Saturday, October 15, 2005
Gentoo Linux on Dell Inspiron 9300
I recently became the owner of a Dell Inspiron 9300. This was a replacement laptop for my old Dell Inspiron 8600. Inspiron 9300 is a great desktop replacement laptop with a huge 17 inch display. Its slightly on the heavier side, that is something you have to make do with for the 17 inch display. I am running a dual boot of Windows XP and Gentoo Linux on this laptop. In this post I will try to cover the installation of Gentoo on this laptop.
Basic Installation
I use gcc-3.4 as my compiler as it supports Architecture specific optimisation for the Pentium M processors. To install from stage1 using gcc-3.4 you need to add the following lines to your /etc/portage/package.keywords
Additional features for Gentoo Linux
The DVD drive by default runs without DMA. By editing the kernel headers you can enable DMA. Edit the file/include/Linux/libata.h, change the line
Unresolved issues
E-mail: bharathblog at gmail dot com
Last updated: Sunday, February 22, 2006
| Hardware component | Status | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Pentium M Processor 750, 1.86GHz | Works | |
| 17 WUXGA TFT Display | Works | |
| 128MB ATI Mobility Radeon X300 | Works | Requires ATI Linux drivers. |
| 1024MB 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM (2x512) | Works | |
| 60GB (5,400 RPM) Hard Drive | Works | |
| NEC ND-6650 8X DVD+/-RW Drive | Works | DMA requires libata support. |
| Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base | Works | |
| Intel ProWireless 2200 802.11b/g Mini PCI Wireless | Works | Requires Intel ipw2200 drivers. |
| Internal Intel AC'97 56k Modem Controller | Don't know | Haven't tried. |
| Dell Wireless 350 Bluetooth 2.0 | Works | Tested with Plantronics bluetooth headset. |
| Intel AC'97 Audio Controller | Works | |
| PCMCIA Cardbus: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II | Seems to work | Haven't tested, dont own any hardware. |
| FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C552 | Seems to work | Haven't tested, dont own any hardware. |
| SD Card Reader: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 | Not supported |
Basic Installation
- I installed my system from stage1 using the 2005.1 Universal CD.
- For installation documentations use the Gentoo installation handbook.
- The hard drive is a regular IDE drive but accessed as a scsi device using the libata ata_piix sata driver.
- For ATI driver emerge ati-drivers, followed by opengl-update ati.
I use gcc-3.4 as my compiler as it supports Architecture specific optimisation for the Pentium M processors. To install from stage1 using gcc-3.4 you need to add the following lines to your /etc/portage/package.keywords
sys-devel/gcc ~x86Then run the bootstrap.sh script. Once gcc-3.4 has been installed edit your make.conf to change the arch type as pentium-m from whatever you were using earlier.
sys-libs/libstdc++-v3 ~x86
source /etc/profileYou need to re-source /etc/profile so that you use the gcc-3.4 as the default compiler. Re-emerge glibc and gcc-3.4. Unmerge gcc-3.3 and then proceed from stage2 to stage3.
Additional features for Gentoo Linux
The DVD drive by default runs without DMA. By editing the kernel headers you can enable DMA. Edit the file
#undef ATA_ENABLE_ATAPIto
#define ATA_ENABLE_ATAPIEnable scsi cdrom support if you hadn't enabled it earlier. Recompile your kernel and reboot, you need to pass ide1=noprobe to the kernel. The DVD drive will now appear as a scsi device /dev/sr0 and not as a IDE device /dev/hdc. hdparm doesn't work with scsi devices without the libata passthru patch from Jeff Garzik.
Unresolved issues
- Internal Modem
- Firewire
- SD card reader, doest not work as it is not supported.
- Cardbus/PCMCIA
- lscpi
- Kernel .config
- xorg.conf
- make.conf
- kernel-2.6 (list of modules that I load on boot. I use a modular kernel hence a lot of modules are loaded.)
E-mail: bharathblog at gmail dot com
Last updated: Sunday, February 22, 2006
