The quick install guide omits the step where the /dev directory is mounted to /mnt/gentoo/dev before chrooting (Code listing 2.16). This step is present in the handbook installation instructions before switching to the chroot environment: mount -o bind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev Mounting /dev like that is required because recent stage3 tarballs have very minimal /dev entries. Withough the above mount command the chroot environment will be missing the /dev files required for things like ssh, scp, grub installation, etc. Reproducible: Always
It's usually not required, but I noticed a week ago that I had to bind-mount /dev if I wanted to install grub later on. Fixed in CVS. Thanks for reporting.
You're right. In the past it wasn't require because the stage3 tarballs had a full-up set of /dev entries. That is no longer the case. Starting with the most recent autobuilds of stage3, the /dev directory is basically empty, and unless you mount /dev before chroot'ing any app that uses any sort of device files other /dev/null will fail. Examples include /dev/random (required by ssh and scp), /dev/sd* and /dev/hd* (required by fdisk, mount, grub), and so on.
