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Community Project: Get ABF to build Gentoo and shut up

post #1 of 41
9/24/05 at 8:04pm
Thread Starter 
Well, this shall be the official post of a little project that i expect help on from the whole notebookforums linux community.

The goals are:
1) Help me build a working, stable gentoo 2005.1 x86_64 w/ wifi and fglrx
2) get me to shut up and stop trying a new distro every day of the week

Some General Notes:
Build starts today, Sept 24 and will last until its done (a week, maybe longer). My laptop is a uniwill 258kao with atheros wifi and ati 9700 128mb.

Goal of the day:
Burn iso and install everything up to the lilo config
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post #2 of 41
9/24/05 at 8:08pm
Ummm OK. ANy questions post up, I'll do what I can.
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post #3 of 41
9/24/05 at 8:27pm
ABF before you being...

DOWNLOAD or PRINT the handbook and have it availiable during the install.

Do the same for the technotes on AMD64.

Also do that for the video driver installation instructions on the gentoo website.

And also do that for ALSA(Reccomended, but not nessecary)

The reason for doing all the above is some things require settings in the kernel to work properly or best.

READ all of the above before you begin.

And then post up here as you get questions. I run an opteron based Gentoo environment so I can give you a good hand with it most likely.

Seablade
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post #4 of 41
9/24/05 at 8:39pm
Thread Starter 
well, i popped in the disk and when i tried to connect to the network i couldn't first i tried wirelss, but if it didn't work no worries. so then i go downstairs and connect to teh router by wire. try to connect again, nada. so i tried the onebase linux cd....nada, hell, i was getting freaked out, so i went and rebooted to windows adn tried to connect....nada....now i know my router ain't broke because my desktop is connected to the router by wire.

i had to rma my lappy (see link #2 in my sig) not too long ago because of the ethernet port malfunction, it was fixed (or so i thought) but now the problem is back. however, it gets worse, my warranty expired, so now all fixes with IBP will run me at least $80 + shipping or who knows how much if direct with uniwill. could it be that its a fixable problem? any troubleshooting tips and possible resolutions on this issue?
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post #5 of 41
9/24/05 at 9:00pm
Why would it kill both wireless and wired? That I dont understand.

Also, an alternative method for a gentoo intstall which may make things enormously easier, use a known working livecd, such a knoppix, and do the install from there. That way you have a graphical environment to view the handbook from, (without killing fifty trees), and you can play some KDE games, or surf the web while it compiles. And you have a working laptop should you need to type a report or something of that nature.

Also, for your first try, I would suggest doing a stage 3 install. You'll lose maybe .0152% speed, but it'll be about half as long to do. Besides, the gentoo devs have great optimizing capabilites.

Also, use settings and your cflags are very important, so make sure you know ahead of time what you want to run on your system so you can compile things from the start to work out correctly.

I hope all goes well on your RMA, should you have to go through with it. Good luck on your install and you know how to get in touch with me if you have any issues.
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post #6 of 41
9/24/05 at 9:04pm
Thread Starter 
wicked....it didn't kill my wifi, my wifi works (in windows aynways) , its just that it didn't have madwifi drivers on the livecd. so only my wired is dead....i think.

as for the install manual, i have my thinkpad next to me with it opened up
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post #7 of 41
9/24/05 at 9:37pm
Hehe you can't win can you. I can sympathise with you on that count. On the t-shooting front. Any errors in event viewer? is it passing traffic at all?
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post #8 of 41
9/24/05 at 10:00pm
HehHeh ABF the world is against you there...

Let us know how it comes out though.

