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Old 05-07-2010, 07:45 PM   #1
donallen
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X fails on Toshiba netbook


I just bought a Toshiba NB305 netbook and attempted to install Slackware 13 on it. When attempting to start X, it failed, complaining that /dev/agpgart can't be opened because the file doesn't exist, which was true. The intel-agp module was loaded, as was the i915 module, which I believe is the correct driver for the graphics hardware in this machine (see lspci output below).

I gave up and installed Ubuntu 10.04, in which X works. Before I did that, I tried the most recent OpenBSD snapshot, and that fails the same way as Slackware did. I note that with Ubuntu, there is an agpgart module loaded; there is no such module provided with the Slackware distribution.

I really would prefer to run Slackware on this machine, so if anyone has any bright ideas, I'd appreciate suggestions. lspci output follows:

dca@olympia:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation N10 Family DMI Bridge
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation N10 Family Integrated Graphics Controller
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation N10 Family Integrated Graphics Controller
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation NM10 Family LPC Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH7 Family SATA AHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family SMBus Controller (rev 02)
07:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 02)
dca@olympia:~$

/Don Allen
 
Old 05-07-2010, 10:30 PM   #2
allend
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Apparently that netbook uses an Intel GMA3150 for graphics. That device is supported by xf86-video-intel-2.10.0 and later. I suggest that you try upgrading to slackware-current. You will be so glad you did!
 
Old 05-08-2010, 06:24 AM   #3
donallen
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Quote:
Originally Posted by allend View Post
Apparently that netbook uses an Intel GMA3150 for graphics. That device is supported by xf86-video-intel-2.10.0 and later. I suggest that you try upgrading to slackware-current. You will be so glad you did!
I was going to try downloading and building the latest stable kernel from kernel.org today, but I think your idea is better, especially since Patrick thinks things are in good enough shape to have done a beta release of 13.1. I'll give it a try and report back. Thanks very much for the suggestion.

And by the way, Ubuntu is not exactly distinguishing itself on this machine. I tried suspending the machine and could not reboot subsequently. I think it is scribbling on the mbr and whatever it leaves there to wake the machine back up is failing. I had to reinstall grub to fix it. Last night, I did a normal shutdown, and this morning the machine won't boot -- same symptom. Pretty disappointing ...

/Don
 
Old 05-08-2010, 01:41 PM   #4
donallen
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Quote:
Originally Posted by allend View Post
Apparently that netbook uses an Intel GMA3150 for graphics. That device is supported by xf86-video-intel-2.10.0 and later. I suggest that you try upgrading to slackware-current. You will be so glad you did!
Well, I am in the process of giving this a try, using the 5/4/2010 current snapshot. I think there's a problem with the kernel. I've got the system installed, my home directory created, and am attempting to rsync the contents of my home directory to this machine from a workstation on my ethernet. What I'm seeing is that files transfer for awhile, then stop for a long while, then resume transferring and the process repeats. Running 'top' on the target machine (the Toshiba netbook), I see that periodically (frequently), top hangs, doesn't refresh. If I poke the machine in some way, such as hitting ctrl, or touching the touchpad, top immediately refreshes and the transfers resume (I've got the two machines in the same room, so I can see the screen of the sending machine). After a time, things deteriorated on the Toshiba to the point where it stopped talking to the ethernet, was unresponsive to ctrl-alt-fn, but top would update if I typed ctrl.

I've done a lot of OS scheduler work in my career, and I think this is a scheduler problem, or a bad interaction between the scheduler and this machine. Ubuntu 10.04 did *not* exhibit this problem and uses a somewhat earlier kernel (2.6.32), so if I'm right about this, they broke something after 2.6.32.

The good news is that X works, as you thought it would. But the system is not usable at this point. I'm going to have to re-install Ubuntu, and just avoid suspending, which doesn't work. Hopefully, this will serve until Slackware 13.1 is released (with a fix for this problem).

Again, thanks for your trying to help, even though this didn't work out.

/Don
 
  


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