I'd wanted a laptop for some time so, after researching what was available and deciding what I wanted it for,
I bought the rather nice Digimate M-2615
from Aria Technology. Checkout the 'tour', it has an
interactive flash animation of the connections and layout.
Introduction
As a programmer, I need access to Windows for development and testing and have been using Windows 2000
successfully for a number of years. I partitioned the 40G drive into an 8G NTFS partition, the rest unused, and
installed Win2K without any problems. For web-browsing, e-mail and everything else, I have been using Gentoo Linux for
over a year on a desktop system, have learnt a lot, and even had a bit of fun! This page documents my attempts
to get a Gentoo Linux / Win2K dual-boot system setup and working.
Recent changes
Discovered that The Gimp didn't have printing support and that the built-in help wasn't available. Added the
'doc' and 'gimpprint' USE flags to make.conf and re-ran 'emerge -av gimp'.
Gentoo base-installation
I initially tried the 'install-x86-minimal-2004.1' Gentoo LiveCD, but it didn't automatically detect the network
interface (VT6105 [Rhine-III]) and I failed to get it working manually. Being a big fan of
Knoppix which I knew worked (surfing the web
less than 5 minutes after unpacking!), and knowing that there were instructions for installing Gentoo Linux using a
Knoppix CD, I decided to go this route.
After configuring the BIOS (<F2>) to try booting from CD-ROM, and making sure that the Knoppix CD was in
the drive, it booted. (Note: unusually, the graphical boot-screen was corrupted, but the instructions were readable)
I just hit 'enter' when prompted, and eventually arrived at a good-looking KDE desktop. I sparked-up a console using
CTRL-ALT-F2 and then followed the
alternate instructions.
I used the pentium3 stage3 tarball (a Pentium-M is a kind of 'super' pentium III) as the stage1 tarball wasn't
available, and opted for a 2.6 version of the Linux kernel using 'emerge gentoo-dev-sources'.
I chose to use syslog-ng, grub, fcron, and partitioned the disk, using cfdisk, like this:
Name Flags Part Type FS Type [Label] Size (MB)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
hda1 Boot Primary NTFS 8389.79 Windows 2000
hda5 Logical Linux ext2 65.81 /boot
hda6 Logical Linux swap 509.97
hda7 Logical Linux ReiserFS 31042.21 /
root@tty1[/]# emerge -a world
These are the packages that I would merge, in order:
Calculating world dependencies
*** Package in world file is not installed: sys-apps/fileutils
*** Package in world file is not installed: sys-apps/textutils
*** Package in world file is not installed: sys-apps/sh-utils
...done!
root@tty1[/]# esearch -c sh-utils
[ N] sh-utils (2.0.15-r1): textutils, sh-utils and fileutils moved to coreutils
Before configuring anything else I emerged a few of my favourite utilities:
- emerge -a vim
- emerge -a pciutils
- emerge -a gentoolkit
- emerge -a esearch (see above)
ALSA Sound
The Gentoo Linux ALSA guide is helpful for
ALSA configuration in general. I opted to build the snd-intel8x0 drivers and support as modules which
means that /etc/modules.d/alsa needed editing.
In the past, I've found sound on Linux to be a royal pain. With one application blocking access to
the sound device, how are you supposed to play music over your favourite game?
With ALSA, this is possible using 'dmix' and an /etc/asound.conf script. All ALSA
aware applications (or with an ALSA plugin) will now play happily together.
Xorg-X11 X Window system
The Gentoo Linux
X Server Configuration HOWTO
is helpful for Xorg-X11 configuration in general. I wanted hardware-accelerated 3D graphics (OpenGL) and
overlay surfaces (DVD scaling). This involved building the kernel (DRM) drivers for the AGPGART and the
graphics chipset.
I tried the stock Gentoo distribution, but enabling Direct Rendering
resulted in a hard-lock whilst starting X, and (recoverable) damage to my disk drive. An
'Option "NoAccel"' in XF86Config 'solved' the problem but I was left with no
hardware acceleration. I ended up building a version fresh out of cvs by following these
instructions: X.org Foundation CvsPage.
