Successfully Installed Gentoo into VMware Fusion 7

I doubt many people would be interested in this, but one never knows.

After probably about 16 hours of work (with some sleep involved too), I finally got a working VM of Linux Gentoo running. Thank God for Snapshots in VMware. I took several several Snapshots at key points during the build and they came in quite useful when I'd screwed something up.

Late last night when I got to the part where I had to build and compile the kernel and then wait, I ended up falling asleep on the couch until I awoke at 3am. Then I went to bed and picked up work today around 10am. Now it's all done.

I don't really know what I will do with it. I only built it to see if I could and to practice on Linux and learn some command line stuff. That's why I chose Gentoo because it's all command line, and tough for a newbie like me.

Now, I wonder if I can copy the VM, made in Fusion 7 to my VSphere environment at the office...

I do have one issue that I need to figure out. Because it's in a VM and you have to press Control + Command to release the cursor from Linux back to OS X, when pressing the Command button Linux displays a bunch of info and I don't know how to get back to a working prompt. I can type stuff in but nothing happens.

The only way to get back is to reboot it either by pressing control + alt + delete or restart from VMware controls.

I didn't have this issue throughout the install process at all on the LiveCD (or actually ISO). Just when I am booted into the final product does this happen.

556fmjoe said:

Gentoo is a good distro. I'd use it myself, but just never had the time for compiling and didn't really care enough to sit through it. I do like that they use init scripts instead of the systemd abomination that Arch and others use now. One of these days Gentoo will replace Arch on my MBP.

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I mostly don't know what I'm doing in Linux distros like Gentoo, but that's partly why I did this - so I could learn something.

I'm so glad I have VMware now and can do this in a VM. Several years ago I tried loading it onto an old HP PC and never accomplished it. I could get far past the partitioning of the disk - I don't really know why though anymore.

But with the VM, it's so easy to run and build and backup with snapshots and such that working on it is a breeze in comparison to a regular PC.

lowendlinux said:

time to see what it can do

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hehe, that's just it. I don't know what to do with it now...

maflynn said:

What issues were you running into? I haven't done it recently, but in the past, I've installed both Fedora and Ubunutu in VMware. Both worked fairly seamlessly though video acceleration was not enabled, i.e., the VMware video drivers were not compatible.

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The only issue I have so far is in post #2. Pressing the Command button makes the OS display odd stuff and I can't get back to a useable prompt - have to reboot it.

I press the command button + control to release the cursor back to OS X.

maflynn said:

Did you try installing the VMware tools for Linux. I was able to do that for Ubuntu and that removed the need to hit the cmd key. I'm not sure if the distro you're using will be compatible with the vmware tools.

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I have not tried that yet, for the same reason; I'm not sure if it will work or not. But, I will give it a whirl and see what happens.

I did update VMware the other day to the latest version and there were some updates for Linux included.

maflynn said:

Did you try installing the VMware tools for Linux. I was able to do that for Ubuntu and that removed the need to hit the cmd key. I'm not sure if the distro you're using will be compatible with the vmware tools.

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I'm not really sure how to do this in Gentoo.