tried to emerge gentoo-sources, and odd errors..help?

[loyalbluefox28]

Well, this is my first time attempting to install Gentoo, and I've hit quite the snag and while I'm here I'm going to ask about USEflags because maybe I am thinking this error is stemming from typing in USEflags. So my question about USEflags is how are you supposed to type them in? I have all the ones written down that I want and the way that I entered them was:

nano -w etc/portage/make.conf

and then under where it said:

USE="bindist"

I typed all the other ones I wanted following the same form such as:

USE="java"

My question is: Is there a different way to enter USEflags that I am missing, or is the form that I used okay?

My second issue is when it came to:

emerge gentoo-sources

it gave me these lines of error:

/etc/portage/make.conf", line 133: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/etc/portage/USE'
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/emerge", line 48, in <module>
retval = emerge_main()
File "/usr/lib/portage/pym/_emerge/main.py", line 1009, in emerge_main
settings, trees, mtimedb = load_emerge_config()
File "/usr/lib/portage/pym/portage/proxy/objectproxy.py", line 31, in __call__
return result(*args, **kwargs)
File "/usr/lib/portage/pym/_emerge/actions.py", line 3061, in load_emerge_config
trees = portage.create_trees(trees=trees, **kwargs)
File "/usr/lib/portage/pym/portage/__init__.py", line 522, in create_trees
env=env, eprefix=eprefix)
File "/usr/lib/portage/pym/portage/package/ebuild/config.py", line 334, in __init__
expand=make_conf) or {})
File "/usr/lib/portage/pym/portage/util/__init__.py", line 638, in getconfig
val=lex.get_token()
File "/usr/lib/python3.2/shlex.py", line 96, in get_token
spec = self.sourcehook(self.read_token())
File "/usr/lib/python3.2/shlex.py", line 251, in sourcehook
return (newfile, open(newfile, "r"))
IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/etc/portage/USE'

Can anyone help? Thanks in advance!

[gabrielg]

You are probably managing the USE variable wrongly in your /etc/portage/make.conf - assuming you will use flag1, flag2, flag 3 but _not_ flag4, you would type: