Install Gentoo to second hard drive

[Gegenki]

Does anyone know how?
I have 2 hard drives.
The second needs reformating. I have the gentoo handbook open

I have alot of data on my windows drive. It is my first hard drive. I want Gentoo on the second hard drive but I can only find information on either installing gentoo as first or second on a single drive

Also interms of harddrive numbering in the console, is my first hard drive hd0 making my second hd1 or is it hd1 making the second hd2

[BugenhagenXIII]

My drive is labelled as the following ( it's a sata drive):

sda <---The name of the whole drive
sda1<---My windows partition
sda2<---My fat32 partition
sda3<---My ext3 (linux) partition
sda4<---My swap partition

You could always download the gparted livecd, boot it, then see how it labels the harddrives. You could also format from there. You can find the .iso here. (http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php)

As for installing on a second drive, it should be the same as installing it on one drive, the only difference being where you install GRUB. I always install it on the MBR. It should also automatically detect the windows installation and add it to the boot list.

[Garfunkel]

as ^ said it will detect windows and ask to install grub to the MBR, if all the OS's you have are on the list it should be ok. I think the labeling should go hda and hda1 etc if you have ide drives or sda and sda1 etc for sata drives.

[Gegenki]

im done with gentoo. I'm too indescribebly angry, not to mention tired
I spent 4 and half hours last night installing it ( using 2 computers, one for the manual - it was light when i went to sleep)
I tried to open the manual in links on a seperate console window and the window just stopped. So i went back to finsih the install how i was before. Was about to save teh grub config when i noticed an error in the file path which lead me to believe that i had accidentally created a new file instead of editing what I was meant to. So I went to the only empty console window, which was the one with the gentoo picture behind it and it wouldnt load it. The system just locked.

At this point i was absolutely mad.
I restarted and tried to get back where i was and it wouldn't have it.

So this morning I started again - another 3 hours. I got to a point and had to emerge --sync and it wouldn't work. I think it had a server error and I couldnt change the mirror at that point

So again! I started again chose a different mirror and it worked. When I went to emerge coldplug as the instructions said it got an error.

It all worked so perfectly last night as well. I'm just too agry to continue, I'm getting a different distro. One that doesn't rely on downloading things from the internet to install it.

[BugenhagenXIII]

You could always use Ubuntu. It doesn't require downloading to install (once you download the install cd, that is). However, to install anything after the base install, it does require internet.

If you go with Ubuntu Dapper, it has a completely graphical installer on the livecd. Just boot it up, and double click on the install icon on the desktop. After you enter all the info like username and timezone and such, it takes about 30-45 min.

Honestly, Ubuntu is the best distro I've used. I've used Gentoo (I've never installed it though, it was on the computers at my school), Fedora Core 4, and SuSe 10.1, and none of them compare to Ubuntu for ease of use.

[Gegenki]

I've actually used Ubuntu before. I stopped using it when I realised i couldnt use su
Im downloading it now - Good server. Giving me 2mb down speed. Only 1 hour to download
I can't stand the waiting

[Teh Roxor!]

I've actually used Ubuntu before. I stopped using it when I realised i couldnt use su
Im downloading it now - Good server. Giving me 2mb down speed. Only 1 hour to download
I can't stand the waiting
It's too bad you had trouble with Gentoo. I love Getoo.

Also, I think you can use su in Ubuntu. At least, I can with my laptop which has Kubuntu installed on it. Just make sure you set a su password.

[BugenhagenXIII]

There is absolutely no reason to use su in Ubuntu. All you need is sudo. Need root for a command?

sudo whatever-command-is-needed


It uses your user password. No need to use su or log into root. That's why Ubuntu disables the root account by default. Check this (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RootSudo?highlight=%28sudo%29%7C%28root%29) out.

[Gegenki]

Ye its just that, back then it was causing me huge problems with installing my graphics card because it wasn't having it with sudo before. Stupid ATI linux incompatibility. Just one reason I have an nvidia.

Been using ubuntu for about 4 hours now. I shoulda gotten it months ago. I spent about 2 hours tweaking it to look mac.
Had no problems at all. My nvidia even installed in a flash.

[Garfunkel]

glad to hear you like ubuntu