F8 - Intel laptop installation adventure (and networking question)

[John Summerfield]

Frank Cox wrote:
> I have been setting up a new high-end Intel Core 2 Duo laptop with all the bells
> and whistles.  It's apparently one of the first Intel "mix-and-match" laptops
> that's built from standard parts like a regular desktop computer -- buy the
> clamshell, buy the motherboard, (etc) and put it together.  And a mighty nice
> computer it is, indeed.  However, because it's a custom-built machine, it has
> no model number that I'm aware of.  (It also didn't come with Windows, or any
> OS at all.  Which suited me just fine.  It did come with some Windows drivers
> on a CD.)  It seems to have the very latest version of "everything", which is
> probably the cause of the situations listed below.
> 
> Plan A was to install Centos 5 on it.  My usual method of installing Centos or
> Fedora is to boot off of a boot CD and then point it to my fileserver and do
> the installation from there.  I quickly discovered that booting the Centos
> installation disk didn't give me anything but a text-mode screen, and I had no
> network access.  Accordingly, I installed Centos 5 on it from a series of CD's,
> but after installation I still had nothing but text (no X) and no network card.
> 
> I tried installing F8/i386 on it.  The boot CD started and showed me the
> graphic installer screen.  However, it got as far as the line that says
> "loading installer" and sat for several minutes, then continued and allowed me
> to tell it to do an install from NFS.  At the stage where it normally says
> "loading image" (the first step of the actual install) it hung up.  The "F3"
> console told me that it cant' load image/stage2.img.
> 
> I then tried installing F8/x86_64 on it.  Joy -- the boot CD started,
> went past "loading installer" without the long pause (maybe only one or two
> seconds this time) and showed me the graphic installer screen and I had network
> access to install the rest of the operating system. Or so I thought.  Same
> problem.   Telling it to do a NFS install from my fileserver also stalls at the
> same place as the F8/i386 setup, with the same error.
> 
> I then checked the Fedora mirrors list and tried a direct FTP install of
> F8/i386 over the Internet.  No joy -- exactly the same experience (including
> the long pause during the CD boot-up) that I had before.
> 
> I then tried a direct HTTP install over the Internet of the F8/i386 version and
> it got a lot further -- up to the stage where it normally says "gathering
> package information."  In this case, it told me there is a problem with the
> package list (I can't remember the exact wording) and gave me the options of
> "retry" or "reboot".  "Retry" gave me the same error over again, and "reboot"
> worked.
> 
> I then tried a direct HTTP install over the Internet of F8/x86_64 (using
> gulus.usherbrooke.ca) and that worked fine and I got the operating system
> installed and running perfectly.
> 
> It took me most of a day re-writing /etc/modprobe.conf  and rebooting before I
> managed to get the sound to work.
> 
> alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
> options snd-card-0 index=0
> options snd-hda-intel model=toshiba
> 
> Why toshiba?  Beats me.   I don't think this laptop has anything to do with
> Toshiba; I tried that option out of desperation and it worked.
> 
> I anticipated a similar round of joy when attempting to get the Intel wireless
> networking to work, but after following Craig White's suggestion to get Network
> Manager running, and by using System-Administration-Network to check off that
> any user can enable the connection, use DHCP, and changed the mode from Auto to
> Managed, it just started working by magic.
> 
> Two questions arise from this:
> 
> First, has anyone else had any problem with getting a NFS installation to
> work?  I know that it works on other computers -- I installed F8/x86_64 onto
> this computer from my fileserver, for example.  Is there something special
> about laptops in general, or perhaps this laptop in particular, that causes it
> to not work?
> 
> Second, are my current networking settings correct for most or all wireless
> access points?  In other words, if I take this thing to a location that offers
> wireless Internet access, can I expect it to "just work" like it now does with
> my own router, or will I have to fiddle around with the mode settings or
> something else?  (As a side note, if changes would be or could be required, can
> a "mere user" make those changes, or would you require the root password or
> some sort of a sudo setup to allow that?)
> 

You are very short on hardware details. Some of the symptoms are 
familiar, and you may garner some info on the fedora test list, back 
when F8 was in testing.

You should name names, and since you can, publish what lspci says about 
the system, and maybe (part of) what dmidecode says too.

A lot of vendors rebadge others' products, it might be that your mobo is 
one used by Toshiba, or it might have a similar selection of slices of 
silicon.



-- 

Cheers
John

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