This was when I discovered that I should be using the new 'i915' driver along with the
intel AGPGART. These were loaded at startup by making entries in
'/etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6':
KDE Desktop
I just did an 'emerge -a kde' which gets you the KDE desktop and a load of KDE applications.
Configuration and Applications
Fonts
First I improved the range of fonts available:
- copy the Windows fonts over into the '/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype' directory
- uncomment the relevant line in 'XF86Config'
- run 'fc-cache -f'
- restart 'xfs' by running '/etc/init.d/xfs restart'
- run the KDE Font Installer through the 'Control Center' and switch into 'Administrator Mode'.
Some of the above steps may be redundant, I just fiddled 'til it worked.
Cursors
Changed the low visibility black pointer for this set of
flat, white pointers which
are much easier to see against Hubble Space Telescope desktop pictures.
I extracted the archive and, as a normal user, did a "make install" which installed the theme files for just
this user. To activate them I then edited the file "/usr/share/cursors/xorg-x11/default/index.theme":
[Icon Theme]
Inherits=flatcursor
Konsole
Improving the readability of 'Konsole' (the KDE xterm) involved disabling anti-aliasing for 'Konsole' only,
which I did by editing the 'Properties' of the 'Terminal/Shell' button on the taskbar, and changing the
command to 'konsole --noxft'. I also changed the 'Konsole' font to 'Lucida Typewriter', regular, size 12.
Other
Then I installed more of my favourite applications, games and tools:
- emerge -a gvim
- emerge -a gimp
- emerge -a LinNeighborhood
- emerge -a timidity-eawpatches
- emerge -a prboom
- emerge -a tuxpaint
- emerge -a gpm
- emerge -a usbutils
- emerge -a cvs
- emerge -a mpg123
- emerge -a mozilla-firefox
- emerge -a netscape-flash
DVD Player
My Gentoo USE flag settings are from my PIII system (see below), so MMX and SSE
are already enabled. I used 'emerge -a mplayer' to install
MPlayer. I added a symbolic link using the command
'ln -s /dev/hdc /dev/dvd' to make MPlayer happy, and edited '/etc/mplayer.conf' to set defaults:
ao=alsa # use ALSA
vo=xv # use the Xv overlay
fs=yes # fullscreen video
# Enable user-defined RTC frequencies
echo 1024 > /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq
I started missing the introduction and scene selection interface so I installed
Xine as well. It requires 'libdvdcss' to actually play encrypted (most) DVD's
but this isn't emerged automatically for legal reasons.
Touchpad and External USB Mouse
The Synaptics Touchpad drivers and a GUI control
program qsynaptics proved easy to install and
get working. It was a relief to get a 'scroll-wheel' and middle mouse button capability back. Configuration
details are in the XF86Config (see below). I had to adjust the 'RightEdge' option to
get the vertical scrolling to work reliably. To make an external USB mouse 'just work' when plugged in, I
have this in XF86Config which also enables its scroll-wheel :
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "Auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Simple Layout"
Screen "Screen 1"
InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Mouse" "AlwaysCore"
InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection
USB Digital Camera
I've got a 'Canon Powershot A70'. I use 'gphoto2' and 'gtkam' on my desktop. After previous experiences with
'hotplug', I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to get the interface to the camera working. I just
plugged in the camera, started gtkam, chose 'Camera|Add Camera..' from the menu, and clicked on the 'Detect'
button!
USB Scanner (Mustek Scan Express 1248UB)
I followed this document
HOWTO Install a USB scanner
to get my new (£25) scanner working. Obtained the following:
# lsusb
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 055f:021f Mustek Systems, Inc.
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0458:0003 KYE Systems Corp. (Mouse Systems) Genius NetScroll+
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
giving the required VendorID : 055f and ProdID : 021f and then using the
SANE Supported Scanners - Search Engine
to discover that I need to use the 'sane-gt68xx' driver, providing 'complete' support. I'd already
checked this before purchase and must say that it influenced my choice of scanner.
