I have followed the Gentoo Handbook and up untill this point evrything is working fine. The problem I am having happens when I go to emrge the system.

When I run the command emerge system It starts to build the kernel. After a minute or 2 all of the sudden I get this error pop up and then it stops building the system.

Configure: Error: C++ preprocessor . ~ "?lib/cpp" fails sanity check
see config.log for details
Configure Error: ?bin/sn ' ./configure failed for autoconf-lib-bak

!!! Error: system-devel/gettext-0,12.1.r2 failed
!!! Function econf, Line 363 Exitcode 1
econf failed


I have no idea what to do now. I went over the whole handbook to see if I did anything wrong but I cannot find anything.

I even tried to do a emerge --fetchonly system after to see if that would work but that part went fine but I still get the error when I try to emerge system

An help is greatly appreciated.

very very strange ! the kernel compiling shouldnt hapen until you have finished emerginh the system !
ive no idea why its doing this, what does "emerge --pretend system" output ?

also, try to remerge the gettext program, with "emerge sync && emerge gettext"

I got past it the way gwijibow suggested; emerge -p system then emerge the first one on the list or you will see where the problem is.
Sometimes the order will change and the problem emerge will emerge after an emerge sync.If you can't get past it,you can do a stage3 and then set your use flags and do a emerge -e system and you will end up with the same as stage2.Check your /etc/make.conf