First make sure your date and time is set correctly using date MMDDhhmmYYYY. Use UTC time.

(Check the clock)
livecd gentoo # date
Mon Mar  6 00:14:13 UTC 2006

(Set the current date and time if required)
livecd gentoo # date 030600162006 (Format is MMDDhhmmYYYY)
Mon Mar  6 00:16:00 UTC 2006

Next, download a stage from one of our mirrors:

livecd gentoo # links http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/mirrors.xml
(Pick a mirror, move to the releases/x86/current-stage3/ directory, highlight the stage3 of your choice, probably the i686 stage3 and press D to download it)

(Or download it directly with wget without choosing a nearby mirror)
livecd gentoo # wget ftp://distfiles.gentoo.org/pub/gentoo/releases/x86/current-stage3/stage3-i686-*.tar.bz2

Go to /mnt/gentoo and unpack the stage using tar xjpf <stage3 tarball>.

livecd gentoo # time tar xjpf stage3*

real  1m14.157s
user  1m2.920s
sys   0m7.530s

Install the latest Portage snapshot. Proceed as for the stage3 archive: choose a nearby mirror from our list, download the latest snapshot and unpack it.

livecd gentoo # cd /mnt/gentoo/usr
livecd usr # links http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/mirrors.xml
(Pick a mirror, move to the snapshots/ directory,
highlight portage-latest.tar.bz2 and press D to download it)

(Or download it directly with wget without choosing a nearby mirror)
livecd gentoo # cd /mnt/gentoo/usr
livecd usr # wget http://distfiles.gentoo.org/snapshots/portage-latest.tar.bz2

livecd usr # time tar xjf portage-lat*

real  0m40.523s
user  0m28.280s
sys   0m8.240s

Mount the /proc & /dev file systems, copy over the /etc/resolv.conf file, then chroot into your Gentoo environment.

livecd usr # cd /
livecd / # mount -t proc proc /mnt/gentoo/proc
livecd / # mount -o bind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev
livecd / # cp -L /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/
livecd / # chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
livecd / # env-update && source /etc/profile
>>> Regenerating /etc/ld.so.cache...

Set your time zone information by using the correct listing in /usr/share/zoneinfo.

livecd / # ls /usr/share/zoneinfo
(Using Brussels as an example)
livecd / # cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Brussels /etc/localtime

livecd / # date
Wed Mar  8 00:46:05 CET 2006

Set your host name in /etc/conf.d/hostname and /etc/hosts. In the following example, we use mybox as host name and at.myplace as domain name. You can either edit the config files with nano or use the following commands:

livecd / # cd /etc
livecd etc # echo "127.0.0.1 mybox.at.myplace mybox localhost" > hosts
livecd etc # sed -i -e 's/HOSTNAME.*/HOSTNAME="mybox"/' conf.d/hostname
(Use defined host name and check)
livecd etc # hostname mybox
livecd etc # hostname -f
mybox.at.myplace