Please note that this is a part of my page on Running Linux on Dell Dimension 8400.

Linux on Dell: disk setup and initial install

Booting an install cd

This turned out to be the first problem:

I got an Ubuntu Warty install-cd off the Linux Format 62, but that didn't even recognise the dvd-drive, so I got me nowhere
Instead I went for the Gentoo 2004.3 universal live cd. See the full list of mirrors.

Disk-driver

The next issue was accessing the SATA-disk. I was hoping to use dmraid to use the Intel RAID Bios, but the gcc-installation on the gentoo-cd didn't work...

My resolution:

Disable RAID (press Ctrl-I on the disk-summary-boot-screen)
Set the disk controller in RAID/ATA-mode (Press F2 during boot to get the bios-setup)
Install
Compile a 2.6.10-kernel including drivers for both AHCI and ATA_PIIX.
Set the disk controller back to RAID/AHCI

Partitioning

Dual boot

Some more tips

If your system doesn't boot with your new kernel, you can boot from the gentoo live cd and chroot into your installation (I have / on /dev/sda6 and /boot on /dev/sda2):
```
mount /dev/sda6 /mnt/gentoo
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/gentoo/boot
mount -t proc none /mnt/gentoo/proc
chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
```
If you follow the Gentoo x86 handbook for installing, note that the step emerge emu10k1 is not needed for kernel 2.6 (i learned this after not reading the docs properly... ;-), but if you perform this, it will also install X11!
vi is not installed by default, so if you don't like the nano-editor (I don't), you can do emerge gvim (but this will install both X11 and gtk, so you might want to tune the USE-variable and test with emerge -p.
With an 1600x1200 lcd-monitor, it would be nice with more than 80x25 characters on the console, but the documentation for how to set up this was not very clear, in my kernel boot-parameters, I have got: video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr vga=0x31B which looks very nice, gives me lots of text on the screen and a nice tux on boot.
Also note that gentoo needs devfs compiled into the kernel

Example grub setup

I spent too much time getting the kernel to boot properly, but at the end, this is the grub-setup I use:

# For booting GNU/Linux
title Linux
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinux root=/dev/sda6 udev nodevfs panic=5 video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr vga=0x31B

(Do not copy this without understanding what it means, consult the documentation for grub manual and the bootparam(7) manpage.

rolfn@pvv.org