Gentoo minimal install x86 & wireless

Enfield · 12 Sep 2009 at 18:07

Hello,

I want to install Gentoo on my old Dell laptop (P3 500Mhz, 256MB RAM) which I use just for messing about.

So far all I have done is boot from the CD... and have come across a few problems straight away.

First, it's not recognising my BT Voyager 1055 USB wireless adapter which uses the Broadcom 4320 chipset. (The green light is lit up). iwconfig tells me that there are no wireless extensions and ifconfig only displays 'lo'.

As I'm typing this I have disconnected the USB wireless adapter and am trying out another which is PCMCIA (have used gentoo dopcmcia). It's a Netgear MA01 and the green link light is flashing but Gentoo seems to have a problem with this too.

livecd root # hermes @ 00010100: Card removed while waiting for command 0x0002 completion.
eth0: Unable to disable port while reconfiguring card
eth0: Resetting instead...

I have not removed the card at all and Gentoo has been resetting the card for quite a while now but doesn't seem to be getting anywhere.

Second, there is a problem starting gpm. It says:

* Starting gpm ...
/sbin/start-stop-daemon: Unable to start /usr/sbin/gpm: Input/output error (Input/output error)

I get the above message when using both wireless adapters but receive another error when using the PCMCIA card

* ERROR: cannot start nfsmount as rpc.statd could not start

Am I able to do some jiggery pokery with Knoppix to get my USB stick working? I've noticed this on Gentoo's page:

docache
This caches the entire runtime portion of the CD into RAM, which allows you to umount /mnt/cdrom and mount another CDROM. This option requires that you have at least twice as much available RAM as the size of the CD.

Thanks

Enfield · 12 Sep 2009 at 18:45

I have rebooted for the umpteenth time and haven't received and error about gpm this time! Interestingly I used gentoo docache...

Enfield · 12 Sep 2009 at 19:58

At the moment I am trying to install Gentoo via Knoppix LiveCD. I downloaded the latest one and that didn't work at all, got an error straight away. So I tried one of my old Knoppix LiveCD's and that is working fine.

However, it doesn't pick up the wireless so I am having to use NDISWrapper... I've installed the driver and it has worked, but, I still have no wireless extensions! No bloody wlan0 - only 'lo'!

What a pain in the backside. I'm stuck...

EDIT: Getting somewhere now.

I've had to go into /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-1 and edit a file there called bConfigurationValue which is blank and enter in a '1' and save it.

iwconfig now returns wlan0!

Enfield · 12 Sep 2009 at 21:13

Hi.

I'm literally just starting Chapter 6. Installing the Gentoo Base System

I'll let you know how it goes

Enfield · 13 Sep 2009 at 13:48

Well I stayed up till 4am this morning installing Gentoo from Knoppix waiting till I had a bootable environment.

It didn't work on first attempt because in the grub file I had used hda (as per Knoppix) rather than sda and same with fstab and mtab. But now it works perfectly, no errors at all!

Don't need to use ndiswrapper, but do need to setup a wifi manager to log me in automatically. I did have a problem installing ndiswrapper (didn't know that I wouldnt need it at the time) because it needed to install two other packages: -

wireless-tools-29
and something else

Wireless-tools-29 wouldn't work so I had to patch it but that didn't work so I just edited the .ebuild myself but had problems at first using it as what I was doing was overwriting it with one from the internet. Managed to get around this using emerge and manifest I think (am very tired).

Anywhoo, just need to setup a GUI now. Quite pleased that it's working.

Sorry to bore.

Enfield · 15 Sep 2009 at 20:33

Thanks .walls (glad I looked back on this thread before I got started!) Think I shall have a look at that tomorrow as I don't want my laptop left on over night as it will keep me awake!