Gentoo

OS / Drivers / BIOS
Post Reply
vgoraz
Posts: 97
Joined: Sun Oct 13, 2002 2:39 pm
Contact:

Gentoo

Post by vgoraz »

anyone running gentoo linux, i recently decided i am tired of mandrake and would like a more customized almost built from scratch type of linux and well gentoo looks promising. i am not too to fimiliar with the gcc parameters though they mention for building everything and also wondering what a good stage would be to start from. stage 3 seems rather simple but most of the fun work is done for me. so yeah just wondering what any of you think and any suggestions you might have
brian33x51
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2003 10:29 am
Location: Denver

Post by brian33x51 »

I've been using my old bp6 + 2x366 celery's as a firewall/ server for over a year or so now. I had mandrake on it for a while, then decided to put debian on it after a hard drive failure. Sadly I lost 2 debian installs due to 2 more hard drive failures.

After I put an antec 400W power supply on my bp6 (and finally getting it stable again after a year), I put gentoo on it. No problems whatsoever with it, although it is a slow system for doing compiles (well, compared to my dual athlon system I'm using now). I only use it as a server, no X, nothing else special.

So expect no problems.

Since it is a server and any spare machines I have about are either K6-2 or P1 I only use the following:

CFLAGS="-mcpu=i686 -O3 -pipe"

So it works just fine, but there's no way I'm even beginning to push the limits of the machine. As you can tell, I don't even overclock it anymore. Back in the glory days I oc'd the system to 539. Perhaps when I make it into a game server again I'll clock it back up again, I'm very happy with the antec power supply.
martin B
Posts: 6
Joined: Sat Mar 15, 2003 4:07 am

Post by martin B »

the last week i have tested gentoo 1.4 the first time and compared it with debian woody (not native, a lot of backports too), on my passive
cooled bp6(2x466Mhz / 640MB Ram) and an Asus a7v600 (xp2000 / 512MB) .
Gentoo works much faster (and less stable).
so i build avi's on gentoo 15% faster with transcode (Asus-Box)
compilling Xfree4.3 on the bp6 have been done in 7,5 h,
with pentum2 optimation and in nearly 9h at standard enviorment.

the s__t is, that not all progs are compiling at more than one job
(like Xfree) after i set MAKEOPS ="-j 4" in /etc/ make.conf
now gentoo uses the gcc3.2 you can set :
CFLAGS="-mcpu=pentium2 -O3 -pipe".
johnli
Posts: 87
Joined: Sat Sep 28, 2002 4:39 am
Location: Midlands, UK
Contact:

Post by johnli »

The trouble with gentoo is you need to take at least a week to get it all installed, and some of us just don't have the time.
Regards,
John
Derek
Site Admin
Posts: 2489
Joined: Tue Jul 23, 2002 3:55 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

Post by Derek »

I have Gentoo running on my Xbox! :D
-Derek
hyperspace
Board Admin
Posts: 1395
Joined: Wed Jul 24, 2002 7:39 am
Location: Lincoln, NE USA
Contact:

Post by hyperspace »

Derek wrote:I have Gentoo running on my Xbox! :D
You are twisted! :smokin:
Quantum WormHole

Image
lost in hypertime...
FloW
Posts: 32
Joined: Thu Oct 21, 2004 1:54 pm
Location: laptop.lan
Contact:

gentoo(x) runs on my xbox too

Post by FloW »

the subject shows it. gentoo for xbox (gentoox) is a very stable distribution.
http://flow23.homelinux.net:8080
and after i bought an bp6 it will be stable on it too :wink: .
Derek
Site Admin
Posts: 2489
Joined: Tue Jul 23, 2002 3:55 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

Re: gentoo(x) runs on my xbox too

Post by Derek »

FloW wrote:the subject shows it. gentoo for xbox (gentoox) is a very stable distribution.
http://flow23.homelinux.net:8080
and after i bought an bp6 it will be stable on it too :wink: .
Yeah man!! Awesome! :)
-Derek
FloW
Posts: 32
Joined: Thu Oct 21, 2004 1:54 pm
Location: laptop.lan
Contact:

Post by FloW »

i will put it offline when i will complete my bp6 configuration. *arg*
Derek
Site Admin
Posts: 2489
Joined: Tue Jul 23, 2002 3:55 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

Post by Derek »

There are some pics in the gallery showing the X-Box running GentooX and browsing to BP6.Com :)

:arrow: http://www.bp6.com/board/album_cat.php?cat_id=14
-Derek
Derek
Site Admin
Posts: 2489
Joined: Tue Jul 23, 2002 3:55 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

Post by Derek »

That gives me an idea... I have my X-Box hooked up to my projector which will display up to 1280x1024 (unlike the TV in the pictures). I'll have to take some pics of that :) BP6.Com will show up much better!! hehehe
-Derek
FloW
Posts: 32
Joined: Thu Oct 21, 2004 1:54 pm
Location: laptop.lan
Contact:

Post by FloW »

make some and post them here please , i wanna see this pictures. you use gentoox home, right?
purrkur
Linux Guru
Posts: 687
Joined: Fri Dec 12, 2003 5:57 pm
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Post by purrkur »

vgoraz: To answer your questions properly :)

I am not running Gentoo on my BP6 but I am running it on my Athlon machine. I use Debian on my Gentoo machine in order to be able to skip the compiling. I did play with the idea once though and I might still do it at some point just for fun.

