Linux Laptop-HOWTO
Werner Heuser <wehe@snafu.de>
v1.3, 8 March 1999
Laptops are different from desktops/towers. They use certain hardware
such as PCMCIA cards, infrared ports, batteries, docking stations.
Often their hardware is more limited (e.g. disk space, CPU speed),
though the performance gap is becoming smaller. In many instances,
laptops can become a desktop replacement. Hardware support for Linux
on laptops is sometimes more limited (e.g. graphic chips, internal
modems). Laptops often use specialized hardware, hence finding a
driver can be more difficult. Laptops are often used in changing
environments, so there is a need for multiple configurations and addi�
tional security strategies. Though there are laptop related HOWTOs
available already, this HOWTO contains a concise survey of laptop
related documents. Also, laptop related Linux features, such as
installation methods for laptops (via PCMCIA, without CD drive, etc.),
laptop hardware features and configurations for different (network)
environments are described.
______________________________________________________________________
Table of Contents
1. Preface
2. Copyright, Disclaimer and Trademarks
3. Which Laptop to Buy?
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Portables, Laptops/Notebooks, Sub/Mini-Notebooks, Palmtops, PDAs/HPCs
3.2.1 Portables
3.2.2 Laptops/Notebooks
3.2.3 Sub-Notebooks/Mini-Notebooks
3.2.4 Palmtops
3.2.5 Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs)/Handheld PCs (HPCs)
3.2.6 Cellular Phones, Calculators, Digital Cameras, Wearable Computing
3.3 Linux Features
3.4 Main Hardware Features
3.4.1 Weight
3.4.2 Display
3.4.3 Batteries
3.4.4 CPU
3.4.4.1 Supported CPU Families
3.4.4.2 Miscellaneous
3.4.5 Keyboard Quality
3.4.6 Price
3.4.7 Power Supply
3.5 Sources of More Information
3.6 Linux Compatibility Check
3.6.1 Related HOWTOs
3.6.2 Check Methods in General
3.7 Buying a Second Hand Laptop
3.8 No Hardware Recommendations
3.9 Laptop Distribution
3.9.1 Requirements
3.9.2 Recommendation
4. Installation Methods
4.1 Related HOWTOs
4.2 Introduction
4.3 From a Boot Floppy plus CD-ROM - The Usual Way
4.4 From a DOS or Windows Partition at the same Machine
4.5 From a Second Machine With a Micro Linux On a Floppy
4.5.1 Introduction
4.5.2 Prerequisites
4.5.3 Source Machine
4.5.4 Destination Machine
4.5.5 Configuration of the Source Machine after the Transfer
4.5.6 Miscellaneous
4.6 From a Second Machine With a 2.5" Hard Disk Adapter
4.7 From a PCMCIA Device
4.8 From a Parallel Port Device (ZIP Drive, CD Drive)
5. Hardware In Detail
5.1 PCMCIA Controller
5.1.1 Linux Compatibility Check
5.1.2 Related HOWTOs
5.1.3 PCMCIA Configuration - Survey
5.1.3.1 Software
5.1.3.2 PCMCIA Controller
5.1.3.3 PCMCIA Card
5.2 Infrared Port
5.2.1 Linux Compatibility Check
5.2.1.1 SIR
5.2.1.2 FIR
5.2.1.3 Hardware Survey
5.2.2 Related HOWTOs
5.2.3 IrDA Configuration - Survey
5.2.3.1 IrDA
5.2.3.1.1 Kernel
5.2.3.1.2 Software
5.2.3.1.3 Hardware
5.2.3.2 Linux Remote Control - LiRC
5.3 Graphic Chip
5.3.1 Linux Compatibility Check
5.3.1.1 Video Mode
5.3.1.2 Text Mode
5.3.2 Related HOWTOs
5.3.3 Survey X-Servers
5.3.4 Resources
5.3.5 External Monitor
5.3.6 Miscellaneous
5.4 Sound
5.4.1 Linux Compatibility Check
5.4.2 Related HOWTOs
5.4.3 Survey Sound Drivers
5.5 Keyboard
5.5.1 Linux Compatibility Check
5.5.2 Second Keyboard
5.6 Mice and their Relatives
5.6.1 Linux Compatibility Check
5.6.2 Related HOWTOs
5.6.3 Mice Species
5.6.4 Resources
5.6.5 External Mouse
5.7 Advanced Power Managment (APM)
5.7.1 Linux Compatibility Check
5.7.2 Introduction
5.7.3 Caveats
5.7.4 Troubleshooting
5.8 Batteries
5.9 USB
5.10 Memory
5.11 Plug-and-Play Devices (PnP)
5.12 Docking Station / Port Replicator
5.12.1 Definitions
5.12.2 Other Solutions
5.12.3 Connection Methods
5.13 Network Connections
5.13.1 Related HOWTOs
5.13.2 Connection Methods
5.13.2.1 PCMCIA Network Card
5.13.2.2 Serial Null Modem Cable
5.13.2.3 Parallel Port NIC (Pocket Adaptor)
5.13.2.4 Parallel "Null" Modem Cable
5.13.2.5 Docking Station NIC
5.14 Modem
5.15 SCSI
5.15.1 Hardware Compatibility Check
5.15.2 Related HOWTOs
5.15.3 Survey
5.16 Floppy Drive
5.16.1 Linux Compatibility Check
5.17 CD Drive
5.18 Harddisk
5.18.1 Linux Compatibility Check
5.18.2 Miscellaneaous
5.19 ZV Port
5.20 Accessories
5.20.1 PCMCIA Cards
5.20.1.1 Card Families
5.20.1.2 Linux Compatibility Check
5.20.2 Printers
5.20.3 Power and Phone Plugs, Power Supply
5.20.4 Bags and Suitcases
6. Different Environments - On the Road
6.1 Related HOWTOs
6.2 Configuration Tools
6.2.1 NetEnv
6.2.2 Mobile IP
6.2.2.1 Resources
6.2.3 DHCP/BootP
6.2.4 PPPD Options
6.2.5 (TT
6.2.6 PCMCIA - Schemes
6.2.7 Bootloaders
6.2.7.1 LILO
6.2.7.2 Other Bootloaders
6.2.8 X-Windows
6.2.9 More Info
6.3 Data Transport Between Different Machines
6.3.1 Hardware
6.3.2 Software
6.3.2.1 Source Code Control System (SCCS)
6.3.2.2 CODA Filesystem
6.3.2.3 WWWsync
6.4 Security in Different Environments
6.4.1 Introduction
6.4.2 Means of Security
6.5 Dealing with Down Times (Cron Jobs)
7. Other Resources
8. Repairing the Hardware
9. Solutions with Laptops
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Mobile Network Analyzer
9.3 Mobile Router
9.4 Hacking and Cracking Networks
9.5 Lectures
9.6 Mobile Data Collecting
9.6.1 Related HOWTOs
9.6.2 Applications
9.7 Mobile Office
9.8 Connection to Digital Camera
9.9 Connection to QuickCam (Video)
9.10 Connection to Television Set
9.11 Connection to Cellular Phone
9.12 Connection to Global Positioning System (GPS)
9.13 Connection via Amateur Radio (HAM)
9.14 Satellite Watching
10. Other Operating Systems
10.1 DOS/Windows9x/NT
10.1.1 Introduction
10.1.2 DOS Tools to Repartition a Hard Disk
10.1.3 Caveats
10.1.4 Multi Boot
10.1.5 Partition Sharing
10.2 BSD Unix
11. ToDo
12. Revision History
13. Credits
14. Appendix A - Survey about Micro Linuxes
15. Appendix B - Dealing with Limited Resources or Tuning the System
15.1 Related HOWTOs
15.2 Introduction
15.3 Small Space
15.3.1 Introduction
15.3.2 Techniques
15.4 Harddisk Speed
15.5 Small Memory
15.5.1 Related HOWTOs
15.5.2 Techniques
15.6 Low CPU Speed
15.7 Power Saving Techniques
15.8 Kernel
15.8.1 Related HOWTOs
15.9 Tiny Applications and Distributions
______________________________________________________________________
1. Preface
Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding is the
third. -- Marge Piercy
People like either laptops or desktops. I like to work with laptops
rather than with desktops. I like Linux too. My first HOWTO is the
Linux/IR-HOWTO about infrared support for Linux. Also I have written
some pages about Linux with certain laptops: Olivetti Echos 133 DM
(together with Kurt Saetzler), HP OmniBook 800CT, HP OmniBook 3100
(together with Friedhelm Kueck) and COMPAQ Armada 1592 DT. But I don't
claim to be a laptop guru, I just had the opportunity to install Linux
on some laptops and I simply want to share the information I
collected.
This document isn't ready yet. If you like to write a chapter or even
a smaller part by yourself, please feel free to contact me. Also your
suggestions and recommendations are welcome. But please don't expect
me to solve your laptop related problems. Please read all according
manual pages, HOWTOs and WWW sites first, than contact the other
resources mentioned below.
Many times I have mentioned MetaLab formerly known as SunSite. This
site carries a heavy load, so do yourself a favor, use one of its
mirrors http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/MIRRORS.html .
For Debian/GNU Linux the mirror URLs are organized in this scheme
http://www.<country code, e.g. uk>.debian.org .
Since I don't own a non-Intel based machine, this HOWTO might not
contain all the details for non-Intel systems or may contain
inaccuracies. Sorry.
This text is included in the LINUX DOCUMENTATION PROJECT
http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP .
The latest version of this document is available in HTML format at
http://www.snafu.de/~wehe/index_li.html .
Richard Worwood mirrors this HOWTO at
http://www.felch01.demon.co.uk/Links/links.html .
A similar HOWTO written in french by Lionel "Trollhunter" you may find
at http://www.ie2.u-psud.fr/~bouchpan .
Werner Heuser <wehe@snafu.de>
2. Copyright, Disclaimer and Trademarks
Copyright � 1999 by Werner Heuser. This document may be distributed
under the terms set forth in the LDP license at
http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/COPYRIGHT.html .
This is free documentation. It is distributed in the hope that it will
be useful, but without any warranty. The information in this document
is correct to the best of my knowledge, but there's a always a chance
I've made some mistakes, so don't follow everything too blindly,
especially if it seems wrong. Nothing here should have a detrimental
effect on your computer, but just in case I take no responsibility for
any damages incurred from the use of the information contained herein.
Some laptop manufacturers don't like to see a broken laptop with an
operating system other than the one shipped with it, and may reload
MS-Windows if you complain of a hardware problem. They may even
declare the warranty void. Though IMHO this isn't legal or at least
not fair. Always have a backup of both the original configuration and
your Linux installation if you have to get your laptop repaired.
Though I hope trademarks will be superfluous sometimes (you may see
what I mean at Open Source Definition
http://www.opensource.org/osd.html) : If certain words are trademarks,
the context should make it clear to whom they belong. For example "MS
Windows NT" implies that "Windows NT" belongs to Microsoft (MS). Mac
is by Apple Computer. Trademarks belong to their respective owners.
3. Which Laptop to Buy?
3.1. Introduction
Portable computers may be divided into different categories. This is a
subjective decision, but I try to do so. My groupings roughly follow
the generally accepted marketing categories. The criteria could be:
1. Weight: Often expressed in terms like Portables, Laptops/Notebooks,
Sub/Mini-Notebooks, Palmtops/PDAs. There is no standard method to
define the weight of a laptop, therefore the data provided by the
manufacturers (and which are given below) have to be considered as
approximations. The question is how the power supply (wether
external or internal) or swappable parts like CD and floppy drive,
are included in the weight.
2. Supported Operations Systems: proprietary versus open
3. Price: NoName versus Brand
4. Hardware Features: display size, harddisk size, CPU speed, battery
type, etc.
5. Linux Support: graphic chip, sound card, infrared controller
(IrDA), internal modem, etc.
3.2. Portables, Laptops/Notebooks, Sub/Mini-Notebooks, Palmtops,
PDAs/HPCs
3.2.1. Portables
Weight greater than 4.0 kg (9 lbs). Features like a PC, but in a
smaller box and with LCD display. Examples: lunchbox or ruggedized
laptops (e.g., http://www.bsicomputer.com/)
3.2.2. Laptops/Notebooks
Weight between 1.7 and 4.0 kg (4 to 9 lbs). Features custom hardware
and usually a special CPU. Examples: HP OmniBook 3100, COMPAQ Armada
1592DT. The terms laptop and notebook seem equivalent to me.
3.2.3. Sub-Notebooks/Mini-Notebooks
Weight between 1.3 and 1.7 kg (3 to 4 lbs). Features: external floppy
drive, external CD drive. Examples: HP OmniBook 800CT, Toshiba
Libretto 100, COMPAQ Aero, SONY VAIO 505.
3.2.4. Palmtops
Weight between 0.7 and 1.3 kg (1.5 to 3 lbs). Features: proprietary
commercial operating systems. Examples: HP200LX.
3.2.5. Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs)/Handheld PCs (HPCs)
Weight below 0.7 kg (1.5 lbs). Features: proprietary commercial
operating systems and often non-Intel CPU (PalmOS, EPOC32, GEOS,
Windows CE). Examples: Newton Message Pad, Palm III (former Pilot),
Psion Series 5, CASIO Z-7000. Palmtops and PDAs are currently not
covered in this HOWTO. Anyway it may be useful therefore too. There is
also a PalmOS-HOWTO (former Pilot-HOWTO) by David H. Silber and the
Newton and Linux Mini-HOWTO
http://privat.swol.de/ReinholdSchoeb/Newton/Newton_and_Linux-mini-
HOWTO.html . I just include some links, most of them are from Kenneth
E. Harker's page http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-laptop/
:
1. Newtl: Newton/Linux Communications System Newtl allows a Linux
machine to communicate with a Newton PDA. Automatically send e-
mail, print, and fax outboxes through your Linux machine, and more.
