HOWTO: Gentoo 2005.1@Dell 700m

gentoo

This HOWTO summarize the efforts on Gentoo official forum.

This HOWTO is provided “AS IS” without any express or implied warranty. You can redistribute it under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

It is highly inspired by HARDWARE Gentoo Acer Travelmate 803LCi Manual

Technical specification of Dell 700m:

The output of lspci:

/sbin/lspci | cut -b 13-
Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
System peripheral: Intel Corp. 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
VGA compatible controller: Intel Corp. 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
Display controller: Intel Corp. 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 83)
ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801DBM (ICH4-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 03)
IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801DBM (ICH4-M) IDE Controller (rev 03)
SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
Modem: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 03)
Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)
CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI7420 CardBus Controller
FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments PCI7x20 1394a-2000 OHCI Two-Port PHY/Link-Layer Controller
Unknown mass storage controller: Texas Instruments PCI7420/PCI7620 Dual Socket CardBus and Smart Card Cont. w/ 1394a-2000 OHCI Two-Port PHY/Link-Layer Cont. an
Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)

I just follow this HOWTO to install the basic system, we would note 700m-specific configuration in the rest HOWTO.

CFLAGS grant the power to Gentoo users to customize the compiler flag for the specific architecture. For the bootstrap phase:

CFLAGS="-march=pentium3 -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe"

For GCC 3.4, this CFLAG configuration is used by many l33ts in the forum:

CFLAGS="-mtune=pentium-m -march=pentium-m -pipe -mmmx -msse -msse2 -mfpmath=sse -fomit-frame-pointer -momit-leaf-frame-pointer -funit-at-a-time -frename-registers -O2 -Os -fno-align-functions -fno-align-jumps -fno-align-loops
-fno-align-labels -fno-reorder-blocks -fno-prefetch-loop-arrays"

A more conservative CFLAG is

CFLAGS="-O2 -mtune=pentium-m -mmmx -msse -msse2 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe -ftracer"

Don’t forget to set the LDFLAGS as well

LDFLAGS="-Wl,--as-needed�

After reviewing this benchmark result, I decide to use the JFS as the default file system for the sake of power-consuming. I’ve been using nitro-sources for almost one year flawlessly, this time, I would like to go back to gentoo-sources, currently 2.6.14-gentoo-r2

ACPI plays an essential role in power-saving, we would like to compile all ACPI features into the kernel:

Power management options (ACPI, APM) --->
 ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) Support --->
 [*] ACPI Support
 [*] Sleep States (EXPERIMENTAL)
  AC Adapter
  Battery
  Button
  Video
  Fan
  Processor
  Thermal Zone

And in the user land, remember to emerge acpid. It is easy to test whether acpi is running. Just close the lid, and check the system log:

Sep 16 18:12:32 zebra logger: ACPI action lid is not defined
Sep 16 18:12:33 zebra logger: ACPI action lid is not defined

SpeedStep is Intel’s DVFS approach, “conservative” governor dynamically scale the frequecncy according current work load, therefore, theoratically more power-saving than “ondemand” governor.

 CPU Frequency scaling --->
 [*] CPU Frequency scaling
  CPU frequency translation statistics
 [*] CPU frequency translation statistics details
 Default CPUFreq governor (userspace) --->
  'performance' governor
  'powersave' governor
 --- 'userspace' governor for userspace frequency scaling
  'ondemand' cpufreq policy governor
  'conservative' cpufreq governor
 --- CPUFreq processor drivers
  Intel Enhanced SpeedStep
 [*] Use ACPI tables to decode valid frequency/voltage pairs

In the user land,

emerge cpufreqd
cat /etc/conf.d/cpufrequtils
GOVERNOR="conservative"

TO BE CONTINUED …