[gentoo-dev] installation snafus

[Christian Chen <oistrakh@earthlink.net>]

Hi all,

I've just installed gentoo on a machine using the i686 rc5 CD. Overall
things look like they're working great, thanks for taking the time to
put together this distro!

I did run into a couple of installation snafus which I think can easily
be resolved via documentation. After rebooting my system after the
initial install, I found that I could not emerge any more packages off
the CD until I did two things:

1. Rebooted off of the install CD and copied the contents of
   /usr/portage to my own /usr/portage. This copied over all the
   ebuild scripts. Since I didn't want to copy over the packages
   directory, which was also under /usr/portage, I had to do step two ...
2. After rebooting back into my own system, create a symbolic link from
   my own /usr/portage/packages to /mnt/cdrom/gentoo/packages.

I figured this all out by re-tracing the steps in the installation
guide on your web site. The installation guide does not explicitly
explain that these steps are necessary, however. Copying over
the /usr/portage files in step 1 is implied by the step in the installation
guide where a symbolic link is made from /etc/make.profile to
/usr/portage/profiles/default, but it would have been much nicer to
have this step laid out specifically.

I'm still figuring out the system, so if there was a better way to do
this, please let me know!

Again, thanks for taking the time to create this distribution!

Christian Chen