Problems installing Fedora 9 on SatelliteA305-S6825

Wed Jul 2 13:38:55 UTC 2008

Hi,

Has anyone successfully installed Linux on a Satellite A305-S6825 laptop?  I
have tried both Fedora 9 and Ubuntu 8.0.4 unsuccessfully.  What does it take
to install Linux, Fedora 9 specifically on the Toshiba Satellite A305-S6825
laptop?  Am I missing a driver or is there another problem?

Any suggestions, feedback or comments are welcome.

BTW.  This is my second attempt at this message.  I apologize if both of
them show up.

==================

I am attempting to configure my laptop for dual boot between Vista and
Fedora.  Vista has been reduced to a 40 GB partition on the 250 GB HDD with
the rest of the space partitioned into a set of Ext3 and [one] swap
partitions (/boot, swap, /, /usr, /usr/local, /tmp, /var and /opt).  I can
see the Ext3 partitions from Vista as Ext2 file systems with a third party
driver.

In the case of Fedora 9, the install DVD runs as follows:

- starts loading, writing startup (dmesg) text to monitor.
- displays a stack trace (only part of trace is visible on the screen)
- displays another 3/4 screen of text
- hangs for a few minutes
- Displays curses GUI asking to select Language (I selected English)
- Displays curses GUI asking to select Keyboard Type (again, I select
English)
- Displays curses GUI asking for Installation Method (See selection below. I
selected “local CD/DVD”).
  -- Local CD/DVD
  -- Hard Drive
  -- NFS Directory
  -- URL

- Displays curses GUI stating “No Driver Found”.  
  - Selecting the “Select Driver” button moves to a list of drivers, mostly,
NIC drivers.
  - Selecting any driver causes the system to hang until rebooted.

========================= 

I have also attempted to boot the laptop from Live CD’s for both Ubuntu and
Fedora.  Both Live CD’s had trouble loading.  The Ubuntu was only able to
boot to a command line while Fedora managed to get the Gnome GUI up and
running.  In both cases, dmesg showed that there was a NULL kernel pointer
encountered and a call to /sbin/modprobe crashed with the dump of the crash
displayed in dmesg text.

The Fedora 9 Live is able to see the swap partition that I pre-configured so
I am assuming that Fedora can access my HDD and I was able to copy the dmesg
text to a USB flash drive and a USB HDD.

During the login to Fedora 9 Live, there is a pop-up that states that there
was a Kernel failure but does not states any details.

Part of the Dmesg text:

input: Power Button (FF) as /devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXPWRBN:00/input/input6
ACPI: Battery Slot [BAT0] (battery present)
ACPI: Power Button (FF) [PWRF]
input: Power Button (CM) as
/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0C0C:00/input/input7
ACPI: Power Button (CM) [PWRB]
input: Lid Switch as /devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0C0D:00/input/input8
ACPI: Lid Switch [LID]
r8169 Gigabit Ethernet driver 2.2LK-NAPI loaded
PCI: 0000:02:00.0 has unsupported PM cap regs version (7)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:00.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:02:00.0 to 64
BUG: unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at 00000124
IP: [<c05601b5>] dev_driver_string+0x1/0x2a
*pde = bea4f067 
Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP 

Modules linked in: r8169(+) v4l1_compat button battery ac soundcore pcspkr
iTCO_wdt cfg80211 joydev iTCO_vendor_support sg ext3 jbd mbcache dm_snapshot
dm_mod squashfs usb_storage ata_piix pata_acpi sd_mod ata_generic ahci
libata sdhci firewire_ohci firewire_core crc_itu_t mmc_core ehci_hcd
uhci_hcd loop sr_mod scsi_mod cdrom

