I just logged into windows and made an iso image with the RW disk I installed from and apparently, it's md5sum doesn't match. So, I've got burnt the image into an unused CD-R and am now installing gentoo again ... from scratch Anyways, just ignore my previous post because there was a problem with the disk and it shouldn't happen again this time.

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ok okay... i was going to surgest you re-compile gcc.
but if your md5 sums dont match its definatly an error caused when downloading, or burning the CD.

It is actually possable to fix this type of error without re-installing, but i guess you have already started.

Its actually a mirrqcle you got as far as you did with corruped install media though

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Hi qwijibow . Well...I've finally installed X and ALSA. I'm on my way to installing KDE and now I can atleast listen to songs while it's compiling.

But, there still seems to be some problem during the 'emerge'-ing process. While comipiling and 'make'-ing huge installations like KDE, it suddenly stops in between with an error saying:

No bug report, it is likely to be a Hardware or OS error.

Any ideas why that's happening. It will get installed only if I 'emerge' it 3-4 times. I mean, does this happen to everyone? It's a little annoying because, the error shows up after an hour of compiling.

Also, I can't seem to be able to install the nvidia drivers. I've got nvidia geforce4 mx onboard and I've followed all the instructions on the gentoo site for nvidia, but still X doesn't start. It gives some sort of error about 'could not initialise NVIDIA kernel module' or something and exits. It's working if I use the 'nv' driver but not with 'nvidia'. Any ideas?

 

 

 

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Gentoo has never failed to compile except when i unmask testing / unstable packages on my system.

The fact that it sometimes compiles fine is a bit of a worry !

Gentoo puts your system under a very high strain, is it possable that your CPU is over-heating ?

I have never had a compile error except for when i unmask and delibratly try to install testing / unstable versions !

check your md5sums again.

if you have hardware monitoring support on your motherboard, keep an eye on tempreture.

Because with gentoo, everything is compiled locally, the system is very sencitive to faulty hardware.

do you have a memtest86 boot disk ?
it may be worth testing your ram too.

Are you able to underclock your CPU / RAM on your motherboard bios ?

if so, try compiling somthing with an underclocked system, if this works, it may be a sign of faulty hardware.

Anouther method of keeping the cpu cool dureing long compiles is to allow it to sleep periodically.

for exaple, when the cpu starts to get too warm, hit (ctrl and Z) to put the porcess to sleep..
when the cpu cool down, run the command "fg" for i to continue where it left off.

please post your /etc/make.conf
did you use any unstable optimisation settings ?

If all your checksums matchand your hardware is not to blame, then as a last resort, maybe try re-compiling gcc.

Ive never ever ever had the "Hardware or OS error." error.

Lol, i know i said gentoo was one of the hardest distro's to install... but it shouldnt be this hard.

Are you installing from stage 1,2 or 3 ?

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Actually, I'm starting to think that maybe installing gentoo is not such a good idea. If it's gonna screw up my H/W I'd bettter stick to slack.

I've got an AMD Athlon XP 2600+ and Asus A7N8X-VM/400 Motherboard with 512MB and 160GB HDD.
Been using it for a year now and never had any problem with any other distro nor windows.

Maybe the processor is overheating, but I've removed the side panel to give it some more ventilation.

I've checked the md5sum of the CD image after burning this time before installing and it's ok.

There is hardware monitoring support on my motherboard, but how do I observe it while emerging? Is there any program to let me do that?

I don't have memtest86 boot disk. In fact, I don't even have a floppy drive. Is there any image I can download for a CD to test the memory?

No underclocking my system either, there isn't any provision as such.

Anyway, here's the make.conf file:



I did a complete install from stage1... just for the experience .

But tell me, if this thing is going to screw up my hardware, I'll stop installing gentoo right now!

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Gentoo wont damage your hardware, its just that compiling from scratch will run your CPU at 100% for a few hours, if your cooling isnt up-to it, it may overheat.

you missed "-fomit-frame-pointer" from the CFLAGS, but this should just reduce performance a little, and should not cause any instability.

the porgram to monitor cpu tempreture is lm_sensors, you need to have compiled support for your monitoring chip on the kernel.

when you check the md5sums, test the cd's md5 againsed the .iso.md5 on the server.
the corruption may have occured dureing download.

memtest86.com http://www.memtest86.com/

this is a confusing error !