After setting 'SANE_BACKENDS=sane-gt68xx' in '/etc/make.conf' as suggested in the docs, I did:
emerge -av coldplug sane-backends xsane
(first checking that 'hotplug' was up to date). Unfortunately, the version of SANE that I built
doesn't make use of the SANE_BACKENDS variable, so it built all the backends anyway(!)
I remembered to do:
rc-update add coldplug boot
and moved on to configuration. The file '/etc/hotplug/usb/libsane.usermap' already knew about my
scanner so I proceeded to edit '/etc/sane.d/sane-gt68xx.conf'. Here, it appeared that the scanner
would be autodetected, so I didn't need to change a thing.
Used the following:
# gpasswd -a root scanner
# gpasswd -a <user> scanner
to set up group membership, then logged out and back in again.
When I started coldplug, it seemed to work but came up with some strange permission errors:
# /etc/init.d/coldplug start
* Coldplugging input devices ... [ ok ]
* Coldplugging isapnp devices ... [ ok ]
* Coldplugging pci devices ... [ ok ]
* Coldplugging pnp devices ... [ ok ]
* Coldplugging usb devices ...
chown: cannot access `/proc/bus/usb/001/003': No such file or directory
chmod: cannot access `/proc/bus/usb/001/003': No such file or directory [ ok ]
which I ignored for now.
SANE scanner detection test and scanner info was obtained like this:
$ sane-find-scanner -q
found USB scanner (vendor=0x055f, product=0x021f [USB Scanner], chip=GT-6816) at libusb:003:003
$ scanimage -L
device `gt68xx:libusb:003:003' is a Mustek ScanExpress 1248 UB flatbed scanner
When I tried to run xsane, after clicking on the disclaimer, I got the following error:
[gt68xx] Couldn't open firmware file (neither `/usr/share/sane/gt68xx/SBSfw.usb' nor
`/usr/share/sane/gt68xx/sbsfw.usb'): No such file or directory
I was feeling optimistic, so I rebooted, thinking that perhaps coldplug didn't like being run so
long after hotplug. No such luck: produced the same errors on startup, and xsane still didn't work.
The trouble-shooting
section mentions the coldplug problem: a tweak to '/etc/hotplug/usb.rc' should
fix it, and it did! No joy with xsane yet, though.
I then followed the advice about removing the SANE_BACKENDS variable and re-emerging(Doh!). Still no
joy, so it was time to investigate this 'missing firmware' problem.
Discovered that there is a man page for the backend:
$ man sane-gt68xx
and that there is an up to date
backend site.
The missing firmware file is here:
SBSfw.usb.
Making a directory '/usr/share/sane/gt68xx/' and copying the 'SBSfw.usb' file into it did the
trick. Hurray!
Hmmmm. Managed to get a preview scan and selected a region for the full scan. Unfortunately, it
segfaulted on me :-( I was using sane-backends 1.0.15 - changed to 1.0.17 as recommended and
that crashed as well. Tried updating xsane from 0.97 to 0.98a, and deleting the old xsane config
files:
$ rm -rf ~/.sane
That fixed it! To get the GIMP plugin built, I had to add 'gimp' to the USE flags and rebuild xsane.
This added a pair of menu items to the GIMP 'File|Acquire' menu.