Concerning the stages and what to begin with, I would say that it depends on what you want to do and how much time you have. If you want to learn a bit more and have ample time on your hands then I would recommend starting with stage one. Do stage three if you want to get up and running ASAP. Of course the LiveCD's include binaries if you want to have Gentoo up and running at once.

As for the CFLAGS and so on, this is what I would recommend for BP6 and the Celerons:

CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=pentium2 -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"
CXXFLAGS="-march=pentium2 -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"

Let me explain the above a bit. These parameters are what you can consider "safe" to use with gcc 3.2 and above. Now many wannabe-hackers, and "knowitalls" will say that you should use "-O3" instead of "-O2" but I disagree, especially for a platform like BP6. "-O3" means even further optimisations that leads to longer compile times and larger binaries. Now I have tested both options (unlike many who would say that you should use -O3 and nothing else) on my Athlon and found that most of the time the speed difference of the binaries is close to nothing so I seriously doubt that you gain anything of importance with the -O3 flag other than larger binaries and longer compile times. I use the -O2 flag on my Überfast Athlon simply because the -O3 gives me nothing. Let me also tell you that while compiling some sensitive programs, the -O3 flag will break the compile but changing it to -O2 will in most cases work just fine.

Let me remind you that most packages in Debian are compiled to be used on a 386 and I have seen comparisons between a moderately optimised Gentoo system and a Debian system (same hardware) where the Debian system has been faster!

If you want a fast system, don't go for the hype and believe that Über-compile flags will make you king of the hill. There are many other ways of making a Linux system fast, like prelinking which I would recommend that you look into.
2x533MHz@544MHz, 2.0V
640MB PC100 memory
Realtek RTL-8139 NIC
Maxtor 6Y080L0 80GB hdd
Debian Linux stable with 2.4.8 kernel
FloW
Posts: 32
Joined: Thu Oct 21, 2004 1:54 pm
Location: laptop.lan
Contact:

Post by FloW »

i will post my results of my gentoo installation with the confs purrkur has had posted soon. and i will run rrdtool as well as on my xbox to monitor my dual cpus etc.

// YOU DONT NEED AT LEAST ONE WEEK TO INSTALL GENTOO.
GENTOO.ORG HAS VERY GOOD MANUALS.WITH THEM YOU CAN MAKE IT IN SEVERAL HOURS.
FloW
Posts: 32
Joined: Thu Oct 21, 2004 1:54 pm
Location: laptop.lan
Contact:

Post by FloW »

so everything worked fine and gentoo runs stable since 4 days now. i used the flags given above.
purrkur
Linux Guru
Posts: 687
Joined: Fri Dec 12, 2003 5:57 pm
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Post by purrkur »

Thanks for the update!
2x533MHz@544MHz, 2.0V
640MB PC100 memory
Realtek RTL-8139 NIC
Maxtor 6Y080L0 80GB hdd
Debian Linux stable with 2.4.8 kernel
FloW
Posts: 32
Joined: Thu Oct 21, 2004 1:54 pm
Location: laptop.lan
Contact:

Post by FloW »

no problem :)
System Bogomips 2117.63
FloW
Posts: 32
Joined: Thu Oct 21, 2004 1:54 pm
Location: laptop.lan
Contact:

Post by FloW »

# These settings were set by the catalyst build script that automatically built$
# Please consult /etc/make.conf.example for a more detailed example
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=pentium2 -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
MAKEOPTS="-j3"
# OPTIMAL COMPILER-PROCESSES ON A BOARD WITH 2 CPUS
purrkur
Linux Guru
Posts: 687
Joined: Fri Dec 12, 2003 5:57 pm
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Post by purrkur »

Oooops. I forgot to mention the "-j" parameter. Sorry about that since it is pretty important to a multi-cpu system. The rule of thumb is to set it to one more than the number of processors you have (hence -j3 that you show).
2x533MHz@544MHz, 2.0V
640MB PC100 memory
Realtek RTL-8139 NIC
Maxtor 6Y080L0 80GB hdd
Debian Linux stable with 2.4.8 kernel
FloW
Posts: 32
Joined: Thu Oct 21, 2004 1:54 pm
Location: laptop.lan
Contact:

Post by FloW »

no problem, you have me :)
omg i made 2 x 80mm fans on my cpus. fantastic :)
Post Reply