Stuff about putting linux on a Toshiba Satellite 2430-402

About what hardware is in it

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82845G/GL [Brookdale-G] Chipset Host Bridge (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82845G/GL [Brookdale-G] Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB (Hub #1) (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB (Hub #2) (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB (Hub #3) (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BA/CA/DB PCI Bridge (rev 82)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801DB ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801DB ICH4 IDE (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801DB SMBus (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB AC'97 Audio (rev 02)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corp. 82801DB AC'97 Modem (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV17 [GeForce4 420 Go] (rev a3)
02:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB21 IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
02:01.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
02:04.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6933 Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
02:04.1 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6933 Cardbus Controller (rev 01)

Putting Slackware on it...

Pre-installed with Windows XP home (teletubby windows)
Installed parition magic SE 6.0
resized windows partition to 10GB (hda1)
created windows documents partition of 6GB (hda5)
linux root partition 10GB (hda6)
linux /home partition 6GB (hda7)
linux swap 500MB (hda8)
6.5GB free space (in the extended partition)
100MB /boot primary partition after end of extended (didn't work, wasn't bootable)

Installed from slackware 9.0 CD (from downloaded ISO)
"install full" option, nothing fancy.
Lilo installed to /dev/hda3


dd if=/dev/hda3 of=/win-c/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1

creates a bootsect file that can be run by the ntldr to make the system dual-boot without upsetting windows (having had expereince of running NT from lilo, and watching NT slowly steadily corrupt my disk)

Then, lots of kernel problems. Install kernel didn;t support all my hardware, so I complied a new one.

With 2.4.21, 2.4.22-pre4, 2.5.73, and 2.6.0-test1 I experienced a nasty lock-up on boot. "uncompressing linux..." "ok, booting the kernel..." or somethig like that, then the system locked hard. Pressing caps lock did nowt, and pressing the power button briefly had no effect. Holding the power button down for ten seconds did turn the machine off though, so I didn't have to prise the battery out.

I've read a couple of people's report online that compiling with just i386 cpu type selected, rather than p4 sorted out some problems on similar toshies, but from my various compiles with 2.4.22-pre4, its the APIC option that causes the problems. I've got the local APIC and IO APIC options enabled on my p4 desktop machine, so I know that the APIC stuff works ok on the p4 architecture (which does APIC stuff differently in architecture terms than previos processors).

Anyhoo, state I'm at now is that I've got a 2.4.22-pre4 kernel in with most stuff working... sound, network, usb. X windows stuff pretty much worked by itself, a few little tweaks had everything going to my satifaction. I haven't tried to see if the usb ports will do the high-rate stuff yet (I've got a usb2 hard drive adaptor that I'll try it with when I get round to it). Touchpad 'just works' so I don't know what I compiled in that made it go, but it does. I've heard tell of a modified driver that replicates the scrolling functions that the ALPS windows driver does, so I'm going to look into that. PCMCIA/cardbus stuff generally works, but I get a message about resources being tied up and stuff if I put a 2nd card in (and the 2nd card doesn't work). I have a feeling that this wouldn't be a problem if the APIC was working and stuff. I don't have any secure digital / multimedia cards so I can't test if that slot works, I didn't notice anything about it in the startup messages (but I need to increase the size of my ring buffer). When I plugged in my usb card reader, that was allocated devices sda, sdb, sdc. I'd have thought sda would already have been taken if the SD card slot was initialised and working.

I've compiled in options for pcmcia wlan cards, and I think the orinoco driver is supporting the Buffalo AirStation "WLI-PCM-L11GP" card that I've got, and the sparklan WL-311F aswell. I've plugged both of these cards in, and they seem to get recognised ok, and setup as /dev/eth1 iwconfig then does sensible stuff. Haven't actually communicated with either of them yet. I'm fiddling with seeing what's required to let Airsnort put them into monitor mode.

I've got the Riva framebuffer stuff compiled in, but haven't yet fiddled with the boot options to see if I can get a 1024x768 text console. I think that 800x600 stretched to fit a 1024x768 tft looks really ugly, so I've changed the bios option to stop streching the display (so now my text console sits in a rectangle in the middle of the screen).

I didn't compile in firewire support, I don't have any firewire devices.

As you can tell, this page is full of spelling mistakesw, typos, half-sentences, and lots of things that suggest its akin to a beta release. I feel that getting the machine doing what I want is more important than documenting the whole thing fully. That said, if there's anything specific that you think I might be able to tell you, and I haven't in the page, feel free to mail me. More stuff (images, info, corrections, whatever) will appear here when/if I can be bothered, or have anything else to say.

I omitted to say... I applied an ACPI patch to the kernel source before compile, compiling the ACPI stuff as modules did some "unresolved symbols" stuff. I probably ought to understand that more than I do (i.e. I don't). I compiled the ACPI stuff in the next time, and I've got a battery monitor thing now, which is nice.

04/08/2003

I've hooked up my usb2 hard drive now. I got a message about the hub worrying about power supply stuff, there's a whole story about that in itself which I need to write (badly designed usb product attempts to draw too much current, I've modified it so that the hard drive is powered from a battery pack, but the inteface is still drawing too much current from the usb). Anyhow, I copied a 550MB file across, and timed it to 130s. that's about 4.2MB/s, or 33Mbps (ignoring any crc/ecc, command data, etc), hence I reckoned that the interface must be running in usb2 mode, as the old standard is 12Mbps maximum. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

15/01/2004

I've just had a bit of a play with more recent kernels. 2.4.24 also causes the machine to lock if APIC support is compiled in. However, 2.6.0 looks at hardware, decides something is amiss, and does not enable the APIC.

I've been told that there's more APIC improvements in 2.6.1, but I haven't had time to have a look just yet.

One thing that is markworthy is that with 2.6.0 I can use both pcmcia slots simultaneously (in the example I tried, one wlan card gets IRQ 3, the other gets IRQ 5). This had not been possible with 2.4.22 (which I had been using) the second card attempted to operate also on IRQ3 and then was disabled because of the resource conflict.

Another manifestation of this problem appears to be in knoppix 3.3 - it looks like knoppix has a kernel with ACPI support compiled in which crashes this laptop. Passing the noapic option doesn't prevent the crash. I'm going to have a bit more of a look at knoppix when I get a minute, as I've not done anything with it before.