2. PilotLink and XCoPilot PilotLink is an utility that performs data
transfers from 3com PalmPilot handheld computers to your Linux
machine. XCoPilot is an emulator of the PalmPilot operating system
that runs under Linux.
3. PalmVNC PalmVNC is an implementation of the Virtual Network Client
architecture that will allow you to use a Linux or other UNIX
machine to put up a (tiny) X Window on a 3COM PalmPilot.
4. PDAs and infrared remote control, see Hiromu Okada
http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA005810/remocon/remocone.htm
5. AFAIK you can run Linux on the IBM PC110 (a tiny PC handheld that's
no longer manufactured). There's a HOWTO on it running around
somewhere but I don't have an URL.
6. For more information on Virtual Network Computing (VNC), see
http://http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/ .
7. There is also Handheld Systems(TM) On-line Archives at
http://www.cdpubs.com/hhsys/archives.html .and a search engine
about palmtop related topics at http://www.palmtop.net/ .
3.2.6. Cellular Phones, Calculators, Digital Cameras, Wearable Com�
puting
These devices are not covered in this text. For general information
about Embedded Systems, see http://www.embedded.com . For Linux
information, see ELKS http://www.linux.org.uk/ELKS-Home/index.html
and the uCLinux project at http://ryeham.ee.ryerson.ca/uClinux .
Also related to this topic but not covered yet seems wearable
computing, see http://lcs.www.media.mit.edu/projects/wearables/ for
further information.
3.3. Linux Features
Due to a lack of support by some hardware manufacturers, not every
feature of a laptop is always supported or fully operational. The main
devices which may cause trouble are: graphic chip, IrDA port, sound
card, PCMCIA controller , PnP devices and internal modem. Please try
to get as much information about these topics before buying a laptop.
But often it isn't quite easy to get the necessary information.
Sometimes even the specifications or the hotline of the manufacturer
aren't able to provide the information. Therefore I have included a
Linux Compatibility Check chapter in the Hardware In Detail sections
below.
Depending on your needs, you might investigate one of the vendors that
provide laptops pre-loaded with Linux. By purchasing a pre-loaded
Linux laptop, much of the guesswork and time spent downloading
additional packages could be avoided.
3.4. Main Hardware Features
Besides its Linux features, there often are some main features which
have to be considered when buying a laptop. For Linux features please
see the Hardware In Detail section below.
3.4.1. Weight
Don't underestimate the weight of a laptop. This weight is mainly
influenced by:
1. screen size
2. battery type
3. internal components, such as CD drive, floppy drive
4. power supply
3.4.2. Display
Laptops come with one of two types of displays: active matrix (TFT)
and passive matrix (DSTN). Active matrix displays have better color
and contrast, but usually cost more and use more power. Also consider
the screen size. Laptops may be purchased with screens up to 15". A
bigger screen weighs more, costs more, and is harder to carry, but is
good for a portable desktop replacement.
3.4.3. Batteries
The available battery types are Lithium Ion (LiIon), Nickel Metal
Hybrid ( NiMh) and Nickel Cadmium (NiCd).
LiIon batteries are the most expensive ones but a lot lighter than
NiCd for the same energy content, and have minimal -- but present --
memory effects. NiMH is better than NiCd, but still rather heavy and
does suffer some (although less than NiCd) memory effects.
Unfortenately most laptops come with a proprietary battery size. So
they are not interchangeable between different models.
3.4.4. CPU
3.4.4.1. Supported CPU Families
For details about systems which are supported by the Linux Kernel, see
the Linux FAQ http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/iwj10/linux-faq/ .
1. i286: Linux doesn't support this CPU family yet. But there are some
efforts at ELKS http://www.linux.org.uk/ELKS-Home/index.html.
Unfortunately this project seems on halt. But if you like, you may
use Minix http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/minix.html one of the
predecessors of Linux. Minix supports 8088 to 286 with as little as
640K memory.
2. i386: This covers PCs based on Intel-compatible processors,
including Intel's 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium Pro and Pentium II,
and compatible processors by AMD, Cyrix and others. Most of the
currently available laptops use Intel compatible CPUs and have
quite good Linux support.
3. m68k: This covers Amigas and Ataris having a Motorola 680x0
processor for x>=2; with MMU. AFAIK there is no laptop with such a
CPU. But I'm not sure weither the early Mac laptops are falling
into this category. Early PowerBooks did indeed have m68k chips in
them. I think the DuoBook was what they were called. Not sure if
they are Linux capable or not.
4. Alpha, Sparc, Sparc64, PowerPC, Arm and Hurd-i386 architectures:
These are currently under construction. AFAIK there are only the
Tadpole SPARC and ALPHA laptops, and some other ALPHA laptops
available. For a current survey look at Kenneth E. Harker's Linux
on Laptops without x86 Family Processors at
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-laptop/non-intel.html
.
3.4.4.2. Miscellaneous
At higher speed, a CPU consumes more power and generates more heat.
Therefore, in many laptops a special low-power CMOS CPU is used.
Usually, this special CPU doesn't use as much power as a similar
processor used in a desktop. These special CPUs are also more
expensive. As a side effect you may find that laptops with a desktop
CPU often have a fan which seems quite loud.
3.4.5. Keyboard Quality
Though you might use your desktop computer to do longer writings, a
good keyboard can save you some headaches and finger-aches. Look
especially for the location of special keys like: <ESC>, <TAB>,
<Pos1>, <End>, <PageDown>, <PageUp> and the cursor keys.
3.4.6. Price
Laptops are quite expensive if you compare them with desktops. So you
may decide between a brand or no-name product. Though I would like to
encourage you to take a no-name product, there are some caveats. I
have experienced that laptops break often, so you are better off, when
you have an after sales warranty, which is usually only offered with
brand products. Or you may decide to take a second hand machine. When
I tried this, I discovered that the laptop market is changing quite
often. A new generation is released approximately every three months
(compared by CPU speed, harddisk capacity, screen size etc.). So
laptops become old very quick. But this scheme often isn't followed by
the prices for second hand laptops. They seem too expensive to me.
Anyway if you plan on purchasing a second hand machine, review my
recommendations on checking the machine. For German readers there is
an online market place at http://www.hardware.de, which offers a good
survey about current prices for second hand machines.
3.4.7. Power Supply
If you travel abroad pay attention to the voltage levels which are
supported by the power supply.
3.5. Sources of More Information
Specifications and manufacturer support often are not helpful.
Therefore you should retrieve information from other sources too:
1. Highly recommended is the survey by Kenneth E. Harker
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-laptop/ .
2. ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages/laptops/ .
3. Hardware-HOWTO
4. open hardware - The Open Hardware Certification Program
http://www.debian.org/OpenHardware/
5. HARDWARE.doa.org - dedicated to the hardware aspects of (Linux)
computing http://hardware.doa.org/
6. How to Build a PC FAQ - excellent hardware overview by Billy Newsom
http://www.motherboards.org/build.html
7. Last but not least the WWW itself.
3.6. Linux Compatibility Check
3.6.1. Related HOWTOs
1. Hardware-HOWTO
2. Kernel-HOWTO
3. PCMCIA-HOWTO
4. PCI-HOWTO
5. Plug-and-Play-mini-HOWTO
3.6.2. Check Methods in General
If you can't find the necessary information through the above
mentioned sources, you are on your own. Luckily, Linux provides many
means to help. For details see the Hardware on Detail section below.
In general you may use:
1. First of all the kernel itself. Look up what kind of hardware is
detected by the kernel. You get this information during boot time
or usually by dmesg or by looking into /var/log/messages.
2. If your kernel supports the /proc file system you may get detailed
information about PCI devices by cat /proc/pci Please read the
kernel documentation pci.txt. You may get further information about
unknown PCI devices at the database from Craig Hart at
http://members.hyperlink.net.au/~chart. From 2.1.82 kernels on you
may use the lspci command from the pci-utils package.
3. To retrieve information about Plug-and-Play (PNP) devices use
isapnp-tools .
4. Use scsi_info by David Hinds for SCSI devices or scsiinfo.
If you don't want to install a complete Linux you may retrieve this
information by using a micro Linux ( see appendix A). The package
muLinux provides even a small systest program and TomsRtBt comes with
memtest. To use memtest you have to copy it on a floppy dd
if=/usr/lib/memtest of=/dev/fd0 and to reboot from this floppy.
If your laptop came with Windows, you may determine a lot of hardware
settings from the installation. Boot into DOS or Windows to get the
information you need.
Using Windows9x/NT to get hardware settings, basically boot Windows,
then Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> System -> Device Manager
and write down everything, or make a hardcopy from the display using
the <PRINT> key, plus keep a log of settings, hardware, memory, etc.
Using MS-DOS and Windows3.1x you can use the command msd, which is an
akronym for MicroSoft Diagnostics. Or you might try one of the
numerous DOS shareware utilities: CHECK-IT, DR.HARD and others.
3.7. Buying a Second Hand Laptop
Some recommendations to check an used laptop, before buying it:
1. Review the surface of the case for visible damages.
2. Check the display for pixel faults. Maybe it's useful to take a
magnifying glass therefore.
3. Do an IO stress-test, .e.g. with the tool bonnie.
4. You may use memtest and crashme to achieve a memory test.
5. Do a CPU stress test, e.g. with the tool Byte or by compiling a
kernel.
6. Check the floppy drive by formatting a floppy.
7. Check the CD drive by reading a CD.
8. To check the battery seems difficult, because it needs some time:
one charge and one work cycle.
9. To check the surface of the harddisk you may take e2fsck. There is
also a Linux tool dosfsck or the other fsck tools.
10.
To test the entire disk (non-destructively), time it for
performance, and determine its size, as root do: time dd
if=/dev/hda of=/dev/null bs=1024k .
11.
Check wether the machine seems stolen. There is at least one
database about stolen laptops in the WWW. But I have lost the URL.
AFAIK there is no Linux tool like the DOS tools CHECK-IT, DR. HARD,
SYSDIAG and others. These tools include many of the tests in one
integrated suite. One of the best IMHO is the tool PC Diagnostics 95
made by Craig Hart http://members.hyperlink.net.au/~chart . Despite
the 95 in its name it's plain DOS, tiny (76KB programm and 199KB data)
reliable and free. Unfortenately it contains no check for the IrDA
port.
Please note this quotation from the disclaimer: "This program is
written with the target audience being a trained, experienced
technician. It is NOT designed to be used by those ignorant of
computer servicing. Displays are not pretty but functional.
Information is not explained since we are not trying to educate. This
software should be considered to be just like any other tool in a
tech's toolbox. It is to be applied with care, in the right situation,
in order to find answers to specific problems. If you are an end user
who is less than confident of dealing with computer hardware, this is
probably not a program for you."
3.8. No Hardware Recommendations
It's difficult to give any recommendations for a certain laptop model
in general. Your personal needs have to be taken into account. Also
the market is changing very quickly. I guess every three months a new
generation of laptops (according to harddisk space, CPU speed, display
size, etc.) comes into the market. So I don't give any model or brand
specific recommendations.
3.9. Laptop Distribution
3.9.1. Requirements
From the Battery-HOWTO I got this recommendation (modified by WH):
A Message to Linux Distributors
If you happen to be a Linux distributor, thank you for reading all
this. Laptops are becoming more and more popular, but still most Linux
distributions are not very well prepared for portable computing.
Please make this section of this document obsolete, and make a few
changes in your distribution.
The installation routine should include a configuration, optimized for
laptops. The minimal install is often not lean enough. There are a lot
of things that a laptop user does not need on the road. Just a few
examples. There is no need for three different versions of vi (as
found in Suse Linux). Most portable systems do not need printing
support (they will never be connected to a printer, printing is
usually done with the desktop system at home). Quite a few laptops do
not need any network support at all.
Don't forget to describe laptop-specific installation problems, e. g.
how to install your distribution without a cd-rom drive or how to
setup the plip network driver.
Add better power management and seamless PCMCIA support to your
distribution. Add a recompiled kernel and an alternative set of PCMCIA
drivers with apm support that the user can install on demand. Include
a precompiled apmd package with your distribution.
Add support for dynamically switching network configurations. Most
Linux laptops travel between locations with different network settings
(e. g. the network at home, the network at the office and the network
at the university) and have to change the network ID very often.
Changing a Linux system's network ID is a pain with most
distributions.
Add a convenient PPP dialer with an address book, that does not try to
start multiple copies of the PPP daemon if you click on the button
twice (e.g., the RedHat usernet tool). It would be nice to have the
PPP dialer also display the connection speed and some statistics. One
nice command line dialer that autodetects modems and PPP services is
wvdial from Worldvisions http://www.worldvisions.ca/wvdial/.
3.9.2. Recommendation
IMHO the Debian/GNU Linux http://www.debian.org has most of the
desired features for a laptop installation. The distribution has a
quite flexible installation tool. The installation process is well
documented, especially concerning the methods which are useful at
laptops. All the binaries are tiny, because they are stripped. And
besides Debian/GNU Linux is free. Though other distributions are also
worth to try them.
4. Installation Methods
4.1. Related HOWTOs
1. CDROM-HOWTO
2. Config-HOWTO
3. Diskless-mini-HOWTO
4. Installation-HOWTO
5. Pre-Installation-Checklist-mini-HOWTO
6. Update-mini-HOWTO
7. Hard-Disk-Upgrade-mini-HOWTO
8. Installation and getting started by Matt Welsh and others available
at the LINUX DOCUMENTATION PROJECT http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP
9. Installing Debian Linux 2.1 For x86 by Bruce Perens, Sven Rudolph,
Igor Grobman, James Treacy, Adam P. Harris
ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/slink/main/disks-
i386/current/install.html
10.
Install-From-Zip-mini-HOWTO
11.
ZIP-Drive-mini-HOWTO
4.2. Introduction
From the Battery-HOWTO:"Installing and using Linux on a laptop is
usually no problem at all, so go ahead and give it a try. Unlike some
other operating systems, Linux still supports and runs well on even
very old hardware, so you might give your outdated portable a new
purpose in life by installing Linux on it."
