Check out my Fedora Core 3 (2.6 kernel) page.
Contents
Disclamer
I realize the reasons for refering to GNU/Linux as GNU/Linux,
and I wish to give GNU, the Free
Software Foundation, and all the software contributer's the credit
they deserve, but for simplicity I will refer to GNU/Linux as
just Linux for the remainder of the page. This page is meant to
document my fun with getting Linux to run the way I like it on
my machine. I hope that it will help other people as well, but
it is by no means comprehensive. I also do not pretend to be any
type of Linux "guru", so it is quite possible that there are better
ways of doing things than how I have them documented. But, this
is what worked for me.
Resources
These few websites were helpful to me, and most of them offer
a more complete description of getting some type of Linux working
on a T40.
Hardware
IBM Thinkpad T40p (2373-G1U)
Added 512MB of memory, see Memory Problems below.
Distro
Since I've been using Red Hat for awhile, and they recently
have gone the route of Fedora
for their testing grounds I decided to use Fedora Core 1. Most
of the things I discuss here should also work in recent versions
of Red Hat (i.e. 8 and 9). Plus, since I'm a grad student at NC
State and my office is next door to the Red Hat corporate headquarters,
I feel a sort of kinship with them. :)
Partitioning
Even though it isn't free (as in beer or speach), my favorite partitioning tool is Partition Magic.
Version 8 supports formatting ext3 partitions, so it is very convenient.
I used it to partition my 40 GB hard drive to around 20 GB for Linux and 15 GB for
Windows. Partition Magic didn't see the IBM Predesktop area so I didn't have to
worry about it, except that I only have 35 GB of useful space.
I made the mistake of moving my NTFS partition to the end of the drive and installing Linux before
it. Doing it this way makes the partition table messy, because the partitions are no longer numbered
in order. Windows XP needs to have the partition number of its NTFS partition correct in its
boot.ini file or it will not boot. So if some other program looks at your partition table,
and tries to correct the partition numbers, your screwed. Linux is easy to fix, just change /etc/fstab.
In order to fix boot.ini in Windows you need to use the recovery console and run
bootcfg /rebuild. Instead, shrink your NTFS partition down, but leave it as the
first partition. Install linux after it, and in the MBR. Oh, and use grub as your bootloader.
It is better IMHO.
Install
Smooth. The only problem I had was the loss of mouse control (trackpoint,
since I disabled the trackpad in the BIOS because it annoys me)
during the firstboot setup agent. After navigating
through that with the keyboard, the mouse returned.
Memory Problems
I, many of my colleagues, and many other users according to other
web resources, have had issues with installing a second 512 MB
memory module from Crucial in T40s. After surviving a few spontaneous
reboots, I tested the memory with memtest86.
It showed several errors in the upper 512 MB of my memory (the
add-on module). I returned the module to Crucial and tried a replacement…it
failed also. I returned that module and bought an Infineon module
off of Ebay (IBM part number 10K0033) It works flawlessly. Normally,
I am a large advocate of Crucial memory, and they didn't question
my returns, but I would stay away from them if you have a T40.
I've had many other modules from Crucial in the past and never
had any problems with them. I think there is just some compatability
issue with these modules and T40s.
Console Framebuffer
Although Fedora goes to a graphical X console very early in
the startup sequence, I wasn't satisfied. I used the kernel boot
parameter vga=792 to specify a framebuffer for the entire console...start
to finish.
Update (1/15/04): I've since changed this to get a 1400x1050 resolution at 24 bit color.
See /boot/grub/grub.conf for details.
APM
APM is enabled by default in the Fedora kernel and it seems to work fine to just close the lid to go to
suspend. The Fn-F4 key combo does not work well without some further configuration.
The screen goes black, but just moving the mouse brings
it back, the suspend light never comes on. I'm still working on getting suspend/resume to work for real. I've
tried going to ACPI, but even in the 2.6 kernel things are still not quite right.
Update (3/01/04): I've changed my /etc/syconfig/apmd slightly
to make suspend/resume work better. It is working now to use Fn-F4 as well as just closing the lid. The Volume Control
applet needs to be restarted on resume because sound gets restarted. Also, it works better to shutdown the network
devices manually ahead of time with ifdown <device>.
Thinkpad Specific Stuff
To get the Thinkpad functions keys and volume controls to work I
had to install the tbp (http://www.nongnu.org/tpb)
package from Fedora.
