Hi. I have been trying to install gentoo now for a couple of weeks on my p4 machine and getting nowhere.

I have success fully installed gentoo on older machines before from live cd to stage 3 installs but trying to setup my main machine (currently running FC7), I get nowhere.

I bought a new sata drive for the OS and to eliminate any problems, I am just running this 1 drive by itself at the moment.

1st attempt:
Installing from live cd Gentoo 2008.0-r1, gtk installer.
Will install but on booting, no windows manager just blank X windows.
Also no networking, (which worked fine on the live cd).
It wont even let me manually set up networking, just complains the card is not there.

2nd attempt:

Installing from live cd Gentoo 2008.0-r1,text installer.
Pretty much same as above.

3rd attempt:
Full stage3 build from scratch.
Using stage3-i686-2008.tar.bz and following the gentoo handbook http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/altinstall.xml
I get to the kernel build section.

If I use the gentoo live cd or an ubuntu live cd, this bit fails every time.

I then go onto genkernel all

which fails with the following error:

would the fact that I didn't use a .config file before genkernel be the problem, if so where can I get it.

I am a bit afraid of making a kernel myself but will give it a go if I have to.


My system info is
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82865G/PE/P DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82865G/PE/P PCI to AGP Controller (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev c2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801EB (ICH5) SATA Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV280 [Radeon 9200 SE] (rev 01)
01:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV280 [Radeon 9200 SE] (Secondary) (rev 01)
02:02.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
02:03.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 61)
02:03.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 61)
02:03.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 63)
02:04.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 46)
02:09.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8001 Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 13)

Please help as I have come to like gentoo on the machines I can get it to work on and would like to use it as my everyday machine.

If you are installing to a new disk, why are you using the alternate install guide ?.
Did you emerge genkernel ??? - that zcat shouldn't fail.

Yes I did emerge genkernel 1st.

I was following the alt guide because I thought that was the one to use when installing from another system eg ubuntu or gentoo live cd.

What would you recomend I do. (I am not afraid to nuke the disk and start again).

Been a while since I did a gentoo (complete) build. And I always used the minimal install, no GUI no genkernel, so I'm probably the wrong person to ask.
No idea what might be wrong. Hopefully someone else will pass by and offer some help.

Problem solved.

I followed the main guide and one line about mounting the proc system was slightly different.
This made work properly.
After that genkernel and the rest of the tutorial worked fine.

I am now currently compiling xorg. Will check on it in a few hours.

Thanks for your help.
Danny