One of the great benefits of Linux are its numerous and flexible
installation features, which I don't want to describe in detail.
Instead I try to focus on laptop specific methods, which are necessary
only in certain circumstances.
Most current distributions support installation methods which are
useful for laptops, including installation from CD-ROM, via PCMCIA and
NFS (or maybe SMB). Please see the documents which are provided with
these distributions for further details or take a look at the above
mentioned manuals and HOWTOs.
4.3. From a Boot Floppy plus CD-ROM - The Usual Way
With modern laptops, the usual Linux installation (one Boot Floppy,
one Support Floppy, one Packages CD-ROM) should be no problem, if
there is are floppy drive and a CD-ROM drive available. Though with
certain laptops you might get trouble if you can not simultaneously
use the floppy drive and CD-ROM drive , or if the floppy drive is only
available as a PCMCIA device, as with the Toshiba Libretto 100. Some
laptops support also booting and therefore installation completely
from a CD drive, as reported for the SONY VAIO in the VAIO-HOWTO.
Note: Check the BIOS for the CD boot option and make sure your Linux
distribution comes on a bootable CD.
Certain laptops will only boot zImage kernels. bzImage kernels won't
work. This is a known problem with the IBM Thinkpad 600 and Toshiba
Tecra series, for instance. Some distributions provide certain boot
floppies for these machines or for machines with limited memory
resources, Debian/GNU Linux http://www.debian.org for instance.
4.4. From a DOS or Windows Partition at the same Machine
This is a short description of how to install from a CD-ROM under DOS
without using boot or supplemental floppy diskettes. This is
especially useful for notebooks with swappable floppy and CD-ROM
components (if both are mutually exclusive) or if they are only
available as PCMCIA devices. I have taken this method from "Installing
Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 For Intel x86 - Chapter 5 Methods for Installing
Debian" http://www.debian.org :
1. Get the following files from your nearest Debian FTP mirror and put
them into a directory on your DOS partition: resc1440.bin
drv1440.bin base2_1.tgz root.bin linux install.bat and loadlin.exe.
2. Boot into DOS (not Windows) without any drivers being loaded. To do
this, you have to press <F8> at exactly the right moment.
3. Execute install.bat from that directory in DOS.
4. Reboot the system and install the rest of the distribution, you may
now use all the advanced features such as PCMCIA, PPP and others.
This should work for other distributions with similar changes. For
RedHat see How to Install from CD-ROM without Boot and Supplemental
Disks .
Some new laptops may be able to boot a Linux distribution on a
bootable CD-ROM (e.g., RedHat). This would allow installation without
a floppy disk drive.
4.5. From a Second Machine With a Micro Linux On a Floppy
4.5.1. Introduction
Because of their small or non-existent footprint, micro-Linuxes are
especially suited to run on laptops -- particularly if you use a
company-provided laptop running Windows9x/NT. Or for installation
purposes using another non Linux machine. There are several micro
Linux distributions out there that boot from one or two floppies and
run off a ramdisk. See appendix A for a listing of distributions.
I tried the following with muLinux to clone my HP OmniBook 800 to a
COMPAQ Armada 1592DT. Thanks to Michele Andreoli, maintainer of
muLinux for his support. Since muLinux doesn't support PCMCIA yet, you
may use TomsRtBt instead. In turn TomsRtBt doesn't support PPP but
provides slip. I have described how to copy an already existing
partition, but it might be also possible to achieve a customized
installation. Note: Usually you would try to achieve an installation
via NFS, which is supported by many distributions. Or if your sources
are not at a Linux machine you might try SMB, which is also supported
by muLinux .
4.5.2. Prerequisites
You need two machines equipped with Linux. With the laptop
(client/destination) on which you want to install Linux use the
muLinux floppy. The other machine (server/source) may be a usual Linux
box or also using muLinux. Though its low transfer rate I use a serial
null modem cable because its cheap. You may apply the according method
using a PCMCIA network card and a crossover network cable or a HUB, or
a parallel "null modem" cable and PLIP. As the basic protocol I used
PPP, but you may also use SLIP. For the data-transfer I used nc, you
may use ftp, tftp, rsh, ssh, dd, rcp, kermit, NFS, SMB and others.
Basic requirements are:
1. A good knowledge about using Linux. You have to know exactly what
you are doing, if not you might end destroying former
installations.
2. A nullmodem serial cable.
4.5.3. Source Machine
At your source machine issue the following commands (attention: IP
address, port number, partition and tty are just examples!):
1. Edit /etc/ppp/options, it should contain only:
___________________________________________________________________
/dev/ttyS0
115200
passive
___________________________________________________________________
2. With muLinux versions 3.x you may even use the convenient command
setup -f ppp .
3. Start PPP: pppd .
4. Configure the PPP network device: ifconfig ppp0 192.168.0.1 .
5. Add the default route: route add default gw 192.168.0.1 .
6. Check the network connection: ping 192.168.0.2, though the
destination machine isn't up yet.
7. Start the transfer from another console, remember <LEFT-ALT><Fx>:
cat /dev/hda2 | gzip -c | nc -l -p 5555 .
8. After the transfer (there are no more harddisk writings) stop the
ping: killall ping .
4.5.4. Destination Machine
At the destination machine issue:
1. Edit /etc/ppp/options, it should contain only:
___________________________________________________________________
/dev/ttyS0
115200
passive
___________________________________________________________________
2. With muLinux versions 3.x you may even use the convenient command
setup -f ppp .
3. Start PPP: pppd .
4. Configure the PPP network device: ifconfig ppp0 192.168.0.2 .
5. Add the default route: route add default gw 192.168.0.2 .
6. Check the network connection, by pinging to the source machine:
ping 192.168.0.1 .
7. Change to another console and get the data from the server: nc
192.168.0.1 5555 | gzip -dc >/dev/hda4 .
8. 400 MB may take app. 6 hours, but YMMV.
9. Stop the transfer, when it is finished with: <CTL><C> .
10.
After the transfer is completed, stop the ping: killall ping .
4.5.5. Configuration of the Source Machine after the Transfer
1. Edit /etc/fstab .
2. Edit /etc/lilo.conf and /etc/lilo.msg and start lilo .
3. Set the new root device to the kernel: rdev image root_device .
4.5.6. Miscellaneous
1. bzip2 didn't work, probably because I wasn't able to make it read
from stdin .
2. Since rshd, sshd, ftpd daemons are not available with muLinux you
have to build your own daemon with nc, as described above.
3. I had to set up both PPP sides very quick or the connection broke,
I don't know why.
4. Speed optimization has to be done, asyncmap 0 or local?
5. I checked this only with a destination partition greater than the
source partition. Please check dd instead of cat therefore.
6. Don't mount the destination partition.
4.6. From a Second Machine With a 2.5" Hard Disk Adapter
From Adam Sulmicki adam@cfar.unc.edu I got this hint: Most but not all
harddisks in laptops are removable, but this might be not an easy
task. You could just buy one of those cheap 2.5" IDE
converters/adapters which allow you to connect this harddisk
temporarily to a PC with IDE subsystem, and install Linux as usual
using that PC. You may do so using the harddisk as the first IDE drive
or besides as the second IDE drive. But than you need to be sure that
lilo writes to the right partition. Also you have to make sure that
you use the same translation style as your laptop is going to use
(i.e. LBA vs. LARGE vs. CHS ). You find additional information in the
Hard-Disk-Upgrade-mini-HOWTO. You might copy an existing partition,
but it is also possible to achieve a customized installation.
4.7. From a PCMCIA Device
Since I don't have a laptop which comes with a PCMCIA floppy drive
(for instance Toshiba Libretto 100), I couldn't check this method.
Please see the chapter Booting from a PCMCIA Device in the PCMCIA-
HOWTO. Also I couldn't check whether booting from a PCMCIA harddisk is
possible.
Anyway, when you are able to boot from a floppy and the laptop
provides a PCMCIA slot, it should be possible to use different PCMCIA
cards to connect to another machine, to an external SCSI device,
different external CD and ZIP drives and others. Usually these methods
are described in the documentation which is provided with the
distribution.
4.8. From a Parallel Port Device (ZIP Drive, CD Drive)
I couldn't check this method by myself, because I don't have such a
device. Please check the according Install-From-Zip-mini-HOWTO and CD-
HOWTO. Also I don't know how much these installation methods are
supported by the Linux distributions or the micro Linuxes. I suppose
you have to fiddle around a bit to get this working.
5. Hardware In Detail
5.1. PCMCIA Controller
5.1.1. Linux Compatibility Check
With the probe command, which is included in the PCMCIA-CS package by
David Hinds you can get the type of the PCMCIA controller. Often this
shows also up with cat /proc/pci .
5.1.2. Related HOWTOs
1. PCMCIA-HOWTO
5.1.3. PCMCIA Configuration - Survey
In the mailing lists where I'm a member, the question "How can I set
up PCMCIA support, after the Linux installation?" comes up sometimes.
Therefore I try to give a short survey. But the authoritative source
for the latest information about the PCMCIA Card Services for Linux,
including documentation, files, and generic PCMCIA information is the
Linux PCMCIA Information Page . For problems with PCMCIA and APM see
the APM chapter.
5.1.3.1. Software
1. Read the PCMCIA HOWTO, usually included in the PCMCIA-CS package.
2. Install the newest available PCMCIA-CS package, if you take a rpm
or deb package it is quite easy.
3. If necessary, install a new kernel. Note: With 2.2.x kernels PCMCIA
kernel support seems no longer necessary. I had no time to look
this up yet. Please read the according documents.
4. Make sure your kernel has module support and PCMCIA support enabled
(and often APM support)
5. Make sure your kernel also includes support for the cards you want
to use, e.g. network support for a NIC card, serial support for a
modem card, SCSI support for a SCSI card and so on.
5.1.3.2. PCMCIA Controller
1. Use the probe command to get information whether your PCMCIA
controller is detected or not.
2. Edit the file /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia. It should include PCMCIA=y and
the type of your PCMCIA controller, e.g. PCIC=i82365.
3. Start the PCMCIA services typically via /etc/init.d/pcmcia start.
If you get two high beeps, everything should be fine.
4. If something doesn't work, check the messages in /var/log/messages
.
5.1.3.3. PCMCIA Card
1. Check your card with cardctl ident .
2. If your card is not in /etc/pcmcia/config, edit this file
accordingly.
3. If you use X, you can use cardinfo to insert, suspend, or restart a
PCMCIA card via a nice graphical interface.
5.2. Infrared Port
5.2.1. Linux Compatibility Check
To get the IrDA port of your laptop working with Linux/IrDA you may
use StandardInfraRed (SIR) or FastInfraRed (FIR).
5.2.1.1. SIR
Up to 115.200bps, the infrared port emulates a serial port like the
16550A UART. This will be detected by the kernel serial driver at boot
time, or when you load the serial module. If infrared support is
enabled in the BIOS, for most laptops you will get a kernel message
like:
______________________________________________________________________
Serial driver version 4.25 with no serial options enabled
ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A #first serial port /dev/ttyS0
ttyS01 at 0x3000 (irq = 10) is a 16550A #e.g. infrared port
ttyS02 at 0x0300 (irq = 3) is a 16550A #e.g. PCMCIA modem port
______________________________________________________________________
5.2.1.2. FIR
If you want to use up to 4Mbps, your machine has to be equipped with a
certain FIR chip. You need a certain Linux/IrDA driver to support this
chip. Therefore you need exact information about the FIR chip. You may
get this information in one of the following ways:
1. Read the specification of the machine, though it is very rare that
you will find enough and reliable information there.
2. Try to find out wether the FIR chip is a PCI device. Do a cat
/proc/pci . The according files for 2.2.x kernels are in
/proc/bus/pci . Though often the PCI information is incomplete. You
may find the latest information about PCI devices and vendor
numbers in the kernel documentation usually in
/usr/src/linux/Documentation or at the page of Craig Hart
http://members.hyperlink.net.au/~chart . From kernel 2.1.82 on, you
may use lspci from the pci-utils package, too.
3. Use the DOS tool CTPCI330.EXE provided in ZIP format by the German
computer magazine CT http://www.heise.de/ct/ftp/pci.shtml . The
information provided by this program is sometimes better than that
provided by the Linux tools.
4. Try to get information about Plug-and-Play (PnP) devices. Though I
didn't use them for this purpose yet, the isapnp tools, could be
useful.
5. If you have installed the Linux/IrDA software load the FIR modules
and watch the output of dmesg, whether FIR is detected or not.
6. Another way how to figure it out explained by Thomas Davis
(modified by WH): "Dig through the FTP site of the vendor, find the
Windows9x FIR drivers, and they have (for a SMC chip):
___________________________________________________________________
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ratbert ratbert 743 Apr 3 1997 smcirlap.inf
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ratbert ratbert 17021 Mar 24 1997 smcirlap.vxd
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ratbert ratbert 1903 Jul 18 1997 smcser.inf
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ratbert ratbert 31350 Jun 7 1997 smcser.vxd
___________________________________________________________________
If in doubt, always look for the .inf/.vxd drivers for Windows95. Win�
dows95 doesn't ship with _ANY_ FIR drivers. (they are all third party,
mostly from Counterpoint, who was assimilated by ESI)."