Seablade
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post #9 of 41
9/24/05 at 10:51pm
Thread Starter 
well, i figure i can always crack it open myself and have a look (since i am out of warranty and all) if i can't find a solution i'll have to either find a local repair shop that will do the work, or ship it to ibuypower or ship it to uniwill, which in either one of the 3 cases it will cost me money. If i rememeber reading corretly, ibuypower charges $80/hour + parts and a minimum of 1 hour + shipping for their service on out of warranty systems, so figure it will cost me $80 service + $30 shipping + $20 parts = $130. Local shop will also be in that range, uniwill might be a bit cheaper on the service fees, but since they are in taiwan, extra shipping costs will surely fill that price gap.


this is quite strange tough....both times the port failed it was when i stuck in a gentoo cd, both times after a onebase install. and thats strange, because just last weekend i installed onebase, which requires a net connection (wired) and it worked just fine, it was plugged in for like 24 hours. Since the install was finished (this past monday night) it has not been plugged in again till just earlier today when i stuck the gentoo cd in to try to get the installer going.
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post #10 of 41
9/25/05 at 12:22am
I wonder if it's a firmware issue. What did they do to it again?
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post #11 of 41
9/25/05 at 1:50am
Thread Starter 
i am not sure what they did to it.
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post #12 of 41
9/25/05 at 2:16am
Sometimes if i reboot on my gentoo/winxp laptop (asus z70va) the wired nic will "break". It'll be enabled, it just won't detect that the wire is actually plugged in (says its unplugged). Shutting down the computer for about 5-10 minutes then booting straight to Windows fixes this. Not sure if this is related to your problem considering its a different machine, but meh... who knows.
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post #13 of 41
9/25/05 at 2:50am
Thread Starter 
htanks for the advice c-prompt...i'll give it another try tomorrow
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post #14 of 41
9/25/05 at 3:52am
Quote:
Originally Posted by abf
wicked....it didn't kill my wifi, my wifi works (in windows aynways) , its just that it didn't have madwifi drivers on the livecd. so only my wired is dead....i think.

as for the install manual, i have my thinkpad next to me with it opened up
it would be cheaper to just buy an ethernet pci card(or whatever they are called on lappys).
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post #15 of 41
9/25/05 at 6:51pm
Thread Starter 
but then i have to get a linux friendly one taht gets mounted when i need to. option number 2 is to use my wifi pcmcia card that i use on my thinkpad, its a Prism2 and should work in linux without issues.
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post #16 of 41
9/25/05 at 11:04pm
Yeah, bummer @ the network card. FYI, I generally do a cold boot when going from Linux to Windows. I don't know why, but things like the touchpad never really 'reset' on a warm reboot (ie I will loose tapping functionality if I reboot Linux -> Windows).
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post #17 of 41
9/27/05 at 10:57pm
Thread Starter 
sorry for long time no update. i have been really busy with school and other stuff lately so i can't find the time to run some alternative tests and possible fixes on my ethernet port problem. ...i should have the time to at least troubleshoot and possibly fix my problme on thursday night. i can't install this weekend because i am busy all friday night and most of saturday (7am to 7pm) and sunday i have to squeeze in my hw and such other activities.
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post #18 of 41
9/27/05 at 11:38pm
Don't rush on our account. We all know what being busy is like.
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post #19 of 41
9/29/05 at 6:31pm
Thread Starter 
alrighty. big update here.

so my port does work, its the x86_64 drivers (sis900) that are not working right, so i will only install a 32bit x86 install, not much lost, in fact, some things have been gained (like easier wifi config and fglrx installation....if i ever get to that point).

the install will also be done from stage 3, i simply don't have the time for a stage 1 or 2 (well..i guess i could have done 2, maybe later).

in fact as i am typing this, the stage 3 package is being unzipped
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post #20 of 41
9/29/05 at 9:55pm
Thread Starter 
another update. the basic install is pretty much done, there have been a few bugs (mostly my fault) that i can resolve rather easily. the install ended up being a stage 3 x86 with genkernel 2.6.12-r10 to save time since i've been really busy with school, took no more than 3 or 4 hours either.

stuff that still needs to be done
-xorg (emerging right now)
-gnome (2.12 if possible)
-madwifi or ndiswrapper (to get wireless to work)
-fglrx (everyone needs 3d)
anything else i can think of....powernow.d perhaps


oh, also during the install i did not add any modules to be booted at run level. what should i add to that list?
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