Gentoo on Toshiba satellite pro 6100

[Pseud]

I've used Redhat on my laptop for a couple of years now, and am sick of the RPM mess and the KDE-unfriendliness of redhat (I adore KDE). So, anyway, I'm planning to switch to either Gentoo or Debian, but am not yet sure which I should go for.

The freedom with Gentoo is a big attraction. But since its a laptop, I'm a bit worried that I might mess things up (I guess I'd have gone ahead boldly if it were a desktop). The cpu fan automagically turning itself on and off under redhat is one thing that comes to mind, for instance.

Is there anyone here who runs gentoo on the same laptop? I'd greatly appreciate any help/suggestions.

PS:
A related thread on a triple-boot arrangement here: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=151511
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[Humbled]

Hey, I do!

I just installed a few weeks ago. Runs great, but there are some caveats. Most of the advice I found on the 'net was spot-on, although some not as good as others. The install was by-the-book, it's just the hardware config.

For example, I want to run 1600x1200. A lot of the Linux on Laptop advice was, "1024x768 is good enough." Yeah, right.

Anyway, if you would like help on the install just let me know. (IM me if you want, too)

H

[Pseud]

Wow, that was fast!!

Thanks for the offer to help!
I guess I'll do the install tonight. Any tips you could give me right away?
Oh and btw, I'm picky about having a 1600x1200 resolution too

Thanks!
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[Humbled]

Tips, huh?

The best tip I could give you, is that if you're still in your warranty, take it to a service center and get all the fixes. This model has some nasty defects.

I'll tell you this:

You'll want to emerge nvidia-glx to get the best graphics.
You have an eepro100 (ethernet)
I haven't set up built-in wireless yet.
PCMCIA is yenta.
Sound is Intel i810.
USB is UHCI.

(Most of this is detected for you, so it's no biggy.)

ADSL is easy, adsl-setup, adsl-start, adsl-stop.
If you have a router, just use dhcpcd to get your stuff assigned and up.

As for partitioning, I don't know how you're set up, but I split my HD in two and put Linux in an extended partition.

You've been using RH for a few years, so you probably know all of this already...

To get 1600x1200, you need to set IgnoreEDID to True in your XF86Config. Use "nvidia" for the driver after emerging nvidia-glx, take out the entry for loading dri in the modules section. Set the boardname to "NVIDIA GeForce4 (generic)".

Humm, I don't think there's much else to say. If you're using the 2004.0 LiveCD Ultimate, you may as well start from Stage3. I might go back and do Stage1 or Stage2 later, but 3 is good enough for me for now.

I fully recommend the 2.6 kernel. You *want* preemption for a smooth user experience. Only trouble is, I'm having some issues with sound. (But apparently, a lot of people are.)

This is really enough to get you up and running if you know what you're doing (and by the looks of it, you have more experience with Linux than I do), but should you need anything from me don't hesitate to ask. I'd love to help out, that's what makes this thing great.

H

[Pseud]

Oh and I'd love to experiment with the complie-everything-from-scratch install. Is it advisable on laptops?
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[Humbled]

[Humbled]

Ah, I wanted to add that I'm safely using -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe for my CFLAGs. I haven't tried -O3 or anything else drastic.

USE flags are also really great (Gentoo specific, as well). I only want Gnome, so I hard-set -kde -qt, and who needs svgalib? -svga.



H

[Pseud]

Great!
Thanks for all the input!

I'll do my homework and get back with doubts

And my two years with redhat was not very consistent ... very on-off-ish with a dual boot with XP to fall back on, (of course with the associated guilt-pangs for not sticking with Linux the whole time,) so I'm no expert.
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[Pseud]

[Humbled]

Oh, you are SO lucky you bought the extended warranty!

First, make sure that you've got the latest BIOS (1.9 I believe). A LOT of the problems are fixed with that.

It's quite possible that your support guy implemented some of the simpler fixes for you when he had it in his care, or perhaps he didn't. Check the manifest, see if all he did was replace your HD.

I'm not sure if the defects are in all laptops, or if they sold "fixed" versions later as they discovered problems.

They're really too numerous to mention (and I don't remember all of them), but some of the bad hardware probs include:

VGA board separating from main PCB (system won't power on)
Faulty power handling (system won't power on)
Glue separates on screen (get a weird ring around the screen)
Hard drives dying early (you already experienced this)
BIOS/CMOS electrical issues (system constantly forgets settings)
... and more

You'll know if your VGA board starts to separate, your machine will just turn itself off unexpectedly. Then it will slowly get more and more frequent until it won't power on at all.

According to the service rep I talked to, this laptop wasn't designed by Toshiba. The Satellite Pro series was outsourced, and apparently, Toshiba was quite pissed with the results. He claimed that they won't be using the company anymore, since it turned out to be such a lemon.

He told me what he did to fix the problems:

- new motherboard w/ latest BIOS
- new power supply (not to be confused with your power adapter)
- support bracket to keep VGA board properly set into its position
- new keyboard
- new DVD drive

Basically, he replaced everything except the hard drive (which later died and I replaced myself with a Hitachi), the memory, the case, and the screen. I wish he had replaced the screen, since I'm starting to get that annoying ring. It's not burn-in, it gets worse the longer it sits UNused...

I think the battery and charging system is okay.

So anyway, good luck, and enjoy it while you can. FWIW, I started experiencing crash-and-won't-boot-problems approx. 4 months after I bought mine. Support was fantastic, but it did take four attempts, the final one being an "advanced" center after yelling at Toshiba a bit. That's the place that fixed everything in one go with the latest stuff. I just kept having critical problems again and again before that.

