Back again it would seem...

I have now tried 2 networkless installs of gentoo from the liveCD, using all the options,etc the handbook recommends, but now the installer keeps failing at seemingly random points when installing extra packages....

The first time i got a fatal error that had something to do with the kernel

The second time it was a fatal error copying something from tmp/var to the hard drive.

Its a practically brand new HD, i gave gentoo 6gigs from my main partiton to work with, and chose the recommended partition layout. Could the CD i burned the ISO onto be the issue here?

Install failed at step 244/274...

This is getting annoying

I would recommend doing a hardware check. Also try installing some other Linux distribution and see if you get any problems.

Yep i'm beginning to lose patience with this, hardware is all 100% (just finished some system upgrading/refurbishment).

The thing is Gentoo is exactly what i'm looking for as far as i can see, but i cant see how the installer could fail when its only emerging against files on the CD =/

Gonna run the installer again and see if its the same error again or a different one

This sometimes happens. Maybe the CD has corrupt file(s) which is causing the issue. In which case, I recommend you re-download the image and burn it again.

yep

dammit iv got coursework i should be doing hehehehe

but this is more interesting

From my experiences of random failures of Linux installations, it's almost always been one of the two problems:

1. Hardware fault (mostly in the physical RAM) or
2. Corrupt installation CD(s).

I had this strange problem which may or may not be like yours, but my Gentoo installation always failed when I was trying to overwrite the Ubuntu partition. I had formatted, reformatted and I just cannot explain what not did I do to get it run.

Turned out to be some strange behaviour: my previous installation was on reiserfs, and my previous /boot was ex3. My Gentoo installation was going to be full reiserfs.

I deleted both partitions, formatted with ext2, and installed Gentoo... everything went fine.

Try it yourself: install everything on ext2 partition. If it works, god is great.

hehe got it to install with no hitches using the terminal instead of the GTK, but im thinking it maybe bypassed errors instead of terminating the install.

Gentoo still boots, but gnome gdm isnt working, getting some strange error messages. Basically about 5 seconds into boot my screen flashes, which tells me its trying to load a GUI...happens 3 times then it quits out back to the command line login. tells me theres a problem with KDM, vesa, mouse, and something else which i cant remember haha.

Also at the end of the list it says No drivers available.

First thing i tried was startx, then i tried Emerging gdm and gnome. The emerging worked fine, but still no graphical interface, and im not familiar with many linux commands so being restricted to the command line is a big hinderance.

Also, it says i have 3 config files needing to be updated, but i dont know how to do that, either says "config can only handle one package at a time for now!!" or "packages needed for emerge are masked".

Should be cool tho my friend is headed round, he's running on gentoo/gnome and should be able to fix it. At least GRub is working now, it was generating an error code and stopping me from even being able to boot windows HAHA.

I'm amazed at the response time in this forum tho...will be nice in 5 years time when i figure this whole thing out - maybe i can repay the amazing community with some gems of my own

First, install and configure xorg.

Second, install and configure GNOME.

I've only successfully installed Gentoo once. It was version 2006.0 and I have no idea what went right because I left it go for the day. The other 7 times I've tried, I've had exactly the same issue you're having.

yeh i used the terminal install and it seemed to go without a hitch, but... every time i try to emerge xorg-x11 i get an error...cannot write to cache...check permissions etc.

when logged in as root...

friend with a good gentoo/gnome setup tried everything he could, no dice, so what we're gonna do is use a snapshot of his setup and write it on with netcat.

worked on a friend's (who's just decided to say goodbye to windows altogether) laptop fine so it should be good.

considering buying Sedega too so maybe one day i can cut off the microsoft ball-and-chain and still be able to play Battlefield 2142 hahahaha.