Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Mark Shields <laebshade@×××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo
Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 01:59:42
Message-Id: BANLkTimAG_0rF4rv9vVaei+5co23nimXeg@mail.gmail.com
In Reply to: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo by Kevin O'Gorman
1 On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 6:28 PM, Kevin O'Gorman <kogorman@×××××.com> wrote:
2
3 > It looks like it's time to take Gentoo off of my main machine. I feel a
4 > little sad about it, or I'd just quietly go away.
5 >
6 > A few months ago, an update made the machine headless -- well, it could no
7 > longer bring up X but I could use the console-mode for admin, and log in via
8 > SSH from my laptop and run GUI programs. I was busy at the time, first
9 > deciding and then implementing my retirement, so I let it go.
10 >
11 > Now, a couple of months into my retirement, I'm trying to fix things up,
12 > and the latest Gentoo live disk cannot talk to my monitor at all. Whatever
13 > it's trying is unacceptable to the HD monitor I've had on there for a year,
14 > and I can't even run the consoles. The video card is an ATI Rage XL on the
15 > motherboard. Like the rest of the machine, it's vintage 2000, so maybe
16 > support got dropped. But I'm not inclined to drop the machine -- it was the
17 > ballyhooed thing in Linux Journal in 2002 when I finished my PHD, so I put
18 > together these pieces:
19 > * Two XEON chips. I didn't know it right away but that means 4 cores.
20 > They are old Pentium IV-based 32-bit chips. I got the slowest still being
21 > made, so the clock speed is 1.6 GHz. On 4 cores, it's not bad at all.
22 > * 2GB of DDR ECC memory
23 > * about a dozen hard drives (some old, but mostly 500GB - 2TB Sata drives),
24 > I feel it's still worthy of respect. Some of these are in EZ-Dock docking
25 > stations and are used for rotating backups (including off-site). The main
26 > directories are on hardware RAID 1 so I have ongoing redundancy.
27 > * a Smart UPS 1500 for everything except the laser printer.
28 >
29 > So, since I am familiar with Ubuntu from work, and have it on a couple of
30 > laptops, I'm installing from the Ubuntu 11.04 live disk (video is just
31 > fine).
32 >
33 > The real headache is all the stuff I'm going to have to port.
34 >
35 > 1) Apache and dynamic (Python CGI) web site.
36 > 2) Postfix
37 > 3) About a dozen accounts that just do wget(1) data gathering triggered by
38 > the cron daemon.
39 > 4) DNS (I run my own domain on a commercial DSL account)
40 > 5) NTP client and server
41 > 6) Whatever else I forgot I set up over the years.
42 >
43 > My original reason for using Gentoo is that this machine was pretty exotic
44 > when I bought it, and I wanted to be able to tweak the compiler to get the
45 > most out of it. I can still do that for specific applications I'm working
46 > on, but otherwise it's really a non-issue now. I have gotten pretty tired
47 > of updates that take over 48 hours to compile, and the occasional mess-up
48 > that once or twice led me to rebuild with empty-tree and took a week or so.
49 >
50 >
51 > So I guess I shouldn't complain (and I'm not). I'm just not in the target
52 > market for Gentoo any more. It was fun, though.
53 > --
54 > Kevin O'Gorman, PhD
55 >
56 >
57
58 You let a small problem like the latest live cd not booting your system
59 scare you away?
60
61 Have you tried using an older live cd? If it's a video issue, maybe
62 detecting your monitor wrong, how about turning on the framebuffer (there's
63 an option for that)?
64
65 It's doable man, don't give up.

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo Kevin O'Gorman <kogorman@×××××.com>
Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo BRM <bm_witness@×××××.com>