Smart Link 56K Modem
Update:
After upgrading to kernel 2.6.15-gentoo-r1, even the patched slamr driver wouldn't work, so I tried the
ALSA-based driver and found that this worked:
$ ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge -av net-dialup/slmodem-2.9.11_pre20051101
I'm using the ALSA drivers in the kernel, and enabled these PCI drivers:
<M> Intel/SiS/nVidia/AMD/ALi AC97 Controller
<M> Intel/SiS/nVidia/AMD MC97 Modem (EXPERIMENTAL)
I found this useful for checking that the modem hardware and driver were happy:
$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: I82801DBICH4 [Intel 82801DB-ICH4], device 0: Intel ICH [Intel 82801DB-ICH4]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: I82801DBICH4 [Intel 82801DB-ICH4], device 4: Intel ICH - IEC958 [Intel 82801DB-ICH4 - IEC958]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Modem [Intel 82801DB-ICH4 Modem], device 0: Intel ICH - Modem [Intel 82801DB-ICH4 Modem - Modem]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
and I set /etc/conf.d/slmodem to this:
# Config file for /etc/init.d/slmodemd
DEV=/dev/ttySL0
COUNTRY=UK
GROUP=dialout
# the group should be kept in sync with:
# /etc/devfs.d/slmodem (devfs)
# /etc/udev/rules.d/55-slmodem.rules (udev)
# The following symlink will be created if uncommented
LN_DEV=/dev/modem
# Raise priority to reduce modem dropouts
NICE=-6
# ALSA Options:
# The following sets the ALSA (alsasound) init script to
# be a dependancy of the slmodem one. It does also provides
# ALSA support.
MODULE=alsa
# The modem hardware slot
# use "modem:0", "modem:1", etc.
# usually modem:1 is used
HW_SLOT=modem:1
I checked that I was a member of the 'uucp' and 'dialout' groups and then made sure that I could
dial-out using minicom. This only worked when I used the ALSA
device 'modem:1', 'hw:1' looked like it worked but the modem didn't go on-line when dialing.
Previously:
Download the Linux driver from Smart Link Driver Downloads.
I used slmodem-2.9.10, but it may have moved or been updated by now. Unfortunately, these
drivers didn't work with the latest 2.6.11 kernel without being patched. I found a solution to the
# modprobe slamr
FATAL: error inserting slamr (/lib/modules/2.6.11-gentoo-r4/extra/slamr.ko):
Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)
#
# dmesg | grep slamr
slamr: module license 'Smart Link Ltd.' taints kernel.
slamr: Unknown symbol get_device
slamr: Unknown symbol put_device
slamr: Unknown symbol device_release_driver
slamr: Unknown symbol get_device
slamr: Unknown symbol put_device
slamr: Unknown symbol device_release_driver
As a normal user, I changed into my 'utils' directory, extracted the archive using the command :
$ tar xvzf ~/zips/smartlink-modem/slmodem-2.9.10.tar.gz
Next you need to know your country-code/country-name. To get a list of these, I used:
$ /usr/sbin/slmodemd --countrylist 2>&1 | less
I added 'slamr' to '/etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6' and then hacked up Gentoo compatible 'init' and 'conf'
scripts which I put into '/etc/init.d/' and '/etc/conf.d/' respectively (see
below). After setting the executable bit using the command:
# chmod +x /etc/init.d/slmodemd
# modprobe slamr # load the kernel module for the modem
# /etc/init.d/slmodemd start # start the soft-modem application
# ps aux # see if running
# /etc/init.d/slmodemd stop # stop the soft-modem application
# ps aux # see if stopped
# rc-update add slmodemd default
# ln -s /dev/ttySL0 /dev/modem
I read further in the README file, noticed the 'ALSA mode', but thought it was probably more sensible to see if
I could connect for real using 'KPPP'. Remembering that 'KPPP' needs 'ppp', I installed it:
Setting up an account with KPPP is routine and it worked second time, after I'd got my password correct. I had
to disable my broadband Ethernet connection first by issuing:
# ifconfig eth0 down # disconnects the bb connection
# ifconfig # check its gone
Network Configuration
By now, I'd noticed that if I forgot to plug-in the ethernet cable before starting, there was a nasty
delay and lots of error messages. A while back I came across
ifplugd
which periodically checks to see if an ethernet cable has been plugged-in or un-plugged, and if so, runs a
script that either starts or stops networking. This is similar to the scripts that are run when a PPP connection
is made or broken.
The latest stable Gentoo version was quite old, so I just downloaded and compiled by hand. The library
libdaemon is also required, and I compiled this first.
