Compiling module during install against liveCD kernel

[Stormblazer]

It's been quite awhile since I've used linux, and I'm looking to install Gentoo on a new system I've built.
After some initial hassles with the old IDE DVD drive (using all-generic-ide and irqpoll to fix) I have in there (ordering a SATA dvd drive very soon), I've gotten
the livedvd up and working in console mode (intentional).

Anyways, in previous installations, I've had the ability to hook it up temporarily directly through ethernet for internet access. This time I don't really have that luxury, and I need the wifi interface up right away. I'm not using any encryption (MAC address filter on the router works good enough for where I live), so I don't need encryption support. I have a Linksys WMP54G 4.1 PCI card, which uses the RT61 chipset. I found the driver for this on Ralink's website, and in any case I think the RT2x00 project's driver could also work.

I think I need the kernel headers for the kernel on the LiveDVD to compile the modules against- unfortunately, I don't remember how/where to find these. I really don't want to install the whole system right off the LiveDVD and THEN recompile the kernel and build the modules then.

System:
Intel Q6600 quadcore
2GB RAM
MSI P35 Neo2 Motherboard
500GB western digital SATA drive
Linksys WMP54G 4.1 PCI wireless card (Chipset: RT61)
IDE DVD drive
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The vast majority of errors are stupid mistakes that you end up kicking yourself for later.

[transpetaflops]

Found this thread while I was googling for the same problem. Did you ever find a solution Stormblazer?

I need to compile a kernel module for my RAID card which is unsupported in the LiveCD kernel (and even the latest kernel) so I too need the kernel headers installed in my LiveCD environment to accomplish this or I won't even detect my harddrives. I've been unsuccessful in finding any howtos on this subject. It seems a bit drastic to install a temporary Gentoo on a plain IDE disk just to be able to compile the drivers I need for the real install...
Assuming I get past that first problem... since it's the driver for my boot device I guess I can't keep it as a kernel module but must find a way to merge it into my initrd or something. I'm really on thin ice here... this is way beyond my current level of knowledge but I'm able to handle most problems if someone can just point me to some documentation or give some pointers. Thank God it's weekend... and thanks in advance.
/PP

[NathanZachary]

If you have to have wifi for the installation, I would recommend using a distribution LiveCD that supports your WLAN, and installing Gentoo via that live environment. For instance, PCLinuxOS supports many different WNICs by default and even more through synaptic. Once you get your wireless card working, you can install Gentoo from that environment following the Gentoo Handbook, and these initial instructions.
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“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
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[brickhaus]

I'd also love to know if someone's figured this out. I'm actually trying to netboot and install a couple boxes with the r8169 and/or forcedeth drivers, which are not part of the initrd.img from the DVD. The idea is that I've put the squashfs root on an NFS server and told the kernel to go there for the root filesystem. However, I can't even get the kernel to load my modules so that it can get an IP address, and then (maybe) mount the root via NFS.

I've tried building the modules using another system (with the gentoo-sources-2.6.19-r5 package -- I'm using the 2007.0 LiveDVD), and I can't get the modules to insert (I added some custom checking in /etc/initrd.scripts -- which BTW, on the amd64 LiveDVD shows that libata (default driver) doesn't insert properly either).

I see where my new modules try to insert themselves, but they fail.

My guess is that I need the kernel .config file for the LiveDVD, but not sure where to get it from.

Any ideas?