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circuitjp
n00b
Joined: 09 Mar 2004
Posts: 13
Location: Isengard
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 Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2005 1:27 am Post subject: Experience Installing Gentoo on the Dell Dimension 9150 |
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Hi,
I just wanted to relate my experience installing Gentoo 2005.1-r1 on my new Dell Dimension 9150 at work. First off, it was not my decision. The machine's spec was decided by the Windoze Server Administrators, I work as the Sr. Solaris System Administrator and if it doesn't/can't run Solaris it runs Gentoo. No Windows what-so-ever.
Though being a very experienced UNIX/Solaris SA (13+ years) I'm quite the n00b to Gentoo Linux. 
The Dell Dimention 400/9150 that have is a 2.8ghz dual-core Pentium system with 1G of ram. So it's a nice system, but trying to get anything to install on this puppy is a real test of one's sanity. According to our Windows Server Admins, they had alot of problems getting Windows XP-64 to install.
So if you are going to install Windows, use the default install, but of course everyone here, should be installing Gentoo on it.
At first I tried to install Gentoo on the box and it failed to detect the Intel Ethernet inteface. This appears to be a new interface and it seems to be a problem with Linux, if someone has other information, please enlighten me!
The Intel interface seems to be the "Intel Corporation 82573L Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 01)"
At the time I didn't have a spare Ethernet adapter and I wanted to get the system up. With Gentoo not working, I reluctantly tried Fedora/RedHat then SuSe, then FreeBSD even tried OpenSolaris Nevada Build 28. In some way each of these distros failed, I won't get into the details, but you can ask me if you want to know. Gentoo gave me the fewest headaches in the beginning so I decided to not give up! Glad I didn't, 'cause everything works now. I went back to it, several times.
An 'lspci' shows the following:
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#lspci
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 945G/P Memory Controller Hub
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 945G/P PCI Express Graphics Port
0000:00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
0000:00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GR/GH/GHM (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 01)
0000:00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GR/GH/GHM (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev e1)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GH (ICH7DH) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR/GH (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controllers cc=IDE (rev 01)
0000:00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 01)
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV370 5B62 [Radeon X600 (PCIE)]
0000:01:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon X600(RV380)
0000:04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82573L Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 01)
0000:05:04.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82557/8/9 [Ethernet Pro 100] (rev 05)
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With the exception of the Ethernet Pro 100, everything else is standard with the machine. Doing a modprobe on the e1000 driver does not bring up the new GigE adapter. I think a new driver needs to be written or the e1000 driver needs to be modified, if anyone has more info, please share. I used an older Intel 10/100 card my boss found for me.
What I did was simply do a stage-1 install then follow the instructions to a 'T'. I did a 'genkernel' kernel build and the only thing I changed was adding the ALSA and the Intel HD Pro adapter, which is the stock 7.1 intrgrated sound adapter.
then follow the ATI driver instructions on the Gentoo WIKI.
For the Graphics Adapter, I did the following.
When doing an emerge ati-drivers ati-drivers-extras I added 'gnome' at the end. Replace gnome with your favorite WM.
yes the install is a bit long, but I've had a few issues with the stage-3 install. I was so frustrated by this time, I might of screwed up the stage-3 install. So I walked away from the machine (cursing Dell) and went back at it with a stage1 install.
This is an EMT64 system so I used the AMD64 install CD.
I just wanted to let people know that there is hope for this machine to run a real operating system, besides the pre-loaded Windows XP system.
If anyone has any 'specific' questions, please let me know. I'll see if I can help.
Good luck to anyone who has bought one of these things!
Chris
p.s. sorry if this posting is a bit erratic. I wrote this thing over the course of a very long day, piece by piece[/b]! |
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palantir
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 28 Nov 2003
Posts: 142
Location: Trento, Italia
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| Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2005 11:05 am Post subject: |
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Hi
This is my experience: I did a stage-3 install without any problems. I have however picked up x86 and not amd64 architecture (I have been told that it doesn't really change much between the two, unless you have more than 4GB ram).
I have put this in my make.conf (it is a Pentium D processor):
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CFLAGS="-O2 -march=nocona -pipe"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
MAKEOPTS="-j3"
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I have had the same problems with the network interface. Unfortunately, at this time, latest kernel has an e1000 module which is not compatible with our onboard card (82573L). What you need to do, is to find another network card for the first steps of the installation, and as soon as you get to compiling kernel, download the driver from intel's site
Compile your kernel and install your modules as usual, then download the driver (e1000-6.2.15.tar.gz), unpack it somewhere and follow the readme file (well, it all boils down to:)
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cd src
make install
mv /lib/modules/2.6.14-gentoo-r5/kernel/drivers/net/e1000/e1000.ko /lib/modules/2.6.14-gentoo-r5/kernel/drivers/net/
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the last step moves the module up one directory otherwise the lsmod won't find it (there is probably a nicer way to do this 
Now reboot, remove the temporary network card, and try "modprobe e1000". If it doesn't fail, you should be able to do your usual ifconfig eth0...
If everything went well, add your module to be loaded automatically at boot: add the word "e1000" to /etc/modules.autoload
Xorg, ati-drivers and alsa installation gave me no problems at all, if we exclude this nasty bug which prevents me from actually using the hardware acceleration... I hope they'll solve it, sooner or later...
Edit:
I have put my kernel configuration file and my xorg.conf on my website, you can check them out here:
www.netpalantir.it
edit by nixnut: wrapped url in tags |
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Installing Gentoo
