2005.0LiveCD Can't Find Acer TravelMate4652's Combo

xie_xch · n00b Joined: 04 Jul 2005 Posts: 4 Location: Chengdu PRC

I want install gentoo in my ACER TravelMate 4652, but it can't find its CD
boot parameter

Copie · n00b Joined: 03 May 2004 Posts: 7

I have exactly the same problem with an Acer 4651LMi. It seems the kernel simply can't find the cdrom, if i cat /proc/sys/dev/cdrom/info theres no information listed. Also after booting with the "no bootable medium" error and chooseing shell no devices are listed in /dev

is this a problem with the kernel drivers or is it a udev problem? I dont seem to have any other problems with older kernels, gentoo 2004.0 booted fine with a 2.4 kernel. I'll download a different distro and see if i have any joy there.

tanisek · n00b Joined: 15 Aug 2004 Posts: 44 Location: Poland

I have Acer TM 4651LMi and couldn't boot from 2005.0 minimal live CD.
What helps is providing apic=off noapic boot options.
But even then system couldn't find CD/DVD drive.
It worked correctly with 2004.0 cd (with 2.4 kernel).

I tried also SuSe 9.3, and it runs OK with kernel 2.6,
and apic=off option.
It finds DVD drive, also output of lspci looks more sane,
while that one I got with 2005.0 was... strange, no device names, only some
numbers. I have found topic on linux-kernel group
(http://seclists.org/lists/linux-kernel/2005/Jun/0881.html) which may
be about that problem (but may be not, I am not sure...) - something
with PCI Express...

It looks like Suse 9.3 has kernel patched in some way that
deals with that problem - it is 2.6.11.4-20a-default.

Also, 2004.0 (with kernel 2.4) saw disc and DVD as hdb and hdc devices,
2005.0 (with 2.6) saw disc as hdc, and didnt see DVD at all,
and SUSE shows both devices as SATA devices:
CD-ROM as /dev/sr0, and disc as /dev/sda
Also dmesg shows that for both devices ata_piix kernel
module is used.

This module is not present on 2005.0 live CD, maybe this is the reason?

I will try to install Gentoo using SUSE boot disc, and then try
to build working 2.6 kernel...

If someone has any information that could help (what are differences
between gentoo and suse kernels maybe?) - please write something...

tanisek · n00b Joined: 15 Aug 2004 Posts: 44 Location: Poland

WORKS

I downloaded stage-3 and portage snapshot from windows and uncompressed it
(suse CD doesnt have bzip2).
Then I booted laptop from SUSE 9.3 Installation CD1 (only first one needed) - second
installation option works (without ACPI), first one doesn't,
repartitioned the disk with suse graphical utility, switched to console,
hand-configured network, untared stage-3 and portage snapshot from Windows disc,
chrooted to Gentoo disc and made next steps like in normal gentoo install.

I have found a topic about dealing with PIIX problems, it was helpful:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-270763.html

In 'menuconfig' I disabled IDE completely (CONFIG_IDE is not set)
and enabled CONFIG_SCSI_ATA_PIIX (in low-level SCSI drivers).

After building kernel and installing grub, my system could see harddrive
as sda, but couldnt see DVD drive (it was partly detected during kernel boot,
but with strange numbers and no drive name).

When I change include/linux/libata.h like mentioned in that topic
(changed #undef ATA_ENABLE_ATAPI to #define ATA_ENABLE_ATAPI),
rebuilt the kernel and rebooted everything worked - my disc and DVD
were dtected correctly, and were visible as /dev/sda and /dev/sr0.

Next thing I noticed, is that hard disc under 2.4 (and visible as /dev/hdc)
was working horribly slow. It has DMA disabled and no way to enable it.
After those changes (to /dev/sda) it works correctly

Copie · n00b Joined: 03 May 2004 Posts: 7

Excellent, your solution works for me also. Many thanks. I used a Gentoo 1.4 disk to do the initial boot, as the 2004.0 disk i had hasn't got the cdcache option (doh!). It's frustrating that the 2005.0 disk doesn't detect my cdrom drive, and the 2004.0 disk DOES detecet my cdrom drive but i can't change the cd! So i went all the way back to a 1.4 disk.

The kernel now works just like you said, and my devices are now sda and sr0. I shall hope in the future that this conflict is corrected in upcomeing kernel releases so distributions work out the box with my hardware!

mm-motm · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 27 Oct 2003 Posts: 83

Hullo

i bought a Acer TravelMate 4652LMi today, and had the same installtion problem (cdrom drive not found) you discripted.
So well to be honest i am realy shocked about the missing support for this drive. (for a noob like me, linux always was the platform supporting everying out there and even more, expect for grafic cards)

Anyway, i tried to install gentoo using a minimal live cd 2004.0 cause i said it supports the drive (you meaned the 2.4 kernel supportes the drive or?)
and it did, but i am just unable to umount the cdrom and insert the 2005.0 cd. (shouldnt it be possible to just add docache as a kernel paramter, and than do a umount /mnt/cdrom?) well, i read on the forum that i can only cache the universal installation cd, is this true?
I am downloading the 2004.0 universial cd right now, and than will try it with that.

