[indiana-discuss] 2008.11 101a RC1b

[Bill Nesheim]

Here are some notes on my install of 101aRC1b on my Fujitsu Lifebook  
S7211.   While there are some issues overall the fit and finish is  
looking much improved.   Congratulations and thanks to all the Sun and  
community contributors for taking OpenSolaris this far.

Platform:
Fujitsu Lifebook S7211
2GB RAM

a) while install to the whole disk does work properly, install to a  
single fdisk partition as a multi-boot configuration does not, and  
messes up what is already there.   I tried to set up my machine with
   fdisk 1:  Ubuntu
   fdisk 2: OpenSolaris
   fdisk 3: Linux Swap
   fdisk 4: FAT32 partition (for file sharing between Ubuntu and  
OpenSolaris.

I installed Ubuntu 8.10 first - no issues.
The OpenSolaris installer from the liveCD allowed me to select the  
fdisk2 partition and run the install there.   All appeared to go fine  
until I rebooted, to get Grub with no menu.    This appears to be a  
known issue: 4161 no grub in 2008.11 Development Builds
	http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=4161

I was able to get OpenSolaris to boot from the hard disk by booting  
the liveCD, importing the root zpool and fixing grub manually.   I  
have not yet gotten Ubuntu back to working yet though.   Seems to me  
that this is a real stopper.

b) P-states do not work properly on my machine. (makes OpenSolaris  
pretty slow on my laptop :-(  )
powertop is already on the system - this is cool.    The system  
supports 2 p-states: 1000 Mhz and 1500 Mhz.  (this is reported  
properly by powertop and shows up in the kstats).   But: the system is  
spending 100% of time at 1000Mhz. seems that no matter what I do it  
stays stuck at lower p-state (1000 mhz).  Only way to get it to go  
fast seems to be to shut off speedstep entirely in bios.   Ubuntu does  
not have this problem - when you run a cpu intensive app (i tried the  
"mhz" program from lmbench) you get full speed.   Changing power.conf  
settings makes no difference.  The machine is stuck in the lower p- 
state.  I will file a bug on this later today.  I'd encourage others  
to make sure you are getting full speed out of your system when  
expected - easy to check with powertop.

c) nwam is broken for ESSIDs with spaces.  I filed a bug on this last  
week:  http://monaco.sfbay.sun.com/detail.jsf?cr=6766937
NWAM clips text in the notification pop-ups. NWAM when prompting for a  
password pops up a screen asking for both username and password.  This  
is confusing.

d) ath driver does not recognize my wireless chip automatically.  Easy  
workaround:
# update_drv -a -i 'pci10cf,139c' ath

e) Marvell yukon driver (needed for my 88E8055 PCI-E wired gigabit  
ethernet) does not show cable connected status
dladm show-phys shows yukonx0 as state "unknown" even though it is up  
and running.    This messes up nwam - it always thinks there is a  
cable there even when it is not and nwam prefers wired network so  
never configures my wireless network.  Have to either not configure  
marvell driver or manually take it down to work around this.

f) package manager has a category called simply "System U" with only  
SUNWmeld package in it.  Probably a typo somewhere..

g) Volume, Mute and Brightness function keys do not work on this  
system.   /var/adm/messages gets a bunch of ACPI related messages when  
I press the keys, but nothing happens.    (This also works fine in  
Ubuntu).   I will file bugs on this.

h) forcing system suspend (via S3-enable in power.conf) results in an  
unresponsive system with an interesting random noise pattern on the  
display.   I will file a bug on this with details.   (this works fine  
in Ubuntu on the same laptop).

Given that Ubuntu handles the function keys and suspend/resume on this  
laptop just fine I don't buy the argument that the BIOS is broken. We  
should be able to make this work at least as well as Ubuntu. .


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