I have installed 1.4_rc2 before from stage1 and did not have this problem. I *did* remember 'emerge system' and followed the x86 install procedure, having downloaded the recent 1.4 stage1 tarball. Everything seemed to work, but booting into kernel I made, came up with various module errors, and also missing commands like /usr/bin/which. Obviously the change to procedure was the 'genkernel' utility, in past no initrd was used, and I think a static kernel was recommended. Anyway it seems that it would be a damn good idea if modprobe & modutils got installed (preferably automatically rather than change to docs). util-linux ought also be considered essential. There may be other packages, added by stage2 or stage3 that really ought to be built as part of base system, cannot really tell until I'm rid of all the errors.
What CD/build did you use to install Gentoo?
I didn't use a Gentoo CD (to save bandwidth and hassle), only the stage1 tarball, and the x86 installation instructions. This install method worked fine at 1.4rc2, lets you run another distro, whilst Gentoo is emerge-ing. module-init-tools would probably make more sense than modutils now. It seems to me that genkernel depends on modprobe as it configures a modular kernel and an initrd. util-linux, I would have expected to be built as part of the 'emerge system', it has commands like kill, renice, mount, swapon, hwclock and fdisk etc. They appear to be the only 2 things you absolutely need, that were missing.
Your "emerge system" either did not get run, or failed in the middle and aborted. util-linux is in /usr/portage/profiles/default-x86-1.4/packages: *sys-apps/util-linux As is which: *sys-apps/which As is the modules stuff: *virtual/modutils Without some text output from emerge system, I'm not going to be able to track down this bug to the root cause, so unfortunately I'm going to have to close it. If you encounter this problem again, please try to log the last few lines of emerge system, and take a good hard look at the emerge system output to make sure that it did not abort with an error. Sorry I can't be more help.
You mean a log like /var/log/emerge.log? I've now spotted it and checked what happened, and it looks like modutils and util-linux emerged succesfully. But I was very definitely left without the commands, until I emerged them explicitly. I remember checking for the file locations with ls, and emerging gentoolkit (shows up in log), so I could do stuff like epm -qf and search for missing packages. Then when I emerged them myself the stuff was present. No sign of any deletion, I know it seems crazy and this is unlikely to be reproducible, but it *has* happened, and the rc scripts which autoload modules weren't finding modprobe or insmod, which is the reason I looked for the commands, so I think I can rule out not being root and failing to have /sbin:/usr/sbin in $PATH. 1062347378: Started emerge on: Aug 31, 2003 16:29:38 1062347378: *** emerge system 1062347402: >>> emerge (1 of 73) sys-apps/modutils-2.4.25 to / 1062347402: === (1 of 73) Cleaning (/usr/portage/sys-apps/modutils/modutils-2.4 .25.ebuild) 1062347403: === (1 of 73) Compiling/Merging (/usr/portage/sys-apps/modutils/mod utils-2.4.25.ebuild) 1062347416: === (1 of 73) Post-Build Cleaning (/usr/portage/sys-apps/modutils/m odutils-2.4.25.ebuild) 1062347417: >>> AUTOCLEAN: sys-apps/modutils 1062347417: --- AUTOCLEAN: Nothing unmerged. 1062347417: ::: completed emerge (1 of 73) sys-apps/modutils-2.4.25 to / Next mention of modutils is at : 1062422804: Started emerge on: Sep 01, 2003 14:26:44 1062422804: *** emerge utils-linux modutils 1062422804: *** terminating. 1062422822: Started emerge on: Sep 01, 2003 14:27:02 1062422822: *** emerge modutils 1062422822: >>> emerge (1 of 1) sys-apps/modutils-2.4.25 to / 1062422822: === (1 of 1) Cleaning (/usr/portage/sys-apps/modutils/modutils-2.4. 25.ebuild) 1062422823: === (1 of 1) Compiling/Merging (/usr/portage/sys-apps/modutils/modu tils-2.4.25.ebuild) 1062422843: === (1 of 1) Updating world file (/usr/portage/sys-apps/modutils/mo dutils-2.4.25.ebuild) 1062422843: === (1 of 1) Post-Build Cleaning (/usr/portage/sys-apps/modutils/mo dutils-2.4.25.ebuild) 1062422843: >>> AUTOCLEAN: sys-apps/modutils 1062422843: --- AUTOCLEAN: Nothing unmerged. Perhaps I can try to re-produce and ensure all the output is in a screen logfile. If that happens, I'll submit more evidence.
OK, if it helps your sanity, we did get one other bug report with similar symptoms. Still not sure why it happened or what could have caused it, beyond some weird Portage bug.