The Circle of Life

Specifications

lspci output

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
0000:00:00.1 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
0000:00:00.3 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
0000:00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
0000:00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
0000:00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
0000:00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
0000:00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
0000:00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 83)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) IDE Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 03)
0000:01:0a.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6933 Cardbus Controller (rev 20)
0000:01:0a.1 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6933 Cardbus Controller (rev 20)
0000:01:0c.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5788 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 03)
0000:01:0d.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless LAN 2100 3B Mini PCI Adapter (rev 04)
0000:01:0e.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB21 IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)

Other specs

• Pentium M 1.7GHz w/ Centrino chipset
• 512MB DDR RAM
• 13 inch TFT display
• 40GB HDD
• DVD Combo drive

Introduction

This is a quick and dirty guide to getting Gentoo Linux to work on my laptop, which might help others with the same laptop model or similar models (especially the Fujitsu 'S' Series of notebooks).

This is not an all encompassing guide to a Linux installation. It just touches upon some laptop specific issues I encountered along with other minor issues that I can remember.

Any comment, queries and suggestions can be mailed to deepak dot jois at gmail.

Installation

Print out the Gentoo x86 Installation Handbook and follow the instructions religiously.

I just burnt the minimal ISO and then did a stage3 install completely from the Internet.

Alps Touchpad

The Fujitsu laptops come with an Alps Touchpad installed. The standard Synaptics Driver will work with these devices, but it requires a kernel patch, and subsequently a recompile.

Download the latest Synaptics driver sources and unzip them to your home directory. The commands below assume that the Synaptics sources are in /home/deepak/synaptics and the kernel sources are in /usr/src/linux.

vyom root #cd /usr/src/linux
vyom root #cat /home/deepak/synaptics/alps.patch | patch -p1

After that, follow the instructions in the Synaptics README and modify your xorg.conf file. Here is the relevant portion from my xorg.conf file :

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver        "synaptics"
  Identifier    "Synaptics Mouse"
  Option        "Device"                "/dev/psaux"
  Option        "Protocol"              "auto-dev"
  Option        "SHMConfig"             "1"
  Option        "LeftEdge"              "120"
  Option        "RightEdge"             "830"
  Option        "TopEdge"               "120"
  Option        "BottomEdge"            "650"
  Option        "FingerLow"             "14"
  Option        "FingerHigh"            "15"
  Option        "MaxTapTime"            "180"
  Option        "MaxDoubleTapTime"      "180"
  Option        "MaxTapMove"            "110"
  Option        "EmulateMidButtonTime"  "75"
  Option        "VertScrollDelta"       "20"
  Option        "HorizScrollDelta"      "20"
  Option        "MinSpeed"              "0.2"
  Option        "MaxSpeed"              "0.5"
  Option        "AccelFactor"           "0.01"
  Option        "EdgeMotionMinSpeed"    "15"
  Option        "EdgeMotionMaxSpeed"    "15"
  Option        "UpDownScrolling"       "1"
  Option        "CircularScrolling"     "1"
  Option        "CircScrollDelta"       "0.1"
  Option        "CircScrollTrigger"     "2"
EndSection

Update : The kernel 2.6.11 series and onwards have already been patched with the ALPS patch. So there is no need to perform the step above.

There is a bug in the kernel, which requires you to reload the psmouse module after bootup in order to correctly recognize the Alps touchpad.

vyom root #rmmod psmouse
vyom root #modprobe psmouse
vyom root # cat /proc/bus/input/devices
I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0001 Product=0001 Version=ab54
N: Name="AT Translated Set 2 keyboard"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio0/input0
H: Handlers=kbd event0
B: EV=120003
B: KEY=4 2000000 3802078 f840d001 f2ffffdf ffefffff ffffffff fffffffe
B: LED=7

I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0008 Version=0000
N: Name="AlpsPS/2 ALPS TouchPad"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio4/input0
H: Handlers=mouse1 event2
B: EV=b
B: KEY=420 0 670000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
B: ABS=1000003

Update : There is a neater solution for auto-reloading. Check this post : http://chakravyuh.blogspot.com/2005/03/gentoo-tips.html

Display

The display did not need anything special to work and was auto configured.

