LINUX ON I8500 (<- LINUX <- HOME)

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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