Hi folks,

After tiring of Ubuntu, I've decided to try something a little more daring. I've always wanted a nice Gentoo box, but the last time I did it I ended up with a desktop system that had no sound. I have to admit that the portage system was nice, however.

Well, I'd like to install Gentoo onto my old Thinkpad T20. The problem is that the onboard nic is dead and I only have an old Dlink DWL-G630 to access the network with. Given that it's so old, most live cds have no problem with it (including WPA2 encryption). However, Gentoo does not support wireless off of it's CD/DVD builds. I've been reading the scant posts about using a random live CD in an effort to have access via wireless while installing but again I have hit a snag. It appears that regardless which live CD distro I use, I get to the point of:

# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/gentoo/boot

...and I receive the error that the mount point does not exist. I'm a little rusty when it comes to tinkering here but am I missing something in the fstab? Keep in mind that I did make the directory for "gentoo" and "boot."

I know there has to be a simple error that I'm overlooking. Could someone be kind enough to point it out? Thanks, everyone.

You need to create the mountpoint if it doesn't exist (which is what it sounds like). As root, do: Then do the mount: EDIT: Sorry, missed this: Did you mean that you created /gentoo and /boot, or that you created /mnt/gentoo/boot?

I made each separately. This is a bit of a head scratching moment.

Using the mount command you posted: you will need the directory /mnt/gentoo/boot for it not to give you the error that it did.

Let me clarify. I created the directory "gentoo" in /mnt. Then, I created "boot" inside of gentoo.


Would there be a difference between "sudo" and "su" here? I ask because I can't use "su" or "root" in the live CDs. It's the only common variable I can think of at the moment.

From the same environment as the mount command was executed, try doing ls -ald /mnt/gentoo/boot. If this works with no errors, it sounds like a mount issue. (Maybe a livecd problem)

The result of ls -ald /mnt/gentoo/boot came back: cannot access /mnt/gentoo/boot: no such file or directory. However, when I simple "ls" when inside the gentoo directory, it shows me "boot."

I just "cd-ed" into boot and then ran the mount command, "# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/gentoo/boot" and it seems to have worked (ie no error this time). I did not think it was a live cd problem as I had used several different live cds. I'm not sure as to why I needed to cd into the directory before being able to access it but there you have it. If I had this issue it stands to reason that someone else will.

As always, I appreciate the help, and thank you brucehinrichs and Matir.

Now, I have an install to finish.