Thanks to those that came before for the start of this document and Nathan
my son who has become a better Linux technician thin me. (He did most of
the work.)
The Notebook
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The notebook comes pre installed with DOS and Microsoft Windows 2000. Because I wish to run only the best software available, at all times, I erased all that stuff and installed RedHat 7.0. I latter upgraded to RedHat 7.1.
Some of my friends (and my wife) use other operating systems. I like to help them with their problems so I also installed VMWare.
I have also created to kernels to boot into 2.2.16 (the one that comes with the distribution) and 2.4.0. I have upgraded to 2.4.3.
To get around this problem you need to change the boot order in the BIOS to boot from CD-ROM. You can then boot the CD and use the graphical installation.
NOTE: When I upgraded from 7.0 to 7.1 I found the DVD drive would not read the CDRW disk I was using. I have since found other people who have had this problem with the RedHat 7.1 image. To get around this, I copied the to ISO files to the root directory of my drive. I could then boot the CD and tell it the images where on the hard drive.
Create partitions as you wish. Creating a small 'boot' partition for the kernels to reside in is not nessary. The LILO that come with the system can read kernels past 1024 tracks.
Pay Attention to the X configuration.
Fred Maciel has more information on his web page about problems with 3COM mini-pci cards.
First you need to tell Linux to not check for a drive in the UltraBay. Your laptop will boot faster this way if you have a UltraBay battery or another non-drive bay. You do this by adding append="hdc=cdrom hdc=noprobe" to boot parameter in /etc/lilo.conf.
You can warm swap your drives by going into suspend mode first. First un-mounting any disk you are currently using and then pressing Fn-F4 and wait. After the system is fully suspended, swap your devices. When the swap is complete, tap the Fn key to un-suppend.
To hot swap a drive you can use hdparm (this comes with RedHat) to register and un-register the IDE interface and swap drives (cdrom / floppy) in the bay. (I HAVE NOT GOT THIS WORKING YET!) There is a script call ultrabayd. I havn't got it to work either.
Another program you will want to get is tpctl (ThinkPad Control). This suite of programs allows you to enable and disable things like your infrared port. Version 1.x is required for kernel 2.2.x and version 2.x is required for kernel 2.4.x. After you download it follow the instructions in the README to compile and install it. On the T20, not all the commands work. For example, you can do a tpctl --all to display all the settings, but you can do a tpctl --pm-all to display all the power management settings. Or tpctl --Z will suspend (like closing the lid or Fn-F4) through program control.
Most things seem to work fine. You need to be aware of how your programs will react to suspending. Some programs don't respond will to loosing a resource. For example, if you unplug the network cable and then plug it back into another network don't expect it to work. If you are using DHCP it might not work even if you plug it back into the same network. Someone may have obtained your IP number while you where gon.
This is also true of some network file systems. You should unmount them before the suspend.
All this can be solved by restarting the network after resumes.
I found the /etc/sysconfig/apmd script didn't do much for these problems.
I fixed this by adding a /etc/sysconfig/apm-scripts/apmcontinue file.
XFree86 version 4 seems to go through the suspend just fine.#!/bin/sh -x
#
if [ $1 = 'suspend' ]; then
/sbin/rmmod cs46xx ac97_codec
/etc/rc.d/init.d/network stop
for M in `mount | grep smbfs | cut -f 3 -d \ ` ;
do
umount $M
done
fiif [ $1 = 'resume' ]; then
/etc/rc.d/init.d/network start
fi
Both suspend to RAM (Fn+F4) and suspend to disk (Fn+F12) will work if you create a hibernation file in a FAT32 partition.
To be able to stop the hard disk for some time to save power, you might want to use the noflusd.
Tim Roberts is also working on a driver for XFree86 4.0. Thanks Tim. The newest versions (1.1.8a at this writing) work find. Older version don't work as well.
