asus l5000d amd64 notebook install notes

[tridy]

Overall impressions of install and hardware.

Not a seamless install but I was able to work
through it. Took about two weeks of spare time
but most of it was waiting for downloads over
a dial up account.

Considering its a fairly new laptop and amd64
I was pretty impressed with the install, I was
expecting it to be harder. Everything except
the network card was detected by the boot disk.

I would recommend the notebook, not super mobile
(3.7kg) and battery life is short but everything
except for speakers (they work but are poor)
have been working well for two weeks.
Obviously has plenty of crunch for a notebook.

Pity it came with a OS that only runs in 32bit
mode, they wouldn't sell it without it.

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Install notes (you will still need handbook)

Monday 28th June 2004
1.Gentoo 2004.1 AMD64 cd from lsl.com.au
Hardware Asus L5000D Series Notebook www.asus.com/
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ L2 Cache: 1024K
512MB DDR RAM
80GB Hard drive
DVD-RW
Nvidia crush K8 chip set
Nvidia 64MB graphic card
15" SXGA Asus ACE View TFT

2.Booting Gentoo CD
press ESC when booting, a choice of boot drives is given - I chose the DVD drive.
used default kernel, just pressed enter

L1 I Cache 64K, D cache 64K
L2 Cache 1024K
BogoMips 3555.32

detected powernow-k8, too many lo freq table entries

3.Resize partition and make new partitions

Came with Microsoft XP Pro installed on /dev/hdc2
resized /dev/hdc2 to approx 10G using parted

# parted
# resize 2 1804.175 10316.594

gave error : \WINDOWS\SETUPLOG.TXT is 1162k but it has 62 clusters (1984k)
Ignore/Cancel?
I told it to ignore(i)
(error didn't effect anything.)

Then exited parted and rebooted to check results.
Windows XP Pro booted OK.

*****************************************************
80G hard drive

/dev/hdc1 1843820 1K Blocks - hidden fat32 partition with XP recovery data
/dev/hdc2 76282048 1K Blocks - resized to 10G - winxp
/dev/hdc3 /boot 100M ext2
/dev/hdc4 extended
/dev/hdc5 swap space 1000M swap
/dev/hdc6 /tmp 300M reister
/dev/hdc7 /var 1000M reister
/dev/hdc8 / 5000M reister
/dev/hdc9 /usr 10G reister
/dev/hdc10 /home rest
*******************************************************
4.Make file systems
Had to use mkfs.reiserfs, mkreiserfs didn't want to work with 2.6 kernel.

5.Make swap and turn it on.

6.Mount partitions

Make /mnt/gentoo/usr-var-boot-proc, mount and change permissions of tmp

7.Check date, correct.

8.extract stage 1 tarball

9.Compile options

10.Chroot

11.set use flags

12.bootstrap - network needed
Had to set up network by rebooting as there was no network commands available
and re-mount and chroot system.

Network
# modprobe sk98lin
# ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.3 broadcast 192.168.1.255 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
# route add default gw 192.168.1.1
add nameserver IP address to /etc/resolv.conf

run bootstrap script.
# /usr/portage/scripts/bootstrap.sh
# source /etc/profile

13.Emerge system
# emerge -pv system
# emerge system

down loaded 39 of 86 packages started generating segfaults then
got to the end of downloaded packages - commands segfaulting.

reboot, start again missing steps that don't need to be done again.

# emerge system
slocate compile failed

again
#emerge system

conitinued with another 20 emerges.

opensell-3.8_p1 compile - configure: error: *** libpam missing

# emerge pam
# emerge system again

completed three remaining emerges without error
df, mount don't work? not certain if they should or not?

14.Install kernel

set time zone
install sources

*Network card is Marvell Yukon Chipset / Syskonnect SK-98xx Support
under Ethernet (1000 Mbit)

*Sound - OSS driver is Intel ICH (i8xx) audio support

*Selected DRI support - not certain if nessesary but everything works
with it selected.

*Select IOMMU support in Processor type and features - AGP won't be
available but apparently is included automatically.

compile kernel
install kernel

15. add timezone

# etc-update
file doesn't exist.

# emerge sync
just to make certain its all there

getting portage errors - einfo and similar programs, command not found
also passwd update not working - pam not starting

emerged portage to a lower version then emerge back to latest
seemed to get rid of einfo errors

passwd still not working - emerge pam and shadow again - fixed problem

16.Recompile everything, to be certain.

17.Finish of install as handbook
create fstab
network setupinstall grub
install system tools
add users

18.Install xorg and other apps.
xorg compiled without errors but a known problem with hardened USE flag
made it unusable.

Recompiled gcc and recompiled xorg with -hardened make.conf USE
flag, this fixed problem.

# emerge nvidia-kernel
# emerge nvidia-glx

Followed standard xorg configuration worked first time.
Set Modes to "1400x1050"
There is an occasional .25 second flicker, can't see any problems in logs,
might have to tinker with xorg config, but not a major problem.
Might be a problem with nvidia drivers?

firefox works
gqview works
mplayer works
gnumeric compile fails

18.Some benchmarks
get about 3440 FPS from glxgears.
does 1 setiathome unit in about 3.5 hours.
Sunday July 11 2004.

Any suggested tweaks appreciated.

[bonki]

Which monitor sync ranges did you choose during the xorg configuration process?
_________________
"Security is always a compromise between convenience...and...err...security."
Registered Linux User #355149.

[tridy]

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Monitor Model"
HorizSync 28-96
VertRefresh 50-75
Option "DPMS"

xvidtune reports it is using
Horiz 64.89
Vert 59.98
at 1400x1040

[tridy]

app-office/gnumeric-1.2.2 works to my satisfaction.

I have solved the .25 second occasional flicker I mentioned.
It was occuring because I had framebuffer support compiled in the kernel but I didn't have vga=0x31B or similar on the kernel line in grub.conf.

I remove vga=0x31B and it appears again so I'm pretty certain this was the problem.