Faulty hardware would normally cause a kernel panick, and memory dump.
So i would guess its not your hardware.

And Bugs in the compiler / KDE should cause a seg-fault error...
and your not getting this.

is it possable you made a mistake somwhere ?

Gentoo is probably the second hardest distro to install, right behind Linux From Scratch.

Maybe try a stage3 install ?
i stage3, all important and critical software like the compiler, and glibc are pre-compiled.
yo just need to compile Xorg and KDE.

Otherwise... Keep hacking through, get dirty, find the problem and fix it..( the fun bit, lol )

Or... go back to Slackware.

I Think gentoo is fantastic,

But if you dont enjoy doing some dirty work, and tinkering with the inner workings of linux, It can become quite annoying at times like these.

EDIT: oohhhh, and about your nvidia problem...
assuming you have compiled and loaded the driver (load with modprobe nvidia)

and you get the sae error starting X, have a look in /dev/ for the files /dev/nvidia0 and /dev/nvidiactl.

if they dont exist, run the following as root.



then restart X

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I'm almost at the point of giving up now .

I ran memtest and it gave me errors in excess of 1000! Does this mean my memory is completely screwed? I haven't had any memory problems before neither with windows nor slackware. Of course there is that occasional reboot in windows (maybe once a week or once a fortnight) but that's attributed more to windows than the hardware right?

About the md5sum ... that's exactly what i did. I wrote the image on the CD, then re-imaged it and then cross-checked it's md5sum with the server's.

Now, it's consistently giving me an error whenever it tries to emerge kdelibs. I tried it once again just now and it gave me a segmentation-fault.

I do enjoy tinkering around with it ... but there's no point if I keep running into a wall. So far, I've been at it in excess of 4 days and it still hasn't worked nor is it showing any promise of working.

Maybe there's some base problem in the stage1 and stage2 installs that I did. Would it be better if I started over and did a stage3 install?

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Well... that's that for gentoo. I tried a stage 3 install today and still errors. Well, maybe there is a small problem in my hardware but I don't think I can do anything about it. Anyways, everything else works fine and I did learn a lot of things from the gentoo install . I think I'm an expert at compiling kernels now .

Thanks for your help qwijibow, but I'm going back to slackware. Long live binary installs!

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Your hardware is faulty. No doubt about it.

It seems your hardware is working fine under low stress.
But memtest86 is designed to run your ram at full speed, doing read/write operations at every clock cycle.

Its most likely your Ram, or possably (but un-likely) the CPU.

Are you over-clocking your hardware ???

Did you tweak your ram timings ?
i used to get crashes, and a bad memtest86 because of a bios bug that ran my ram with bad timing settings..

i have Kingston ValueRAM.. my motherboard defalts the ram timings to 1& 2-2-6-3.
i fixed the stability issues by chaging ram timing to the Kingston approved 2T 3-3-8-3.



You may want to run memtest86 a few more times.
If its always the same area of ram that fails (the same address range)
you can config the Linux kernel to not use that area of ram.

ANYWAYS......

You are right to give up gentoo.
Compiling the kernel, and things like glibc under faulty hardware will give you a vey very un-stable system.

At least your ram is running fine under low-stress.

Do you ever run memory intensive programs under windows / slackware ?
for example memory benchmarks, or high performance games ?

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I don't recall overclocking my hardware ... there isn't any option for overclocking given in the manual.

One thing I forgot to mention, I have two 256MB RAM cards with different bus speeds. When I bought the 2nd one I didn't think about matching the speeds, I just bought it because it was at an all time low. Can we change the timings or something?

My system would restart if I played Doom 3 or HL 2 but, that's only on rare occasions ... it wouldn't restart much if I stopped all the services and resources. Quake 3 runs fine without any glitches.

I did try benchmarking my graphics card with 3dmark, but that's different I guess .

Anyways, I've spent way too much time on this ... so back to slackware 10.2 tonight .

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