techblog 

Updated: look for [Feisty] for Feisty Fawn 7.04 tricks.

Ubuntu Linux works reasonable well in the Toshiba Portege S100. There is a report on testing for this computer at:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam/ToshibaPortegeS100

Installation Issues
Hard disk detection

The installation process for Ubuntu Dapper has some problems detecting correctly the hard disk. There is no fix for this problem in version Ubuntu Dapper Flight 6 but the distribution can be installed following a work around described here:

https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/initramfs-tools/+bug/19749

Basically, what is needed is to unload a module and load another one. When the installation process arrives to the disk partitioning stage, there is no disk to partition, at this moment, a console can be opened by pressing ctr+f2 and the following commands can be given to load the appropriate driver:

modprobe -r ata_piix
modprobe ahci
modprobe -r ahci
modprobe ahci

the two last may be not necessary but some times are needed to force the driver to bind to disk resources. In anycase there is no harm on issuing all of them.

After this go back to the installation console (ctrl+f1) and retry the disk partitioning step, the hard disk should be now available and the installation process can be finalized.

[Feisty] Desktop installation is done from a running live which already has failed to detect the hard disk and as the module ata_piix is in use it can not be removed. I suggest downloading the Alternate Desktop CD from

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

And just after booting apply the modprobe sequence explained above. This will install the system properly but it will fail to boot as the kernel will not be able to find the disk. Gary Allen Garibaldi provided a solution for that:

Boot with the install CD again, mount your hard disk root partition in /mnt and Create a init-premount file in

/mnt/etc/initramfs-tools/scripts/init-premount/ahci

with the contents:

modprobe -r ata_piix
modprobe ahci
modprobe -r ahci
modprobe ahci
modprobe ata_piix

give execution permissions to the script:

sudo chmod +x /mnt/etc/initramfs-tools/scripts/init-premount/ahci

and update your initrd with:

sudo update-initramfs -u

The system should boot now.

Networking

[Feisty] Networking works straight in feisty and places lan card on eth0 and wireless in eth1.

Only wireless card is detected by the installer and placed in eth0, therefore installation must be carried using this interface.
After the installation is done, edit /etc/apt/sourceslist and comment out the CDROM line while the rest of lines for all repositories must be uncommented. Then the system can be updated using the following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

A newer kernel is updated from the net which contains support for the ethernet card which will be detected after rebooting the system and work fine

However, the ethernet NIC is configured as eth2 instead eth1. Use “ifconfig -a” after updating the system to see where to which interface the NIC has been assigned.

The interface must be configured in /etc/network/interfaces:

miquel@polldebrega:~$ cat /etc/network/interfaces
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
# wireless-* options are implemented by the wireless-tools package
wireless-mode managed
wireless-essid Nominet
wireless-key1 TooManySecrets;)

auto eth2
iface eth2 inet dhcp