[Leaplist] Fedora 9 on Gateway P-7811FX "Centrino 2" notebook
Bryan J. Smith
b.j.smith at ieee.org
Tue Sep 2 10:08:02 EDT 2008
[ I'll blog this soon enough, with more info, probably a
few Bugzilla entries too so PCI IDs/driver support is added.
This is for Google for now, as I see people with P-7811FX
systems, as well as older P-68??FX products, that run into
the same issues. ]
I just picked up one of these:
http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529668123.php
Understand that "Centrino 2" was just announced by Intel in
July, and the first notebooks are just hitting. Basically
it's the mobile version of the Intel P45 chipset, although
not quite like before -- not everything is Intel. ;)
o WHY I BOUGHT THIS?
Since 2006 I have heavily relied on a "desktop replacement."
My mainstay was an HP Pavilion dv9000z (1st Gen HP 17") with
the Turion x2 + GeForce Go 7600 256MB. I had upgraded the
memory to 4GiB + 2x320GB disk over the years.
Although I upgraded my desktop at the January Installfest
to a Core 2 Duo E6850 + 8800GT 512MiB, I rarely used it
after a few months. When the new Gateway P-7811FX hit
Best Buy for $1250 this weekend, I pulled the trigger.
Now I have this P8400 Centrino 2 Duo (basically the mobile
version of the E8400, slowed from 3GHz to 2.26GHz, and L2
cut in half from 6MiB to 3MiB), plus GeForce Go 9800M GTS
with 512MiB of dedicated GDDR3. BTW, the system RAM is
also DDR3 (not DDR2 ;).
o QUICK LINUX NOTES:
- Marvell "SyKonnect" Ethernet
Despite the Intel "Centrino(R) 2" branding, it's a non-
Intel Ethernet chipset. The "skge" driver in Fedora 9
didn't cut it, and I had to build the "sk98lin" driver.
I think it's just a PCI ID 'thang, but I could be wrong.
- Intel 5100AGN WLAN
Although the driver/firmware is experimental, with an
updated Fedora 9 kernel, it does seem to load the Intel
2008 June 5000AGN firmware on the iwl4965 driver without
throwing an error code. It can then see the WLANs.
It wouldn't connect to my 802.11g WLAN with WPA2 though.
Ironically, it had trouble connecting to my 802.11g WLAN
in the pre-loaded Vista, it didn't like my WPA2 setup.
Even though it should support fall-back to 802.11b and WPA,
a few WLAN MACs just don't. I've seen this before on other products too.
I'm going to try the open AP at my hotel tonight. Sounds
like Intel's got some bugs in its firmware at this point,
even under Vista, for the 5000 series. ;)
- All other hardware notes
Audio works, including "soft" speaker v. headphones support
(software-based switch to headphones, a common 'thang since
2006). Storage via AHCI works flawlessly, although SATA-based
ATAPI timeouts and disconnects to the optical was not a
surprise (including under Vista, I've seen this with many
vendors now, sigh -- poor design). SD, ExpressCard (my
3.5G GSM card from AT&T is "click and connect"), etc... as
expected.
The nVidia drivers from 7/30 fully support the GeForce Go
8800M GTS 512MiB, including the HDMI out it seems. Ahhh,
1920x1200 in a notebook, very bright'n beautiful -- although
the 19V @ 6.32A (120W, *YIKES*!) was a shocker coming from
my HP's already "beefy" 19V @ 4.94A (90W).
Didn't try suspend/resume yet.
- Funky partitioning ...
They ship 3 partitions, on odd-boundaries ...
10GiB "Recovery Partition" -- starts cyl/hd 0/32 (not 0/1)
90GiB "OS" Vista (C:) -- also on odd boundaries
90GiB "DATA" Vista (D:)
You can see the "odd geometry" by using an "expert" mode
in your slicing/partitioning program (e.g. "x" menu in
fdisk). The only "good" thing was that they used standard
hd/sec 255/63 geometry. That made things easy on the
included 200GB to "copy/relocate" to another disk.
I was moving over my 2x320GB drives from my HP. Yeah, yeah,
taking out a 7200rpm 2.5" drive and putting in a pair of
5400rpm 2.5" drives. Oh well. As most of you who
know me know, I *HATE* to re-install Linux. I never, ever
do it, _period_. ;)
Luckily I always keep a good 32-64GiB "free" at the
beginning of my disks, putting my root (/) as /dev/sda3.
So I did the following ...
NOTE: I do *NOT* recommend this for people who don't know
their way around a disk (good way to kill existing data).
