Here are the steps needed to create chroot'ed base install of Mandriva:
mkdir chroot
mkdir chroot/dev
mkdir chroot/sys
mkdir chroot/proc
mount -o bind /dev chroot/dev
mount -o bind /sys chroot/sys
mount -o bind /proc chroot/proc
urpmi basesystem --root chroot
It seems, that you can safely accept the suggestions, especially the one that installs a bootloader. However you should really know, what you're doing and not perform any of the suggested steps on a production system. This was my first and only usage of Mandriva so far.