Im trying to install gentoo 1.4 off of the two cd set with the GRP here are the commands i've been running (after partitioning of course)

mke2fs -j /dev/hdc1

mkswap /dev/hdc4

mkreiserfs /dev/hdc2

swapon /dev/hdc4

mount /dev/hdc2 /mnt/gentoo

mkdir /mnt/gentoo/boot

mount /dev/hdc1 /mnt/gentoo/boot

cd /mnt/gentoo

tar -xvjpf /mnt/cdrom/stages/stage3-pentium4-20030910

tar -xvjpf /mnt/cdrom/snapshots/portage-20030911.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/gentoo/usr

cp -R /mnt/cdrom/distfiles /mnt/gentoo/usr/portage/distfiles

cp -a /mnt/cdrom/packages /mnt/gentoo/urs/portage/packages

mount -t proc proc /mnt/gentoo/proc

cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/resolve.conf (is this line right?)

chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash

after the last line i get told it is an illegal action. I've tried it after a cd / and it does the same thing. Pleez help anyone who can. thank you.

cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/resolve.conf is NOT right. /etc/resolve.conf minus the e is correct
Also:
cp -a /mnt/cdrom/packages /mnt/gentoo/urs/portage/packages
Should be /usr

As for the rest:
That's an OLD portage snapshot, that shouldn't matter though...
You may have to source /etc/profile first? Can you post up the exact message you are getting, an illegal action is far from something to go off of

Cool

source /etc/profile goes after chroot. the only mistakes are the couple of spelling mistakes MasterC pointed out.

oops, forgot a line:

chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
env-update
source /etc/profile

Just so I don't cause a confusion later on.

when i type chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash is says exactly "illegal action" and nothing else at all.

when i do source /etc/profile or env-update they both say "bash command not found"

what else should i do?

Sorry. I messed up. You type those after chroot is done. I only mentioned them because MasterC did. Did you try to redo the steps MasterC pointed out? I also just noticed that you left the .tar.bz2 out of the stage tarball file name. What happened when you untarred the stage tarball? Did you actually untar it?

the missing tar.bz2 was just a typo in this forum sorry bout that.
the /usr was also a typo

MasterC said
"cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/resolve.conf is NOT right. /etc/resolve.conf minus the e is correct"

but does that mean w/ or w/out the "e"? he typed the e but said to not have it

the correct path is: /etc/resolv.conf

okay???? i went to go try the install again with the correct resolv.conf file tpyed in....but i could repeatedly only get as far as

mkreiserfs /dev/hdc2

My screen gets flooded with

hdc:realintr:staus=0x61 {DriveReady DeviceFaultError}
hdc: setgeometry-intr:error 0x04 {DriveStatusError}
ide:reset:success

it just prints that out over and over and over...so i figure that since i already formatted the reiser partition in the unsuccessful installs before i probably could just skip it...but then i got to

mount /dev/hdc2 /mnt/gentoo

and it does the same things so whats up!? also will having the right resolv.conf fix the chrooting?

Ok. The first time I did a Gentoo installation (also 1.4 stage 3 GRP), I had to restart three or four times. It's actually very simple if you read the instructions carefully and make sure that you do everything correctly, but it can be really tricky. It's not necessarily the resolv.conf that messes up the change of the root directory (though it may well be). You have to do everything exactly right for it all to work.

I remember doing everything (and I mean everything) over when restarting the installation. I'm not sure if it's necessary or not, but I'm sure that it will work if you redo it all. If you got past the making of filesystems once, you can do it again. Are you going straight into filesystems, or are you fdisk-ing over? When I started over, I would delete all the partitions from the unsuccessful installation, re-create them and format them, just like the first time. So, try it again, following the instructions down to the letter, and see what happens.

i've been starting w/ cfdisk and redoin the partitions and it still does the same error thing w/ hdc2

That's strange. I'm no Gentoo Linux guru, so I'm not sure what to tell you based on your error message. As I understand it, you're able to mke2fs -j on your boot partition and mkswap on hdc4 (based on your previous list of commands), but you can't mkreiserfs on hdc2? I would try creating a different filesystem (ext3) on hdc2, just to see what happens. I really don't know what else to suggest. Maybe you could post your partition table here.

Yeah i tried that too...and it still doesn't work...the only thing i can think of would be a bad harddrive...but then it seems like teh other hdc partitions wouldn't work then...im really lost here