When did you buy yours?

H

PS - All of those hardware problems I listed, I experienced. Not one... ALL. Oh, and my "advanced" service guy said there were actually hardware revs to fix the known problems, which is why he replaced so much stuff.

[Pseud]

Holy ravioli!
That's one huge list alright! And a total refurbishing, now that's scary.

I bought mine close to two years back, if I remember right. Now I'm glad I decided to go for the extended warranty.

Actually, other than that one-time hard disk snag, I've had absolutely no problems with my laptop... probably was a patched-up version, like you said.
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[Humbled]

Let's hope, at least. I have to admit, 1.5 years is a bit quick for a hard drive to be dying. I'd want to see 3+, optimally...

Anyway, mine's working fine now, and hopefully yours will continue to work well into the future. Maybe the fact that I lugged mine to work and back every day egged on the problems. That's always a possibility. It also made a trip to Japan and back with me..

H

[Pseud]

I just remembered, even the hard disk failure, I have a strong suspicion it was faulty right from the beginning. The laptop came preinstalled with Win XP Pro and among the gazillion pre-installed software packages (Doesn't one find them annoying?), there was AOL...

I never was able to uninstall AOL ... it would always hang for a long time and I'd cancel it thinking I'll do it later...
It got done in a giffy with the new disk ... so I'm guessing there were some bad sectors on the disk and my near 24/7 usage of the laptop ensured things got worse and i noticed something was wrong, within the warranty period

Ah well, anyway, my next post will only be after I've loaded Gentoo, and hopefully from something Mozilla-ish.

I love this forum already!
Thanks everyone out there!
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[Humbled]

emerge firefox-bin

unless you REALLY want to compile Mozilla...

[Pseud]

Hey Humbled,

I just finished the Gentoo install. Well, I have the basic services up and running, that is. (I did a stage1 install and I think it was a good learning experience.) I asked elsewhere in this forum and NeddySeagoon's tips helped me keep the Redhat install and share the /boot and <swap> partitions with Gentoo, which I thought was a neat solution.

I tried cheating X by copying over the XF86Config form the Redhat install, but it didnt work ... guess I'll look into it now. I'll get back to you if I can't figure it out?

Just wanted to say thanks for all the help, really appreciate it.
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[Humbled]

No problem.

If you need to see any of my config files or anything just let me know (I've got a watch set on this thread so I'll know when you post.)

H

[Pseud]

Humbled,

Can you show me your XF86Config file?

X seems to be skipping the 1600x1200 resolution and jumping to 1400x1050. I am guessing its because my HorizSync and VertRefresh aren't set to the full range (I never could find the specs ... googling gives any number of different ranges), or because my VideoRam is only 16384, but I'm not sure.

[Humbled]

My laptop's at home and I'm at work at the moment, and I don't remember exactly what it is I did. The IgnoreEDID should be what tells X that you can go higher than that res, but it could be the frequency settings you've got.

IIRC (and I might not), I'm using something more like

[Pseud]

Thanks.

Btw, how do I actually check the current resolution?

I did take out the dpms line... Actually I added it off someone else's config file without knowing what it means or does (Oh, a LOT of things took that route before Gentoo )
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[Humbled]

Intuition.

Seriously, I don't know. But I think it's pretty easy to tell when the LCD is interpolating.

[Humbled]

You seem like the kind of person who does quite thorough research.

This is my first really serious go at linux, so I'm learning new things as I go.

I used a stage 3 tarball, but I've been reading up more on setting compiler flags and stuff. I'll probably change all my make.conf settings and emerge -e world this weekend. (I do mean weekend.. )

I just found info on NPTL. Search the forum for it, there should be something in Tips & Tricks for getting it working. Word is, you'll get a little somethin' somethin' in your Linux mug when it's used instead of linux-threads. Maybe I'll give it a try on the ol' 6100 and report.

H

[Pseud]

Oh its just that I have time to kill with my job starting only in mid-April or so.
This place has quite thorough and professional documentation resources for a community maintained project, don't you think? Best for Linux I've seen anywhere. I've learnt a whole load of stuff about Linux internals that I never knew. (I don't think I even knew there was so much to know heh.)

I set my CFLAGS to
CFLAGS="-O2 -march=i686 -formit-frame-pointer -pipe"

Oh and there's also a
MAKEOPTS="-j2"
in my make.conf

The installation guide said its recco'd value is number of CPU's+1 (the j's for imaginary? heh)
There's some slight difference between choosing -march=i686 and -mcpu=i686, which I can't recall right now. Haven't looked at the gcc docs to find out more about other flags ... might do eventually.

I'll do an nptl search, too. My Redhat kernel has a .nptl at the end, so I guess it was there for some reason worth looking up.
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[Humbled]

The difference betweeen -march and -mcpu is that -march will optimize for your architecture & cpu only, whereas -mcpu will make code optimized for your cpu that will run on any i386 architecture.

I've heard that it's a good idea to explicitly add -msse -mmmx -msse2 or whatever other extensions the processor supports, even though they are supposed to be implied with -march/-mcpu.

I think you can get that info in /proc/cpuinfo, or there are resources like freehacker that have that stuff.

[Pseud]

Ok, I found a solution for finding the current display resolution:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=153477

I get this on xrandr:

[Humbled]

My xrandr output: