Setting up Linux on Toshiba Satellite 1805-S177

This description is quite likely fits all 1800-1805 series. But I tried it on Toshiba Satellite 1805-S177. This is model is similar to 1805-S207 but DVD/CD/RW is replaced with DVD/CD.

Hardware

Monitor	14.1" TFT 1024x178 or 800x600
VGA	Trident Microsystems CyberBlade XPAi1
Memory	256 Mb
Hard Disk	20 Gb	Repartitioning NTFS without Partition Magic
CDROM/DVD	Toshiba DVD-ROM SD-C2502	CD/DVD players
Floppy	Built-in (both CD and Floppy simultaneously)
LAN	Intel Corp. 82557 10/100 Mb	Works fine
Audio	Acer Laboratories Inc M5451 PCI	Works fine
Modem	Lucent Scorpio 56k
TV output	PAL/NTSC
Infrared	1 port
PS/2	1 port
USB	2 ports
Connectors	VGA, Serial, Parallel, Microphone, Headset
CardBus	2 slots

lspci output
lspci -vv output

Hardware under Linux and Installation tricks

Repartitioning of the Hard Drive. The Laptop comes with 20GB NTFS with Windoze XP. I did not have Partition Magic and none of the free tools available now can resize NTFS partition. There also only 3 recovery disks that come with the Laptop and when you use them they blindly format ALL disk. By default installation procedure does not give you ANY control over installation process - no options to choose - nothing.
Well you still can use those to install windows on a part of the disk (I've chosen 8Gb). The trick is to Control-C from the installation process and run fdisk manually
1. Start recovery procedure. It will inform you that ALL data is going to be gone. And it will :)
2. It will get to the stage when it will Format C: all 20 Gb
3. Control-C from formatting
4. cd Q:/bin That is CD-ROM mounting moint
5. Run fdisk . Delete 20 Gb partition, Create new primary partition (8Gb). That will occupy 1020 cylindes so you would fit into 1023 cylinders limitation of LILO boot loader. Don't forget to make new primary partition Active
6. Run seq -set 4 . This command actually informs BIOS that we are at the stage 4 (Partitioning hard drive) of Recovery procedure. Next stage after it is to format the disk.
7. Run reboot and boot from Recovery CD (Hold F12 and choose CDROM too boot from)
8. Now Recovery Procedure should continue formatiing the disk but only 8 GB of it, not all 20GB.
9. Finish Windoze installation procedure. Check that your disk is only 8Gb NTFS
BIOS You can get into BIOS by pressing ESC during boot.
Booting from Linux CD Now put Linux Installation CD in and boot from CD. This laptop should boot from CD without problems. I used Debian GNU/Linux Woody

Disk partitionning Do it to your liking. I used the following:


    Name        Flags      Part Type  FS Type          [Label]        Size (MB)
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    hda1        Boot        Primary   NTFS             M$-sucks         8389.79
    hda5                    Logical   Linux ext2       /                8003.20
    hda6                    Logical   Linux ext2       /usr             2500.49
    hda7                    Logical   Linux ext2       /var              501.75
    hda3                    Primary   Linux swap                         608.68

After that I usually reboot and check that windows still boot and run checkdisk. Just to play safe.

Ethernet LAN Works fine (driver=eepro100.o) Intel EtherExpress Pro 100
Sound Works fine (driver=trident.o) Choose Trident 4DWave, Sis or ALi 5451 PCI Audio Corem in kernel compilation. If you use make menuconfig it is under Sound .
CD/DVD players Audio CD players work just fine. For DVD players Ogle works and recognizes DVD, so unencryption is done in the hadware.
DHCP client Word on the street is that dhclient is better DHCP client than other (pump). I'm not an expert and took it for granted. There is a catch though - don't forget to enable CONFIG_FILTER and CONFIG_PACKET when compiling kernel. If you use make menuconfig it is under Networking options

Alexander Kushnirenko

Last modified: Fri Mar 1 16:17:47 CST 2002