[ Drives: sda = original 200GB (I don't want to modify)
sdb = first drive 320GB from HP (existing data)
sdc = eSATA Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750GB)
("temporary/throw-away" drive) ]
A. Use a "raw" dd to copy the first ~100GB to an
"intermediate" drive (thanx to the eSATA port ;)
E.g., dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdc bs=8225280 count=13000
NOTE: bs= comes from hd/sec 255/63 * 512 bytes =~ 8M
fdisk lists it ;)
That gives me the partition table (as long as the
hd/sec geometry matches, which almost always are 255/63,
and I always force such during an install), plus the
first two partitions complete and as-exact.
B. Resize the /dev/sdc2 slice to ~32GB
Used gparted.
C. Now a "raw" dd to copy the first ~45GB to the
"existing" drive (without wiping out data).
Close but under cylinder 6145.
E.g., dd if=/dev/sdc of=/dev/sdb bs=8225280 count=5700
NOTE: Existing Linux root (/) is /dev/sdb3 and
starts at 48GiB (cyl 6145-8192 = 16GiB)
D. Now re-create rest of partition table starting with
/dev/sdb3 (83 for root), /dev/sdb4 (Extended), etc...
I create a new /dev/sdb7 for "DATA" Vista (D:).
E. Do a raw "dd" of the remaining "DATA" Vista drive.
E.g., dd if=/dev/sda3 of=/dev/sdb7 bs=512M
NOTE: bs=512M for fast as possible, I'm doing the whole
partition, and I've got 4GiB RAM.
Alternatively: You could used Parted to copy NTFS
filesystems, even resize them too.
F. Here's my disk as it stands ...
10G ( odd ) sdb1 : 27h : Gateway recovery part
32G ( odd ) sdb2 : 7h : NTFS "OS" Vista (C:)
~6G (- 6144) - To be allocated to sda2 (= 38GiB)
16G (- 8192) sdb3 : 83h : Linux / -- cyl 6144-8192
~270G (- end) sdb4 : Fh : Extended (LBA) -- cyl 8193+
16G (-10240) sdb5 : 82h : Linux swap
16G (-12288) sdb6 : 82h : Linux /tmp
90G (-2xxxx) sdb7 : 7h : NTFS "DATA" Vista (D:)
~38G (-28672) - To be allocated to sda7 (= 128GiB)
~81G (- end) sdb8 : n/a : Spare space (MD/LDM/LVM)
The second column are the end cylinders. The first two
slices/partitions are odd-ball. But after that, I _always_
start on a multiple of 1,024 (8GiB) _exactly_. That has
saved me in the past when it came to fitting geometry, copying
partitions, etc...
I maintain the "odd alignment" on hd/sec for the first two
partitions (sdb1, sdb2) to match the original 200GB disk.
But after that, I do my standard "alignment" on perfect
cylinder boundaries (each 8MiB) of 1,024 (so 8GiB for 1,024).
I resize /dev/sdb2 ("OS" Vista) to ~38GiB so it ends at
cylinder 6144 (exactly 48GiB into the disk), where my
existing root starts. I then resize /dev/sdb7 ("DATA"
Vista) so it's now 128GiB exactly at cylinders 12289-28672
(exactly 96GiB - 224GiB into the disk). I do the resizing
in Vista itself, for maximum "safety."
I then move /dev/sdb so it is now /dev/sda, and put the
original, _unmodified_ 200GB in a bubble bag for now, and
it will remain "unused" until I trust this setup (then I'll
recycle it as a server backup or general disk -- I've gone
all 2.5" in my new server).
I then put in my 2nd 320GB disk as /dev/sdb, which has a
similar layout in perfect geometry 16GiB/32GiB/128GiB
slices/partitions, but only all Linux (Linux /var, more
swap, /usr, /usr/local, /export/local, etc...). A "rescue"
CD boot later, rebuild the initrd for the AHCI (instead of
sata_nv of the HP) and re-install of the GRUB MBR, and I'm
dual-booting Vista and Linux, using my existing Linux
system (other than the small notes above).
Taking out the "dd" portions (resizing was actually very
quick), it only took me about 30 minutes or so. With "dd"
portions it was about 3 hours. Spent another 2 hours just
getting Vista "usable" (Firefox, other things) and another
2 hours dorking with WLAN under both Vista and Linux.
--
Bryan J Smith Professional, Technical Annoyance
b.j.smith at ieee.org http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith
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Fission Power: An Inconvenient Solution
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