Lone Coder: VirtualBox on Vista with a Gentoo Guest

[Jason Carson]

> 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.
>

Yeah, I've been using Gentoo for about 7 years. The recommended way of
installing it is to download and burn to CD the Gentoo Weekly Minimal
Install CD for your architecture and follow the Gentoo handbook. I've
never tried the installer.

The first time I tried installing Gentoo it took me a few attempts and
several days but now that I know what I'm doing I can have a basic system
up and running in 'only' a few hours.

I'll admit installing and configuring Gentoo has a fairly steep learning
curve but once you have it installed its great. Once command "emerge
program" and your program is downloaded, compiled and installed along with
all its dependencies onto your system according to your optimization
settings.

If you don't like manually editing configuration files you can always use
Webmin. I'm glad I took the time to figure out how to install Gentoo, it
taught me a lot about how a Linux system is setup.

I look forward to trying out Funtoo when I have some free time.

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