[gentoo-user] site:www.gentoo.org (compile phase)...die "econf failed"

[Felix Miata]

Googling above or similar is getting me nothing useful: 70% non-English 
pages, and of the remainder, 90% questions without answers (from 
forums.gentoo.org), and of those with answers, answers specific to packages 
bearing no apparent relationship to those failing to emerge for me. There are 
plenty hits for 'die "econf failed"' and 'ERROR:...failed (compile phase)', 
just nothing useful.

How can my attempts to follow the Handbook instructions have failed so 
miserably that I can't even emerge such a basic package as Grub Legacy?

http://fm.no-ip.com/Tmp/Linux/G/ has my build.log, config.log and 
eclass-debug.log files from 6 different emerge failures, plus output of 
emerge --info. Is there something akin to a Handbook page that describes 
similar failures and how to fix them? Is my problem not a common blocker for 
new users? How can I make any progress with everything hitting this 
apparently same or similar problem? Since I got a working kernel and mc, I've 
not managed to get anything else to emerge. :-(

As an aside, pages like http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/qa/asneeded.xml don't 
fit. My browser viewport can be up to 1392px wide, and yet there's a 
horizontal scroll of 50% or so, making it really difficult to use such pages. 
I can dezoom to make the scollbar go away, but of course that restores the 
original illegibility for the pages' CSS.
-- 
"The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

  Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/