console option?

Yes, I believe it should be possible through the recovery console.

 

[Will Rickards]

I'm not used to linux. I did have slackware installed but never really used it.
I wanted a linux version that was hardcore enough to actually learn something but easy enough if I wanted it. Gentoo seemed to fill that niche. I also wanted a 2.6 kernel and slackware last time I checked didn't enable it by default.

So far all I've been doing is following the handbook install instructions which is basically type this and wait. Until I got to the kernel part and it glossed over everything so I'm a little lost in the kernel configuration. I think I tried to compile the kernel once with slackware too.

I'm not even sure I'll use it for anything other then web surfing.
I want to see if it is any faster on my old hardware.
P3 667, 512MB RAM.
I'm just having 'fun' experimenting.

 

[Gilbo]

I'm just having 'fun' experimenting.

I did that, and now all the computers in my house run Linux . It just kind of happened, although it did take a lot of patience in the beginning. The key for me, was to not need to get it running. When something wasn't working I could wait till the weekend and put a couple lazy hours into working it out. Now though, you couldn't pay me to go back to Windows (although PS CS2 is rather tempting --thank god for Bibble).

Until I got to the kernel part and it glossed over everything so I'm a little lost in the kernel configuration.

LOL. The first time I rebooted my first Gentoo system I thought it was going to explode there were so many error messages and angrily coloured double exclamation points on the screen. It took me at least 10 recompiles to get everything working. I was trying to do everything though, external binary ATI drivers, the most recent external ALSA modules, wifi. It was quite the trial by fire, but it was fun. Of course I could have used the automatic hardware detection offered by genkernel and coldplug, which is how the LiveCD does its stuff, but I wanted to learn and was patient. It was quite rewarding watching those error messages slowly dwindle away, until I rebooted the machine and all I saw was scrolling, peaceful, green-coloured output.

I want to see if it is any faster on my old hardware.

It certainly will be, even with KDE or Gnome, but the difference will be shocking if you use a lightweight Window Manager and skip the full Desktop Environment. In general I've found Linux 'feels' a lot faster because of its caching and paging mechanisms. It doesn't start paging until it needs to (well a little before to avoid thrashing problems if you suddenly start a new application), but it also seems to cache used data more than Windows did on the same computer. A previously loaded application is much more likely to startup instantly, I've found.

Forgive me if you are already aware of the distinction between window managers and desktop environments, but it was something I didn't appreciate at first that might have saved me some trouble.
1. A Window manager is all you need for a GUI (other than xorg). Xorg actually comes with a very simple, basic (ugly) Window manager. You can run KDE or Gnome applications without the KDE or Gnome Desktop Environments, with any Window Manager and just the necessary base libraries for the application (Qt for KDE and GTK for Gnome). KDE & Gnome bring along their own Window Managers (Kwin and Metacity respectively), but will run with 3rd party Window Managers. Fluxbox and FVWM are probably the most popular Window Managers in the Gentoo community. People have done some pretty amazing things with FVWM in particular.

2. A desktop environment, like KDE or Gnome, brings all sorts of stuff with it, menus, taskbars, a graphical terminal, a gui task manager, clocks etc. You can emerge minimal versions of them if you like, which aren't cluttered with games and other applications, for a lighter install (which I strongly recommend if you go this route), and then only emerge what you need, like a web browser, e-mail client (Evolution, which comes with the full Gnome install is terrific). This is the easiest way to get started, and with 512MB of RAM you'll be just fine with these heavier GUI environments.

The minimal gnome install is 'gnome-light,' for KDE I'm pretty sure it's just 'kde' and 'kde-meta' includes the kitchen sink.

 

[Will Rickards]

recovery console huh... seemed useless. No text editor.
I finally tried plugging my usb flash drive in and discovered it was available in the recovery console. So I had to copy the boot.ini onto the flash drive, take it to another computer and edit it and then copy it back over. I'm now typing from my windows install.

 

[sechs]

I thought partitions designations in boot.ini were 0 based indexes?

Just be confusing, partitions start with 1, and extended partitions start with 5.