I am seriously considering do a ground up re-install of my Gentoo system. Now that I know way more about Linux than I did 4 months ago I think I can get a system without the handful of annoying glitches that currently plague my system.

What should I back up besides the stuff that I can think of right now like: /home/aaron /root, and, /etc stuff like xorg.conf, make.conf, and fstab?

--Aaron
Gentoo 2005.0
Kernel: 2.6.12-rc6-love1

I do reinstalls as well from time to time. It never hurts to get a completely clean system .
It's also a good opportunity to make major system overhauls, like switching to nptlonly etc

Check /var as well.
If you run MySQL you might want to back up /var/lib/mysql.
An SMTP server typically stores mail spools in /var/mail.
Your web roots will be stored in /var/www by default.

I have always believed it was good to wipe the HD re-install every couple of years--especially since I do alot of tinkering.

In this case I want to do it because I know alot more about Linux (perhaps only enough to be dangerous ) and I think I can get a better working installation. Maybe I'll get lucky and stumble into a working config for xorg transparency or really high FPS on glxgears or something.
Does NPTL work on the Peg? Is it as touchy as it sounds on the Gentoo forums?

Thanks for the advice

--Aaron
Gentoo 2005.0
Kernel: 2.6.12-love1

Cool. Don't forget to report on your progress.
If you are feeling extra adventurous you might want to play around with this stuff: http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=69579
Yes, it's working really well.
We are considering making nptlonly the default on ppc. There are some issues with >=glibc-2.3.5 when building with support for both linuxthreads and nptlonly.

Hey Aaron!

What stage do you use to install? Stage 1 did not work for me, only stage 3.

I did Stage 1 the first time. It took 4 tries to get it right.

I'll do Stage 1 on the re-install, too. I'm holding off until I have a few days that I don't need my computer.

--Aaron
Gentoo 2005.0
Kernel: 2.6.12-love1

I FINALLY got around to re-installing Gentoo on my machine. The base system installed extremely smoothly (way better than the first time). Here is my partition layout: I chose ext3 for my /av just incase I have trouble with reiserfs. The other stuff is easier to get back than my music and videos. I put my portage overlay in /portage/local.

As noted, using nptl didn't work and I chose not to use nptlonly because it breaks some things. I also chose to use -O3 in my CFLAGS.

I tried to install the modular Xorg 7.0, but it didn't work out. I found a 6.9 ebuild and installed that, which works perfectly. The exa modules for Radeons rock! I am using window shadows in XFCE4 for a few days and they work absolutely perfectly! There are no artifacts, no yellow windows, and the speed is very good too. I have not done much with transparency since exa isn't supposed to help that much, although the transparency on the XFCE panel seems to work just fine.

I'm still clearing the dust and I'll continue to file reports if anybody is interested. I'm interested to see if gdesklets will work with the Xorg composite extension on. It would not on my old install.

_________________
--Aaron
Gentoo 2006.1
Kernel-2.6.17-no4

Hi there!

I'm intereted in re-installing my gentoo system too and I'm curious about your experience... I guess I'm not so expert like you, but when I did my installation I was really a beginner, so it is necessary t give it a try.
A few questions...
- Is it good to have so many partitions?
- I never heard about some things you mentioned: portage overlay, nptonly and modular Xorg... can you give me some info?
- Would it be possible to make a complete stage1 installation using gcc-4.0? And how can I tell portage to unmask it? I tried, but unsuccessfully...
- What about these "exa modules"? Where can I find them? How to use them?
- What kernel did you use?

Thanks

I was a complete Linux noob when I first installed Gentoo as well. I've been using it for about 7 months, so I'm hardly an expert, but I know enough now that I felt that I could organize my system in an educated way.
From the reading I have done on Gentoo.org among other sites, it is safer, improves performance, and makes fsck faster--especially with ext3 which runs a check every 30 mounts or so. Plus, I like the organization aspect.
Portage overlay allows you to download ebuilds that are not in Portage for things like Firefox 1.5, kernel patchsets, and other software that are not stable enough yet to be included in Portage. Usually, those ebuilds go into /usr/local/portage and are not affected by emerge --sync. The overlay directory is expressed in make.conf with this line: I chose to make mine: There are two methods to do multi-threading under linux. Linux Threads is the old way and NPTL is the new way. In order to use the new threading method, you have to specify nptl or nptlonly in your USE flags in make.conf. Using the nptl flag will cause 2 versions of glibc to be built--one of nptl and one for linux threads. This method does not work on the PPC with the current version of glibc for some reason. Nptlonly will cause only one version of glibc to be built and it works on the PPC, but there are a few packages to don't play nice when built with the nptlonly glibc.

The modular Xorg is the new way Xorg is going to be distributed starting with 7.0. They decided to divide Xorg into separate modules so that development management is easier. I assume it'll also allow you to install those modules you need and reject the ones you don't. I could not make 7.0 work on my machine because there are still too many ebuilds that do not have the ~ppc keyword. I hacked a bunch of ebuilds to include the keyword, but I guess I didn't hack enough of them.

Xorg 6.9 is the last monolithic version and is meant to be a transitional release. There is not an official Gentoo ebuild for 6.9. I found one in the forums and stuck it in my overlay directory.
I'm not sure if you can do it or not. I have not messed with 4.0 and the current suggestion seems to be to have it installed along side with 3.4. Gcc-4.0 is not really stable yet.

To unmask it, you can try this as root: I don't know enough about exa to give you a good explanation. All I know is that the Radeon cards below the 9600's can use the new module and it finally makes shadows and (maybe) transparency usable. I still have not had a problem with exa, but I still have not played with xcompmgr.
Currently, I'm using 2.6.14 with the acid2 patchset which adds a different CPU scheduler, fbsplash, and a few other things. You can read more about it here. I also use the SFS patch so I can read my MorphOS drive.

I hope this helps.

_________________
--Aaron
Gentoo 2006.1
Kernel-2.6.17-no4

Thanks ALOT!
I guess I'll wait a little before making the big change, but the information you give is going to be very useful.

If you have any more questions, you know where to find me!

_________________
--Aaron
Gentoo 2006.1
Kernel-2.6.17-no4