Installing Gentoo on eMachines E730G laptop

NForce · Last edited by NForce on Wed Jan 05, 2011 10:51 pm; edited 1 time in total

Hi all, I have some problems with installing gentoo on this laptop.
I don't know if I should split this topic or not, so I'm creating one topic.

Kernel is configured manually, http://pastebin.com/kP2Tz1ZG - is the .config
These are the problems I have with it:

3. KDE doesn't autodetect if AC was plugged in/out. It's not KDE issue as it works on OpenSUSE with KDE.

4. It has 4GB of RAM, but only 2.5GB of it is detected (also on Windows 7). I use 32bit systems, it should see 3GB, I think.

5. It has Intel Core i3 processor, which should have integrated Intel HD graphics accelerator, but kernel doesn't create switcheroo interface even with hybrid graphics support enabled.

6. I have problems with my wifi card. When I connect to my home wireless AP (with wpa2 encryption), it gets disconnected randomly. Sometimes it could happen two times in 24 hours, sometipes it could happen five times in 10 minutes. Very annoying. However, when I set up wireless tethering on my Android phone and connect with this laptop to it - no disconnects happen (no encryption). The wireless card is:
03:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR928X Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
The driver is ath9k. I tried to get madwifi working, but it doesnt find my wireless card, don't know what is wrong here.
Update. It works great with ath9k driver on Ubuntu, so the problem is not ath9k

RESOLVED:
1. My audio card isn't detected if I don't load HAL. I have set up the kernel support for it, but it just doesn't detect it.
The card is HDA Intel with Realtek ALC272X chip (alsamixer tells that). Resolved. Had to select everything under Intel HDA.
2. There is no sound over HDMI connection (I'm using xf86-video-ati driver from git, mesa from git, libdrm from git). The card is Radeon HD5470. Resolved. Well it's not really resolved, I just found out the open source driver doesn't support hdmi audio on evergreen yet. I'll just wait for it
7. Can't get information about CPU temperature. What in the kernel config should I enable for that? Resolved. I needed to compile and load coretemp module. Now i'm getting sensors information from the CPU and video card.
Also I have some issues with touchpad, but I think i could resolve them, so I won't ask about it yet. Resolved

NForce · Posted: Tue Jan 04, 2011 12:01 am Post subject:

A little update on problems status. I really need to fix number six

And also number 3

Logicien · Posted: Tue Jan 04, 2011 1:07 am Post subject:

Hi,
did you manually configure your kernel? If yes, maybe just let Genkernel do it. Did you install Gentoo from a Gentoo media? if yes, how was the material detection and support by the generic kernel?
_________________
Paul

NForce · Posted: Tue Jan 04, 2011 1:14 am Post subject:

Yes, I've manually configured the kernel. With my previous laptop I had no problems doing that...I've installed gentoo by installing sabayon and then removing it's packages such as entropy, etc. I know this is an unsupported way to install it, but I still think everything could be fixed

Kernel made by genkernel boots too long, and I also want KMS and stuff

I think only problems with kernel configuration might be 1 and 3. And I also want to know what's wrong with that, so genkernel is not a way out, I afraid. For 6 it should be something about wpa_supplicant, networkmanager or dhcpcd...

NForce · Posted: Wed Jan 05, 2011 11:22 pm Post subject:

Resolved first problem, after selecting all the codecs in Intel HDA submenu

Considering 6 problem, in the log I can see a string containing something like:
NetworkManager: changed device state 8 -> 3 (reason 0) if that tells something