7. Also Thomas Davis found a package of small DOS utilities made by
SMC. Look at http://www.smsc.com/ftppub/chips/appnote/ir_utils.zip
. The package contains FINDCHIP.EXE. And includes a FIRSETUP.EXE
utility that is supposed to be able to set all values except the
chip address. Furthermore it contains BIOSDUMP.EXE, which produces
this output:
Example 1 (from a COMPAQ Armada 1592DT)
___________________________________________________________________
In current devNode:
Size = 78
Handle = 14
ID = 0x1105D041 = 'PNP0511' -- Generic IrDA SIR
Types: Base = 0x07, Sub = 0x00, Interface = 0x02
Comm. Device, RS-232, 16550-compatible
Attribute = 0x80
CAN be disabled
CAN be configured
BOTH Static & Dynamic configuration
Allocated Resource Descriptor Block TAG's:
TAG=0x47, Length=7 I/O Tag, 16-bit Decode
Min=0x03E8, Max=0x03E8
Align=0x00, Range=0x08
TAG=0x22, Length=2 IRQ Tag, Mask=0x0010
TAG=0x79, Length=1 END Tag, Data=0x2F
___________________________________________________________________
Result 1:
Irq Tag, Mask (bit mapped - ) = 0x0010 = 0000 0000 0000 0001 0000 so,
it's IRQ 4. (start at 0, count up ..), so this is a SIR only device,
at IRQ=4, IO=x03e8.
Example 2 (from an unknown machine)
______________________________________________________________________
In current devNode:
Size = 529
Handle = 14
ID = 0x10F0A34D = 'SMCF010' -- SMC IrCC
Types: Base = 0x07, Sub = 0x00, Interface = 0x02
Comm. Device, RS-232, 16550-compatible
Attribute = 0x80
CAN be disabled
CAN be configured
BOTH Static & Dynamic configuration
Allocated Resource Descriptor Block TAG's:
TAG=0x47, Length=7 I/O Tag, 16-bit Decode
Min=0x02F8, Max=0x02F8
Align=0x00, Range=0x08
TAG=0x22, Length=2 IRQ Tag, Mask=0x0008
TAG=0x47, Length=7 I/O Tag, 16-bit Decode
Min=0x02E8, Max=0x02E8
Align=0x00, Range=0x08
TAG=0x2A, Length=2 DMA Tag, Mask=0x02, Info=0x08
TAG=0x79, Length=1 END Tag, Data=0x00
______________________________________________________________________
Result 2:
a) it's a SMC IrCC chip
b) one portion is at 0x02f8, has an io-extent of 8 bytes; irq = 3
c) another portion is at 0x02e8, io-extent of 8 bytes; dma = 1 (0x02
=0000 0010)
Thomas Davis has placed some device information at
http://www.jps.net/tadavis/irda/devids.txt .
WARNING: The package is not intended for the end user, and some of the
utilities could be harmful. The only documentation in the package is
in M$ Word format. Linux users may read this with catdoc, available at
http://www.fe.msk.ru/~vitus/catdoc/ .
8. Use the Device Manager of Windows9x/NT.
9. You may also use the hardware surveys mentioned below.
10.
And as a last ressort, you may even open the laptop and look at the
writings at the chipsets themselfs.
5.2.1.3. Hardware Survey
I have made a hardware survey at
http:/www.snafu.de/~wehe/ir_misc.html. This list also contains
information about infrared capable devices which are not mentioned
here (mice, printers, remote control, transceivers, etc.).
To make this list more valuable, it is necessary to collect more
information about the infrared devices in different hardware. You can
help by sending me a short e-mail containing the exact name of the
hardware you have and which type of infrared controller is used.
Please let me know also how well Linux/IrDA worked (at which tty, port
and interrupt it works and the corresponding infrared device, e.g.
printer, cellular phone).
Also you can help by contributing detailed technological information
about some infrared devices, which is necessary for the development of
drivers for Linux.
5.2.2. Related HOWTOs
1. Linux/IR-HOWTO
5.2.3. IrDA Configuration - Survey
5.2.3.1. IrDA
The Linux infrared support is still experimental, but rapidly
improving. I try to describe the installation in a short survey.
Please read my Linux/IR-HOWTO http://www.snafu.de/~wehe/index_li.html
for detailed information.
5.2.3.1.1. Kernel
1. Get a 2.2.x kernel.
2. Compile it with all IrDA options enabled.
3. Also enable experimental, sysctl, serial and network support.
5.2.3.1.2. Software
1. Get the Linux/IrDA software irda-utils at The Linux IrDA Project .
2. Untar the package.
3. Do a make depend; make all; make install
5.2.3.1.3. Hardware
1. Enable the IrDA support in the BIOS.
2. Check for SIR or FIR support, as described above.
3. Start the Linux/IrDA service with irmanager -d 1 .
4. Watch the kernel output with dmesg .
5.2.3.2. Linux Remote Control - LiRC
Linux Remote Control http://fsinfo.cs.uni-sb.de/~columbus/lirc/ is
maintained by Christoph Bartelmus. "Lirc is a package that supports
receiving and sending IR signals of the most common IR remote
controls. It contains a device driver for hardware connected to the
serial port, a daemon that decodes and sends IR signals using this
device driver, a mouse daemon that translates IR signals to mouse
movements and a couple of user programs that allow to control your
computer with a remote control." I don't have valid information about
how much infrared remote control is working with laptop infrared
devices.
5.3. Graphic Chip
5.3.1. Linux Compatibility Check
5.3.1.1. Video Mode
The tool SuperProbe is part of XFree86 and is able to check many
graphic chips. Please read the documentation carefully, because it
might crash your hardware. From man SuperProbe:
"SuperProbe is a a program that will attempt to determine the type of
video hardware installed in an EISA/ISA/VLB-bus system by checking for
known registers in various combinations at various locations
(MicroChannel and PCI machines may not be fully supported; many work
with the use of the -no_bios option). This is an error-prone process,
especially on Unix (which usually has a lot more esoteric hardware
installed than MS-DOS system do), so SuperProbe may likely need help
from the user.
...
At this time, SuperProbe can identify MDA, Hercules, CGA, MCGA, EGA,
VGA, and an entire horde of SVGA chipsets (see the -info option,
below). It can also identify several HiColor/True-color RAMDACs in use
on SVGA boards, and the amount of video memory installed (for many
chipsets). It can identify 8514/A and some derivatives, but not XGA,
or PGC (although the author intends to add those capabilities). Nor
can it identify other esoteric video hardware (like Targa, TIGA, or
Microfield boards).":
For testing reasons start the X server with X 2> <error.msg>. And try
to change the resolution by typing <CTL><ALT><+> or <CTL><ALT><->.
Note: the + or - sign have to be taken from the numeric pad, which can
be emulated at the letter pad by some laptops.
5.3.1.2. Text Mode
Just watch the display and determine if it works properly. If not, try
to enable different video modes at startup time. Setting up X can
sometimes be an exercise in trial and error.
5.3.2. Related HOWTOs
1. XFree86-HOWTO
2. XFree86-Video-Timings-HOWTO
3. XFree86-XInside-HOWTO
4. X-Big-Cursor-mini-HOWTO (useful when running X on a notebook with
low contrast LCD)
5. Keyboard-and-Console-HOWTO
6. vesafb-mini-HOWTO
5.3.3. Survey X-Servers
You might discover that some features of your laptop are not supported
by XFree86, e.g. high resolutions, accelerated X or an external
monitor. Therefor I give a survey of available X servers.
1. XFree86 http://www.xfree86.org
2. Xinside aka AcceleratedX http://www.xig.com , commercial
3. SciTech http://www.scitechsoft.com , commercial
4. VESA Frame-Buffer-Device, available with 2.2.x kernels and XFree86
3.3.2
5.3.4. Resources
You may find a survey about X windows resources at Kenneth E. Harker's
page http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-laptop/.
5.3.5. External Monitor
There are several different methods to activate support for an
external monitor: as a BIOS option or during runtime with a keystroke
e.g. <Fn>+<F4>. Maybe you have to edit /etc/XF86Config by configuring
int_disp and ext_disp. If you can't get this to work with XFree, try a
demo version of the commercial X servers mentioned above. Also check
with the RedHat and SuSE WWW sites as they may have new, binary-only,
X servers that may work with your laptop.
5.3.6. Miscellaneous
Sometimes you may encounter a display not working properly in text
mode. Currently I don't have any recommendations, please see Keyboard-
Console-HOWTO.
Take care of the backlight AFAIK this device can only bear a limited
number of uptime circles. So avoid using screensavers too much.
For problems with X windows and APM please see the APM chapter.
5.4. Sound
5.4.1. Linux Compatibility Check
The only way I know to check this, is to compile the different sound
drivers into the kernel and check whether they are detected or not.
The best way to do so, is to compile them as modules because it's
easier to load different parameters such as interrupts and IO ports
than. For the new 2.2.x kernels, read the
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/sound/Introduction document by Wade
Hampton. This document may help you get started with sound. Also, you
might try one of the commercial sound drivers mentionend below.
5.4.2. Related HOWTOs
1. Sound-HOWTO
2. Visual-Bell-mini-HOWTO
5.4.3. Survey Sound Drivers
Many new laptops come with 16-bit sound. But MWave and some other
sound technologies won't work or are very hard to get working, e.g.
booting to DOS, loading a driver, then using the soundcard as a
standard SB-PRO. So you might need a commercial sound driver. With the
recent announcement of Linux support by IBM, it would be GREAT if IBM
supported the MWave under Linux (hint, hint...). As a last ressort you
may try the speaker module pcsnd, which tries to emulate a soundcard.
1. Kernel Sound Driver by Hannu Savolainen
2. ALSA Advanced Linux Sound Architecture , commercial or at least
non-GPL (since I found a Debian/GNU Linux package I'm not sure
anymore, about the commercial status)
3. OSS UNIX Sound System Lite / OSS, commercial or at least non-GPL
(since the 2.2.x kernels I'm not sure about the commercial status),
also available from http://www.opensound.com .
5.5. Keyboard
5.5.1. Linux Compatibility Check
Usually there are no problems with Linux and the keyboard. Though
there are two minor caveats: First the setleds program might not work.
Second the key mapping might not fit your needs. Some Unix users and
vi users expect to find the <CONTROL> key to the left of the <A> key.
Many PC-type keyboards have the <CAPS-LOCK> key there. You may use
xmodmap or loadkeys to re-map the keyboard. Some laptops (e.g.,
Toshiba) allow you to swap the <CAPS-LOCK> and <CONTROL> keys. Mark
Alexander offered this solution in the linux-laptop mailing list: On
RedHat, it's a one-line patch to /usr/lib/kbd/keytables/us.map , or
whatever file is referenced in /etc/sysconfig/keyboard:
______________________________________________________________________
*** us.map~ Tue Oct 31 14:00:07 1995
--- us.map Thu Aug 28 13:36:03 1997
***************
*** 113,119 ****
keycode 57 = space space
control keycode 57 = nul
alt keycode 57 = Meta_space
! keycode 58 = Caps_Lock
keycode 59 = F1 F11 Console_13
control keycode 59 = F1
alt keycode 59 = Console_1
--- 113,119 ----
keycode 57 = space space
control keycode 57 = nul
alt keycode 57 = Meta_space
! keycode 58 = Control
keycode 59 = F1 F11 Console_13
control keycode 59 = F1
alt keycode 59 = Console_1
______________________________________________________________________
5.5.2. Second Keyboard
A second keyboard can be attached using the PS/2 port (I don't know
whether this is possible via the serial port). Also there is one
laptop with a detachable keyboard the Siemens Scenic Mobile 800. This
machine uses an infrared connection to the keyboard, but I don't know
whether this works with Linux. WARNING: Don't plug the external
keyboard in while the laptop is booted, or plug the mouse in the
keyboard port and the keyboard in the mouse port. On a Toshiba, this
caused one user to have to completely shutdown the laptop, remove the
keyboard/mouse, and do a cold reboot.
5.6. Mice and their Relatives
5.6.1. Linux Compatibility Check
You may check your mouse with the mev command from the GPM package.
5.6.2. Related HOWTOs
1. 3-Button-Mouse-mini-HOWTO for serial mice
2. Bus-Mouse-HOWTO
3. Kernel-HOWTO
5.6.3. Mice Species
1. Trackpad, Touchpad, used with the majority of current laptops
2. Trackball, e.g. COMPAQ LTE
3. Pop-up-Mouse, e.g. HP OmniBook 800
4. Trackpoint, Mouse-Pin, e.g. IBM ThinkPad and Toshiba
5. 3 Button Mice, e.g. IBM Thinkpads at least the 600s. I have heard
rumor about a 3 button mouse for Texas Instruments Travelmates, but
couldn't verify this yet.
Most of the mice used in laptops are PS/2 mice (actually I don't
know one with another mouse protocol). You may communicate with the
PS/2 mouse through /dev/psaux or /dev/psmouse. If you use X windows
this device and the protocol has to be set in /etc/XF86Config, too.
In earlier releases, sometimes the GPM mouse manager and X windows
had trouble sharing a mouse when enabled at the same time. But
AFAIK this is no problem anymore for the latest versions.
5.6.4. Resources
Synaptics Touchpad Linux Driver The Synaptics touchpad is a pointing
device used in notebooks by Acer, Compaq, Dell, Gateway, Olivetti,
Texas Instruments, Winbook, and others.
Linux Compaq Concerto Pen Driver The latest version of the Linux
Compaq Concerto Pen Driver is available from its author's home page.
5.6.5. External Mouse
For better handling, e.g. with a 3 button mouse you may use an
external mouse. This usually a serial mouse or a PS/2 mouse, according
to the port your laptop offers. Usually this is no problem.
WARNING: Don't plug in the external mouse while powered up. If you
have separate mouse and keyboard ports, make sure you plug the mouse
in the mouse port and the keyboard in the keyboard port. If you don't,
you may have to do a hard reboot of the laptop to get it to recover.
5.7. Advanced Power Managment (APM)
5.7.1. Linux Compatibility Check
From the Battery-Powered-mini-HOWTO " .. for APM to work on any
notebook or energy-conscious desktop, the system BIOS ROM in the
machine must support the APM standard. Furthermore, for APM to work
with the Linux operating system, the system BIOS ROM must support
either the 1.0 or 1.1 version of the APM standard, and it must also
support 32-bit protected mode connections. A system that supports APM
1.1 is preferred, as it provides more features that the device driver
and supporting utilities can take advantage of."
