[gentoo-user] Gentoo Laptop

[gentoo-user] Gentoo Laptop

[Timothy A. Holmes]

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HI folks;

I am getting ready to rebuild my laptop in gentoo - it is currently running the first install of gentoo that i ever did and i need to clean it up and running right.

I want to use the laptop for the following - 
IM and IRC communications, (kopete and kvirc) 
photo processing (digikam and gimp and gthumb) 
web browsing etc (firefox and konqueror) 
VM ware to run windows
samba connections to my file servers (smb4k)
Regular file management (konqueror)
VNC and RDP Connections to windows servers
SSH connections to linux servers
VPN connection to my network at work
Video capture via firewire (kino or equivalent)
Use of detachable firewire hard drives
use of iomega external USB dvd burner (k3b)
use of internal cd rw drive / dvd reader (K3B)
i need the wireless to work - im using the windows driver and NDISwrapper

I use Fluxbox as my GUI

wishes / wants -- i would really love the flash cards from my camera to automout and be read/write automatically

Id also like the external usb / firewire drives and flash (thumb) dries to do the same thing

the screen is 1440x900

the hdd is 80gb and i will be partitioning it thusly:

32mb - boot
1gb - swap
remainder /

it has 1gb memory onboard

i have 2 hard drives for the machine, so i will keep the current gentoo install, and swap the other one in to build on, but that keeps it from being a rush job and hopefully i can get it right the first time.  I will be taking this machine with me for 3 weeks storm chasing this summer and i need to be able to depend on it to always JUST WORK without hassles etc.

I am looking for recomendations / suggestions / pitfalls etc to assembling this machine -- i will be following the manual for the build, but if anyone has done this type of builds in the past and has suggestions etc id appreciate recomendations, or links to appropriate howtos etc.  Many of the things i want to add / build have howtos associated with them, and i will be using them.




Thanks


here are the various specs on the machine

cat cpuinfo

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 15
model           : 2
model name      : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz
stepping        : 9
cpu MHz         : 3200.000
cache size      : 512 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 2
core id         : 0
cpu cores       : 1
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 2
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov   pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe cid xtpr
bogomips        : 6389.63

processor       : 1
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 15
model           : 2
model name      : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz
stepping        : 9
cpu MHz         : 3200.000
cache size      : 512 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 2
core id         : 0
cpu cores       : 1
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 2
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov   pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe cid xtpr
bogomips        : 6383.12


lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82865G/PE/P DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82865G/PE/P PCI to AGP Controller (rev 02)
00:03.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82865G/PE/P PCI to CSA Bridge (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev c2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10]
02:01.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82547EI Gigabit Ethernet Controller
03:01.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI4510 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 02)
03:01.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments PCI4510 IEEE-1394 Controller
03:02.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)



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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo Laptop

[Mick]

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On Thursday 08 March 2007 16:18, Timothy A. Holmes wrote:

> I use Fluxbox as my GUI
>
> wishes / wants -- i would really love the flash cards from my camera to
> automout and be read/write automatically

You would probably want hald, dbus which are now installed by default when you 
emerge KDE applications.  You may also want to install ivman for 
automounting.  Personally, I have stayed away from ivman and added something 
like this to my ~/.fluxbox/menu to choose when I mount/unmount my flashcards:
========================================
    [submenu] (CF / camera) 
</usr/kde/3.5/share/icons/slick/32x32/devices/camera.png>
      [exec] (mount CF) {pmount /dev/sda1 && konqueror /media/sda1} 
</usr/kde/3.5/share/icons/crystalsvg/32x32/devices/compact_flash_mount.png>
      [exec] (unmount CF) {sync && pumount /dev/sda1} 
</usr/kde/3.5/share/icons/crystalsvg/32x32/devices/compact_flash_unmount.png>
========================================
The assumption being that your camera/flashcard reader is detected 
as /dev/sda1, not /dev/sda.  Adjust or duplicate as required.

Alternatively, you need to launch Konqueror every time before you navigate to 
Storage Media and click to mount your camera device therein.

> Id also like the external usb / firewire drives and flash (thumb) dries to
> do the same thing

As my comments above.

> the hdd is 80gb and i will be partitioning it thusly:
>
> 32mb - boot
> 1gb - swap
> remainder /

Unless you are keen to keep your boot time in the nanoseconds, I suggest that 
you add a few more partitions and have swap (/dev/hda1), / (/dev/hda2), /home 
(/dev/hda3) on primary partitions.  The remaining goes into an extended 
partition (/dev/hda4), and /usr/portage (/dev/hda5) and /boot (/dev/hda6) on 
logical partitions thereafter.  My rational is as follows:

When you use swap you want it to be as fast as it gets.  Root and /home come 
next.  You keep /home on a separate partition for ease of back ups and to 
simplify a reinstall in the future, or a transfer to another machine 
altogether.  /usr/portage goes on a separate partition to minimise fs 
fragmentation.  /boot goes last because you only access it once every time 
you boot and it is small enough to quickly move/back up/restore to another 
partition if you decide to add some more partitions to your scheme.

DISCLAIMER
Before anyone starts shooting me down, this is just my preferred way of 
partitioning a laptop.  No doubt there are umpteen partitioning schemes out 
there, some simpler, some more complex, some of which involve LVM, EVM; etc.  
Not all of them maximise access/read/write times for the most often used 
directories/files and minimise fs fragmentation.

> it has 1gb memory onboard

I wish mine did too.  ;-)

> i have 2 hard drives for the machine, so i will keep the current gentoo
> install, and swap the other one in to build on, but that keeps it from
> being a rush job and hopefully i can get it right the first time.  I will
> be taking this machine with me for 3 weeks storm chasing this summer and i
> need to be able to depend on it to always JUST WORK without hassles etc.
>
> I am looking for recomendations / suggestions / pitfalls etc to assembling
> this machine -- i will be following the manual for the build, but if anyone
> has done this type of builds in the past and has suggestions etc id
> appreciate recomendations, or links to appropriate howtos etc.  Many of the
> things i want to add / build have howtos associated with them, and i will
> be using them.

If you like your current desktop and applications configuration you can copy 
over most config files from /etc and /home onto your new drive and then 
emerge packages as you need them.

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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