Acer_Extensa_4420

Overview

This is an article about running Gentoo on an Acer Extensa 4420. I specifically have a Extensa 4420-5874. This is my first wiki article so it may not be formated well or w/e, any help would be nice :-)

lspci Output

00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (Internal gfx)
00:04.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 7914
00:05.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (PCI Express Port 1)
00:06.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (PCI Express Port 2)
00:12.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 Non-Raid-5 SATA
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI0)
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI1)
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI2)
00:13.3 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI3)
00:13.4 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI4)
00:13.5 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB Controller (EHCI)
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 14)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 IDE
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 PCI to LPC Bridge
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RS690M [Radeon X1200 Series]
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8071 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 15)
05:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM94311MCG wlan mini-PCI (rev 01)
0b:06.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ711SP1 Memory CardBus Controller (rev 01)
0b:06.2 SD Host controller: O2 Micro, Inc. Integrated MMC/SD Controller (rev 02)
0b:06.3 Mass storage controller: O2 Micro, Inc. Integrated MS/xD Controller (rev 01)
0b:06.4 FireWire (IEEE 1394): O2 Micro, Inc. Firewire (IEEE 1394) (rev 02)

Installing

The Gentoo mini CD uses an older kernel that does not support the wireless card or nic card in this laptop. To make things easier I just installed it from the system rescue cd [1]. Tip: when booting type rescue64 for a 64 bit install.

my make.conf

CFLAGS="-march=athlon64 -O2 -pipe"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"

CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"

MAKEOPTS="-j3"

# portage

GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.mirrors.tera-byte.com/ http://gentoo.arctinetwork.ca/"

USE="X -gnome gtk -kde -qt3 -qt4 dbus lirc xfce4 xscreensaver alsa -oss jpeg spell xinerama truetype -ipv6 -cups"

# x

INPUT_DEVICES="mouse keyboard synaptics"

VIDEO_CARDS="fglrx"

Wireless

I had some probs getting my wireless working on the live cd. I wanted to get it working before I even installed it on the hard drive. I could use my wired but I know some people rely on wireless.

Make sure you have same wireless card as me:

lspci | grep wlan                                                
05:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM94311MCG wlan mini-PCI (rev 01)

I get this when I type iwconfig:

sudo iwconfig
wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:""  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Tx-Power=27 dBm   
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2346 B   
          Encryption key:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

If you don't even get this, try typing:

sudo modprobe b43

Once you get the wlan0 to show, test if it works. Type this:

sudo ifconfig wlan0 up

If you get an error like "SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory" then these. If you don;t already have access to the net on the laptop, download these files somewhere else and put them on a flash drive or something.

wget http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources/broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0.tar.bz2
wget http://bu3sch.de/b43/fwcutter/b43-fwcutter-009.tar.bz2

Now to get to work:

tar xjf b43-fwcutter-009.tar.bz2
tar xjf broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0.tar.bz2

cd b43-fwcutter-009
make

cd ..
cd broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0
cd kmod/
sudo ../../b43-fwcutter-009/b43-fwcutter -w "/lib/firmware" wl_apsta.o

sudo rmmod b43
sudo modprobe b43

Now it should work. Test it

sudo ifconfig wlan0 up
sudo iwlist wlan0 scan

You should get a list of access points. If you get a msg like "wlan0 Interface doesn't support scanning : Network is down" try it again.

Also as a tip, type "sudo dmesg" and you might get a really nice message like:

b43-phy3 ERROR: YOUR FIRMWARE IS TOO NEW. Please downgrade your firmware.
b43-phy3 ERROR: Use this firmware tarball: http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources/broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0.tar.bz2
b43-phy3 ERROR: Use this b43-fwcutter tarball: http://bu3sch.de/b43/fwcutter/b43-fwcutter-009.tar.bz2
b43-phy3 ERROR: Read, understand and _do_ what this message says, please.

---

I plan to fix this page up real nice later. I'm going to make it an entire guide to installing Gentoo on this bs laptop.

Windows

For people who plan on installing Windows XP and dual booting with Gentoo Linux:

• 1. Simply make your Windows XP partition the first one. So make a say 20gig NTFS partition as partition 1.

• 2. Install Grub and chain load it to the Windows boot loader.

• 3. On Gentoo Linux install NTFS-3g so you can read/write to the NTFS partitions including the XP partition.

Tip: The Acer Europe site seems to have the correct drivers listed and is much more organized. http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers/notebook/ex_4420.html Also, the ATI driver for the x1250 is crap. I used Omega drivers.