[gentoo-dev] Installing 1.0-rc6-r9 on Vaio Laptop

[Christian Hergl]

Greetings list,

two days ago I started to install the r9 build of the rc6 on my Sony 
Vaio N505X. Special Problem: It only got ONE PCMCIA slot, where the 
cdrom hooks in. Here are some remarks about during and after installing:

1. Problem: Got a pcmcia network card and a pcmcia cdrom. The cd image 
boots fine, but... can't mount the cdrom (isn't recognized by the kernel 
after it takes control, though the ramdisk loads fine). So I wanted to 
go over a fat or ntfs partition. Suprise: the gentoo kernel can't mount 
any other filesystem.
Now, after long thinking and a different solution (lotsa different 
bootdisks), I found a file called /etc/filesystems. Does it help if I 
put the fat and ntfs line in there?
Of course, it has to be in the kernel. I think lots of install problems 
could be easier solved if one has the possibility to go over fat and 
ntfs partitions. Any reason why that'S not in the gentoo yet?
2. Pcmcia isn't loaded. So I had to manually insmod every single driver 
for the pcmcia stack (the modules were there, hurray!), then insmod the 
network driver. Worked, but at least it would be nice to have some lines 
about that in the docu =)
Like: 	insmod path/pcmcia_core
	insmod path/yenta_socket
	insmod path/ds
	insmod path/to/networkdriver	
3. Install and compile worked well enough (perl was a bit bouncy with 
some timeout in iolibs?) and I got the system up and running. But... 
pcmcia again. This packet (in pcmcia-cs of portage) also complains about 
the missing X (been on the list before, same bug here). So, erasing X 
from the USE-Variable. Compiles till to the 3c575/tulip, then stops 
there with an error 2 =P Same error one all three version of the 
pcmcia-cs package (28, 28-r1 and 29). Suprisingly enough, if I install 
the package manually (from the tar.gz sources), it worked and compiled 
fine! Some ebuild problem?
4. So, about starting the pcmcia.... I'm totally confused by the new 
startup scripts. I mean, I'm used to the rc runlevels and stuff. The 
problem now that I have (AFTER manually installing the pcmcia startup 
script according to the ebuild AND manually altering the PCIC in it to 
yenta_socket, as the i8xxx doesn'T work on my laptop (and 2.4.x in 
general?)): the pcmcia startup script gets called AFTER the network 
driver is supposed to be loaded by modules. Is there ANY way to change 
the timing/row of the startup scripts?
Currently I manually load the pcmcia modules before the network module 
in 'modules'. I doubt that is wanted....
5. I get every time now I boot a log replay of my reiserfs happens. 
Also, mount/umount and du don'T work, probably due to the new devfs? 
Could someone clue me in pleeze how to get my reiserfs consistent every 
time I (re)boot? I have a baaaad feeling about it, like it doesn't get 
unmounted properly...
6. Yah, and with the yesterday's version of the portage tree I can't 
compile Xfree. Period, any version. Is that knowen yet? If not, tell me 
and I look up the exact lines where it bounces out (short after the 
depencies calculation, I guess)

Else this is the newest linux I've seen so far and think it'S nifty. =) 
Bad luck that r10 came out today. Is it just the hdparm adjustement, and 
can that be fixed into a r9 too? (reinstalling and recompiling would 
take again almost at least 1 day =P)

Thanks for the toy to play with,
Christian

PS: Build from Sources docu: code listing 25. Shouldn'T it be 
net.eth0-dhcp somewhere in there? =) It looks very much the same like 
code listing 24 ;)