I used the following commands to build them:
$ cd ~/utils/libdaemon-0.6
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-doxygen
$ make
$ su -c "make install"
$ cd ~/utils/ifplugd-0.25
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr
$ make
$ su -c "make install"
$ rc-update remove net.eth0 # Don't start network automatically
$ rc-update remove sshd # or anything else that depends on a network connection
# start the ifplugd
/etc/init.d/ifplugd start
$ su -c "tail -f /var/logs/messages"
File '/sbin/ifup' :
#!/bin/sh
/etc/init.d/net.eth0 start
/etc/init.d/sshd start
File '/sbin/ifdown' :
#!/bin/sh
/etc/init.d/sshd stop
/etc/init.d/net.eth0 stop
# chmod +x /sbin/ifup /sbin/ifdown
KDE Menu Editor problem
Discovered that the KDE menu editor wasn't working correctly. Adding and removing entries appeared to work, but
after saving all changes would be lost - very irritating. After making multiple searches on Google I finally
noticed that there was a lot of talk about a '.config' directory that I didn't have.
Before installing X, I had put a copy of my kernel '.config' file into my home directory and this was preventing
the creation of a '.config' directory used by KDE. Ouch!
Guarddog Firewall
The 2.0.0 version of Guarddog in portage doesn't work
with the 2.6 Kernel series, and rather than use the 'unstable' 2.3.1 alternative, I downloaded and installed the
stable 2.2.0 version. There is
nothing much to say about building and installing, it just worked.
Configuration was more complicated though. Guarddog is a configuration tool for the 'iptables' packet-filter
that is part of the Linux Kernel. It is controlled by a set of 'rules' about what kind of packets from where are
allowed through to which destination, and is quite complex to setup, but very powerful.
Guarddog creates a script, '/etc/rc.firewall', that basically calls the 'iptables' tool with the right arguments
to setup the firewall you described to Guarddog using its friendly user interface. It isn't as easy to use as,
say, Zone-Alarm for Windows, but it does the job, and I found it quite
educational, not being a networking expert.
In brief: I read the tutorial material, added a LAN Network Zone, a small number of missing protocols:
- PGP Key Server TCP 11371
- rsync TCP 873
- partimage TCP 4025
and enabled DNS, HTTP/HTTPS, FTP etc. as described in the documentation. Using other machines on the network,
it was easy to test and understand what the setting were doing by trying to get ping working. Being able to ping
other machines from the laptop and being able to ping the laptop from other machines got the concepts fairly
clear in my mind.
The next step was to get the generated script, '/etc/rc.firewall', run at the right times, which is pretty
much anytime the network configuration changes. I edited '/etc/init.d/net.eth0' and added a pair of functions
at the end of the script which get called automatically for you:
postup() {
ebegin " Reconfiguring firewall"
/etc/rc.firewall
eend 0
}
postdown() {
ebegin " Reconfiguring firewall"
/etc/rc.firewall
eend 0
}
# Reconfigure the firewall rules
/etc/rc.firewall
K3B CD-Burner
Whilst the 'cdrtools' collection is technically very impressive, it doesn't appeal to someone who just
wants to backup some files, or make a copy of an audio CD.
Enter K3B which, if you are familiar with Easy-CD (one of the versions that worked properly that is) will make
you feel right at home. It has an easy to use 'Copy' button which will copy Audio and Data CDs without much
fuss, will burn ISOs and has quite a nice project builder interface.
It emerged painlessly, and on first running, prompted me to run the companion k3bsetup program.
K3bsetup presumably 'captures' the root password, and requires a user to be a member of the 'cdrw' group.
After logging back in and restarting X, it worked fine and I successfully burnt a test CD.
Just for the record (ho, ho, ho) here is the output of 'cdrecord':
# cdrecord -scanbus dev=ATA
Cdrecord-Clone 2.01a28 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2004 Jörg Schilling
scsidev: 'ATA'
devname: 'ATA'
scsibus: -2 target: -2 lun: -2
Warning: Using badly designed ATAPI via /dev/hd* interface.