Well, hopfully i will mange to install gentoo someday, but what than? What do i have to do to get my system working "right"?
What is source of the problem? And what kernel patches do i need, and what do they do?

thx for ur help guys.

mm-motm · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 27 Oct 2003 Posts: 83

ok, i coulnd wait for the download to finishe, and so i copied the universial 2005.0 cd onto some win partition (fat32), started up with the 2004.0 minimal boot cd, mounted the windows partition and copied the data onto the new created root partiton. Good till now, but something is wrong. Coping is extremly slow. When i mounted the new root partition (its reiserfs) something about warning reiserfs debug is set? I tried hdparm, and found out that dma is not set, but when i try to do a hdparm -d1 i get (HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted) Whats that about?

ps: my harddis is recognised as hdc, hdb seems to be the cdrom drive, and hda is "empty", does someone maybe know why?

mm-motm · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 27 Oct 2003 Posts: 83

grrr

i just finished the gentoo instatlion. I choosed grub as the bootloader, and had some problem installing it (something with the partitions)
rebooted, and well, nothing. I insert the live cd again (live cd minimal 2004.0) booted, and and tried to mount my new installed system,
but bul***, all my partition are screwed up.

Bevore the reboot i had:
hdc1 boot primary linux (boot)
hdc2 primary linux (root)
hdc5 logical linux swap (swap)
freespace
hdc6 logical fat32

now after the reboot i have.

hdc1 primary Compag diagnostics
hdc2 primary linux
hdc5 logical linux swap
hdc6 logical fat32

when i try to mount hdc2 i get, "can not find reiserfs on ide1(22,2).

has some any idea? (it makes me crazy to have a new notebook and to not be able to use it)

mm-motm · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 27 Oct 2003 Posts: 83

ha! i got it working.

I reainstalled the system, starting from a 2004 universial disk, copied the stage files from a fat32 partition and made a stage 3 installation.
Grup worked fine this time, and after "patching" the kernel, i can boot, using the paramter root=/dev/sda2.

But i still have some questions, why my grup at startup is a interaktiv one? forcing my to tipe kernel /kernels/genoo26 noapic root=/dev/sda2 followed by a boot, every time?

How can i find out what my cdrom is named now?
Why when i a do a hdparm /dev/sda i get:
/dev/sda:
HDIO_GET_MULTCOUNT failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device

and when i want to do a hdparm -d1 /dev/sda nothing happens?

I have to disable acpi on boot (woth noacpi), does this mean that my notebook realy has to run
without any power manager? (cause i daubt the akku will hold long this way)

Copie · n00b Joined: 03 May 2004 Posts: 7

You can just add your kernel parameters to your grub.conf file in an append statement. Check out the man file. As for ACPI try using pci=noacpi instead of acpi=off noacpi that way you still retain some power management but avoid the conflict.

Regards

Copie

majid · n00b Joined: 26 Jul 2005 Posts: 16

Hi
I have the same problem. I tried to install gentoo on DELL blade server, but it can't find its CD.
I tried noapic option and i have the same error messageon boot.
-------------------------------------------------------

szym · n00b Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 14

tanisek · n00b Joined: 15 Aug 2004 Posts: 44 Location: Poland

For 2.6.14 and above kernels there is no need to modify kernel source.
It is enough to append libata.atapi_enabled=1 to kernel boot options (in grub or lilo).
Although I wasn't able to get PCMCIA working with 2.6.14 :/

szym · n00b Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 14

I think You should patch your kernel. Without libata1 patch hdparm -tT /dev/sda return some errors.

szym · n00b Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 14

tanisek · n00b Joined: 15 Aug 2004 Posts: 44 Location: Poland

"Doesn't work" - what exactly is wrong??

Do something like this:
dmesg | grep -i -e sr0 -e ata -e scsi -e dvd -e cdr -e hd -e sd
and post results

Maybe you don't have correct kernel options enabled?
Check your .config file, you should have
CONFIG_SCSI_ATA_PIIX = y
and
CONFIG_IDE not set

If you have CONFIG_SCSI_ATA_PIIX as a module, probably libata.atapi_enabled=1 won't work,
try compile it into the kernel and try how it works

d2clon · n00b Joined: 08 Jun 2003 Posts: 60

i was the same problem on a new desktop computer with sata harddisks and dvd.

i booted the live cd with the next options:
boot: gentoo-nofb irqpoll

and the system started-up right.

luck¡
d2clon

szym · n00b Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 14

Have anyone managed to get sensors runing? I have 'No sensors found!' message (i2c-core, i2c-dev, i2c-i801, eeprom modules are loaded).

fluzz · n00b Joined: 29 Aug 2004 Posts: 8 Location: uk

after following most of the advice above ive gotten the drive to read everything but audio cd's

tanisek · n00b Joined: 15 Aug 2004 Posts: 44 Location: Poland

You don't mount audio cds

You just play them, for example with kscd in KDE.
But for that laptop you have to enable digital audio
to have any sound (I am not sure if this is the name of the option in english,
but it is int the first panel of kscd configuration, just below device file (/dev/cdrom or whatever you have there))