10.1 and up on a Toshiba Satellite Pro M70

[edwinb]

This is some useful information for Toshiba users:

I have a working 10.1 installation on my Toshiba. "Everything" works except for the following two things:
- ACPI:
No functionality at all. Starting Linux with ACPI enabled will freeze the pc in an early stage. Installing with ACPI didn't work at all.

- the graphics card (ATI Mobility Radeon X700):
It sometimes starts with a complete garbled screen. Pressing Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to restart X solves it. Sometimes have to press it a few times.... but then it works. Full range of resolutions available. Have 1280x800 and it looks great!
Switching to text console (Ctrl-Alt-F1 etc.) garbles the screen (like at startup) and only rarely switching back to graphical environment, it is restored.

But apart from these two minor problems, it works smoothly. The wireless works also, although I had to set the wireless card (which always is eth1) to primary card in order to get routing and name server information from the DHCP server. Well, it gets it ok, but the dhcp client doesn't use it, as long as eth0 is set as primary card. It's a bit stupid choice of the client, and I had some discussion with a developer about it. So maybe it works in later versions to detect which card is actually connected and use that one as primary card.

Now, the big question is of course: how will the installation of 10.2 go? I'm not afraid of it, except for the graphics card. I don't wish to be rendered with a non-working pc, as I need it for my work. Because it was bought with Windoze, it has an extended partition and I cannot free space enough to perform a test install. Unless I delete the Windows partition completely, but I do need that sometimes... Tried freeing space inside the extended partition, but the installation script does not see this free space. Don't ask me why...

I would like to get some feedback from Toshiba users. Someone who can perform the 10.2 installation on a separate partition maybe?

Regards,
Edwin

[watologo]

You may want to try the live DVD?

[LuisC-SM]

You may want to try the live DVD?

I did so, and the live dvd really sux it didn't even recognize my dhcp connection. Anyhow, SLED 10.1 went smoothly with no major problems when I install it . In fact everything works just great (except for bluetooh I've not any BT device to test), I have a Toshiba Satellite P105 series.

Regards

Luis CSM

PS. By the way, you should install the ATI driver from the repos, and also u must install with ACPI=off or change it from the boot parameter.

[watologo]

I see. I found this one, which describes the same problems you have:
http://www.suseforums.net/index.php?showtopic=20482

Do you see any acpi warnings/errors in "dmesg |grep -i acpi" ?
When booted without the acpi=off parameter?

Have you checked that you run the latest BIOS?
Or maybe you have some BIOS option related to interrupts or acpi?

If you see kernel acpi warnings/errors, you might want to send me them with acpidump output attached (linux_forum@renninger.de).
Maybe I am lucky and find something...

[watologo]

I'd also give pci=noacpi a try, hopefully it behaves a better...