Linux sg driver version: 3.5.27
Using libscg version 'schily-0.8'.
scsibus1:
1,0,0 100) 'QSI ' 'CDRW/DVD SBW-242' 'UX09' Removable CD-ROM
1,1,0 101) *
1,2,0 102) *
1,3,0 103) *
1,4,0 104) *
1,5,0 105) *
1,6,0 106) *
1,7,0 107) *
Reboot and Poweroff
I emerged 'sudo' so that I could run '/sbin/reboot' and '/sbin/poweroff' as a normal user without having to type
the root password in everytime. sudo is configured by editing '/etc/sudoers' using the command 'visudo'. I found
it a little tricky to figure out, but 'man sudo' and 'man sudoers' were quite helpful. I used the following, which
allows local users in the wheel group to use the command 'sudo /sbin/poweroff' to switch off or restart the machine.
# Cmnd alias specification
Cmnd_Alias ONOFF = /sbin/reboot, /sbin/poweroff
# User privilege specification
root ALL=(ALL) ALL
%wheel localhost=NOPASSWD: ONOFF
%wheel digimate=NOPASSWD: ONOFF
Intel PRO/Wireless LAN 2100
Luckily, this WiFi card has quite mature Linux drivers, and has
support from
Wireless Tools for Linux.
I checked with the Gentoo package list and, whilst the above drivers and tools are included, they aren't very
upto date. I downloaded
wireless_tools.27.pre25.tar.gz,
drivers ipw2100-1.1.0.tgz and the
card firmware ipw2100-fw-1.3.tgz.
I unpacked them and read the INSTALL file for the drivers. First, I decided to build the driver 'outside'
the kernel as I'm already doing that for the modem. This meant that I had to check that the
CONFIG_NET_RADIO kernel configuration option was set, it wasn't so I sorted that out whilst also ensuring that
CONFIG_CRYPTO_ARC4 and CONFIG_CRYPTO_CRC32C were set. After rebuilding, installing and rebooting, a simple
'make', 'make install' ritual did the job. Note: there were some warnings about missing CRCs which I just
ignored. I built the wireless tools the same way, but edited the Makefile first so that they would install
in '/usr/sbin' instead of '/usr/local/sbin'. As directed by the INSTALL file, I also moved the firmware files and
licence into the directory '/usr/lib/hotplug/firmware/'.
At this point I was pretty much left on my own as the example in the INSTALL instructions was for an rc system
quite different from Gentoo's. Fortunately, it wasn't difficult to check that it worked manually. As root I did:
# modprobe ipw2100
# lsmod
...
ipw2100 151708 0
firmware_class 7744 1 ipw2100
ieee80211 13892 1 ipw2100
ieee80211_crypt 4996 1 ieee80211
...
# iwconfig
eth0 no wireless extensions.
lo no wireless extensions.
eth1 IEEE 802.11b ESSID:"" Nickname:"ipw2100"
Mode:Managed Channel:0 Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Bit Rate=0kb/s Tx-Power=32 dBm
Retry:on RTS thr=2304 B Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
eth0 no wireless extensions.
lo no wireless extensions.
eth1 IEEE 802.11b ESSID:"XXXXXX" Nickname:"ipw2100"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462GHz Access Point: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
Bit Rate=1Mb/s Tx-Power=32 dBm
Retry:on RTS thr=2304 B Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=30/100 Signal level=-88 dBm Noise level=-98 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:6
# ifconfig eth1 up
# ifconfig
...
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:1
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0x2000 Memory:e0001000-e0001fff
...
# dhcpcd eth1
# ifconfig
...
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
inet addr:192.168.1.104 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:3 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:1
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:1240 (1.2 Kb) TX bytes:4142 (4.0 Kb)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0x2000 Memory:e0001000-e0001fff
...
