HOWTO VDR-Box

From Gentoo Linux Wiki

[edit] General

I recently spent about a week fiddling around with Gentoo 2005.5 on my Sony TR1A/P (PCG-482N). This laptop has a 16:9 low-reflectivity screen, a 900mhz pentium-m with some degree of speed-step, typically 512mb of memory, and a 30gb disk that defaults to 15gb x 2, with windows on the first partition and an empty D: on the second. This laptop is a mid 2003 design, but strangers still ask about it, in 2005! Models released after this TR1 include the TR2E(800mhz) TR2B(1ghz) TR3E(800mhz) TR3B(1ghz) and TR5(1.1ghz). They all use the Intel 866GM chipset, I think.

• I used the gentoo-dev kernel-sources, 2.6.11-rc4

[edit] Installation

Booting from install-x86-universal-2005.0 ISO, I found that gentoo managed a 1024x768 screen mode and detected and setup the LAN ethernet ok.

[edit] Listed PCI devices

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
0000:00:00.1 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
0000:00:00.3 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
0000:00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
0000:00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
0000:00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
0000:00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
0000:00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
0000:00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 83)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) IDE Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 03)
0000:02:05.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c475 (rev b8)
0000:02:05.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C551 IEEE 1394 Controller
0000:02:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB PRO/100 VE (MOB) Ethernet Controller (rev 83)
0000:02:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5211 802.11ab NIC (rev 01)

[edit] Failures

• the motion eye camera is not of the varieties supported by the meye.c kernel driver. It is a USB device of unknown type.
• Control of the actual LCD backlight (on or off), beyond changing its intensity
• Control of the LCD output to external CRT, both LCD and CRT, or back
• ACPI S3 suspend-to-memory (actually, resume from memory)

[edit] Tricky things

• Synaptics/ALPSs touchpad and settings
• Software suspend version 2
• Direct Rendering in X (glx and dri)
• Hearing anything out of the speakers
• Catching FN-events to control screen brightness, volume, lid close/open actions
• Doing something with the screen buttons (Capture, Vol + and Vol - and the + button)
• Using 1280x768 pixels in X but 1024x768 in text consoles
• CPU frequency scaling
• Atheros WIFI device and associated stuff (browsing available networks etc)
• FBSplash and other splashy stuff

[edit] Basic gentoo installation

Following the basic instructions at gentoo.org quick install worked ok. This laptop had a two partition disk so I just left /dev/hda1 as it was (windows) then removed /dev/hda2 and made a /boot (64mb) a swap (1gb) and a / (the rest) in hda2 thru hda4.

Plan to take a day off when you emerge xorg-x11 etc. It will take a long time.

TO BE CONTINUED..