You may get information about the APM version with the dmesg command
and in the /proc/apm file.
5.7.2. Introduction
APM support consists of two parts: kernel support and user-land
support.
For kernel support, enable the parameters in the corresponding kernel
section. AFAIK not all features work with laptops. AFAIK the feature
CONFIG_APM_POWER_OFF works with most laptops.
The utilities for userland support may be found at
http://worldvisions.ca/~apenwarr/apmd/. APMD is a set of programs that
control the Advanced Power Management system found in most modern
laptop computers. If you run a 2.2.x kernel and want to experiment,
Gabor Kuti <seasons@falcon.sch.bme.hu> has made a kernel patch that
allows you to hibernate any Linux system to disk, even if your
computers APM BIOS doesn't support it directly. IMHO you don't need
this features if your laptop provides a function key to invoke suspend
mode directly.
When you first install Linux, you will probably have to recompile the
kernel. The kernel that came with your distribution probably does not
have APM enabled.
Please see the Battery Powered Linux Mini-HOWTO by Hanno Mueller
<hanno@lava.de> http://www.lava.de/~hanno/ and the page of Kenneth E.
Harker http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-laptop/ for
detailed information.
Richard Gooch wrote: I'have had a look at the beta version of apmd,
and I still don't like it, because:
� Only supports one command to run at suspend time.
� Doesn't distinguish between user and system suspends.
� doesn't provide a way to disable policy (the sync(); sleep(0) ;
sync(); sleep(1); sequence)
� Does not document extra features.
� And I'm not sure that what we want is a single super daemon. A
collection of smaller daemons might be better, since it allows
people to pick and choose. A super daemon is bloat for those who
only want one small feature.
Though this topic was discussed controversly Richard Gooch has put
together a package suspendd at http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/
.
Also, have a look at apmcd (apm based crontab) at
ftp.binary9.net/pub/linux/apmcd-1.15.tar.gz . A tool made by Nicolas
J. Leon <nicholas@binary9.net> http://mrnick.binary9.net/.
Note: I didn't check wether this features are merged into one package
(apmd eventually) already.
5.7.3. Caveats
If you have another operating system preinstalled or use another
operating system at the same disk, make sure there is no "hibernation"
or "suspend" tool installed, which could severely interfere with
Linux, e.g. it might use disk space which is occupied by Linux or vice
versa.
5.7.4. Troubleshooting
If your machine worked with 2.0.x kernels but not with the 2.2.x
series, take this advice from Klaus Franken kfr@klaus.franken.de :
"The default changed in 2.2. Search in the init-scripts for halt and
change it to halt -p or poweroff. See man halt , if you don't have
this option you need a newer version of halt." You may find it in the
SysVinit package.
PCMCIA Card Services and Advanced Power Management (from the PCMCIA-
HOWTO):
"Card Services can be compiled with support for APM (Advanced Power
Management) if you've configured your kernel with APM support. ...
The PCMCIA modules will automatically be configured for APM if a
compatible version is detected on your system. Whether or not APM is
configured, you can use cardctl suspend before suspending your laptop,
and cardctl resume after resuming, to cleanly shut down and restart
your PCMCIA cards. This will not work with a modem that is in use,
because the serial driver isn't able to save and restore the modem
operating parameters. APM seems to be unstable on some systems. If you
experience trouble with APM and PCMCIA on your system, try to narrow
down the problem to one package or the other before reporting a bug.
Some drivers, notably the PCMCIA SCSI drivers, cannot recover from a
suspend/resume cycle. When using a PCMCIA SCSI card, always use
cardctl eject prior to suspending the system."
Sometimes X windows and APM don't work smoothly together, the machine
might even hang. A recommendation from Steve Rader: Some linux systems
have their X server hang when doing apm -s. Folks with this affliction
might want switch to the console virtual terminal then suspend chvt 1;
apm -s as root, or, more appropiately.sudo chvt 1; sudo apm -s. I have
these commands in a script, say, my-suspend and then do xapmload
--click-command my-suspend .
On some new machines (for instance HP Omnibook 4150 - 366 MHz model)
when accessing /proc/apm, you may get a kernel fault: general
protection fault: f000. Stephen Rothwell
<Stephen.Rothwell@canb.auug.org.au> http://www.canb.auug.org.au/~sfr/
explaines: "This is your APM BIOS attempting to use a real mode
segment while in protected mode, i.e. it is a bug in your BIOS. .. We
have seen a few of these recently, except all the others are in the
power off code in the BIOS wher we can work around it by returning to
real mode before attempting to power off. Here we cannot do this."
apmd-rhcn-2.4phil-1 by RedHat ftp://rhcn.redhat.com/pub/rhcn/
contains an unofficial patch for shutting down the PCMCIA sockets
before a suspend and patches for multiple batteries.
5.8. Batteries
For information about available battery types, take a look at the
Hardware Features chapter above.
Please see Battery Powered Linux Mini-HOWTO by Hanno Mueller
<hanno@lava.de> http://www.lava.de/~hanno/ for detailed information.
Stephen Rothwell http://www.canb.auug.org.au/~sfr/ is currently
integrating a patch that will add multiple battery support to the
kernel APM.
From the mobile-update page (modified by WH): Discharge the battery.
If your battery runs only for about 20 minutes, you probably suffer
from memory effects. Most laptops do not discharge the battery
properly. With low powered devices like old computer fans they can be
discharged completely. This removes memory effects. You should do so
even with LiIon batteries, though they don't suffer much from memory
effext (the manual of an IBM Thinkpad says to cycle the batteries
through a full charge/discharge cycle 3 times every few months or so).
WARNING: Try this at your own risk! Make sure the voltage of the fans
is compatible to your battery. It works for me.
In the US, this company has most batteries for anything and can
rebuild many that are no longer manufactured: Batteries Plus, 2045
Pleasant Hill Road, Duluth, GA 30096 +1 770 495 1644.
5.9. USB
Newer laptops come with the UniversalSerialBus. I haven't tried it on
any of my systems because I don't have any USB devices.
Visit http://peloncho.fis.ucm.es/~inaky/uusbd-www/ for the USB Linux
home page.
5.10. Memory
Unfortenately most laptops come with a proprietary memory chips. So
they are not interchangeable between different models.
5.11. Plug-and-Play Devices (PnP)
The Plug and Play driver project for Linux is a project to create
support within the Linux kernel (see Linux.Org for more information)
for handling Plug and Play (and other semi-PnP) devices in a clean,
consistent way. It aims to allow a driver of any type of hardware to
have this hardware configured by the PnP driver in the kernel. This
driver is then notified when the device is reconfigured, or even
removed from the system, so as to allow for graceful action in these
circumstances http://www.io.com/~cdb/mirrors/lpsg/pnp-linux.html .
ISA PnP tools is another useful package.
And there is a project at RedHat
http://www.redhat.com/pnp/overview.html .
5.12. Docking Station / Port Replicator
5.12.1. Definitions
First some definitions. There is a difference between docking station
and port replicator.
I use the term docking station for a box which contains slots to put
some interface cards in, and space to put a harddisk, etc. in. This
box can be permanently connected to a PC. A port replicator is just a
copy of the laptop ports which may be connected permanently to a PC.
5.12.2. Other Solutions
I don't use a docking station. They seem really expensive and I can't
see any usefulness. OK you have to mess up with some more cables, but
is it worth so much money? Docking stations are useful in an office
environment when you have a permanent network connection, or need the
docking station's SCSI adaptor (e.g., for a CD-R). Also all docking
stations I know are proprietary models, so if you change your laptop
you have to change this device, too.
I would prefer to buy a PC instead and connect it via network to the
laptop.
Or use an external display, which usually works well as described
above, and an external keyboard and mouse. If your laptop supports an
extra PS/2 port you may use a cheap solution a Y cable, which connects
the PS/2 port to an external keyboard and an external monitor. Note:
Your laptop probably has support for the Y cable feature, e.g. the
COMPAQ Armada 1592DT.
5.12.3. Connection Methods
AFAIK there are three solutions to connect a laptop to a docking
station:
1. SCSI port
2. parallel port
3. (proprietary) docking port
From Martin J. Evans martin@mjedev.demon.co.uk "The main problem with
docking stations is getting the operating system to detect you are
docked. Fortunately, if you configure your kernel with the /proc file
system (does anyone not do this?) you can examine the devices
available and thus detect a docked state. With this in mind a few
simple scripts is all you need to get your machine configured
correctly in a docked state.
You may want to build support for the docking station hardware as
modules instead of putting it directly into the kernel. This will save
space in your kernel but your choice probably largely depends on how
often you are docked.
1) Supporting additional disks on the docking station SCSI card
To my mind the best way of doing this is to:
1. Either build support for the SCSI card into the kernel or build it
as a module.
2. Put the mount points into /etc/fstab but use the "noauto" flag to
prevent them from being mounted automatically with the mount -a
flag. In this way, when you are docked you can explicitly mount the
partitions off any disk connected to the docking station SCSI card.
2) Supporting additional network adaptors in the docking station
You can use a similar method to that outlined above for the graphics
card. Check the /proc filesystem in your rc scripts to see if you are
docked and then set up your network connections appropriately. "
Once you determine this information, you may use a script, similar to
the following example, to configure the connection to your docking
station at startup. The script is provided by Friedhelm Kueck:
______________________________________________________________________
# check, if Laptop is in docking-station (4 PCMCIA slots available)
# or if it is standalone (2 slots available)
# Start after cardmgr has started
#
# Friedhelm Kueck mailto:fk@impress.de
# 08-Sep-1998
#
# Find No. of Sockets
SOCKETS=`tail -1 /var/run/stab | cut -d ":" -f 1`
case "$SOCKETS" in
"Socket 3")
echo Laptop is in Dockingstation ...
echo Disabeling internal LCD Display for X11
echo
cp /etc/XF86Config_extern /etc/XF86Config
#
# Setup of PCMCIA Network Interface after start of cardmge
#
echo
echo "Setting up eth0 for use at Network ..."
echo
/sbin/ifconfig eth0 10.1.9.5 netmask 255.255.0.0 broadcast 10.1.255.255
/sbin/route add -net 10.1.0.0 gw 10.1.9.5
/sbin/route add default gw 10.1.10.1
;;
"Socket 1")
echo Laptop is standalone
echo Disabling external Monitor for X11
cp /etc/XF86Config_intern /etc/XF86Config
echo
echo Network device NOT setup
;;
esac
______________________________________________________________________
5.13. Network Connections
5.13.1. Related HOWTOs
1. PLIP-mini-HOWTO
2. NET-3-HOWTO
3. Ethernet-HOWTO
4. Term-Firewall-mini-HOWTO
5.13.2. Connection Methods
5.13.2.1. PCMCIA Network Card
If your laptop supports PCMCIA this is the easiest and fastest way to
get network support. Make sure your card is supported before buying
one.
5.13.2.2. Serial Null Modem Cable
Probably the cheapest way to connect your laptop to another computer,
but quite slow. You may use PPP or SLIP to start the connection.
5.13.2.3. Parallel Port NIC (Pocket Adaptor)
Accton Pocket Ethernet and Linux This ethernet adaptor uses a parallel
port and delivers approximately 110k Bytes/s throughput for those
notebooks that do not have PCMCIA slots.
Linux and Linksys Ethernet Adaptors A short note on the use of the
Linksys parallel-port ethernet adaptor under Linux. This is a widely
available networking adaptor that doesn't require a PCMCIA slot.
5.13.2.4. Parallel "Null" Modem Cable
Offers more speed than a serial connection. Some laptops use chipsets
that will not work with PLIP. Please see PLIP-HOWTO for details.
5.13.2.5. Docking Station NIC
I don't have experience with a NIC in a docking station yet.
5.14. Modem
There are three kinds of modems available: internal, PCMCIA card or
external serial port modems. But some internal modems will NOT work
with Linux such as the MWave modems (IBM) or if the laptop has a
WinModem. This is caused by non-standard hardware. So you have to use
either a PCMCIA card modem or an external modem.
Quotation from the Kernel-FAQ: "9.Why aren't WinModems supported?
(REG, quoting Edward S. Marshall) The problem is the lack of
specifications for this hardware. Most companies producing so-called
WinModems refuse to provide specifications which would allow non-
Microsoft operating systems to use them. The basic issue is that they
don't work like a traditional modem; they don't have a DSP, and make
the CPU do all the work. Hence, you can't talk to them like a
traditional modem, and you -need- to run the modem driver as a
realtime task, or you'll have serious data loss issues under any kind
of load. They're simply a poor design."
WARNING: Pay attention to the different kinds of phone lines: analog
and ISDN. You can't connect an analog modem to an ISDN port and vice
versa. Though there might be hybrid modems available. Connecting to
the wrong port may even destroy your modem. Trick: If you are looking
for an analog phone port in an office building which is usually wired
with ISDN, take a look at the fax lines, they are often analog lines.
For tracking the packets on PPP you may use pppstats. Or pload this
provides a graphical view of the traffic (in and out) of the PPP
connection. It is based on athena widgets hence is very portable. It
also uses very little CPU time. The home of pload is
http://www.engr.utk.edu/~mdsmith/pload/ .
5.15. SCSI
5.15.1. Hardware Compatibility Check
If unsure about the right SCSI support, compile a kernel with all
available SCSI drivers as modules. Load each module step by step until
you get the right one.
5.15.2. Related HOWTOs
1. SCSI-HOWTO
5.15.3. Survey
AFAIK there is no laptop yet with a SCSI harddisk. Though there are
two models with a built in SCSI port: Texas Instruments TI 4000 and HP
OmniBook 800. For other models, if you need SCSI support you may get
it by using a SCSI-PCMCIA card or via a SCSI adapter in a docking
station.
