GCC Update Problem

So after running emerge --update --deep --newuse world, and then emerge --depclean, somehow I lost Firefox, my gentoo sources (used to compile/recompile the kernel), and I could no longer compile any emerged packages... Somehow the update shot GCC. I googled the problem, and found this forum post about my very problem, so I unset GCC_SPECS and reemerged gcc (which takes forever to compile), and was able to reinstall firefox and install gtk+, to play with some Gnome eye-candy later...

Alas, I still can't recompile my kernel to enable extra CIFS support required to use Windows WINS names. Everytime I try running make menuconfig, I get

make: *** No rule to make target `menuconfig'. Stop.

and when I try to reemerge gentoo sources, I get

* Messages for package sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-2.6.29-r5:

* If you are upgrading from a previous kernel, you may be interested
* in the following document:
* - General upgrade guide: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/kernel-upgrade.xml
>>> Auto-cleaning packages...

>>> No outdated packages were found on your system.

* GNU info directory index is up-to-date.

even though my kernel is a few minor revisions behind (2.6.24-r8)... I looked in /usr/src and saw that the /usr/src/linux symlink was still pointing to 2.6.24-r8, and not the new minor revision... portage did pull down the newer kernel, but didn't update the symlink (duh).

I went back and modularized CIFS support, with the following options:

CIFS support (advanced network filesystem, SMBFS successor) │ │
│ │ [*] CIFS statistics │ │
│ │ [*] Extended statistics │ │
│ │ [ ] Support legacy servers which use weaker LANMAN security (NEW) │ │
│ │ [ ] Kerberos/SPNEGO advanced session setup (NEW) │ │
│ │ [*] CIFS extended attributes │ │
│ │ [*] CIFS POSIX Extensions │ │
│ │ [*] Enable additional CIFS debugging routines │ │
│ │ [ ] CIFS Experimental Features (EXPERIMENTAL) (NEW)

Currently I'm compiling the new kernel and will deploy it when it finishes. As of right now, I can mount the Windows share using mount -t cifs, but only using the IP address, and not the host name. I can also see my workgroup and computers in nautilus, but still can't access the Windows shares.

Hopefully the added CIFS support (namesly CIFS extneded attributes and CIFS statistics) will get me working all the way.