When I try to boot the Gentoo 2007.0 Minimal CD/InstallCD (amd64) (on my makeshift "server" desktop machine) it prompts me for a device to boot... YOU! Boot you! Output follows (three lines of dots signify irrelevant lines/blocks whose output weren't recorded):

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.
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>> No bootable medium found. Waiting for new devices...
!! Could not find CD to boot, something else needed!
>> Loading keymaps
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>> Determining root device...
!! The root block device is unspecified or not detected.
    Please specify a device to boot, or "shell" for a shell...
boot() :: 

The >> and !! are colored yellow, red, green, green, and red, respectively. Perhaps I should note that the CD image was written to a DVD-RW. I'm not sure if that would matter, but in case it will now you know.

Does anybody know what the problem might be or what I need to do at this point?

/offtopic

- Source
Does that make sense...? It seems that if it checks for "no*" options before "do*" options then it wouldn't specifically allow you to override options in the order you specify, rather, "do*" options would override "no*" options regardless of order. At least, that's how I interpret it.

Perhaps I should clarify... The "no*" and "do*" options are kernel options passed to configure the booted environment. Example options are dopcmcia and nodhcp. Sorry.

Oh, I just used some simple examples. Thankfully I never had to mess with them (other than once when I recompiled the kernel and left it unbootable, and had to choose one by hand because I had lilo and not grub).

Linux supports AHCI SATA drives, and a few non AHCI SATA controllers, so it should just work. If its in non AHCI mode, its possible the device isn't supported. If its actually a PATA drive on a crappy new secondary PATA/eSATA chip, theres also a chance its not supported (mine wasn't in 2.6.18~).

All I can suggest is toggling the mode. If it doesn't support AHCI mode, like my board, (because asus SUCKS balls, ICH9 supports it just fine, but they disable it for non RAID boards), you likely have an ICHx chipset, which is supported under linux in legasy mode just fine. The last possibility is that gentoo forgot to include a given driver on the livecd. It happens.

So you want the "Small Gentoo Custom livecd", or the 2008 livecd. Or possibly the latest 2007.x.. usually theres at least 2... aka: 200x.0, 200x.1 etc.

You have to boot something. The non livecds aren't bootable afaik.

When I used gentoo, the minimal CD was called a livecd. And it technically is, it just doesn't setup X like most other livecds.

The extra package disks aren't bootable. Theres only two general kinds of gentoo disks, livecds, and package disks.

Don't get the minimal CD, IIRC it doesn't have all the drivers available on the full one.

The Gentoo 2008.0_beta2 Minimal CD/InstallCD (amd64) seems to boot fine. The interface for selecting a kernel and passing options appears different from the previous version and handbook, but hopefully not so different that I have trouble with it. I'll give it a try tonight.

Not a terrible idea. At least it would save me the trouble of transferring my monitor, keyboard, and mouse cables until I actually had completed a successful installation, but it won't really help with the hardware snags. Does anybody know of a free Windows VM that allows you to install fully functional Linux?

And it's open source?! Hurray!

VMWare Server is laggy and sucks. VirtualPC works fine with Linux too, even though they don't say it.

VirtualBox runs Linux guest operating systems much better than VirtualPC does.

You should beable to use physical disks (partitions or LVM volumes) as VirtualBox images, so existing raid on the host could easily be used in guests.

I'd probably go with plain old .vdi images on a raid array on the host though. Guests then won't need to mess with raid internally.