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Hi list, |
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|
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Having troubled the list much in the past, I figure one way to |
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contribute is to here list some pit-falls I encountered in getting a |
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working environment set up on my Gigabyte T1028M netbook. I will |
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gradually update this thread as I run into more problems and figure |
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out how to solve them. |
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|
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* Installation |
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|
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The 1028M, like most netbooks, does not have an optical drive. But the |
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BIOS is capable of booting from USB. So one way of installing Gentoo |
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is to boot from a USB disk running SystemRescueCD, which has enough |
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bells and whistles that the built-in Realtek RTL8101E ethernet jack |
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works. Then one can just follow the Gentoo Handbook to do the install. |
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|
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Just for reference (in configuring the kernel), the hardware on my |
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netbook includes |
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- Realtek RTL8101E ethernet |
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- Atheros wireless |
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- The IDE/SATA/PCI/USB chip set is Intel 82801G |
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- VGA is Intel 945 GME |
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- Audio is hda-intel |
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More on other bits of kernel config later. |
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|
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If you just want to nuke the pre-installed stuff, then a quick fdisk, |
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untarring the stage-3, and installing the bootloader and kernel is |
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pretty much all you need to get a (re)bootable machine. |
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|
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But, as I said before, the computer does not come with optical drive, |
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even though they do include a set of Install CDs in the purchase. The |
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recovery system, like many netbooks, consists of an extra partition on |
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the Hard Drive that boots and re-images the harddrive to factory |
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state. One may want to save that partition for a rainy day. |
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|
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To dual boot, I found out the hard way that the partition table is |
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fragile. gparted does a good job resizing the Windows partition. But |
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to re-partition the newly freed space, remember: Windows has a quirky |
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behaviour. If one does not change the entry units to "sectors" in |
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fdisk, the Windows bootloader will crap out the next time you try to |
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boot into Windows. |
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|
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The 160G harddrive is big enough to contain a 20G Windows partition + |
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a 4G FAT32 partition I use to copy files between the two boots. The |
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rest (minus the ~1G rescue partition) is dedicated to Gentoo. |
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|
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* Drivers for the Kernel |
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|
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I use intelfb on the console. The native resolution of the netbook is |
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1024x600-32. The frequency probably doesn't matter that much as it is |
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a LCD display. One should read the Kernel Doc if one needs help with |
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the boot parameters. |
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|
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The netbook comes with a touchscreen, which requires the USB |
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Touchscreen support in the Kernel (under Device Drivers -> Input -> |
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Touchscreen). That's right, the built-in eGalax TouchScreen is USB |
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connected. Though I have not quite managed to get it working yet (as a |
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mouse). Not a big deal since I haven't installed X at the moment. I'll |
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deal with that later. At least now with the proper kernel support, I |
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have a device in /dev/input/event6 that registers whatever happens to |
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the touch screen. |
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|
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The netbook also (like the eeePC and friends) come with the ElanTech |
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Touchpad for a PS/2 mouse device. Be sure to select the proper kernel |
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support (Device Drivers -> Input -> Mouse -> ... something here...). |
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It is the one for the ElanTech PS/2 support, and hard to miss (though |
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I did on my first time through the configuration). |
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|
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Now, if your computer is like mine, just this is not enough to get |
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mouse working. You'd find after booting that dmesg lists no ElanTech |
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devices! This is a known bug! It happens also for eeePC and MSI Winds, |
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that whatever chipset is responsible, is causing a problem that |
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overflows the kbd driver, which causes the mouse driver to not load at |
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boot-time. A workaround is to pass "i8042.noloop=1" as a kernel boot |
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parameter. With this, and with gpm pointed to the proper mouse device |
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(on this box it is /dev/input/mouse1) one gets the pointer on the |
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console. (Useful if you browse the net in links on a console in |
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framebuffer mode.) |
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|
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* Console |
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|
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I have the console set-up to use unicode. Of course, the available |
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codepages are still limited to basically European glyphs. I emerged |
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"terminus-fonts" and am using ter-v16n in conf.d/consolefont. |
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|
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Of side interest, I just found out that lynx now has CJK support. Of |
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course, in the normal console where Chinese/Japanese/Korean glyphs are |
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not available, this doesn't do much. To see CJK on the console, one |
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needs to install a console emulator. In my case, I am mostly |
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interested in Chinese support, so I emerged zhcon. Now, I am not |
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exactly sure if zhcon has UTF-8 support (their webpage suggests yes, |
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but I am still looking to toggle it on). Right now I run zhcon with |
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the locale set to zh_TW.Big5. A downside to this is that when starting |
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lynx, one needs to go to the options (which now shows in Gibberish |
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since lynx by default outputs to UTF-8 which the locale now doesn't |
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parse), and tick the option to set output locale to the environment |
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locale. After hitting submit the text will be all "right" again. |
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|
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|
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To be continued... (?) |
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|
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W |
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|
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-- |
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If you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate. |
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Sortir en Pantoufles: up 1114 days, 11:07 |