Installing Debian on a ThinkPad G41 - Revision history

Billgian: /* External Sources */

2008-03-01T13:51:34Z

‎External Sources

Wehe: /* Going further with Debian */ added External Sources section

2006-10-19T08:47:01Z

‎Going further with Debian: added External Sources section

12.162.31.191 at 19:57, 3 January 2006

2006-01-03T19:57:54Z

12.162.31.191: /* Installing a few important packages */

2006-01-03T19:51:50Z

‎Installing a few important packages

12.162.31.191: /* Installing a few important packages */

2006-01-03T19:44:04Z

‎Installing a few important packages

12.162.31.191: Updated for newer kernel version. Removed Windows partiton crud. Updated suspend2 info for SMP kernel.

2006-01-03T19:41:24Z

Updated for newer kernel version. Removed Windows partiton crud. Updated suspend2 info for SMP kernel.

Show changes

Thinker: /* Power management */

2005-11-10T11:42:21Z

‎Power management

Thinker: wikilink

2005-11-10T11:33:37Z

wikilink

Wyrfel: /* Unpack the kernel, configure, and compile */

2005-10-28T01:09:41Z

‎Unpack the kernel, configure, and compile

Wyrfel: /* Unpack the kernel, configure, and compile */

2005-10-28T01:07:25Z

‎Unpack the kernel, configure, and compile

@@ Line 270: / Line 270: @@
 =External Sources=
 *This guide is listed at the [http://tuxmobil.org/ibm.html TuxMobil Linux laptop and notebook installation survey (IBM/Lenovo)].
 [[Category:G41]]

@@ Line 269: / Line 269: @@
 Check out the excellent Debian Reference at: http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/reference/reference.en.html (can also be installed "apt-get install debian-reference-en"
+=External Sources=
 [[Category:G41]]

@@ Line 250: / Line 250: @@
 :{{cmdroot|cat /proc/acpi/ibm/driver}}
-== Further stuff ==
+== Additional stuff ==
 [http://www.nongnu.org/tpb/ tpb] is a neat program that enables the on-screen display for certain keys functions such as the volume control and LCD brightness levels. {{cmdroot|apt-get install tpb}} and then edit {{path|/etc/tpbrc}}.
 {{Todo|This page still needs a section on configuring the modem.  The last time I tested on another Thinkpad model, neither the Open-Source nor the proprietary driver for the "slmodem" Intel AC'97 Modem Controller seemed to work to well.  Fortunately I have a miniPCI card with a true Lucent WinModem which uses the "alk" driver available [http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/packages/ltmodem/kernel-2.6/ here].  If you are planning to use the modem a lot it may be worth the $5 to pick one of these up on Ebay as it is much easier to configure and works quite reliably under Linux.}}
 [[Category:G41]]

@@ Line 27: / Line 27: @@
 == Installing a few important packages ==
 Here are a few important packages that it is good to install right away:
-:{{cmdroot|apt-get install less vim nvi-}}
+:{{cmdroot|apt-get install anacron less ssh vim nvi-}}
 vim is a much better than nvi.  Less is much better than more which is installed by default.

@@ Line 27: / Line 27: @@
 == Installing a few important packages ==
 Here are a few important packages that it is good to install right away:
-:{{cmdroot|apt-get install less vim}}
+:{{cmdroot|apt-get install less vim nvi-}}
 vim is a much better than nvi.  Less is much better than more which is installed by default.
 == Building a Linux kernel with [[Software Suspend 2]] Support==

@@ Line 237: / Line 237: @@
 "S3 has absolutely no chance of working with SMP/HT. Be sure it to turn it off before testing (swsusp should work ok, OTOH)."
-In order to get Software Suspend 2 fully working you also need to download and install the hibernate-script from the [http://www.suspend2.net/downloads/ Software Suspend 2 site]. This will install a shell script called "hibernate" in {{path|/usr/local/sbin}} and also a configuration directory {{path|/etc/hibernate}}. Once installed, if your kernel was configured correctly, you should be able to run the command {{cmdroot|hibernate}}. The system will save the current contents of RAM to the swap partiton (make sure you have set the correct {{bootparm|resume2|swap:}} parameter in your bootloader config or else it will not work). The next time you restart the system it will detect that the swap partition contains the suspended information and automatically restore the system. If there is a problem with [[Software Suspend 2]] it may freeze while resuming. The only time that I personally experienced a resume problem was when I was running the {{cmdroot|top}} command in a gnome-terminal during a suspend operation.
+In order to get [[Software Suspend 2]] fully working you also need to download and install the hibernate-script from the [http://www.suspend2.net/downloads/ Software Suspend 2 site]. This will install a shell script called "hibernate" in {{path|/usr/local/sbin}} and also a configuration directory {{path|/etc/hibernate}}. Once installed, if your kernel was configured correctly, you should be able to run the command {{cmdroot|hibernate}}. The system will save the current contents of RAM to the swap partiton (make sure you have set the correct {{bootparm|resume2|swap:}} parameter in your bootloader config or else it will not work). The next time you restart the system it will detect that the swap partition contains the suspended information and automatically restore the system. If there is a problem with [[Software Suspend 2]] it may freeze while resuming. The only time that I personally experienced a resume problem was when I was running the {{cmdroot|top}} command in a gnome-terminal during a suspend operation.
 ===ibm-acpi===
@@ Line 253: / Line 253: @@
 You can see the currently installed version with:
 :{{cmdroot|cat /proc/acpi/ibm/driver}}
 == Further stuff ==

