Gentoo: Recovering from installing a bad kernel
Arguably, Gentoo is the best Linux distribution available. If you have patience and don't mind tweaking you can have a system that is built from the ground up with only the features you want with a minimum of what you don't. However, for new users, it can be intimidating.
The price of being able to build a system and kernel with exactly the features you want (my kernel is down to 3.1MB), there are some pain points. The biggest headache is that after spending time configuring the kernel and you reboot only to get a kernel panic. Here is how to get back to recompile the kernel.
Insert the CDROM and boot. At the livecd prompt remount your drives (swap out sda with your device):
# swapon /dev/sda2 # mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/gentoo # mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/gentoo/boot
Next, mount the proc and dev mount points, and then change root:
# mount -t proc none /mnt/gentoo/proc # mount -o bind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev # chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash # env-update >> Regenerating /etc/ld.so.cache... # source /etc/profile
Now you can work on getting the kernel.
# cd /usr/src/linux # make menuconfig make && make modules_install make install (change the grub.conf file) exit umount /mnt/gentoo/proc /mnt/gentoo/dev /mnt/gentoo reboot
