Re: [gentoo-user] Acer Aspireone AO751h install hints

[Mick]

Thank you Walter!  I'm about to buy a new laptop and these instructions will 
save me a lot of time and effort.  :-)

On Sunday 08 November 2009 08:11:15 Walter Dnes wrote:
>   It started off ugly, but I found the solutions, so here they are, to
> hopefully save other people some time.
>
>   The Gentoo minimal install image cannot see the harddrive at all.
> "fdisk -l" only showed /dev/sda, i.e. the USB stick on which unetbootin
> had installed the minimal install.  I've filed bug a report on this...
> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=292346
>
>   Knoppix, on the other hand, could see the hard drive, but wasn't able
> to drive the RTL8101 network card.  I ended up installing under a
> Knoppix "live CD" on a USB stick.  Notes regarding the installation
> under Knoppix...
>
>  1) Get *TWO* USB sticks, one of which has at least 1 gigabyte capacity,
>     and make sure to back up any important data on them.  It will all be
>     overwritten.
>
>  2) On a machine with a CD or DVD download and burn the microKnoppix ISO.
>
>  3) Boot the existing computer from the Knoppix CD/DVD.
>
>  4) Plug in a USB stick with at least 1 gig capacity.
>
>  5) From a console, execute "flash-knoppix" (without the quotes).  That's
>     it.  Surprisingly easy.  For people who insist on menus, the path is
>     [LXDE --> System Tools --> Install KNOPPIX to flash disk]
>
>  6) Unmount and take out the USB stick, and reboot the linux machine.
>     You will need it a lot.
>
>  7) Do the following in the exact order.  I went around in circles over
>     this one...
>     - insert the bootable USB stick into the ACER netbook.
>     - reboot the ACER while holding down the {F2} key.  This will bring
>       you into the BIOS setup.
>     - go into the boot menu and select the item which mentions your USB
>       stick.  In my case it was "USB HD" (YES!!!) not "USB KEY".
>     - save changes and boot.  This should bring up Knoppix
>
>  8) Make sure that the other linux machine is up to date, and do *NOT*
>     clean out the /usr/portage/distfiles directory.
>
>  9) Follow the regular Gentoo install instructions with these changes
>     - open 2 terminals after Knoppix boots, and "su -" in both.  Later
>       on you'll be able to switch back and forth between chrooted and
>       Knoppix environments
>     - as per http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/altinstall.xml
>       - after bootup execute "mkdir /mnt/gentoo" from one of the 2 terms
>       - when setting up for chroot, mount proc system with the command
>         mount -o bind /proc /mnt/gentoo/proc
>         rather than the command given in the install documentation
>     - if Knoppix can't use the network card (as in my case) you'll have
>       to be prepared to download stage3 and portage snapshot files, etc
>       to the other linux machine, and shuttle them over via USB stick.
>       This gets painfull when the instructions tell you to emerge stuff
>       and you don't have a network card.  If you followed instructions
>       in step #8, you can shuttle the necessary tarballs over from the
>       other machine's distfiles directory to the Acer's distfiles
>       directory.
>
> 10) If you're going to be running "make menuconfig" manually *EXIT AND
>     SAVE YOUR WORK EVERY FEW MINUTES*!!! I cannot emphasize this enough.
>     There is some magic combination of keypress and dragging my fingers
>     on the touchpad, which kills the terminal you're working in.  Of
>     course you end up losing the entries you've made.  Save early and
>     save often.  Here are the "make menuconfig" paths for installing
>     working hard drive and network card drivers...
>
> Device Drivers
>   Serial ATA (prod) and Parallel ATA (experimental) drivers
>     ATA SFF support
>       Intel SCH PATA support
>
>
> Device Drivers
>   Network Device support
>     Ethernet (1000 mbit support)
>       Realtek 8169 gigabit ethernet support
>
>   It's now booting properly and seeing the internet.  The install is
> done on GMT time, and then I set to local time.  Since I'm in EST
> timezone (5 hours behind GMT), it complains on bootup about certain
> config files having dates in the future.  That will disappear in a few
> hours.  It's close to finishing an update.  Next is "emerge system" to
> be followed by "emerge world".
>

-- 
Regards,
Mick