My latest acquisition is Dell Inspiron 8500 notebook. First I wanted to use FreeBSD, which worked for me quite well on the I5000 I had. But it lackes support for the Ethernet Adapter, which I need a lot. So I installed Red Hat 9 modified according to the instruction on this excellent "Linux on the Dell Inspiron 8500 (I8500)" guide.
Because I had troubles with the way Red Hat does things - e.g. I do no initialise networking right at boot time, but only afterwards depending on where I am - I started to modify the setup. Also because some software is not avaible as RPM I compiled myself. Now I start to dislike the resulting system, and would prefer something else. I started collecting links describing other Linux installation for the I8500 or similar Dell Laptops:
Red Hat Linux 9 on the Dell Inspiron 8500,
Gentoo Linux on the Dell Inspiron 8500,
Gentoo on Dell Latitude D800,
Gentoo Linux auf einem Dell Latitude D600,
Installing Gentoo from an existing Linux distribution
I proceeded the following way to install Gentoo ont the 20 GByte /dev/hda2 partition I had previously reserved for FreeBSD. Most time only the commands are shown, sometimes the output too. The shell prompt is always show as "#" for root and "$" for a regular user, even when the actual prompt is different.
# mke2fs -j /dev/hda2 # mkdir -p /mnt/gentoo # mount /dev/hda2 /mnt/gentoo # cd /tmp # curl -O ftp://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/mirror/gentoo/releases/x86/1.4/stages/x86/stage1-x86-1.4-20030806.tar.bz2 # curl ftp://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/mirror/gentoo/releases/x86/1.4/stages/x86/stage1-x86-1.4-20030806.tar.bz2.md5 a0db1f3ff23e59e73454ddc934ab1074 stage1-x86-1.4-20030806.tar.bz2 # openssl md5 stage1-x86-1.4-20030806.tar.bz2 MD5(stage1-x86-1.4-20030806.tar.bz2)= a0db1f3ff23e59e73454ddc934ab1074 # cd /mnt/gentoo # tar -xvjpf /tmp/stage1-*.tar.bz2 # mount -t proc proc /mnt/gentoo/proc # cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/resolv.conf # chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash # env-update # source /etc/profile # echo 'GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/ftp/mirror/gentoo/"' >>/etc/make.conf # emerge sync # echo 'CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"' >>/etc/make.conf # echo 'USE="acpi alsa -apm avi crypt cups dga directfb dvd encode fbcon gif gnome gtk java jpeg mozilla mpeg perl png sdl spell sse tiff truetype X -xinerama xmms xv"' >>/etc/make.conf # echo 'ALSA_CARDS="intel8x0"' >>/etc/make.conf # cd /usr/portage # scripts/bootstrap.sh # emerge system # ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/right/Europe/Zurich /etc/localtime # echo '/dev/hda2 / ext3 noatime 1 1' > /etc/fstab # echo 'proc /proc proc defaults 0 0' >> /etc/fstab # emerge sys-kernel/ac-sources # cd /usr/src/linux # wget -O .config http://tinymicros.com/inspiron/files/config-2.4.21-dis4.txt # cat >> .config <<'EOF' CONFIG_BLK_DEV_LOOP=m CONFIG_NETFILTER=y CONFIG_IP_NF_CONNTRACK=m CONFIG_IP_NF_FTP=m CONFIG_IP_NF_AMANDA=m CONFIG_IP_NF_IRC=m CONFIG_IP_NF_IPTABLES=m CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_LIMIT=m CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_MAC=m CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_PKTTYPE=m CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_MULTIPORT=m CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_TOS=m CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_STATE=m CONFIG_IP_NF_MATCH_CONNTRACK=m CONFIG_IP_NF_FILTER=m CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_REJECT=m CONFIG_IP_NF_NAT=m CONFIG_IP_NF_NAT_NEEDED=y CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_MASQUERADE=m CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_REDIRECT=m CONFIG_IP_NF_NAT_AMANDA=m CONFIG_IP_NF_NAT_IRC=m CONFIG_IP_NF_NAT_FTP=m CONFIG_IP_NF_TARGET_LOG=m CONFIG_IRDA=m CONFIG_IRLAN=m CONFIG_IRNET=m CONFIG_IRCOMM=m CONFIG_IRDA_CACHE_LAST_LSAP=y CONFIG_IRDA_FAST_RR=y CONFIG_IRDA_DEBUG=y CONFIG_IRTTY_SIR=m CONFIG_IRPORT_SIR=m CONFIG_EXT3_FS=y CONFIG_JBD=y CONFIG_JOLIET=y CONFIG_UDF_FS=m CONFIG_NFS_V3=y CONFIG_LOCKD_V4=y CONFIG_FB=y CONFIG_DUMMY_CONSOLE=y CONFIG_FB_VESA=y CONFIG_VIDEO_SELECT=y CONFIG_FBCON_CFB8=y CONFIG_FBCON_CFB16= CONFIG_FBCON_CFB24=y CONFIG_FBCON_CFB32=y CONFIG_FONT_8x8=y CONFIG_FONT_8x16=y CONFIG_USB_DEVICEFS=y CONFIG_USB_PRINTER=m CONFIG_CRYPTO=y CONFIG_CRYPTO_HMAC=y CONFIG_CRYPTO_MD4=m CONFIG_CRYPTO_MD5=m CONFIG_CRYPTO_SHA1=m CONFIG_CRYPTO_SHA256=m CONFIG_CRYPTO_SHA512=m CONFIG_CRYPTO_DES=m CONFIG_CRYPTO_BLOWFISH=m CONFIG_CRYPTO_TWOFISH=m CONFIG_CRYPTO_SERPENT=m CONFIG_CRYPTO_AES=m CONFIG_CRYPTO_DEFLATE=m CONFIG_CRYPTO_TEST=m EOF # make oldconfig # make dep && make clean bzImage modules modules_install # cp -i /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot # emerge app-admin/syslog-ng # rc-update add syslog-ng default # emerge sys-apps/dcron # rc-update add dcron default # crontab /etc/crontab # emerge sys-apps/pcmcia-cs # emerge net-wireless/wireless-tools # passwd # groupadd -g 500 claudio # useradd claudio -u 500 -g claudio -m -G users,wheel,audio -s /bin/bash # passwd claudio # echo garfield > /etc/hostname # echo inodes.ch > /etc/dnsdomainname # echo '127.0.0.1 localhost garfield garfield.inodes.ch' > /etc/hosts # emerge grub # etc-update # exit # cd / # umount /mnt/gentoo/proc # umount /mnt/gentoo
I installed grub, so it is there, but still use the grub on my red hat partition. I would later copy grub.conf over to the gentoo partition. The entry needed to boot the partition is:
title Gentoo root (hd0,1) kernel /boot/bzImage root=/dev/hda2 hdc=ide-scsi vga=6
Then I booted into Gentoo and performed these additional installations:
# emerge nvidia-glx # modules-update # emerge fvwm # emerge gvim
After copying the XF86Config from my Red Hat partition I could start X, but the USB mouse would not work, because the necessary modules were not loaded. More on that on my Gentoo page where I write also about additional kernel configuration I made later.
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