Once installed, I changed a few settings in /etc/tpbrc to make the OSD a bit prettier.
APM ON
OSDFONT -adobe-helvetica-*-r-*-*-14-*-100-100-*-*-*-*
OSDCOLOR Red
I then installed the kernel-module-thinkpad, tpctl, and configure-thinkpad
packages from the DAG apt repository
(http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/).
I created a thinkpad group to give access to /dev/thinkpad. Also, I added some lines
to /etc/modules.conf. I know the rpm does some of this for you,
but I don't remember exactly what.
Centrino
Well, Pentium M anyway (see Wireless below). The default kernel
version with Fedora Core 1 supports the 1MB cache (in /proc/cpuinfo),
but doesn't support the speedstep technology to stepdown the processor
when the power adapter is unplugged. The processor speed is stepped
down (via the BIOS) if the adapter is unplugged before the T40
is powered up. Previous versions of the 2.4 kernel also had some
IDE (DMA) problems that slowed the machine way down. I have not
seen any issues like that. Eventually I am planning on trying
a 2.6 kernel, which will hopefully fix the speedstep issue.
Update (11/18/03): I was wrong, the kernel does support speedstep for
Centrino. To enable automatic stepdown for the processor speed when the power
adapter is unplugged I did the following. (This is a shameless copy from
http://slog.dk/~jensen/inspiron8200/inspiron_rh9.0.html#cpufreq.)
I loaded the Centrino module
modprobe speedstep-centrino
I added these two lines to the end of /etc/sysconfig/apmd.
CPUFREQ="yes"
[ "x$CPUFREQ" == "xno" ] || [ -e /proc/cpufreq ] || modprobe speedstep-centrino
Then I restarted the apm daemon with
/sbin/service apmd restart
To test this, I used the information provided in /proc with
cat /proc/cpuinfo
cat /proc/cpufreq
The frequency values in these files changed when I plug and unplug the power adapter.
To load the speedstep module during the bootup sequence I created a file /etc/rc.modules
and added the line
modprobe speedstep-centrino
This file is executed in Fedora and Red Hat distributions during the initiallization sequence, specifically
in /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit. Since it is executed and not just sourced, the file needed to be
executable. (chmod +x /etc/rc.modules)
Update (2/26/04): A much better way to do this is to just install the cpufreqd rpm
from DAGs apt repository (I'm starting to sound like a commercial). See my
/etc/cpufreqd.conf for how to configure it for use with APM.
You can then remove the added line at the end of /etc/sysconfig/apmd, but just leave
CPUFREQ="yes". You also don't need to create the /etc/rc.modules file because the
cpufreqd daemon loads the module for you.
Graphics
Without any changes to the default Fedora kernel (2.4.22-1.2149.nptl) and XFree86 (4.3.0-42)
3d direct rendering (DRI) works fine for my Ati Mobility Fire GL 9000. I was getting around 1200 FPS
with glxgears (in the original window size, not full screen)
and the standard XFree86 Mesa drivers. Out of curiosity I installed the fglrx Ati
proprietary drivers from http://www.schneider-digital.de/html/download_ati.html.
glxgears showed an improvement to around 1600 FPS with these drivers. Since I
really only use OpenGL in Linux for tuxracer and the like, I didn't think this
was really worth "tainting" my kernel for. So I'm going back to the free drivers. You can
look at the Ati version of my /etc/X11/XF86Config-4
file if you want to go that route. I've also included the default /etc/X11/XF86Config
file for reference.
Note: I also have an Ati Radeon 9500 Pro in my desktop, and the only way I could get 3d support
was to install the fglrx drivers. And since my desktop has a Via KT400 chipset, I
had to even hack (though a very simple one) the provided agpgart driver to get it to recognize my
AGP aperture size from my motherboard. Long story short...don't get an Ati card if you want to play
games in Linux. Go with nVidia (the lesser of two evils), they have better drivers for Linux (though
still proprietary).
Wireless
I didn't have a choice on my wireless option (I guess I could've
bought another card, but then what would I do with my
old one?). I have the IBM Atheros a/b minipci card (thus making my system non-Centrino...Ah man, what ever will I do!). Currently
there isn't good Linux support. I have tried the latest version
of Linuxant's
driverloader to no avail. I'm in the process of getting the
latest CVS version of the madwifi
atheros driver (the madwifi faq
site is best viewed with a Mozilla
type browser).
