Setup:INSTALLING gentoo(amd64) in VBox vm guest - win-10 (64bit) host Hardware: HP xw8600 - 2x Xeon CPU X5450 @ 3.00GHz - 32 GB ram
Installing grub:0 was my first attempt, since I kind of know my way around that and have never used grub:2. But, ran into several problems concerning ncurses and gpm and somehow involving competing versions of perl. Seemed like enough of a mess to just break down and take the plunge, going with the flow toward grub:2 The amd64 hand book offered this for emerge --backtrack=30 But apparently that was enough or not the right thing for the mess I was making. After going through the pages https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GRUB2 I tried a couple of edits that seemed to be suggested there and some USE flag changes (didn't record what I did so quickly lost track of the things and the sequence) I did have this set GRUB_PLATFORMS="emu" which is suggested in the help pages. But in the initial grub commands there was a complaint about not understanding emu or something to that effect. So emerge -vC grub:2 and started over. Got grub:2 installed (Note that I removed the (GRUB_PLATFORMS="emu") this time and allowed the system to handle that on its own. Ok, so got it installed alright. USE flags and GRUB_PLATFORMS came up like this: USE="doc fonts nls sdl themes truetype -debug -device-mapper -efiemu -libzfs -mount -multislot -static {-test}" GRUB_PLATFORMS="(efi-64 pc) -coreboot -efi-32 -emu -ieee1275 -loongson -multiboot -qemu -qemu-mips -uboot -xen -xen-32 I quit trying to mess with anything except two variables I changed from the defaults in /etc/default/grub. /etc/default/grub: # Boot the default entry this many seconds after the menu is displayed GRUB_TIMEOUT=8 Changed from 5 to 8 seconds # The resolution used on graphical terminal. # Note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE. # You can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo'. #GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480 GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x1024x32 So I took a stab hoping the vbox screen would allow such a setting. (Now after the inital boot and reboot I'm currently installing that tool to make sure of the graphic setting [sys-apps/vbe-tool]) Back to the way I got here: Ran install-grub (completed successfully) Attempted to run update-grub, but that script was nowhere to be found. qlist grub:2 |grep update shows its not part of grub:2 pkg. Just to make sure I re-installed grub:2 once more. Completed successfully. But no update-grub Googled up a page that shows what the script is supposed to do; all pretty basic stuff. Ended up writing my own: I did put a little bloat in it but still does the same stuff: cat update-grub #!/bin/sh cmd='/usr/sbin/update-grub' set -e if mount |grep /boot;then echo " /boot is mounted .. running exec grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg \"\$\@\"" exec grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg "$@" && if [[ "$?" < 1 ]];then echo "$cmd ran successfully" fi else echo " /boot is not currently mounted, please mount /boot and rerun this command: /usr/sbin/update-grub" fi Maybe that is where I've messed things up. On boot instead of getting a grub menu, I got a grub command line. in one of those really small consoles inside a vbox vm.. . the default console I guess. I bumbled my way thru and managed to boot the OS, so at least my kernel config worked straight away for a change. I'm really not sure at all where to begin trying to debug this. I can see my self trying different things until "Maybe" something works.... I could really use some more of this lists generous patience and some kind of scheme to get this working like I want.
