Install of Gentoo on a Toshiba Satellite A20 - s259

currently it is running 2.6.10-gentoo-r6 that is the latest dev-sources as of Jan. 30, 2005.

Toshiba Support Page

IDE

It appears to have an Ali ide controller. So the ali dma config option in the kernel needs to be enabled. Before enabling this I was getting "too many ticks" errors.

Wireless

The mad-wifi driver supports the built in wireless card. It took a little work to get it working, but I don't remember what I had to do. You can start by emerging madwifi-driver and madwifi-tools.

LCD Brightness

You must enable toshiba acpi in the kernel. This provides a way to change the brightness through /proc/acpi/toshiba/lcd. If you want to use the fn buttons to change the brightness then you need the fnfx package:
http://fnfx.sourceforge.net/ There isn't a ebuild for this yet.
The fnfx monitors the fn key presses and updates the /proc/acpi/toshiba/lcd accordingly.

ACPI resume

This is partially working.

To test it I boot into single user mode. Then I run

echo -n mem > /sys/power/state

this puts it to sleep just fine. I close the lid and open it again.
It prints lin in yellow and then someting about "C!" and then it comes back to the same prompt.
So it seems like it is working.

When I first tried this it would reboot immediatedly when I opened the lid.
That test was with kernel 2.6.9-gentoo-r1 and toshiba bios 1.10

I then upgraded by bios to 1.40 and:
It would print a yellow "lin" and then reboot.

I googled "yellow lin acpi resume", and found a patch on the lkml addressing this:
http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0411.1/2118.html
Now it resumes correctly in single user mode.

I have yet to test it with all the normal stuff running.

BIOS Update

The bios update file available from the toshiba support site contains an .iso that can be used to make a bootable CD for updating the bios. So having windows installed is not necessary.
It is a little difficult to find the latest bios update. Going to the link at the top if this page and then clicking on Downloads, only shows an update for bios version 1.20. However if you go to this page:
http://eu.computers.toshiba-europe.com/cgi-bin/ToshibaCSG/download_bios.jsp
You can find the 1.40 version of the bios.

Unresolved Issues

running emerge -s XXX is very slow to get started. Much slower than the thinpad t40 that I normally work with. I think this must be harddrive related but I haven't looked into it much yet.

Other Toshiba Laptop Sites

http://linux-laptop.net/
http://cold.sunsite.dk/toshiba/
http://lucidforest.net/~humanpeople/linux.html

Other Relvent Links

http://www.emperorlinux.com/ - a place that sets up laptops with linux.
If you want a linux laptop without figuring out these details

Contact Me

scott@concord.org