Update (11/10/03): I got the CVS (11/10/03) madwifi driver
to work (sort of). I had trouble with getting it to successfully
use the WEP key, so for the time being (until I have enough free
time to look into it further) I'm just not broadcasting my ssid.
I have basic functionality, but I haven't tried to do anything
fancy. This is what I did (as well as I can remember).
- Checked out the latest CVS copy of madwifi
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/madwifi
co madwifi
- Followed the directions for installing in the
README
as root…
make all
insmod wlan/wlan.o
insmod ath_hal/ath_hal.o
insmod driver/ath_pci.o
make install
- add this line to
/etc/modules.conf
alias ath0 ath_pci
- I think I rebooted at this point and
kudzu found
the ath0 device on the next startup and asked me
to configure it. I tried that, but I think it failed for some
reason (probably some confusion with eth0). Anyway,
it created an ifcfg-ath0 file for me, but I had
to modify it (see next).
- I modified
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ath0
to be the following (the redhat-config-network
program didn't see the ath0 driver, so I couldn't
use that).
DEVICE=ath0
ONBOOT=no
BOOTPROTO=static
IPADDR=192.168.1.3
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
GATEWAY=192.168.1.1
WIRELESS=yes
- I never got certain things to work on bootup (e.g. associating
with a certain access point), so I created a few very rudimentary
script files that I run depending on if I'm at home or at school/work
(I will be merging these into a single script with some options
eventually). The scripts basically just run these commands in order.
# bring up the interface
ifup ath0
# set ssid to "my essid"
iwconfig ath0 essid "my essid"
# set access point to hardware address of the access point you
# want to connect to, in the form FF.FF.FF.FF.FF.FF
iwconfig ath0 ap "my access point"
# non-adhoc mode
iwconfig ath0 mode Managed
# use 802.11b only, don't even try the others
iwpriv ath0 mode 2
- To find the access point hardware (MAC) address to connect to,
I have to use the commad
iwlist ath0 scan
This gives a list of the APs that the device can "see". I just
pick the one with the best signal and run
iwconfig ath0 ap FF.FF.FF.FF.FF.FF
with the new AP address accordingly. I tried to have the driver (or Linux tools, whichever)
discover the best AP, but that didn't work for me. Sometimes
I have to bring the device up and down a few times before things
start working. However, once it is up it stays that way. I haven't
tried any benchmarks or anything yet. I'm just happy that it
works.
So it took some fiddling, but wireless works for
what I need it to at the moment. Thanks to the guys who help
out with madwifi. I also use some network applets that let me
see what's going on at all times. With the version of madwifi
that I am using the GNOME wireless link monitor applet works fine.
In addition I like the net-speed
applet, so I know how well my DSL is working.
Update (1/14/04): I found that the driver works the best if used with DHCP.
So I configured my /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ath0
file accordingly.
I also found that the driver does a pretty good job of autodetecting the access point in
this configuration, so all I really need to do to start up wireless is run (as root)
ifup ath0
Update (1/15/04): DAG made some rpms of a CVS version of this driver and he made them
available in his apt repository
(http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/),
so I unistalled mine and used his instead. They work the same.
IBM USB Memory Key
To get my IBM USB memory key to work I added the following to
/etc/updfstab.conf
device usbkey
{
partition 1
match hd "Memory Key"
}
then in /etc/security/console.perms under #device
classes I added
<usbkey>=/mnt/usbkey*
and under #permission definitions I added
<console> 0600 <usbkey> 0660 root.disk
Alternatively, it should work to just add match hd "Memory
Key" to one of the devices already listed in /etc/updfstab.conf.defaults
(e.g. flash or diskonkey).
Compact Flash PC Card Reader
I also had to add
match hd "SanDisk"
match hd "TOSHIBA"
to the device listing for flash in /etc/updfstab.conf.defaults
for my PCMCIA card reader to work with my Canon (SanDisk) and
Kingston (TOSHIBA) CompactFlash cards. To find the string values
to use for these cards I plugged them in and looked at /proc/scsi/sg/device_strs.
Now when I plug any of these devices in, a corresponding directory
(mount point) appears in /mnt and in /etc/fstab.
I can then mount the device with
mount /mnt/[device]
where [device] is either flash (for the CF cards) or usbkey (for
the memory key). I can do this as any user also. I don't have
to be root because of my changes to /etc/security/console.perms.
To remove the device I must first
unmount /mnt/[device]
then physically remove it.
Config Files
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