This on took me a while to solve. I got a new server from HP a Proliant DL 380 G5. So i went about installing my favorite distro on it gentoo. So far so good until i reached the step to install grub. Grub would not recognize the hard drives on the smart array controller. This is what i did to fix the problem

E dit the file /boot/grub/device.map to look like this

(fd0) /dev/fd0
(hd0) /dev/cciss/c0d0

Run grub like this:

/sbin/grub --batch --device-map=/boot/grub/device.map --config-file=/boot/grub/grub.conf --no-floppy

grub shell:

grub> root (hd0,0)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit

That’s it your done go compile your kernel or something 🙂

When you log onto a gnome session in ubuntu your gnome keyring automatically gets loaded. So that you can use your WPA or ssh keys in your gnome session. On a gentoo install you get prompted to type in your password to unlock you keyring. So you have to type in your password twice this about how to stop this behavior and pass on your login from gdm to the keyring manager. You must edit a few files in /etc/pam.d

On a gentoo ~x86 system i had to edit the following files all changes i had to make are highlighted in bold text. Please follow the exact order of the statements they are important to make this work.

/etc/pam.d/system-auth


#%PAM-1.0
auth required pam_env.so
auth optional pam_gnome_keyring.so
auth sufficient pam_unix.so try_first_pass likeauth nullok
auth required pam_deny.so

account required pam_unix.so

password required pam_cracklib.so difok=2 minlen=8 dcredit=2 ocredit=2 try_first_pass retry=3
password optional pam_gnome_keyring.so
password sufficient pam_unix.so nullok md5 shadow use_authtok
password required pam_deny.so

session required pam_limits.so
session optional pam_gnome_keyring.so auto_start
session required pam_unix.so

/etc/pam.d/gdm

#%PAM-1.0
auth optional pam_env.so
auth optional pam_gnome_keyring.so
auth include system-auth
auth required pam_nologin.so
session optional pam_gnome_keyring.so auto_start
account include system-auth
password include system-auth
session include system-auth

/etc/pam.d/passwd

#%PAM-1.0
password optional pam_gnome_keyring.so
auth include system-auth
account include system-auth
password include system-auth

/etc/pam.d/gnome-screensaver

#%PAM-1.0
# Fedora Core
auth optional pam_gnome_keyring.so
auth include system-auth
account include system-auth
password include system-auth
session include system-auth

# SuSE/Novell
#auth include common-auth
#account include common-account
#password include common-password
#session include common-session

Source Gentoo forum:

One of our gentoo vmware servers crashed and stopped all running VMs on the server. After looking trough the logs i found out that vmware server had filled the /tmp partion which was 1GB. What i didn’t know is that vmware requires the /tmp partion to  be equivalent to 1.5 times the amount of memory on the host. Otherwise you will experience vm crashes. To change the tmp location edit

/etc/vmware/config

and add the following line tmpDirectory = “/<your>/<new>/<tmp>/<directory>”

Be sure that the specified directory is on a local hard drive and that the user running the VMware software has write permissions for that directory. For more infos check out

http://www.vmware.com/support/gsx3/doc/intro_sysreqs_host_gsx.html