Best way to reinstall?

[Theophile]

I'd like to reinstall my system but it's been along time since I did it. Basically, I'm wondering if theres a way to reinstall the whole filesystem without having to use the LiveCD. Last time I did this, I had another working machine I could use for Internet references and downloading in crunch situations. This is not the case this time around so I can't afford to make a careless mistake. All suggestions are welcome! Also, check out the thread below to help me tweak my make.conf. Thanks in advance!

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-2284374.html#2284374

[bakreule]

As long as you have a bunch of extra space, you can always reinstall from within your own system. I do it all the time when I install to older hardware that would take forever.

Make a directory (/mnt/gentoo for consistency), and then follow the handbook, skipping the parts about fdisking. When you're done "installing" your system, reboot into the LiveCD, copy all the crap from /mnt/gentoo onto your real root partition (watch out for permissions) and you're set. You'll still have to use the LiveCD at the end for copying your new system, but at least you'll have a system you can surf with while all this is going on....
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[Jerem]

Stage4 is the fastest way to reinstall the same system on the same computer. It's basically a tar.bz2 archive of your whole system, excluding things like /var/tmp/*

There's a howto in the gentoo Wiki.

[johnnymac]

I agree with Jerum...do a stage 4 install using a backup of your entire system. There's a couple of scripts out there for it but I usually use Partimage and store it off to a usb drive.
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