The ENV is corrupted in install-x86-minimal-2008.0_beta2.iso. Running env or printenv shows 5 lines of garbage between the lines PATH= and RUNLEVEL=. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Load install-x86-minimal-2008.0_beta2.iso 2.Run env or printenv 3.See 5 lines of garbage between PATH= and RUNLEVEL= Actual Results: Corrupted ENV causes emerges to fail with complaining error messages. For example, "emerge lilo" fails to install the binary; instead it exits on an error. Expected Results: Should have uncorrupted ENV. emerges should work without exiting on an error message. I couldn't figure out where ENV picked up the bad lines, and I wasn't able to delete them as a work-around. If I didn't have a previous install on the machine with a lilo binary, I wouldn't have been able to complete the install.
I can't reproduce this with the beta2 ISO. Maybe your ISO image got corrupted? These, days, download happens not quite as often, but it still can happen. If you still have the image around, you can check it with md5sum and sha1sum. Also note that your medium might've been corrupted when burning the CD, you can check that in the same way (md5sum /dev/hdc or wherever your medium is).
Until we can rule out corrupt media, I'm closing this. Feel free to reopen if/when you've made sure that intact media has this problem.