5.16. Floppy Drive
5.16.1. Linux Compatibility Check
Usually there are no problems connecting a floppy drive to a Linux
laptop. But with a laptop floppy drive you may sometimes not be able
to use every feature. I encountered the superformat command (from the
fdutils package) couldn't format more than 1.44MB with my HP OmniBook
800. You may also have difficulty when the the floppy drive and CD
drive are mutually exclusive, or when the floppy drive is a PCMCIA
device (as with the Toshiba Libretto 100). With older laptops, there
might be a minor problem if they use a 720K drive. AFAIK all
distributions come with support for 1.44M (and sometimes 1.2M)
floppies only. Though it's possible to install Linux anyway. Please
see Installation chapter. Please see kernel documentation for boot
time parameters concerning certain laptop floppy drives, for instance
IBM ThinkPad. Or man bootparam .
5.17. CD Drive
Most notebooks today come with CD drives. If floppy and CD drive are
swappable they are usually mutually exclusive. Sometimes they come as
PCMCIA devices. Or as SCSI device (HP OmniBook 800). AFAIK there are
discmans available which have a port to connect them to a computer or
even a SCSI port. I found an article published by Ziff-Davis
Publishing Company (September 1996 issue, but missed to note the URL)
written by Mitt Jones: "Portable PC Card CD-ROM drives transform
laptops into mobile multimedia machines", which listed: Altec Lansing
AMC2000 Portable Multimedia CD-ROM Center; Axonix ProMedia 6XR; CMS
PlatinumPortable; EXP CDS420 Multimedia Kit; H45 QuickPCMCIA CD;
Liberty 115CD; Panasonic KXL-D740; Sony PRD-250WN CD-ROM Discman.
5.18. Harddisk
5.18.1. Linux Compatibility Check
Useful programms are hdparm, dmesg, fsck and fdisk .
5.18.2. Miscellaneaous
Be careful when using your laptop abroad. I have heard about some
destroyed harddisks due to a magnetic field emitted from the magnetic-
holds at the backresttable of the seats in a german railway waggon.
Though I am quite satisfied with the quality of the harddisk in my
laptop, when I removed it from the case I unintendedly dropped it, I
recommend to be very careful.
5.19. ZV Port
Some laptops come with a ZV port. Since I don't have a laptop with a
ZV video port yet, I can provide only some URLs: http://www.thp.uni-
koeln.de/~rjkm/linux/bttv.html (driver) http://www.mathematik.uni-
kl.de/~wenk/xwintv.html (tvviewer). Alternatively to the ZV port you
might use the USB port.
5.20. Accessories
5.20.1. PCMCIA Cards
5.20.1.1. Card Families
1. Ethernet adapter
2. Token Ring adapter
3. Ethernet + Modem / GSM
4. Fax-Modem / GSM adapter
5. SCSI adapter
6. I/O cards: RS232, LPT, RS422, RS485, GamePort, IrDA, Radio, Video
7. SmartCard reader, see Project Muscle - "Movement for the Use of
Smart Cards in a Linux Environment"
http://www.linuxnet.com/smartcard/index.html
8. Memory cards
9. harddisks
10.
2.5" harddisk adapters
For desktops there are PCMCIA slots for ISA and PCI bus available.
Source: http://www.lapshop.de
5.20.1.2. Linux Compatibility Check
With the command cardctl ident you may get information about your
card. Put this information into /etc/pcmcia/config if necessary. But
this may not be enough to get the card to work, but works sometimes
for no-name network cards or modem cards. If you get a card to work
please don't forget to announce this to the developer of the PCMCIA-CS
package David Hinds
http://hyper.stanford.edu/HyperNews/get/pcmcia/home.html .
5.20.2. Printers
Survey about small mobile printers:
1. CANON: BJC-80
2. CANON: BJ-30
3. HP: DeskJet 340Cbi. This is a small, portable, low-duty-cycle
printer. It prints either black, or color (3 color). I have had
some problems with it loading paper. Overall, the small size and
portability make it a nice unit for use with laptops. I use the HP
500/500C driver with Linux.
4. Olivetti: JP-90
AFAIK only the HP and the BJC-80 machine have an infrared port. Pay
attention to the supplied voltage of the power supply if you plan to
travel abroad. Source: http://www.lapshop.de
5.20.3. Power and Phone Plugs, Power Supply
When travelling abroad you might consider to take a set of different
power and phone plugs with you. Also, it's useful if you can change
the input voltage of the power supply, for instance from 110V in the
US to 220V in germany. There might be even power supplies for 12V
batteries from cars.
5.20.4. Bags and Suitcases
You probably wonder, why I include this topic here. But shortly after
using my COMPAQ Armada 1592DT I recognized that the rear side of the
machine (where the ports are arranged) was slightly damaged. Though I
have taken much care when transporting the laptop, this was caused by
putting the bag on the floor. It seems that the laptop has so much
weight, that it bounces inside the bag on its own rear side. So I
decided to put a soft pad into the bag before loading the laptop. A
good bag is highly recommended if you take your laptop on trips, or
take it home every night.
6. Different Environments - On the Road
6.1. Related HOWTOs
1. Security-HOWTO
2. Multiboot-with-LILO-mini-HOWTO
3. Ethernet-HOWTO
4. NET-3-HOWTO
5. Offline-Mailing-mini-HOWTO
6. Plip-mini-HOWTO
7. Slip-PPP-Emulator-mini-HOWTO
6.2. Configuration Tools
6.2.1. NetEnv
Do you use your laptop in different network environments? At home? In
the office? At a customers site?
If yes, the small package "netenv" might be useful for you. When
booting your laptop it provides you with a simple interface from which
you can choose the current network environment. The first time in a
new environment, you can enter the basic data and save it for later
reuse.
Netenv sets up a file containing variable assignments which describe
the current environment. This can be used by the PCMCIA setup scheme,
e.g. like the one that comes with Debian/GNU Linux and perhaps others.
The netenv data can be used for things like:
1. Network Device: Configure the network device for different
environments.
2. Choose a proper XF86Config: Think of using your laptop standalone
with touchpad vs. connected to a CRT monitor along with an external
mouse. For example, a wheel mouse could be used when docked, but
the driver is not compatible with the normal trackpoint or
touchpad.
3. Windowmanager: You can set up your windowmanager according to the
current location of your machine.
4. Printing Environment: The netenv data can easily be used to set up
the printing environment.
Netenv is available as Debian/GNU Linux package as well as tarball. It
depends on dialog(1) for the menu system. It is developed by Gerd
Bavendiek bav@rw.sni.de you may get it at http://www.uni-
bielefeld.de/~portgym/net/netenv.html .
6.2.2. Mobile IP
Mobile IP allows a portable computer access to the Internet from
different networks without changing its IP address.
6.2.2.1. Resources
1. Linux Mobile-IP
2. Linux Mobile IP from HP Labs Bristol by Manuel Rodr�guez
3. MosquitoNet Mobile IP
4. Mobile IP at NUS
5. Linux Mobile-IP
6. Bay Area Research Wireless Access Network (BARWAN)
Sources: Kenneth E. Harker and Dag Brattli
6.2.3. DHCP/BootP
DHCP and BootP are also useful for working in different environments.
Please see the DHCP-HOWTO and BootP-HOWTO.
6.2.4. PPPD Options
The pppd command can be configured via several different files: pppd
file /etc/ppp/<your_options> .
6.2.5. /etc/init.d
You may even choose to do your configuration by editing the
/etc/init.d files manually.
6.2.6. PCMCIA - Schemes
How can I have separate PCMCIA device setups for home and work? This
is fairly easy using PCMCIA scheme support. Use two configuration
schemes, called home and work. For details please read the according
chapter in the PCMCIA-HOWTO by David Hinds.
6.2.7. Bootloaders
6.2.7.1. LILO
From http://www.mjedev.demon.co.uk/index.html <Martin J. Evans
martin@mjedev.demon.co.uk> I have taken this recommendation: The first
point to note is that init will take any arguments of the form
name=value as environment variable assignments if they are not
recognized as something else. This means you can set environment
variables from the LILO boot prompt before your rc scripts run. I set
the LOCATION environment variable depending on where I am when I boot
Linux. e.g.
______________________________________________________________________
LILO: linux LOCATION=home
______________________________________________________________________
Or
______________________________________________________________________
LILO: linux LOCATION=work
______________________________________________________________________
Or simply
______________________________________________________________________
LILO: linux
______________________________________________________________________
where failing to set LOCATION means the same as LOCATION=home (i.e. my
default). Instead of typing LOCATION=place each time you boot you can
add an entry to your /etc/lilo.conf file and use the append instruc�
tion. e.g.
______________________________________________________________________
# Linux bootable partition for booting Linux at home
#
image = /vmlinuz
root = /dev/hda3
label = linux
read-only
# Linux bootable partition config ends
#
# Linux bootable partition for booting Linux at work
#
image = /vmlinuz
root = /dev/hda3
label = work
read-only
append="LOCATION=work"
# Linux bootable partition config ends
______________________________________________________________________
With the example above you can use "linux" for booting at home and
"work" for booting at work.
Armed with the facility above, you can now edit the relevant rc
scripts to test ENVIRONMENT before running ifconfig, setting up route
etc.
6.2.7.2. Other Bootloaders
There are several other bootloaders which are often overlooked.
Besides LILO, have a look at loadlin, CHooseOS (CHOS) (not GPL), GRand
Unified Bootloader (GRUB), System Commander and take a look at
ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/boot/loaders/. The NT boot
loader or OS/2 boot loader may even be used.
6.2.8. X-Windows
From Steve <steve@cygnet.co.uk> I got a configuration for X windows
with an external monitor: Note that I have introduced a neat trick!
For my nice 17" monitor I start X with no options and get the default
16-bit 1152x864 display - but when using the LCD screen I specify a
15-bit display (startx -- -bpp 15) and get the correct 800x600
resolution automatically. This saves having to have two XConfig files.
6.2.9. More Info
Using a Laptop in Different Environments by Gerd Bavendiek . This
article appeared in the August, 1997 issue of the Linux Gazette. This
is an excellent, short technical article describing an easy way to
setup your Linux notebook to boot into different network and printing
configurations, especially useful for those who use their machines at
home as well as other locations such as in the office, at school, or
at a customer site.
6.3. Data Transport Between Different Machines
I don't have experience with this topic yet. So just a survey about
some means of data transport and maintaining data consistency between
different machines.
6.3.1. Hardware
1. external harddisks
2. ZIP drive
Wade Hampton wrote: "You may use MS-DOS formatted ZIP and floppy discs
for data transfer. You may be able to also use LS120. If you have
SCSI, you could use JAZ, MO or possibly DVD-RAM (any SCSI disc that
you could write to). I have the internal ZIP for my Toshiba 700CT. It
works great (I use automount to mount it). I use VFAT on the ZIP disks
so I can move them to Windows boxes, Linux boxes, NT, give them to
coworkers, etc. One problem, I must SHUTDOWN to swap the internal CD
with the ZIP."
6.3.2. Software
6.3.2.1. Source Code Control System (SCCS)
Currently I had no time to check a SCCS system, such as RVS or CVS for
this purpose.
6.3.2.2. CODA Filesystem
The Coda File System is a descendant of the Andrew File System. Like
AFS, Coda offers location-transparent access to a shared Unix file
name-space that is mapped on to a collection of dedicated file
servers. But Coda represents a substantial improvement over AFS
because it offers considerably higher availability in the face of
server and network failures. The improvement in availability is
achieved using the complementary techniques of server replication and
disconnected operation. Disconnected operation proven especially
valuable in supporting portable computers http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/
.
6.3.2.3. WWWsync
This is a program written in Perl that will update your web pages by
ftp from your local pages. This was originally written for updating
Demon home-pages, but will work with other providers which provide
direct FTP access to your web pages. I didn't check this for laptop
purposes yet. You may get the program at
http://www.alfie.demon.co.uk/wwwsync/ .
6.4. Security in Different Environments
6.4.1. Introduction
I am not a computer security expert. Please read the Security-HOWTO
for more information. I just collected some information below. Note,
these means are just small steps to additional security, though I
recommend that you use them.
6.4.2. Means of Security
1. Kennsington Lock: AFAIK proprietary lock solution with different
laptops http://www.kennsington.com
2. SmartCards: by DESKO http://www.desko.de are not available for
Linux yet. The only available laptop with a SmartCard builtin is
the Siemens Scenic Mobile 800.
3. User passwords: can be easily bypassed if the intruder gets
physical access to your machine
4. BIOS passwords: are also easily crackable, though sometimes harder
than with desktops
5. Name plates: to reduce the possibility of theft, you may want to
have a nameplate made and affixed to the cover of the laptop. A
nice one will cost you about $12, and can be made by any good
trophy shop. They'll glue it on for you too. You could use double-
sided tape instead, but glue is more permanent. You may even make
an engravement into the laptop cover.
6. Boot loader: a boot loader may be used to put your name and phone
number (or whatever text you choose) into the boot sequence before
the operating system is loaded. This provides a label that can't be
removed by editing files or even doing a simple format of the
harddisk.
7. Antivirus policy: I have seen an antivir RPM somewhere. Check the
BIOS for an option to disable writing at the boot sector.
8. Database of stolen laptops: Just in case, there is at least one
database of stolen laptops in the WWW, which is free of charge, but
I have lost the URL.
9. Laptop as a security risk itself: Since a laptop can easily be used
to intrude a network, it seems a good policy to ask the system
administrator for permission before connecting a laptop to a
network.
10.
Secure Protocol: When connecting to a remote server always use a
secure protocol.
