I thought this was the best place for this thread, seeing as it's distro specific (and there isn't a Gentoo forum).

Ok, I thought I'd give Gentoo a try seeing as I've used a few other distributions. I followed through the stuff in the handbook and haven't had any major problems until now. I decided to use genkernel to configure the kernel, cos I wasn't sure about doing it manually. When I issued 'genkernel all', I got an error message: ERROR: Error: no kernel .config specified, or file not found!"

Has anyone got any ideas about what I can do now?

Thanks.

Try doing it by hand, it's not all that hard once you get the hang of it, although it is time=consuming. Gentoo is worth the hassle in the installation process, trust me. It is the best linux distro there is.

Ok, I'll give that a go .

Hi again, I'm having problems getting started with doing it by hand. When I try to change directory to /usr/src/linux, I get an error saying that that folder doesn't exist. There is a file in /usr/src called linux, but I can't determine whether or not it's a folder :/.

Did you remember to download the latest kernel before you even tried to build it???

emerge gentoo-dev-sources

And by the way, there is a great Gentoo forums. Go to the main page and on your left, there is a link to the forum so I don't know what you are talking about...

y2k

I did emerge gentoo-sources.

Err, I meant there's no LQ Gentoo forum, at least I can't see one. I know about the Gentoo forum on gentoo.org

If you did run "emerge gentoo-sources" and there was no /usr/src/linux (should be pointing to a kernel...), there is some serious problem with your machine!!! Try running it again and see if there is an error message or not!

y2k

Try starting with vidalinux, navynos or even jollix and then build from there. The new 1.1 vidalinux is really nice. You can have a gnome desktop on gentoo in 20 minutes rather than 2 days. Xfce2 is really fast to build.

http://desktop.vidalinux.com
http://www.edworak.os1.kappa.pl/inde...avynos&lang=en
http://www.jollix.de/en/en_home.html

uman of ac2?

I did "emerge gentoo-sources" again and eventually sorted it so there was a link. I then ran genkernel and it finished with the error "couldn't mount initrd filesystem!". Also, seeing as I had to turn my machine off last night, is there anyway I can continue my installation or do I have to start from scratch?

No need to start it all over again unless you want to. Boot your system up with the LiveCD and mount your HD. Change chroot and continue where you left off.

y2k

Cool, thanks.

At what point did the genkernel build fail?
The initrd is done last, which means the kernel & modules have been completed, just need installing..
And actually, the initrd isn't required for a normal ide drive, unless you boot from network, pcmcia, usb, scsi or anything else..

If you want to start again though, it's probably easier to just start genkernel with the --no-mrproper option..
This stops it cleaning out the already done work ...
Do man genkernel or genkernel --help for possible options..

genkernel doesn't configure the kernel, it just builds it from a known .config file.
You still have to reconfigure manually, using the --menuconfig or --gconfig options

You can adjust default genkernel settings in /etc/genkernel.conf

Well, this is the end of the output from genkernel:

--
5336+0 records out
ext2fs_check_if_mount: No such file or directory while determining whether /var/tmp/genkernel/initrd-2.4.26-gentoo-r14 is mounted.
/usr/bin/genkernel: line 13: mount: command not found
* Gentoo Linux Genkernel; Version 3.1.0c

* ERROR: Could not mount the initrd filesystem!

Commands seem to be missing from /mnt/gentoo/bin (not just mount. umount isn't there, nor ping but I'm not sure what else).

Ah ok, thanks for the genkernel options. I've been told to unpack the stage2 tarball and start from there again.

Cheers.

I eventually got genkernel to work, after copying mount and umount to /mnt/gentoo/bin from /bin. However, I'm still having problems, this time with "emerge coldplug". When it tries to build sys-devel/bc-1.06-r5, it complains about missing makeinfo, automake and aclocal. Grr!