Speaker for the Dead

[k9dog]

Split from the nigh on 7-year-old Giving up after trying too hard!!! with apologies to Orson Scott Card. k9dog, there are a lot of interesting topics on the Gentoo Forums, but replying to one that's been inactive for this long usually doesn't serve any purpose. — JRG

Sounds to me like you should read the install handbook. hdd1 sounds like you are guessing (no offence and you could be correct in your attempts.
Lets say you are booting from an install disk. Your install disk provides 2 partion tools: fdisk and parted. Personally I prefer fdisk on partitions less than 2TB. On your system you should be able to install both. Fdisk is missing some neat feature, but it have that polished look of something old that you can depend on.
Anyway once you booted the install disk run a "fdisk -l" will show you the name of devices and their partions. I would normally expect devices with the names that fdisk show on the install disk. "fdisk -l" might not show 4 partionsunless it has been set up similar to what the handbook outlines.
If you followed the handbook you should have sda1 through sda4 on a one disc system. sda1 is pretty much left alone from our point of view after partioning. sda2 is usually used for kernel images, and while used during boot, partion isn't mounted on the root system unless you ask to.
You should (build and) install kernel (remember to mount /boot ... gentools can help with kernel and initramfs). sda3 is swap and nothing yourself need to consider after installing and setting it as swap. sda4 is usually only place you use for system. Instead of 4 primary partions, you might need to partion things different, but this is how things usually is configured. About the disc naming most modern IDE controllers are veri similar to scsi controllers, which probably explans why we nearly always use sdX# (Where X is a letter and # is a number). Old style IDE controllers show as hdX# (notation same as before). sd is for scsi disc and hd for hard disc originally. These days I would suspect the hd to be mostly gone (due to EIDE is based on SCSI), but depending on your kernel or controller you might see hd. Also when setting up kernel use gentools or at least copy and extract /proc/config.gz for a starting configuration, so your own kernel doesnt differ too much from the one from installation disc - I don't expect it,but you might see a fallback to hd** if you try to create your own configuration)

[szatox]

Oh, wow, what a case of necrophilia
k9dog, after 7 years of inactivity the OP either sorted it out or is long gone. Nobody cares about this thread anymore, you may want to focus on more recent things.

[Ant P.]

I see that user does this sort of thing quite often.

[k9dog]

Sorry for being a forum noob

I guess I was looking for something and got caught in something old from a search Not sure how it related to my original search. The chat seemed a bit derailed anyway and solutions .. well not exactly easy.