Here is the relevant portion in my xorg.conf file.

Section "Device"
        ### Available Driver options are:-
        ### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
        ### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz"
        ### [arg]: arg optional
        #Option     "NoAccel"                   # [<bool>]
        #Option     "SWcursor"                  # [<bool>]
        #Option     "ColorKey"                  # <i>
        #Option     "CacheLines"                # <i>
        #Option     "Dac6Bit"                   # [<bool>]
        #Option     "DRI"                       # [<bool>]
        #Option     "NoDDC"                     # [<bool>]
        #Option     "ShowCache"                 # [<bool>]
        #Option     "XvMCSurfaces"              # <i>
        #Option     "PageFlip"                  # [<bool>]
        Identifier  "Card0"
        Driver      "i810"
        VendorName  "Intel Corp."
        BoardName   "82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device"
        BusID       "PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection

Note that all the advanced options are commented out. I have not really played around with more advanced settings yet. If and when I do, I will update this section.

Networking

I managed to get both the ethernet and the wireless working.

Ethernet

It was autodetected by the Gentoo LiveCD, but was giving me some problems when I compiled my own kernel. If you encounter any such problems, try installing coldplug.

vyom ~ #emerge coldplug
vyom ~ #rc-update add coldplug boot

Alternatively you can autoload the relevant module on bootup by adding tg3 (which is the Broadcom Tigon3 chipset module) to /etc/modules.autoload/kernel2.6.

Wireless

Setting up wireless is probably most easily done on Gentoo than any other distro. The portage tree already has the ipw2100 drivers and all you need to do is symlink /usr/src/linux to the sources your used to compile your current kernel and run emerge ipw2100.

Untested

• Firewire
• Internal Modem
• VGA Out (mostly does not work, have to figure out how)

Other Things

Output of lsmod

Here is my current lsmod output in case it is of any use to you. Note that the sound and pcmcia modules are also loaded.

psmouse                24200  0
ohci_hcd               18760  0
parport_pc             29316  0
parport                31304  1 parport_pc
ohci1394               29956  0
ieee1394               91572  1 ohci1394
ipw2100               142532  0
firmware_class          7360  1 ipw2100
ieee80211              36324  1 ipw2100
ieee80211_crypt         4168  2 ipw2100,ieee80211
tg3                    80260  0
yenta_socket           18944  0
pcmcia_core            47936  1 yenta_socket
snd_intel8x0           27808  2
snd_ac97_codec         72544  1 snd_intel8x0
ehci_hcd               27140  0
uhci_hcd               29776  0
intel_agp              19356  1
agpgart                27752  2 intel_agp
evdev                   7424  1
usbcore               102264  4 ohci_hcd,ehci_hcd,uhci_hcd
vfat                   11328  2
fat                    35744  1 vfat

Time

I lost a few strands of hair trying to get time to work properly. After like the millionth time, I managed to get it working like this.

• Create symlink /etc/localtime pointing to your timezone in the folder /usr/share/zoneinfo
• REMOVE /etc/adjtime.
• Set the clock to "UTC" in /etc/conf.d/clock.
• Reboot and set the system clock to UTC (or GMT whatever).

Update : My HDD managed to crash, and I did a clean re-install with Gentoo 2004.3, and did not use the ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" flag. And I managed to get local time working without any additional steps. The advantage if this is that it plays well with my Windows paritition.

Having a nice screen on bootup

If you use genkernel to compile your kernel then enable framebuffer and bootsplash support, and if you are doing it manually then just enable the following option.

Device Drivers --> Graphics Support --> Vesa Driver Type (vesa-tng) --> (1024x768@60) Vesa Default Mode (NEW)

Other Resources

• http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~chak/linux/centrino.html
• http://gentoo.org