I installed Gentoo from my Debian installation. Followed 'The Gentoo Linux alternative installation method HOWTO' but missed one important step, flushing the environment during chroot.

When booting Gentoo I get this message:

Activating mdev
Determing root device
Mounting root...
Booting (initramfs)>> ERROR: your real /dev is missing files required to boot (console and null)..
Switch_root: Can't open '/dev/console': No such file or directory

Then the Kernel panics.


My question is do I need to re-install or can this be fixed.

I've tryed using MAKEDEV to install /dev/console but no luck.

Tried two kernels, one I compiled myself and the genkernel.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Simple mknode for both will do - use your Debian system as an example. Either chroot into the gentoo system (if you can), or merely use the mountpoint.

Some "stage3" archives lack few items (like /dev/console and /dev/null) necessary for boot.
To fix your installation, you need to:
- mount your gentoo root device in read/write mode (for example to /mnt/gentoo)
- create missing pseudo-files (something like the following):
mknod /mnt/gentoo/dev/console c 5 1
mknod /mnt/gentoo/dev/null c 1 3
- unmount your gentoo root device or execute "sync" command
- reboot

Sorry for the late response but work called and I had to go.

Thanks to syg00 and mkborg I was able to get Gentoo to boot, now all I have to do is build my own kernel, install Gnome then enjoy.

Thanks again guys.

Good luck, more specific for your kernel :P

Good Luck!
Another way is to simply copy necessary files from another stage3 tarball.
Once I removed entire /dev directory (devfs unmounted) on working system and this method helped me to "restore" my system )