Fresh reinstall... init is never called?

[hackerError]

Hi. I decided a fresh install was in order before I went back to school this semester. Popped in good ol' knoppix, formatted, reinstalled, and rebooted.
Grub showed up, and when I pressed enter, the system began spewing the normal dmesg stuff.
Then it stopped.
No endless [ok] [ok] [ok], just the last half of the dmesg stuff
the last message of the dmesg stuff was about how it detected my usb mouse.
so, thinking that may have caused a lockup somehow, i unplugged it getting ready to reboot.
the screen then said, usb device disconnected. so I was like... okay it's not locked up...
and replugged the mouse, and the system said usb device connected, logitech mouse.
irc people said I messed up my usb settings in the kernel, but I think that the usb thing was a red herring as to the real problem. I could be wrong, but I think that init... just isnt starting. Anyone know how I can be sure, or how to test or make init start?
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[tomchuk]

I had the same problem when I installed on a box last week - turns out portage momentarialy decided that sys-apps/sysvinit wasn't a part of emerge system. Boot into knoppix, chroot and emerge sysvinit. Make sure /sbin/init is there.