I was forced to use the SVGATextMode program to manage text mode display
until I installed XFree86 4.0.2 Savage driver 1.1.8a. It fixed a problem
with framebuffers (see below) that left the screen in graphics mode when you
changed back to text mode. It also fixed some problems with DVD support,
Installation of the XFree86 4.0 Savage driver (as user root ):
DefaultMode "100x37_VGA"
Text ModeChipSet "S3"
Clocks 25.175 28.322 40.00 0.00 50.00 77.00 36.00 44.90
Clocks 130.00 120.00 80.00 31.50 110.00 65.00 75.00 94.50
These settings will give you a good looking character set and enough display to edit files easily.
To have your display change to this mode at boot time I put the command 'SVGATextMode >/dev/null 2>&1' just after the PATH is set in /etc/rc.sysinit.
NOTE: If you pick the wrong text mode and go into X,
you may not be able to return to text mode. I found almost all except 100x37_VGA
would cause the system to HANG!
To turn on Framebuffer mode add vga=0x317 to your lilo.conf and re-lilo your system.
Like VGA text mode, this to can hang your system when you move from X to text mode. Framebuffers didn't work at all until I got the 1.1.8a display driver. (See above)
As Mandrake GNU/Linux comes with the ALSA sound drivers, it detects a sound card and loads the cs461x driver. You should add the following lines into your /etc/modules.conf:
Don't forget to check the mixer settings using aumix and the sound keys on the keyboard. Both of these effect the volume. I turn up the Volume and PCM levels to 75% and then use the keybord keys to control my volume.alias snd-card-0 cs461xx
options cs46xx thinkpad=1
OMS is the program used to read and play your DVD. I'm using version 0.11.0 of OMS. You will also want to get a copy of GTK Open Media Interface (OMI). This is the user interface for OMS. I am using version 0.0.9d_dent.
After completing the compilation and installation, OMS will save it's configuration in your home directory in the .oms directory. If found if the audio plugin is not sys the sound didn't work.
I also found the frame rate was bad. I only get about eight frames per second. If I turn sound off (change it to null in the configuration file) I get a much better frame rate. About 37 frames per second.
Here is my .oms file
plugin_dir=/usr/local/lib/oms/plugins|
devices=dvd:/dev/dvd
skin=some
output_audio_device=/dev/dsp
output_audio_plugin=sys
output_video_device=/dev/null
output_video_plugin=x11
xpos=100
ypos=100
I found the ltmodem-5.78d worked great. I found this through the Linmodem-Mini-HOWTO (thanks to Martin Elsman). After download the driver, untaring it in the /usr/src directory I was able to run make and ltinst to install it. Then a simple insmod ltmodem loaded the driver.
I had some very strange problems with kernel 2.2.16 after changing the processor speed from low to high if Linux was booted in low speed mode. Rebooting solved this problem. This might be a problem with SpeedStep, but it might also be another problem, I don't know.
Another strange thing: When running at low speed, the processor should run with about 500MHz (?). But Linux then detects an 125MHz processor...
However, As of this writing 2.4.2 is out and seems to be very stable. RedHat 7.1 has been developed as a intermediate step between the 2.2.x and 2.4.x kernels so it works well with both.
I dual kernel my systems. Meaning, in lilo I set up two boot kernels. One is the "Stable" kernel and the other is my experimental kernel. I make the stable kernel (2.2.x) my default kernel. If a kernel compile goes wrong I can reboot with a known good kernel.
Here is my /etc/lilo.conf
The compile of 2.4 was stright forward. Here is a copy of my .config in my /usr/src/linux directory. You should be able to download the 2.4.0 kernel, drop this file into the /usr/src/linux directory. You can then compile the kernel without having to go through the configuration menus. Just do the usual make dep clean vmlinux modules modules_install.boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout=50
message=/boot/message
default=linux
lba32
vga=0x317
append="hdc=cdrom hdc=noprobe"image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.16-22
label=linux
read-only
root=/dev/hda2
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.0
label=linuxdev
read-only
root=/dev/hda2