[gentoo-user] Botched Gentoo Install

[C.Beamer]

Hello all,

This will be a bit lengthy and I apologize for that, but I don't know
exactly where I went wrong, so am providing all details.

First, I am new to Gentoo, but not new to Linux.  I have installed
source tarballs on other distributions (mostly Redhat and Fedora), but
have never configured Linux in the same manner as required for Gentoo. 
However, I am not stupid, although not a computer science grad, so all I
really need is a push in the right direction with an explanation that
doesn't required you to be a "geek" to understand (I'm a wanna be
"geek", but nowhere near that elite status! :-) ).

Okay, short story first.  This was my second attempt at installing
Gentoo.  The first time, I got to the point where I could boot from the
hard drive, but when I tried to connect to the network (i.e. my isp via
cable modem), I had no connection.  I had missed a step somewhere.

Anyway, I went back to square one because I wasn't sure exactly where I
had missed the step and even if I could have surmised it, I wasn't sure
if I could recover from that point.  This wasn't a problem and it was a
good learning experience.  Attempt 2 was successful in that I could boot
my system and eth0 was recognized and functional.

>From here, I did a quantum leap.  I didn't know where to start so, I
just typed 'emerge kde'  3 days later, kde was installed along with X,
which of course I know kde is dependent on.  At this point, I tried to
startx to see what the system looked like and to try to determine
exactly how much of kde had been installed - ie whether I had any
further components to install.  Well, that's where my problem starts.

After attempting to connect to the xserver, I got my shell prompt back
again with the following printed on the screen:

New driver is "i810"
(==)Using default built in configuration
(EE) open /dev/fb0: No such device --> I have no idea what this means
(EE) GARTinit: Unable to open /dev/agpgart (no such file or directory)
(EE)I810(0) AGPGART support is not available.  Make sure your kernel has
agpgart support or that the agpgart kernel module is loaded
(EE)Screens found, but non have useable configuration
Fatal server error:
no screens found

Now for the details:

When I initially booted from the Gentoo CD, at the boot prompt, I typed
gentoo dopcmcia agpgart acpi=on

The reason that I did this was because when I had Fedora Core installed
on that computer, I noticed references to those things during the boot -
I ALWAYS boot into runlevel 3 rather that runlevel 5

I didn't install any extra kernel modules because when I got to the
point in the Handbook that showed the command to list the available
modules, on issuing the command, I didn't know what any of them were, so
left well enough alone.

Probably not relevant to this issue, but in my make.conf file, I
probably went overboard with the USE flags.  I included everything that
I recognized or that sounded interesting that wasn't in the
make.defaults file.

In my grub.conf file, I *didn't* use the vga line that the Handbook said
could be used because from what I read in the Handbook, I didn't think I
needed to.

Graphics integrated into the system board into the system board: - an
Intel i810 chip.
Specifics:

Integrated Intel Direct AGP Graphics Accelerator with Dynamic Video Memory (DVM) technology architecture.

Other details are as follows (I provide this in case it is thought that
I should have installed an extra kernel module):

Graphics architecture:  Intel Dynamic Video Memory (DVM) technology

Graphics accelerator: Intel Direct Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) 
2D and 3D graphics accelerator
		
Display cache: 4 MB, 100-MHz synchronous dynamic random-access memory (SDRAM)
		
Graphics memory: Dynamically assigned from system memory

Video resolutions

800 x 600 pixels; 85 hertz (Hz) refresh rate with 16.7 million colors

1024 x 786 pixels; 85 Hz refresh rate with 64,000 colors

1280 x 1024 pixels; 85 Hz refresh rate with 256 colors

1600 x 1200 pixels 75 Hz refresh rate with 256 colors 

The computer is a Dell Optiplex GX100 and the monitor is a Dell E551,
which has always been recognized on other Linux installs (as far back as
Redhat 9.0), so I don't think that it is special.

Any ideas where I went wrong?  Is this recoverable without having to
reinstall everything?

I don't mind reinstalling.  I'm doing this on an old PC (600 MHz Celeron
processor).  The idea is to get Gentoo to the point where I have my
Fedora Core system and if I can do that, I'm going to ditch FC4 in
favour of Gentoo.

Oh another piece of info.  This has to be something that I missed
doing.  The computer I'm using once had Fedora Core 3 on it, I have
tried Ubuntu on it and I can run a Knoppix 3.9 live CD on it, so I know
that I should be able to install Gentoo on it.

If the concensus is that I should again start from scratch, any ideas on
what I should have done would be appreciated so that I don't repeat my
mistakes.

Thanks for the patience in reading this.

Regards,

Colleen
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