# /usr/sbin/iwlist eth1 scanning
eth1 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
ESSID:"XXXXXX"
Mode:Master
Frequency:2.462GHz (Channel 11)
Bit Rate:1Mb/s
Bit Rate:2Mb/s
Bit Rate:5.5Mb/s
Bit Rate:11Mb/s
Bit Rate:18Mb/s
Bit Rate:24Mb/s
Bit Rate:36Mb/s
Bit Rate:54Mb/s
Quality=23/100 Signal level=-75 dBm Noise level=-98 dBm
Encryption key:on
Cell 02 - Address: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
ESSID:"XXXXXX"
Mode:Master
Frequency:2.462GHz (Channel 11)
Bit Rate:1Mb/s
Bit Rate:2Mb/s
Bit Rate:5.5Mb/s
Bit Rate:11Mb/s
Bit Rate:18Mb/s
Bit Rate:24Mb/s
Bit Rate:36Mb/s
Bit Rate:54Mb/s
Quality=14/100 Signal level=-84 dBm Noise level=-98 dBm
Encryption key:off
# route
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.1.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth1
loopback digimate 255.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 lo
default 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth1
I eventually purchased a cheap WAP and did a little more work on configuring the WiFi interface
so that it worked with ifplugd. It was quite nice being able to just
pull out the ethernet cable, flick the WiFi interface on and be surfing again in well under
a minute.
ACPI Power Management
Here things went wrong. The fan was running continuously, and the lid switch and mains<->battery
transitions were being ignored - until the power button was briefly pushed. The fan was the killer
for me: couldn't stand the noise. The CPU Frequency Scaling seemed to work. Using 'top', I could
see the effect of writing to '/proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/throttling' but the fan kept running.
I tried decompiling/recompiling the ACPI scripts as described in
HOWTO Fix Common ACPI Problems
, but found no errors. I tried identifying the OS as various flavours of Windows to no
effect. It seemed that ACPI interrupts from sources other than the power
button were being ignored - presumably because they were being initialised
incorrectly or masked for some reason. I started reading the ACPI documentation
but eventually gave up.
Until now. Using a recent kernel:
linux-2.6.11-gentoo-r4, and having done a bit more reading of the the kernel
documentation, I've got the fan to run only when required. I needed to enable
'ACPI Processor P-States driver' and 'Intel Speedstep on ICH-M chipsets (ioport
interface)' under 'CPU Frequency scaling'. I also built the new 'ondemand'
governor which is currently working very well.
I found a more extensive power management interface
here: '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/', and writing to 'scaling_cur_freq' after reading
'scaling_available_frequencies' generated cheers when the fan stopped and stayed stopped.
I set the governor at start-up by adding this line to the end of '/etc/conf.d/local.start':
# Set the CPUFreq governor to 'ondemand'
echo "ondemand" > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor
$ su
# modprobe speedstep_centrino
# modprobe cpufreq_ondemand
# echo "ondemand" > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor
Hardware List
root@tty1[/]# lspci
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82852/855GM Host Bridge (rev 02)
0000:00:00.1 System peripheral: Intel Corp. 855GM/GME GMCH Memory I/O Control Registers (rev 02)
0000:00:00.3 System peripheral: Intel Corp. 855GM/GME GMCH Configuration Process Registers (rev 02)
0000:00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corp. 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
0000:00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corp. 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
0000:00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB (ICH4) USB UHCI #1 (rev 03)
0000:00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB (ICH4) USB UHCI #2 (rev 03)
0000:00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB (ICH4) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BAM/CAM PCI Bridge (rev 83)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801DBM LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801DBM (ICH4) Ultra ATA Storage Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBM (ICH4) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB (ICH4) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corp. 82801DB (ICH4) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 03)
0000:01:01.0 Network controller: Intel Corp. PRO/Wireless LAN 2100 3B Mini PCI Adapter (rev 04)
0000:01:02.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6105 [Rhine-III] (rev 8b)
0000:01:04.0 CardBus bridge: ENE Technology Inc CB710 Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
0000:01:04.1 FLASH memory: ENE Technology Inc CB710 Memory Card Reader Controller
0000:01:05.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 80)
Configuration files
Links