Pid: 1423, comm: modprobe Not tainted (2.6.25-14.fc9.i686 #1)
EIP: 0060:[<c05601b5>] EFLAGS: 00010206 CPU: 0
EIP is at dev_driver_string+0x1/0x2a
EAX: 00000054 EBX: 000000f0 ECX: 00000000 EDX: f8c55548
ESI: 37a00000 EDI: f74ea454 EBP: f6ad8dd0 ESP: f6ad8d54
 DS: 007b ES: 007b FS: 00d8 GS: 0033 SS: 0068
Process modprobe (pid: 1423, ti=f6ad8000 task=f6b6ee90 task.ti=f6ad8000)

Stack: f6ad8dd0 f8c549e7 d0010000 00000000 f72106b8 00000028 f74ea400
f8c550dc 
       f6328500 f6328000 f8c06000 00000000 f6ad8db4 c04bc269 f6ad8db4
f6b90c90 
       f6ad8da8 c04bc35e f6ad8db4 f6b90c90 00000000 f6ad8dd0 f74ea4cc
f6ad8dbc 

Call Trace:
 [<f8c549e7>] ? rtl8169_init_one+0x356/0x9b3 [r8169]  [<c04bc269>] ?
sysfs_find_dirent+0x16/0x27  [<c04bc35e>] ? sysfs_add_one+0x14/0xa6
[<c04fea0f>] ? pci_match_device+0x8f/0x95  [<c04feac9>] ?
pci_device_probe+0x39/0x59  [<c0562826>] ? driver_probe_device+0xa0/0x136
[<c0562935>] ? __driver_attach+0x79/0xaf  [<c05621d3>] ?
bus_for_each_dev+0x3b/0x63  [<c05626cb>] ? driver_attach+0x14/0x16
[<c05628bc>] ? __driver_attach+0x0/0xaf  [<c0561ba4>] ?
bus_add_driver+0x9d/0x1ba  [<c0562ab8>] ? driver_register+0x47/0xa7
[<c047592d>] ? __vunmap+0x93/0x9b  [<c04fec75>] ?
__pci_register_driver+0x35/0x64  [<f8c04017>] ?
rtl8169_init_module+0x17/0x19 [r8169]  [<c0446f93>] ?
sys_init_module+0x17be/0x18f6  [<c04d3577>] ?
selinux_file_permission+0x100/0x106
 [<c045c76c>] ? disable_irq+0x0/0x2a
 [<c04cc41c>] ? security_file_permission+0xf/0x11
 [<c04835e1>] ? sys_read+0x3b/0x60
 [<c0405bf2>] ? syscall_call+0x7/0xb

 =======================

Code: 85 c0 79 20 68 a0 ba 84 c0 b9 d6 58 6c c0 31 d2 b8 77 61 6e c0 53 e8
68 79 ec ff 5a 59 eb 05 b8 ed ff ff ff 8b 5d fc c9 c3 90 55 <8b> 90 d0 00 00
00 89 e5 85 d2 75 19 8b 90 cc 00 00 00 85 d2 75 

EIP: [<c05601b5>] dev_driver_string+0x1/0x2a SS:ESP 0068:f6ad8d54 ---[ end
trace f07761451a141af1 ]--- Linux video capture interface: v2.00
ACPI: device:1a is registered as cooling_device3
input: Video Bus as
/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0A08:00/device:17/input/input9
ricoh-mmc: Ricoh MMC Controller disabling driver
ricoh-mmc: Copyright(c) Philip Langdale
ACPI: Video Device [OVGA] (multi-head: yes  rom: no  post: no)
uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device Chicony USB 2.0 Camera (04f2:b008)
input: Chicony USB 2.0 Camera as
/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.7/usb6/6-2/6-2:1.0/input/input10
usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo
USB Video Class driver (SVN r200)
iwl3945: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG/BG Network Connection driver for
Linux, 1.2.26kds
iwl3945: Copyright(c) 2003-2008 Intel Corporation
[drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:02.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:02.0 to 64
[drm] Initialized i915 1.12.0 20071122 on minor 0

This is where the loading of the Fedora 9 Live hangs for a minute or two
before continuing.

Steven F. LeBrun                     http://steven.lebruns.com/blog

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