Gentoo Linux on the ASUS M6800N Laptop

I have installed Linux (Gentoo Linux) on my ASUS M6800N
Centrino Laptop. On this Website I want to provide Information on how to get everything up and running no this Laptop.

Model Info

lspci

This is the lspci output (on 2.6.1 kernel)

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82855PM Processor to I/O Controller (rev 21)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82855PM Processor to AGP Controller (rev 21)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB (Hub #1) (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB (Hub #2) (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB (Hub #3) (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB USB2 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BAM/CAM PCI Bridge (rev 83)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801DBM LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801DBM Ultra ATA Storage Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBM SMBus Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB AC’97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corp. 82801DB AC’97 Modem Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10]
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5788 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 03)
02:01.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev ac)
02:01.1 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev ac)
02:01.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C552 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 04)
02:02.0 Network controller: Intel Corp. PRO/Wireless LAN 2100 3B Mini PCI Adapter (rev 04)

You can view the whole output of “lspci -v” here.

cpuinfo

I have the M6800N with 1,5GHz Pentium-M CPU, this is the output of “cat /proc/cpuinfo”

processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 9
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1500MHz
stepping : 5
cpu MHz : 1500.258
cache size : 1024 KB
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 mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 tm pbe tm2 est
bogomips : 2957.31

lshw

Have a look at the complete output of “lshw” on this page.

Base Installation

Gentoo Live CD

I chose to use an experimental Live-CD that supports kernel 2.6.1 because I want to use some useful features like Suspend-to-disk.
You can get the CD Images via BitTorrent here, or via http: live-cd stage tarballs.

If you already have a running OS on your system, you will have to change the Boot Order in the BIOS setup because the Hard Disk is
the Primary Boot Device per default. At the boot prompt type “experimental” and press enter to start booting with the gentoo 2.6.1 kernel.

Following the official Installation Instrucions worked
nearly without problems for me (for detailed instruction read the official Docs):

Configure Network (net-setup eth0)
Create Partitions (cfdisk)
Create Filesystems (mkswap/mkreiserfs)
Mount Partitions (mount /dev/hdaX /mnt/gentoo …)
Place the experimental stage1 tarball in /mnt/gentoo and extract it (tar -xvjpf stageXYZ.tar.gz)
Let mirrorselect choose good mirrors (mirrorselect -a -s4 -o >> /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf

Now comes the one step which differs from the official instructions:

bind dev and proc filesystem:
mount -o bind /proc /mnt/gentoo/proc
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev
Well just some quick points here: when you compile the kernel, don’t forget to activate reiserfs (if you’re going to use it, of course), broadcom netxtreme, acpi4asus and chose vesa frambuffer driver (radeon won’t work).