Lone Coder: VirtualBox on Vista with a Gentoo Guest

Ken Burtch ken-8VyUGRzHQ8IsA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org
Sun Oct 18 20:25:00 UTC 2009


On Sun, 2009-10-18 at 10:15 -0400, Jamon Camisso wrote:
> 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

According to the Gentoo website
(http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/releng/installer/), the Installer is
abandonware and is not supported.


Ken B.

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-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ken O. Burtch                                    Phone/Fax: 905-562-0848
  "Linux Shell Scripting with Bash"              Email: ken-8VyUGRzHQ8IsA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org
  "Perl Phrasebook"              Blog: http://www.pegasoft.ca/coder.html
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The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
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