1.4_rc2 on a new toshiba satellite 2430 101 (long)

acepoint · n00b Joined: 23 Aug 2002 Posts: 20

Hi folks,

I spend two days now trying to install gentoo on a new notebook. It's a toshiba satellite 2430_101 (p4 2.53 ghz, 2x256 DDR Ram, Gforce 420 Go with 32 mb)

Neither 1.4_rc1 nor 1.4_rc2 did boot, though I tried many different boot options like bios=conf2, acpi=off ... So I used the older 1.2 stage 1, I still had somewhere. It booted without problems, installation started and compilation of 1.4_rc2 (stage 1) worked fine (Yes, I downloaded the stage_1-tarball of 1.4).

But no matter what kernel I downloaded and used (gentoo, crypto or vanilla), no matter what configuration I took, the new boot always stopped at uncompressing the kernel. I'm an experienced user of linux, so main configuration errors of grub, /etc/fstab and so on are out of question (I know that it's dangerous to assert this, but I checked everything many times). And I'm working with gentoo for nearly a year now installing it on work stations and notebooks.

To be sure I tried to install SuSE-8.1 and it did without major problems. I don't know what and where to check now, I'm completely helpless, but I want my gentoo back on this nice new notebook.

Below are the outputs of of lspci and dmesg:

Anybody got a clue?

Ciao

acepoint

Cheesefoam · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 02 Jan 2003 Posts: 89

Although this might not be of direct help, I did run into many of your problems on my Dell Inspiron 2650 when trying to install 1.4_RC1. When 1.4_RC2 came around, there seems to have been an incompatibility / kernel issue that was fixed for my particular setup.

Also, I had many problems with LILO and RC1 or RC2 in terms of getting the kernel past the decompression stage. I dual boot Gentoo with XP, and I use the NT bootloader to manage bootups. For some reason, even though I went to great pains to make sure LILO was set up correctly and all of the appropriate files were referenced properly in lilo.conf, etc, it still hung at decompression.

As soon as I switched over to grub, the problem vanished. Also, for laptops, I would suggest you take a try with one of the alternate kernel sources, such as acpi-sources or lolo-sources. Although DMA worked just fine on my laptop during bootstrapping and such, when I rebooted with the gentoo-sources or vanilla-sources, DMA was totally broken. The lolo-sources work extremely well, and the nvidia problems seem to be fixed now, too.

Just for reference, here's how I genned my system:

Booted with 1.4_RC2, with startup options "nonet noscsi"
modprobed in my NIC, 3c59x.
Did stage1, and bootstrapped etc with the following CFLAGS:
"-march=pentium4 -O2 -mmmx -msse -msse2 -fPIC"
Downloaded the lolo-2.4.20-r1 sources and compiled with P4 gcc>3.21 enabled, as well as ACPI.
installed grub to my root partition, set up grub.conf, and rebooted.

A final quick question - whan you said the RC2 CD didn't boot, where did it bail?

acepoint · n00b Joined: 23 Aug 2002 Posts: 20

Cheesefoam · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 02 Jan 2003 Posts: 89

The lolo-sources are performance and functionality enhanced kernel sources - they're called the lolo-sources because they're developed and maintained by Lostlogix. They are similar in many respects to the kernel sources maintained by Con Kolivas, except they are more Gentoo-oriented, and I have had a greater degree of success with them than with Con Kolivas's.

BTW, what bootloader are you using? LILO or grub?

xming · Guru Joined: 02 Jul 2002 Posts: 441

try to use vanilla src with minimal option (no raid, no acpi, no apm, no ide, no scsi, cpu type i386, ...)

If it boots, then try to add feature by feature

xming

acepoint · n00b Joined: 23 Aug 2002 Posts: 20

Smooth · n00b Joined: 28 Jun 2002 Posts: 28

Hey,

I was having problems installing Gentoo on my IBM Thinkpad 600 laptop. With Gentoo 1.2, the compressed image would not decompress, so I couldn't even boot up into the installation process. For 1.4_rc1 and rc2, the installation process is pretty painless--except that I had to do a parallel connection with my desktop and set up the proxy, because the ACP modem needs some tweeking to work right and stuff. However, after installation and all, if I tried booting up the laptop, it would always lock up somewhere before the INIT process could begin.

I decided to keep the kernel configuration to a minimum (no USB/Infrared/Sound/SCSI emulation/etc) and it booted up fine. That's using the gentoo-sources. Now I'm in the process of slowly adding stuff to the kernel to see what works and what doesn't. I'm also gonna try the lolo-sources to see if it works alright (though I thought the lolo-sources and gentoo-sources are almost the same...). Each compilation takes about an hour

, so it's gonna take a while. I'll try to see what might be the cause for the hangs and I'll come back and post it if I find that out.

Smooth · n00b Joined: 28 Jun 2002 Posts: 28

Ok,

I narrowed down my problem to one thing: The architecture type in the kernel. I have a Pentium II 300Mhz, and before I was compiling it for the Pentium Pro/MMX/II architecture. I tried the Pentium Pro/MMX/II (gcc>31) architecture and it worked, and I'm using the lolo-sources, since I couldn't get the gentoo-sources-r10 to compile right with certain kernel options.

Hope that helps at least a lil' bit.

SeaPig · n00b Joined: 18 Jun 2002 Posts: 70

mcgregor2003 · n00b Joined: 19 Feb 2003 Posts: 7

I tried the lolo sources and had the same problems. Suse linux 8.1 works with this laptop with no problems. The next thing I was going to try, is to get the kernel from suse and then use the 1.2 disk to boot up, install everything as normal and then copy the suse kernel over to boot. I don't know if this will work, but I'm desperate to try at this point!

SeaPig · n00b Joined: 18 Jun 2002 Posts: 70

well freeBSD 5.0 works just fine.
but I am not much of a BSD guy.

redhat 8.0 - installer hangs.
suse 8.0 - installation is fine but after install the system won't boot.
Xandros - installer hangs.
I have read on mandrake fourms that they are having the same problem.

Based on what I have found on google I think the problem is apic, but I am unsure how to build a kernel that will work,

http://www.redhat.com/mailing-lists/anaconda-devel-list/msg01293.html

discomfitor · l33t Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 927 Location: None

Try using 1.1 or 1.2. These kernels have fewer things compiled in that could screw up booting. I had to use 1.2 for my toshiba 2400-something satellite.

-Mike
_________________
There is no substitute for experience.
Imperfection indicates a lack of effort.

SeaPig · n00b Joined: 18 Jun 2002 Posts: 70

is there any way to get the .config file from the 1.2 CD's kernel?

SeaPig · n00b Joined: 18 Jun 2002 Posts: 70

I tried gentoo-sources-2.4.19-r7 and they work
w00t!!!

SeaPig · n00b Joined: 18 Jun 2002 Posts: 70

2.5.63 works and unlike the 2.4.19 kernel dma also works.
I do like the new menu layout of menuconfig in the 2.5 kernel.

kos · Posted: Wed May 28, 2003 2:21 pm Post subject:

Got the same problem with my 2430-s255
linux-2.4.20-wolk4.1s seems to work
_________________
/KoS