6.5. Dealing with Down Times (Cron Jobs)
A cron-like program that doesn't go by time: anacron (like
"anac(h)ronistic") is a periodic command scheduler. It executes
commands at intervals specified in days. Unlike cron, it does not
assume that the system is running continuously. It can therefore be
used to control the execution of daily, weekly and monthly jobs (or
anything with a period of n days), on systems that don't run 24 hours
a day. When installed and configured properly, anacron will make sure
that the commands are run at the specified intervals as closely as
machine-uptime permits.
hc-cron This program is a modified version of Paul Vixie's
<paul@vixie.com> widely used cron daemon. Like the original program it
runs specified jobs at periodic intervals. However, the original crond
relies on the computer running continuously, otherwise jobs will be
missed. This problem is addressed by hc-cron, that is indended for use
on home-computers that are typically turned off several times a day;
hc-cron will remember the time when it was shut down and catch up jobs
that have occurred during down time when it is started again. Felix
Braun <fbraun@atdot.org> is the author of the programm, it is
available at http://metalab.unc.edu /pub/Linux/system/daemons/cron .
7. Other Resources
Kenneth E. Harker maintains a quite valuable database at
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-laptop/ . Please have a
look at his site to get current information about laptop related
mailing lists, newsgroups, magazines and newsletters, WWW sites and a
big database about many different laptop pages.
To join the Linux-Laptop-Mailing-List write a mail to
<majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu> with subscribe linux-laptop in the
subject. You will get a confirmation message than, which you have to
reply accordingly.
There is now a debian-laptop mailing list. Any questions or
discussions concerning running the Debian/GNU Linux operating
system(s) on laptops are welcome. Send mail to <debian-laptop-
request@lists.debian.org> with a subject of subscribe. Or visit
thehttp://www.debian.org site and use the online form.
8. Repairing the Hardware
There are several different reasons that could make it necessary to
open the case of a laptop.
1. repairing broken hardware
2. get some hardware info, which isn't available otherwise
3. remove the speakers (speakerrektomie, as described in Visual-Bell-
mini-HOWTO)
4. install overdrive for CPU
5. change BIOS battery
6. upgrade harddisk
7. upgrade memory
Repairing a laptop can be quite expensive if you don't have a
manufacturer's warranty. Sometimes professional support is bad. But
opening a laptop case can be difficult. Often the procedures to
upgrade the memory and the harddisk are described in the manual. For
further details, you should try to get the maintainance/technical
manual. Just be extremely careful and make notes as to where each
screw goes. You must get most of them back in the right hole or you
could ruin the machine by damaging the system board. Also after you
get all the screws to an assembly out (some will be hidden) the parts
are usually held together with plastic clips molded in, so you still
must exercise care to separate them. Sometimes you need certain tools,
for instance TORX screw drivers or a solder kit. Good luck.
I found two books about PC hardware which contained a dedicated
chapter about laptops:
� Scott Mueller: Upgrading and Repairing PCs. QUE Corporation.
� Marc Misani: The Complete Hardware Upgrade and Maintainance Guide.
Both books don't know about Linux and both are quite short about
laptops. The book by Marc Minasi provides a little more information
about laptops.
WARNING: Usually laptop manufacturers declare the warranty to be void
if the case was opened by people other than their own staff.
9. Solutions with Laptops
9.1. Introduction
The power and capabilities of laptops are sometimes limited as
described above. But in turn, they have a feature which desktops don't
have, their mobility. I try to give a survey about applications which
make sense in connection with laptops. Since I couldn't try all of
them, there is currently little documentation. If you can provide
further material, please contact me.
9.2. Mobile Network Analyzer
I'm not an expert in this field, so I just mention the tools I know.
Please check also for other applications. Besides the usual tools
tcpdump, netcat, there are two applications I know, which may be used
to analyze network traffic:
The Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG) is a tool to monitor the
traffic load on network-links. MRTG generates HTML pages containing
GIF images which provide a LIVE visual representation of this traffic.
Check http://www.ee.ethz.ch/stats/mrtg/ for an example. MRTG is based
on Perl and C and works under UNIX and Windows NT.
The CMU-SNMP package, is designed to configure and analyze the SNMP
protocol http://www.gaertner.de/snmp/ .
9.3. Mobile Router
Though designed to work from a single floppy, the Linux Router Project
(LRP) , seems useful in combination with a laptop, too.
9.4. Hacking and Cracking Networks
When thinking about the powers of laptops, hacking and cracking
networks comes easy into mind. Though I don't want to handle this
topic here, but instead recommend the Security-HOWTO.
9.5. Lectures
If you are giving lectures, readings or presentations in different
places, a laptop might suit your needs. You can combine it with an
overhead display, a beamer or a second monitor. For a second monitor
or a beamer make sure it is supported by your laptop. BTW though
Microsoft's PowerPoint is often used for such things, there are also
Linux solutions. See the software maps at KDE (K-Office)
http://www.kde.org and GNOME http://www.gnome.org/ . Or the commercial
packages Applixware
http://www.applix.com/appware/linux/slideshow/gfx011.html and
Staroffice
http://vesta.astro.amu.edu.pl/Library/Linux/LinFocus/May1998/article15.html.
MagicPoint or mgp, is an X11-based presentation tool. The home page is
http://www.Mew.org/mgp or ftp://ftp.Mew.org/pub/MagicPoint/ or
http://jiji.mew.org/mgp/ .
9.6. Mobile Data Collecting
9.6.1. Related HOWTOs
1. Coffee-mini-HOWTO
2. AX-25-HOWTO
3. HAM-HOWTO
4. Serial-HOWTO
5. Serial-Programming-HOWTO
9.6.2. Applications
A Linux laptop can be used to collect data outside an office, e.g.
geodesy data, sales data, network checks, patient data in a hospital
and others. There is support for wireless data connections via
cellular phone modems and amateur radio. I am not sure whether PCMCIA
radio cards are supported, see Aironet Wireless Communications
http://www.aironet.com/. There are also laptops available with cases
build for a rugged environment (even waterproof laptops).
9.7. Mobile Office
With KDE http://www.kde.org (K-Office), GNOME, http://www.gnome.org/
and the commercial products WordPerfect, Staroffice and Applixware
http://www.applix.com/ Linux has more and more business software
applications. With the corresponding hardware, e.g. a portable
printer and a cellular phone which connects to your laptop, you will
have a very nice mobile office.
9.8. Connection to Digital Camera
AFAIK there are currently three methods to connect a digital camera to
a laptop: the infrared port (IrDA), serial port and maybe USB. There
are also some auxiliary programs for conversion of pictures, etc.
9.9. Connection to QuickCam (Video)
AFAIK there are currently two methods to connect a video camera to a
laptop: a ZV port and maybe USB, but I don't know how this works with
Linux. I have heard rumors about using a sound card for video data
transfer to a Linux box, see http://worldvisions.ca/~apenwarr/ . I
have heard rumors about a Linux-QuickCam-mini-HOWTO, but couldn't find
a reliable URL yet. Check the sane package which is build for scanner
support, this should contain support for still-grabbers as well.
9.10. Connection to Television Set
If you have a ZV port in the laptop, it should be easy to connect it
to a TV set, using either NSCA or PAL, but I don't know whether either
works with Linux.
9.11. Connection to Cellular Phone
AFAIK there are two methods to connect a cellular phone to a laptop:
via the infrared port (IrDA) or via the serial port. See the
Linux/IrDA project for the current status of IrDA connections. AFAIK
only the Ericsson SH888, the Nokia 8110 provide infrared support.
9.12. Connection to Global Positioning System (GPS)
From the Hardware-HOWTO I know there is Trimble Mobile GPS available.
You may also connect a GPS via a serial port. Most GPS receivers have
a data port and can connect to a PC with a special serial cable.
9.13. Connection via Amateur Radio (HAM)
AFAIK laptops are used in HAM contests. Please see HAM-HOWTO.
9.14. Satellite Watching
Together with an antenna and software like seesat or sattrack you can
use a laptop to locate a satellite for visual observation. You could
also use xephem on a laptop when stargazing.
10. Other Operating Systems
10.1. DOS/Windows9x/NT
10.1.1. Introduction
Unfortunately, there are a few reasons which might make it necessary
to put DOS/Windows and Linux together on one laptop. Often the support
for the flash ROM of PCMCIA cards and modems is not available for
Linux, or you have to retrieve hardware information, which is not
visible with Linux, due to a lack of support by some hardware
manufacturers. I'm not sure wether this tasks can be achieved under an
emulation like DOS-EMU or WINE.
If you want Linux with X, Netscape, etc., and Windows95, things will
be tight in a 1GB harddisk. Though I do so with a 810MB disk.
10.1.2. DOS Tools to Repartition a Hard Disk
Often you get a preinstalled version of Windows on your laptop. If you
just want to shrink the Windows partition, you need a tool to resize
the partition. Or you can remove the partition first, repartition,
then reinstall. Most of the following information I found at the page
of Michael Egan <Michael.Egan@sonoma.edu> at
http://libweb.sonoma.edu/mike/fujitsu/ .
A well known and reliable, but commercial product is Partition Magic
http://www.powerquest.com/product/pm/index.html from Power Quest.
Many people have used FIPS 15c (which may support FAT-32)
http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/people/chaffee/fips/fips.html for
repartitioning FAT partition sizes.) Also, another version from a
different source is FIPS 2.0 (claims to support FAT-32)
http://www.igd.fhg.de/~aschaefe/fips/ for repartitioning FAT partition
sizes.)
One more "newer" utility for repartitioning and resizing FAT
partitions is Ranish Partition Manager/Utility (FAT-32 support is
claimed for this as well, Linux support is taken into account.)
http://www.users.intercom.com/~ranish/part/ .
Something was recently published on the <linux-
kernel@vger.rutgers.edu> mailing list about a partition recovery
program. I have not used this, nor examined it, nor read much about it
(except for the HTML page.) It may be useful to some of you if you
have problems with FIPS, Ranish Partition Manager/Utility or Partition
Magic destroying your partition information. You can find information
on this partition-fixer named "fixdisktable" at
http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/people/chaffee/fat32.html . It is quite a
ways down in that page. Or look for it via ftp in
ftp://bmrc.berkeley.edu/pub/linux/rescue/ and locate the latest
"fixdisktable" in that ftp directory. (Source and binary dist should
be available.)
10.1.3. Caveats
Before repartitioning your harddisk take care about the disk layout.
Especially look for hidden disk space or certain partitions used for
suspend to disk or hibernation mode. Some laptops come with a
partition which contains some BIOS programs (e.g. COMPAQ Armada
1592DT). Search the manual carefully for tools like PHDISK.EXE,
Suspend to Disk, Diagnostic TOOLS.
10.1.4. Multi Boot
Please see the Different Environments chapter, for information about
booting different operating systems from the same harddisk.
10.1.5. Partition Sharing
You may share your swap space between Linux and Windows. Please see
"Dealing with Limited Resources" section. Also with Linux you can
mount any kind of Windows partition. The other way round there should
be also some tools, but I don't have an URL yet.
Also you can mount DOS drives of the type msdos, vfat and even
compressed drives (Drivespace, etc.). For long file names use vfat and
if you like autoconversion ( a nice feature for text files), you may
do so by using the conv=auto option. I have used this in my
/etc/fstab, but be aware this might cause some strange behaviour
sometimes, look at the kernel docs for further details.
______________________________________________________________________
/dev/hda8 /dos/d vfat user,exec,nosuid,nodev,conv=auto 0 2
______________________________________________________________________
10.2. BSD Unix
1. PicoBSD is a one floppy version of FreeBSD 3.0-current, which in
its different variations allows you to have secure dialup access,
small diskless router or even a dial-in server. And all this on
only one standard 1.44MB floppy. It runs on a minimum 386SX CPU
with 8MB of RAM (no HDD required!). You probably may also use it to
install BSD on a laptop as described with micro Linuxes above. You
get PicoBSD at http://www.freebsd.org/~picobsd/
2. PAO: FreeBSD Mobile Computing Package FreeBSD is a version of the
UNIX operating system that runs on PC hardware. It uses a different
set of support for PCMCIA devices, APM, and other mobility related
issues.
3. The CMU Monarch Project Implementations of Mobile-IPv4 and Mobile-
IPv6 for FreeBSD
4. XF86Config Archive. A database of XF86Config files used by Linux
and FreeBSD users. If you need an XF86Config file for your notebook
or laptop, check out this site. (Some documents available in
Japanese only.)
5. AFAIK there is no IrDA support yet.
11. ToDo
1. mention the corresponding kernel options in the Linux Compatibility
Check sections
2. write more Hardware sections
12. Revision History
v0.1 13 January 1999, first draft
v0.2 15 January 1999, minor changes
v0.3 28 January 1999, APM chapter started, minor changes
v0.4 8 February, APM chapter rewritten, removed some lint
v0.5 17 February 1999, added small USB chapter, added Dealing with
Limited Resources chapter, added Solutions with Laptops chapter, minor
editorial changes, released draft to the public
v1.0 19 February 1999, added Sound and Keyboard chapter, minor
changes, release to the LDP
v1.1 28 February 1999, spelling, grammar, style checked and many
additional information added by W. Wade Hampton, added CD Drive,
Harddisk and Kernel chapters, many minor changes
v1.2 5 March 1999, added Debian-Laptop-Mailing-List, added information
about apmcd and suspendd to APM chapter, changed some URLs, minor
changes
v1.3 8 March 1999, minor changes
13. Credits
I would like to thank the many people who assisted with corrections
and suggestions. Their contributions have made this work far better
than I could ever have done alone. Especially I would like to thank:
� First of all Kenneth E. Harker kharker@cs.utexas.edu, from his page
at http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-laptop/ I have
included much material into this HOWTO, but didn't always quote him
verbatim.
� The other HOWTO authors.
� The members of the Linux/IrDA Project.
� The members of the Linux Laptop Mailing List.
� The visitors and contributors of my Linux Laptop Pages.
� David Hinds maintainer of the PCMCIA-CS package.
