Moving to Gentoo on T41

[x86processor]

Greetings gentoo users!

I am planning to install Gentoo on my laptop (T41p) soon (currently running SuSE 9). I read many useful posts in this forum and I am looking forward to it.

Any suggestions on which kernel sources I should use? My configuration is as follows:
Intel Pentium M 1.40 GHz
512 MB RAM
40 GB HDD
14"
32 MB ATI Mobility RADEON 7500
UltraNav Ultrabay Slim CD-RW/DVD-ROM
Integrated Intel PRO/1000 Gigabit Ethernet
56KV.92 designed modem
Intel PRO/Wireless Network Connection 802.11b

x86

[stgreek]

Hello and welcome. I have installed Gentoo in quite a few Thinkpads (about 10 or so) and have to say that mm-sources kernels are probably the best choice when it comes to laptops. They have tons of ACPI fixes, and include laptop mode, which no other kernel does afaik. Also, mm-sources has direct support for P-M in the kernel which I believe vanilla kernels don't have.

Whatever choice you make, though, make sure that you choose a 2.6 kernel, the difference from 2.4 is huge. 2.6 should work fine with your system, only thing that might not work perfectly is ACPI (standby-suspend problems, some fixed in 2.6.5-mm1) but fear not, for your Thinkpad supports APM and works perfectly with it.

Good luck with installing and keep us updated!

Stavros


PS If you have a T41p (not T41), shouldn't you have a radeon 9000 or FireGL T2 card? I thought 7500 goes only in normal T41 thinkpads
_________________
The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day that they start making vacuum cleaners

[markandrew]

i have both gentoo and suse9 on my T41, and use mm-sources (currently 2.6.5) with no problems. I'd go with APM for the time being as opposed to ACPI, as suspend to RAM is still problematic in the latter. if you need any help with config etc let me know (i have a SXGA screen w/ radeon9000+IBMa/b/g but apart from that specs are the same i think). i have everything working on my machine except suspend-to-disk, and the wifi/bluetooth is working but not as well as under windows.

[x86processor]

Thanks for your replies stgreek and markandrew Yeah, your right stgreek, mine is a T41 . I think I'll go with the mm-sources. Found documentation here:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-kernel.xml

Do I have to specify any kernel number or simply do:
#emerge mm-sources

Thanks again,

x86

[stgreek]

No need to specify number,

[Bionut]

I have just finished (almost) installing gentoo on a T41 and would be glad to help also...
Guess it doesn't hurt to point out that the wireless card operates fine for me if you emerge the open source drivers for it

[chino_]

@stgreek:

Hi, I am about to install gentoo on my T30, so do you recommend the -mm kernel tree also for this laptop-model?

[x86processor]

Hi!

I have now installed Gentoo on my T41. I did a stage-3 installation. Before I ask questions, I will give you a quick summary (will put up a webpage later):

- My system partition is
/dev/hda1 boot ext2
/dev/hda2 swap swap
/dev/hda3 root reiserfs
- used the latest stage-3 tarball for x86
- used "emerge sync" to get the latest portage (50,000 files
- used mm-sources which gave me 2.6.5-mm1 kernel sources and compiled and installed using "genkernel"
- eth0 worked by default, but, emerged e1000 drivers and it works too
- used grub and booting works

I will emerge xfree tomorrow and try installing kde and fluxbox. Now my questions:

1/ reboot works, but for "shutdown -h now" system does not shutdown completely and battery light is on. Even "init 0" does not turn off battery. I tried a cold shutdown to turn off the machine and it won't shutdown. I have to unplug and do cold shutdown to turn off the machine. Is that ok?

2/ I added user using:
#useradd username -s /bin/bash
so i have only a shell but no home directory, how do i create a home directory for the username?

3/ I am not able to see anything in /boot directory when i am root. I am guessing I have to mount it? How do I do that? Should I mount other directories too to view them?

Installation took about 5 hours, mostly for "emerge sync" but it was really cool.

x86

[x86processor]

My documentation for Gentoo on T41:

http://www.rit.edu/~sak5991/gentoofreebsd.html

I don't have sound working now (No /dev/dsp file). Would you recommend I use "oss" for sound and how would I go about getting the drivers (I have all sound drivers in /lib/modules) installed or should I try alsa ?

Thanks,

x86

[Hypnos]

[geta]

Hello there,

thanks to your little tips and hits setting up and configuring my T41 will probably become a breeze.
There is one subject I have been trying to solve up to now and have not found answers for:
The thinkpad has some special keys. Some of them are hardwired, and the others produce a set of keyboard "events", which can be caught by linux.
The three keys that interest me are:
"Fn", "Page left", "Page right".
These three keys produce the following keycodes (provided by the tool "showkey"):
Fn: 0 press, 1 release, 15 release, 0 release, 1 release, 15 release
Page left: 0 press, 1 release, 30 release, 0 release, 1 release, 30 release
Page right: 0 press, 1 release, 31 release, 0 release, 1 release, 31 release

Now how can I use this information to integrate those three keys into XFree86. I've tried searching the net, but haven't been very successful at this.

Greets, geta
_________________
geta - pronounced: "djetta"

[markandrew]

the easiest way IMO is to use xmodmap to map the keycodes to existing (but not present on your keyboard) key definitions. then add that to your ~/.Xmodmap file; most window managers will parse it on startup so that the special keys act as normal ones under X. here is my ~/.Xmodmap file

keycode 227 = Multi_key
keycode 234 = F19
keycode 233 = F20

you could also use the programs 'hotkeys' and 'lineak', though i had less luck with those