Lone Coder: VirtualBox on Vista with a Gentoo Guest

Jamon Camisso jamon.camisso-H217xnMUJC0sA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org
Sun Oct 18 14:15:36 UTC 2009


Ken Burtch wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-10-18 at 09:38 -0400, Jamon Camisso wrote:
>> Ken Burtch wrote:
>>> On Sat, 2009-10-17 at 20:55 -0400, Rajinder Yadav wrote:
>>>> Ken Burtch wrote:
>>>>> My latest Lone Coder column, very long and technical:
>>>>>
>>>>> "Regardless if you think Gentoo is genius or madness, a manual install
>>>>> represents the ultimate challenge to boot Linux on VirtualBox.
>>>>>
>>>>> This document assumes you have a basic understanding of setting up a
>>>>> Linux computer, such as how to build a kernel and how to format a disk
>>>>> partition. "Host" refers to the operating system running VirtualBox, in
>>>>> this case, Windows Vista. "Guest" refers to the operating system running
>>>>> within VirtualBox, in this case, Gentoo Linux. I use "gentoo #" as a
>>>>> root Gentoo prompt but your actual prompt may be a different one...."
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.pegasoft.ca/coder/coder_october_2009.html
>>>>>
>>>> Hi Ken,
>>>>
>>>> this is a well written article, excellent work.
>>>>
>>>> Question, about when you say "manual install represents the ultimate challenge 
>>>> to boot Linux on VirtualBox."Is it really that challenging?
>>> As I wrote at the end of the article, it took an hour to install Fedora
>>> and OpenSolaris.  And it took a week to install Gentoo, looking up the
>>> right commands and settings through Google,  So, on that basis, the
>>> Gentoo install was 35 times longer and more complicated, and 35 times
>>> the cost.
>> The question was would a bare metal install have taken longer or would 
>> it have been about the same time? e.g. is there something specific about 
>> VirtualBox that requires more work.
> 
> There is additional work for a VirtualBox install, such as configuring
> the Guest Additions, but I did not do a bare metal install so I can't
> compare.

That can be good or bad. Using genkernel will save figuring out your 
kernel .config either way, but bare metal can take a bit of fiddling to 
find the right kernel options (whereas I'd assume VirtualBox kernel 
images are rather more standardized).

>>>> I've used VMWare and installed many distro on my WinXP, with custom partition, 
>>>> the process was relative effortless and quick.
>>>>
>>>> So is it Gentoo that's involved to install or does VirtualBox makes it so, or do 
>>>> you just like to command line it like a guru =) ... I compared the steps to 
>>>> install Ubuntu and Debain, and I never had to drop into the shell to type stuff 
>>>> to install Linux, ever, not even with Slackware.
>>> Because of its nature, Gentoo has no installer or setup program.
>>> There's no alternative except to use the shell and to use commands like
>>> "fdisk" that I haven't otherwise needed to use in years.
>> They have an installer and have had for some time. A number of their 
>> releases have a livecd that do all the work for you. No fdisk needed.
> 
> The LiveCD is not an installer.  It merely runs a generic Gentoo kernel
> off the CD.  To put Gentoo on your hard drive, you still need fdisk,
> install portage, download the root file system image, etc. as far as I
> know.  Gentoo's documentation didn't say anything about the LiveCD doing
> "all the work for you".  Perhaps I am mistaken??

It does it all. See here for a screenshot of the installer running via 
Xen: http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/1544/gentooinstaller1.png

Jamon
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