I installed Gentoo without a problem for an amd64 system. My only issue is that eth0 is not seen when I boot up and therefore fails to start.

* Bringing up interface eth0
* ERROR: interface eth0 does not exist
* Ensure that you have loaded the correct kernel module for your hardware
* ERROR: net.eth0 failed to start

I have a Gigabit PCI Express Realtek network card (that is what works off of the livecd and is shown with lspci grep | Ethernet).

I have been reading there are issues with this card and that I must not compile with support for it in the kernel and download it instead from the RealTek website. Is this true?

My motherboard is a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 board. I am learning as I go.

It doesn't make much sense considering the livecd sets up my internet perfectly with net-setup eth0, which means the kernel should, somewhere, have support for it. Am I selecting the wrong driver when I go to compile my kernel?

Thanks for your time, once this issue is resolved I can finally move on to getting some real use out of my Gentoo box!

For things like ethernet cards it is better to compile the driver as kernel modules this gives you an advantage of seeing what drivers the system is loading for your ethernet card and being able to blacklist the module if it doesn't work. You can check kernel modules by using lsmod. There is also the r8169 package in portage you may want to have a look at as well

Problem solved!

I forgot to mount /boot after recompiling the kernel with the supported driver. It did not copy over before to boot, I was still using the old kernel. It works now! Thanks