The Fujitsu Lifebook P2000 (P2040 in my case) series of notebooks uses the Ali 15X3 (?) chipset. The linux 2.4.x series kernel needs a patch to get it to boot on this chipset. It is written by Michael Leuchtenberg and can be downloaded from http://math.ucsd.edu/~bond/Fujitsu_P-2040/ali15x3.patch I modified one of the original 1.0 Gentoo x86 boot CDs with this patch and it does work as described. 1.4rc2 still does not boot this so I'm assuming it's just been overlooked until now. I can't be the only Gentoo user who likes this little, low power notebook, so I'm hoping that this bug report will get the developers to patch the LiveCD kernel with that patch. Thank you!
Noticed this is a duplicate of bug # 9633, however reading through it, it does not seem to be resolved as yet. I apologize if you all consider this a duplicate but is there any word on when an official Gentoo LiveCD will have this patch, or a kernel which supports the Ali IDE controller properly?
the latest experimental should work fine with this chipset Id like to get confirmation that it works
re-open if you find the latest experimentals dont take care of this
Hi there. I downloaded this http://gentoo.oregonstate.edu/experimental/x86/livecd/livecd-basic-x86-2003011400.iso It exhibits the same behavior as prior Gentoo boot CDs. Just before the machine freezes on detecting the IDE bus it recommends using the idebus=xx boot argument. Neither using idebus=ata66 nor ide0=xx and ide1=xx seemed to work for me. Is there a specific boot argument that is required to get the experimental ISO to boot this laptop/chipset? Thanks.
Just tried 1.4_rc3, and it won't boot the Lifebook. Booting with gentoo ide0=ata66 ide1=ata66 fails. The boot params may be getting stripped off, because the ALi code still attempts to probe the hardware which the boot params are supposed to prevent. Additionally, booting with gentoo ide=nodma supposedly disables DMA entirely, but that also doesn't work for the Lifebook. It still tries to probe the hardware. The last boot CD that I tried that actually booted by accepting the boot parameters was 2002122100. I'd like to see this resolved before 1.4_final, and I'm happy to test fixes; give me a shout...
Acer TravelMate 527TXV suffers from the same symptoms. RC3 Live CD cant boot (hangs at ...now booting the Kernel). Notebook uses ALI-15x3 chipset too. also some other users on the forum still have that problem with their laptops (another Acer brand and IBM). RC1 Live CD works great though. looks like something changed to the bad since RC1. looking forward to test fixes.
latest experimental at www.gentoo.org/~livewire has the ALI chipset fix, and has been working for some users
Just tested livecd-experimental-3-16-03.iso on the Lifebook, and it looks like the ALi fixes are in. It boots without specifying boot params.
fixed, as per comment
