I am having some seriouse problems getting Gentoo installed on my machine. 2 problems.

The first is when i try to download the stage3 tarball from the gentoo mirror site, I choose an ftp then about 112mb into 117mb download everything freezes. I have to hard reboot. I can't figure out why. I have been following the x86 handbook to a T. I have made probably 10-12 attempts at this from different sites. I am ready to give up. Can anyone tell me why I am having this problem?

My second problem is minor but for some reason I cant get DHCP to configure me. I have to manually enter ip,mask,gw, and ns address's. ifconfig eth0 shows my nic but no ip addy and cant ping out. Again, this is just a minor irritation.

Thanks in advance for your time and help.

-Dan

I'd try it will give an error output to a log file if there is a problem.

If that doesn't work you could install "links" its a lightweight console based browser... I use it... its easy to use and download with.

I am using links to get to the ftp sites.
#links http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/mirrors.xml
Then i cruise the page till I find a mirror that looks close and go to releases/x86/2008.0 then i choose the stage3-i686-2008.0.tar.bz2
download starts then freezes.

btw im not sure i can look back at any logs since nothing has been installed yet. i cant get that far.

If such a simple thing as fetching a file makes your box hard lock, then I'd look at the hardware. I assume that X is not running so there's no graphic driver involved, and that you are using a stable livecd with a stable kernel.

I'd start by checking the ram with memtest86.

You dont want to use the 2008.0 stage3. There are now weekly autobuilds available for download. try this link here. This is the most recent stage3 for i686. This is the most recent

Using "wget -o" will output a log file... so if it locks during the download, just check the log

I have no way to store logs as i have no operating system installed. everytime the ftp download crashes must start the install from scratch minus the partionioning part. I have an intel proc. computer is a dell optiplex 260 i believe (i'm at work now so i could swear to the model). I am curiouse if the swap drive is not functioning correctly. How would i check this. I do have 1Gb DDR ram so I'm not sure i would need the swap drive for this download.

This is nothing to do with lack or ram or swap. If you run out of ram the kernel will kill processes, but never ever shall it hard lock your machine, forcing you to make a cold reboot. When that happens either your kernel (or a module) or your hardware are screwed, and usually it's the later.

That is, as I said, assuming that we are talking about a hard lock.

I'd use a livecd or USB device. And see if there are any problems. From there you can run multiple programs to test the harware. And even download your stage3. I've even used a SytemRescuecd, Sabayon live DVD, even a Unbuntu livecd to build a gentoo box.

This can be done with knoppix? The only two cd's i have are gentoo live and knoppix live. And its possible the gentoo is faulty.

Never tried it with a Knoppix cd. Though it should be fine for a stage3 chroot install. Just follow the Gentoo online handbook. I've actually written an install script for just this type of install... Unfortunately its about 3 days from completion. Its all gui based, and helps the user with a walk through of the install.

In the mean time Knoppix should work. Though the Gentoo guide is somewhat ambiguous, and requires some additional linux knowledge. At first it took me several tries to get it just right. Try this page here for additional help

ok.. I tried to download a hardend stage 2 tarball and the same thing happened, however, this time a log was displayed before it froze.....

DMA per-cpu:
cpu 0: Hot:hi: 0, btch: 1 usd:0 Cold:hi: 0

Normal per-cpu:
cpu 0: Hot:hi: 186, btch: 31 usd: 167 Cold:hi: 62, btch: 15 usd: 56

Highmem per-cpu:
cpu 0: Hot:hi: 42, btch: 7 usd: 8 Cold:hi: 14, btch: 3 usd: 2

Active:244532 Inactive:3391 dirty:0 writeback:0 unstable:0
free:2977 slab:3786 mapped:1 pagetables:282 bounce:2

DMA free: 4064kB min: 68kB low: 84kB high: 100kb active: 7536kB inactive: 0
present: 16256kB pages_scanned: 12142 all_unreclaimable? yes
low mem_reserve []: 0 873 999 999

Normal free: 7716kB min: 3744kB low: 4680kB high: 5616kb active: 864180kB inactive: 0
present: 894080kB pages_scanned: 1331224 all_unreclaimable? yes
low mem_reserve []: 0 0 1011 1011

Highmem free: 128kB min: 128kB low: 260kB high: 396kb active: 106412kB inactive: 13564
present: 129484kB pages_scanned: 253825 all_unreclaimable? yes
low mem_reserve []: 0 0 0 0

DMA: 0*4 0*8 0*16 1*32 1*64 1*128 1*256 1*512 1*1024 1*2048 0*4096 = 4064
Normal: 113*4 44*8 18*16 11*32 6*64 2*128 0*256 1*512 1*1024 0*2048 1*4096 = 7716
High: 0*4 2*8 1*16 1*32 1*64 0*128 0*256 0*512 0*1024 0*2048 0*4096 = 128

clocksource tsg unstable (delta = 169985539 ns)
swap cache : add 0, delete 0, find 0/0, race 0+0
Freeswap = 0kb
Totalswap = 0kb
Out of mem : kill process 13849 (bash) score 7628 or a child
killed process 25876 (links)
killed
livecd gentoo#

Does this make sense to anyone?

This tells me that its hardware related.
1) your livecd is a bad copy and has a faulty kernel
2) your loading the entire livecd into ram & its running out of room.
3) your memory spitting out failed memory addresses.
4) ROM drive or chipset

So best place to begin is what i92guboj suggested:

Run memtest, if passed try another livecd copy or use something different like systemrescuecd. And if that isnt working, then it goes further into hardware like ROM drive or mobo chipset.

I ran the memtest twice. comes back 100%. I have a Dell Optiplex GX260 pentium4 with 20gig IDE and 1 gig of ram. I just had win2k on it with no problems. And this is my first experience with linux.

If this is your first linux experience, try going with a binary distro. Such as Debian,Ubuntu,Mint,Sabayon ... etc. These are much easier to install then Gentoo. This will give you a chance to learn the basic commands, and get you familiar with command shell.

If you insist on Gentoo and are convinced its not hardware, then I can only suspect that its either your ROM drive or the media you used to install with.

(Bad image, did you checksum the image?).

I would definetly try getting a livecd like Ubuntu or Mint. Use gparted to make your partitions and follow Gentoo's install handbook. Make sure you D/L the latest autobuild from Gentoo. There is a sample link that I posted earlier.

Using the Gentoo Livecd for install has been always problematic for me. So I switched to using Sabayon for a Live distro.

NOTE: Dell comes with a 16bit diagnostic partition on the front of the drive. So if you use gparted to partition and still want the diag tools, make sure that you do not erase the partition or mess with the mbr table.

EDIT: You could always make a small partition about 700mb or so and mount it and download the stage3 and portage for later use. Or even better you could run a livecd off of your hdd. Check these instructions out here. I've used gparted to make my partitions, then copy over the data, and install grub to my boot sector, then add the grub entries to my menu.lst Now I can run any live distro from my hdd. Just a suggestion