� Frank Schneider SPATZ1@T-ONLINE.DE
� Stefan Martig martig@iamexwi.unibe.ch
� Michele Andreoli maintainer of muLinux
� Klaus Franken kfr@klaus.franken.de
� W. Wade, Hampton whampton@staffnet.com, did much of spell, grammar
and style checking and added many valuable information
� Anderson MacKay mackay@rice.edu, gave many different detailed
recommendations
� Shaleh shaleh@livenet.net
� Bob Toxen spre@lugs.ch
� Peter Sprenger spre@lugs.ch
� Felix Braun fbraun@atdot.org
� Steve Rader rader@wiscnet.net
� Richard Worwood richard@felch01.demon.co.uk
� Sorry, but probably I have forgotten to mention everybody who
helped.
14. Appendix A - Survey about Micro Linuxes
Because of their small or non-existent footprint, micro-Linuxes are
especially suited to run on laptops -- particularly if you use a
company-provided laptop running Windows9x/NT. Or for installation
purposes using another non Linux machine. There are several micro
Linux distributions out there that boot from one or two floppies and
run off a ramdisk.
See http://www.linuxhq.com or
http://www.txdirect.net/users/mdfranz/tinux.html for details. You may
find a FAQ and a mailing list about boot-floppies at
http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/~sr1/boot-floppies/faq.html . Also a
BootDisk-HOWTO is available. Thanks to Matthew D. Franz maintainer of
Trinux for this tips and collecting most of the following URLs.
1. MuLinux http://www4.pisoft.it/~andreoli/mulinux.html by Michele
Andreoli
2. tomsrtbt http://www.toms.net/~toehser/rb/ "The most Linux on one
floppy. (distribution or panic disk)." by Tom Oehser
3. Trinux http://www.trinux.org "A Linux Security Toolkit" by
Matthew D. Franz
4. LRP "Linux Router Project" http://www.psychosis.com/linux-router/
5. hal91 http://home.sol.no/~okolaas/hal91.html
6. floppyfw http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw/ by Thomas Lundquist
7. minilinux http://alberti.crs4.it/softw are/mini-linux/ (seems no
more valid) or http://www.kiarchive.ru/pub/linux/mini-linux/
8. monkey http://www.spsselib.hiedu.cz/monkey/docs/english.htm
9. DLX http://www.wu-wien.ac.at/usr/h93/h9301726/dlx.html by Erich
Boem
10.
C-RAMDISK http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/kernel/images/
11.
BABEL http://celsius-software.hypermart.net/babel/ "A mini-
distribution to run games"
12.
Xdenu http://xdenu.tcm.hut.fi/
13.
LOAF http://www.ecks.org/loaf/
14.
pocket-linux http://pocket-linux.coven.vmh.net/
15.
FLUF http://www.upce.cz/~kolo/fluf.htm
16.
YARD http://www.croftj.net/~fawcett/yard/
17.
TLinux http://members.xoom.com/ror4/tlinux/
18.
ODL http://linux.apostols.org/guru/wen/
19.
SmallLinux by Steven Gibson http://smalllinux.netpedia.net/ Three
disk micro-distribution of Linux and utilities. Based on kernel
1.2.11. Root disk is ext2 format and has fdisk and mkfs.ext2 so
that a harddisk install can be done. Useful to boot up on old
machines with less than 4MB of RAM.
20.
cLIeNUX by Rick Hohensee client-use-oriented Linux distribution
ftp://ftp.blueznet.com /pub/colorg
21.
linux-lite by Paul Gortmaker for very small systems with less than
2MB RAM and 10MB harddisk space (1.x.x kernel)
http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/kernel
22.
See also the packages at MetaLab formerly known as SunSite
http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/recovery/!INDEX.html and
the Boot-Disk-HOWTO
23.
You may also consider some of the boot floppies provided by various
distributions falling into this category, e.g. the boot/rescue
floppy of Debian/GNU Linux.
24.
If you like to build your own flavour of a boot floppy you may do
so manually, as described in the BootDisk-HOWTO or using some
helper tools, for instance mkrboot (provided at least as a
Debian/GNU Linux package) or pcinitrd, which is part of the PCMCIA-
CS package by David Hinds.
25.
Also you might try to build your Linux system on a ZIP drive. This
is described in the ZIP-Install-mini-HOWTO.
15. Appendix B - Dealing with Limited Resources or Tuning the System
15.1. Related HOWTOs
1. LBX-HOWTO
2. Small-Memory-HOWTO
15.2. Introduction
As mentioned in the introduction laptops sometimes have less resources
if you compare them to desktops. To deal with limited space, memory,
CPU speed and battery power, I have written this chapter.
15.3. Small Space
15.3.1. Introduction
There are different types of techniques to gain more disk space, such
as sharing of space, freeing unused or redundant space, filesystem
tuning and compression. Note: some of these techniques use memory
instead of space. As you will see, there are many small steps
necessary to free some space.
15.3.2. Techniques
1. Stripping: Though many distributions come with stripped binaries
today it is useful to check this. For details see man strip. To
find every unstripped file you can use the file command or more
convenient the tool findstrip. Attention: don't strip libraries,
sometimes the wrong symbols are removed due to a bad programming
technique.
2. Perforation: zum(1)reads a file list on stdin and attempts to
perforate these files. Perforation means, that series of null bytes
are replaced by lseek, thus giving the file system a chance of not
allocating real disk space for those bytes. Example: find . -type f
| xargs zum
3. Remove Odd Files and Duplicates: Check your system for core files,
emacs recovery files <#FILE#> vi recovery files <FILE>.swp, RPM
recovery files <FILE>.rpmorig and patch recovery files. Find
duplicates, you may try finddup. Choose a system to name your
backup, temporary and test files, e.g. with a signature at the end.
4. Clean Temporary Files: , e.g. /tmp, there is even a tool tmpwatch.
5. Shorten the Log Files: usually the files in /var/log.
6. Remove Files: Remove files which are not "necessary" under all
circumstances such as man pages, documentation /usr/doc and sources
e.g. /usr/src .
7. Filesystem: Choose a filesystem which treats disk space
economically e.g. rsfs. Tune your filesystem e.g. tune2fs. Choose
an appropriate partition and block size.
8. Reduce Kernel Size: Either by using only the necessary kernel
features and/or making a compressed kernel image bzImage.
9. Compression: I didn't check this but AFAIK you may compress your
filesystem with gzip and decompress it on the fly. Alternatively
you may choose to compress only certain files. You can even execute
compressed files with zexec
10.
Compressed Filesystems:
- For e2fs filesystems there is a compression version available
e2compr.
- DMSDOS which enables your machine to access Windows95 compressed
drives (drivespace, doublestacker). If you don't need DOS/Windows95
compatibility, i.e. if you want to compress Linux-only data, this
is really discouraged by the author of the program.
11.
Partition Sharing: You may share swap-space (see Swap-Space-HOWTO)
or data partitions between different OS (see mount). For mounting
MS-DOS Windows95 compressed drives (doublespace, drivespace) you
may use dmsdos
http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/filesystems/dosfs/.
12.
Libraries: Take another (older) library, for instance libc5 , this
library seems to be smaller than libc6 aka glibc2 .
13.
Kernel: If your needs are fitted with an older kernel version, you
can save some space.
14.
GUI: Avoid as much Graphical User Interface (GUI) as possible.
15.
Tiny Distributions: There are some distributions available which
fit from one 3.5" floppy to 10MB disk space and fit for small
memories, too. See appendix A and below.
16.
External Storage Devices (Hard Disks, ZIP Drives, NFS, SAMBA):
Since many notebooks may be limited in their expandability, using
the parallel port is an attractive option. There are external
harddisks and ZIP Drives available. Usually they are also
connectable via PCMCIA. Another way is using the resources of
another machine through NFS or SAMBA etc.
15.4. Harddisk Speed
Use the tool hdparm to set up better harddisk performance. Though I
have seen laptop disk enabled with striping, I can't see a reason to
do so, because IMHO aka RAID0 striping needs at least to different
disks to increase performance.
15.5. Small Memory
15.5.1. Related HOWTOs
1. Small-Memory-mini-HOWTO by Todd Burgess <tburgess@uoguelph.ca >
http://eddie.cis.uoguelph.ca/~tburgess
2. Modules-mini-HOWTO
3. Kerneld-mini-HOWTO
15.5.2. Techniques
Check the memory usage with free and top.
Mergemem Project . Many programs contain memory areas of the same
content that remain undetected by the operating system. Typically,
these areas contain data that have been generated on startup and
remain unchanged for longer periods. With mergemem such areas are
detected and shared. The sharing is performed on the operating system
level and is invisible to the user level programs. mergemem is
particularily useful if you run many instances of interpreters and
emulators (like Java or Prolog) that keep their code in private data
areas. But also other programs can take advantage albeit to a lesser
degree.
You may also reduce the kernel size as much as possible by removing
any feature which is not necessary for your needs and by modularizing
the kernel as much as possible.
Also you may shutdown every service or daemon which is not needed,
e.g. lpd, mountd, nfsd and close some virtual consoles. Please see
Small-Memory-mini-HOWTO for details.
And of coarse use swap space, when possible.
If possible you use the resources of another machine, for instance
with X, VNC or even telnet. For more information on Virtual Network
Computing (VNC), see http://http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/ .
15.6. Low CPU Speed
You may want to overdrive the CPU speed but this can damage your
hardware and I don't have experience with it. For some examples look
at Adorable Toshiba Libretto - Overclocking
http://www.cerfnet.com/~adorable/libretto.html.
15.7. Power Saving Techniques
1. If you don't need infrared support, disable it in the BIOS or
shutdown the IrDA device driver. There are also some IrDA features
of the kernel which are useful for saving power.
2. PCMCIA services consume much power, so shut them down if you don't
need them.
3. I'm not sure to which extend the backlight consumes power. WARNING:
AFAIK this device can only bear a limited number of uptime circles.
So avoid using screensavers AFAIK this device can only bear a
limited number of uptime circles. So avoid using screensavers too
much.
4. For some examples to build batteries with increased uptime up to 8
hours look at Adorable Toshiba Libretto
http://www.cerfnet.com/~adorable/libretto.html.
5. For information about APM look at the APM chapter above.
6. A hacked rclock . Booker C. Bense has hacked the rclock program to
include a simple battery power meter on the clock face.
7. xbatstat. A battery level status checker for Linux and X.
8. hdparm hdparm is a Linux IDE disk utility that lets you set spin-
down timeouts and other disk parameters. It works also for some
SCSI features.
9. Mobile Update Daemon This is a drop-in replacement for the
standard update daemon, mobile-update minimizes disk spin ups and
reduces disk uptime. It flushes buffers only when other disk
activity is present. To ensure a consistent file system call sync
manually. Otherwise files may be lost on power failure. mobile-
update does not use APM. So it works also on older systems.
10.
Toshiba Linux Utilities This is a set of Linux utilities for
controlling the fan, supervisor passwords, and hot key functions of
Toshiba Pentium notebooks. There is a KDE package Klibreta, too.
11.
At Kenneth E. Harker's page there is a recommendation for LCDproc
LCDProc . "LCDproc is a small piece of software that will enable
your Linux box to display live system information on a 20x4 line
backlit LCD display. This program shows, among other things,
battery status on notebooks." I tried this package and found that
it connects only to the external Matrix-Orbital 20x4 LCD display
http://www.matrix-orbital.com/, which is a LCD display connected to
a serial port. I can't see any use for a laptop yet.
12.
Diald: Dial Daemon . The Diald daemon provides on demand Internet
connectivity using the SLIP or PPP protocols. Diald can
automatically dial in to a remote host when needed or bring down
dial-up connections that are inactive.
13.
KDE http://www.kde.org provides KAPM, Kbatmon and Kcmlaptop.
Written by Paul Campbell kcmlaptop is a set of KDE control panels
that implements laptop computer support functions, it includes a
dockable battery status monitor for laptops - in short a little
icon in the KDE status bar that shows how much battery time you
have left. It also will warn you when power is getting low and
allows you to configure power saving options.
Similar packages you may find at the GNOME project
http://www.gnome.org/ . See the software maps at both sites.
14.
Please see Battery Powered Linux Mini-HOWTO by Hanno Mueller,
hanno@lava.de http://www.lava.de/~hanno/ for more information.
15.8. Kernel
15.8.1. Related HOWTOs
� Kernel-HOWTO
� BootPrompt-HOWTO
Many kernel features are related to laptops. For instance APM, IrDA,
PCMCIA and some options for certain laptops, e.g. IBM ThinkPads. In
some distributions they not configured. And the kernel is usually
bigger than necessary. So it's seems a good idea to customize the
kernel. Though this task might seem difficult for the beginner it is
highly recommended. Since this involves dangerous operations you need
to be careful. But, if you can install a better kernel successfully,
you've earned your intermediate Linux sysadmin merit badge. - Since
this topic is already covered in other documents I want handle this
here.
15.9. Tiny Applications and Distributions
A small collection yet, but I'm looking for more information.
1. BOA - HTTP server.
2. Pygmy - HTTP server.
3. MGR - a graphical windows system, which uses much less resources
than X.
4. LBX - Low Bandwidth X.
5. blackbox - X11 window manager 204K.
6. linux-lite - distribution based on a 1.x.x kernel for systems with
only 2MB memory and 10MB harddisk. URL see above.
7. smallLinux - http://smalllinux.netpedia.net/ . Three disk micro-
distribution of Linux and utilities. Based on kernel 1.2.11. Root
disk is ext2 format and has fdisk and mkfs.ext2 so that a harddisk
install can be done. Useful to boot up on old machines with less
than 4MB of RAM.
8. cLIeNUX - client-use-oriented Linux distribution.
9. minix - not a Linux but a UNIX useful for very small systems, such
as 286 CPU and 640K RAM http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/minix.html . There
is even X support named mini-x by David I. Bell
ftp://ftp.linux.org.uk/pub/linux/alan/ .
10.
screen - tiny but powerful console manager.
11.
ash - tiny shell.
12.
tinyirc - a small IRC client.