ebuild issues

[whiteheadian]

Hey,
I'm a newbie to Linux, so perhaps someone could help me. I'm trying to install a GUI, Xfce4, on my laptop, but whenever I try to emerge it from the Live CD, I get a "there are no ebuilds to satisfy Xfce..." error message. In fact, I get the same error when I try to emerge ANY programs from the LiveCD!! Since I have installed the most recent (for x86) version of the kernel, I find this hard to believe.

I should also tell you that I'm having problems getting my PC-Network card working, so connecting to the Net for updates is tricky. I DO have the most current portage snapshot on CD, but I don't know what to do with it (should I copy it to a directory, etc?). Is there a command I could use to get emerge to check in a certain directory for a file instead of automatically trying to ftp?

Help!

mj

[drakebasher]

First of all, in case you don't know, you should be following the Gentoo Handbook .

One thing the handbook doesn't make real clear: If you want to install only from the CD set and not from ftp, you must do a stage 3 install. Section 5.d. has instructions on installing the Portage snapshot. A snapshot is good for only one point in time. If you got the snapshot from ftp, you need to emerge the packages from ftp. If you want to emerge from CD, you must use the snapshot on the CD, at least for initial setup of the system.

Lemme know how things go. I'll check my notes and write more later.

[drakebasher]

I have looked a little closer at where you are (it's a bit awkward to get too deep at the office...).

Oddly, in the current Gentoo Handbook, it goes from Section "5.c. Alternative: Using a Stage from the LiveCD" (which presumably you would do only if you don't have a good internet connection) to Section "5.d. Installing Portage" which doesn't describe how to do that without internet access.

In the previous Handbook, it has the following steps for installing Portage using only the CD:

...(check for snapshots:)
# ls /mnt/cdrom/snapshots
...(extract snapshot:)
# tar -xvjf /mnt/cdrom/snapshots/portage-xxxxxxxx.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/gentoo/usr
...(copy source code from CD:)
# mkdir /mnt/gentoo/usr/portage/distfiles
# cp /mnt/cdrom/distfiles/* /mnt/gentoo/usr/portage/distfiles/

and then it continues to configuring compile options, which you have already done. Note that the "xxxxxxxx" in the portage filename is filler.... It also emphasizes that in that same command line, that the "-C" is a capital "C". I hope this helps. The document that the preceding came from I think you will find at the link I gave before, in a link for 2004.3 Specific Networkless Installation Instructions. Try the above and then try emerge again.

[whiteheadian]

Yeah, I thought I HAD been following the manual! Thanks a lot, I'll try this out.

mj