gentoo 1.4 install (on Athlon XP 2400+) unsuccessful
 

I am fairly new to Linux and my friend suggested I try Gentoo, since that is easy to use for newbies. So I got the iso for gentoo 1.4 and got the bootable cd made. After a bit of playing around with SmartBootmanager, I got the cd to boot. I was following the instructions from the gentoo website instructions, but things started to not work at step 8/9. I don't know exactly what GRP is, and went for installing the stage 3 tarball (I don't have internet access). So at step 9 I tried
# emerge sync
which did not work, so I went back to code listing 8.3. This did not also work: there was no directory /mnt/cdrom/snapshots/. So, I thought to go on to step ten. After trying to use nano to edit the make.conf file, I received the "Illegal Instruction" error. For some reason, I have info on nano but nano itself won't work. I was able to set my timezone (step 14) but step 15 did not work because nano would not work. Any ideas? Thanks for any help.

I don't think Gentoo is easy for newbies. Anyway you will get better support on the Gentoo forums.
http://forums.gentoo.org/

you should have net access for a gentoo install. you can do it without access at the time, but make sure that you print off the instrucitons and get the full iso. once you reboot then you can change your make.config file and get everything up to date.

as mirrorball said, gentoo isn't easy for a newbie. get mandrake, red hat, or suse. personally i think that debian and slack are easier then gentoo.

cheers.

No you should not need net access while using a GRP install. I did it without any net access. If you have read the manual correctly poet225 you might see something like:

GRP is a combination install with a stage3 install, because it will allow you to do a gentoo install without net access ....

In the first place, follow the steps needed for a stage 3 install, after that you'll see on every new subject (for GRP users) bl bla bla ...

Have a good look at: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-...tyle=printable

And check this text I just copy out of the manual:
3+GRP No CD 1, CD 2 optionally Partition/filesystem setup, final config, install CD 1 pre-built packages (optional), reboot, install extra pre-built packages like KDE and GNOME (if using "CD 2")

Hope this helps,