@@ Line 49: / Line 49: @@
-== Building a Linux kernel with [http://www.suspend2.net/ Software Suspend 2] Support==
+== Building a Linux kernel with [[Software Suspend 2]] Support==
-As of this writing [http://www.suspend2.net/ Software Suspend 2 (swsusp2)] is the only working implementation of power-saving functionality available. ACPI sleep and standby modes and the in-kernel software suspend do not work with this model. swsusp2 provides a patch for the kernel. Which version of kernel you use is dependent upon which version of swsusp2 you wish to use. There is a development version which has the latest-and-greatest features and bugfixes, and the stable version which is slightly older. For this article I chose to use the latest-and-greatest which was version 2.2-rc8 which requires Linux kernel version 2.6.14-rc3. This is a â€œrelease candidateâ€ kernel which is available from the usual kernel repositories under the /testing subdirectory.
+As of this writing [[Software Suspend 2|Software Suspend 2 (suspend2)] is the only working implementation of power-saving functionality available. ACPI sleep and standby modes and the in-kernel software suspend do not work with this model. [[Software Suspend 2]] provides a patch for the kernel. Which version of kernel you use is dependent upon which version of [[Software Suspend 2]] you wish to use. There is a development version which has the latest-and-greatest features and bugfixes, and the stable version which is slightly older. For this article I chose to use the latest-and-greatest which was version 2.2-rc8 which requires Linux kernel version 2.6.14-rc3. This is a â€œrelease candidateâ€ kernel which is available from the usual kernel repositories under the /testing subdirectory.
 ===Preparing for the kernel build===
@@ Line 71: / Line 71: @@
 At this point I prefer to rename the kernel source tree so that if at some point in the future I wish to build another kernel version, I can do so in a separate tree.
 :{{cmdroot|mv linux-2.6.14-rc3 linux-2.6.13-rc3-uni}}
-I chose to append the name of the kernel with â€œ-uniâ€ as a shorthand for â€œuniprocessorâ€. This Pentium 4 CPU supports hyperthreading which when enabled causes the single CPU to appear as 2 separate CPUs which makes the system a Symmetric-Multiprocessing (SMP) system. However, currently there are issues with swsusp2 and SMP so we will leave hypterthreading disabled in the BIOS settings (under â€œPowerâ€) so that the CPU appears as a uniprocessor, and then build the kernel for a uniprocessor. If you want to experiment later, you can build another kernel version linux-2.6.13-rc3-smp which has Symmetric-Multiprocessing support enabled in the kernel. If you do this, you would set the maximum number of CPU's to â€œ2â€ in the kernel config and be sure to enable hyperthreading in the BIOS settings under the â€œPowerâ€ section. (NOTE: If you do in fact build an -smp kernel and accidently boot the machine with hyperthreading disabled using a kernel compiled without SMP support, or vice-versa, you run the -uni kernel but have hyperthreading enabled in the kernel, there will probably be a loss of performance but it should not harm your system.)
+I chose to append the name of the kernel with â€œ-uniâ€ as a shorthand for â€œuniprocessorâ€. This Pentium 4 CPU supports hyperthreading which when enabled causes the single CPU to appear as 2 separate CPUs which makes the system a Symmetric-Multiprocessing (SMP) system. However, currently there are issues with [[Software Suspend 2]] and SMP so we will leave hypterthreading disabled in the BIOS settings (under â€œPowerâ€) so that the CPU appears as a uniprocessor, and then build the kernel for a uniprocessor. If you want to experiment later, you can build another kernel version linux-2.6.13-rc3-smp which has Symmetric-Multiprocessing support enabled in the kernel. If you do this, you would set the maximum number of CPU's to â€œ2â€ in the kernel config and be sure to enable hyperthreading in the BIOS settings under the â€œPowerâ€ section. (NOTE: If you do in fact build an -smp kernel and accidently boot the machine with hyperthreading disabled using a kernel compiled without SMP support, or vice-versa, you run the -uni kernel but have hyperthreading enabled in the kernel, there will probably be a loss of performance but it should not harm your system.)
 {{HINT|
@@ Line 159: / Line 159: @@
 This will ask a lot of questions about X setup.  Here are options I selected:
-* allow it to attempt to autodetect video hardware. It will automatically select the "nv" driver, which is the one we want if we are going to use swsusp2. Unfortunately this driver does not support OpenGL so you have to choose between 3D graphics acceleration or the ability to suspend-to-disk. If however you decide you want the nvidia driver scroll down one and select it.
+* allow it to attempt to autodetect video hardware. It will automatically select the "nv" driver, which is the one we want if we are going to use [[Software Suspend 2]]. Unfortunately this driver does not support OpenGL so you have to choose between 3D graphics acceleration or the ability to suspend-to-disk. If however you decide you want the nvidia driver scroll down one and select it.
 * leave video RAM setting blank.  X server will autodetect it
 * do NOT use kernel framebuffer interface
@@ Line 237: / Line 237: @@
 "S3 has absolutely no chance of working with SMP/HT. Be sure it to turn it off before testing (swsusp should work ok, OTOH)."
-In order to get Software Suspend 2 fully working you also need to download and install the hibernate-script from the [http://www.suspend2.net/downloads/ Software Suspend 2 site]. This will install a shell script called "hibernate" in {{path|/usr/local/sbin}} and also a configuration directory {{path|/etc/hibernate}}. Once installed, if your kernel was configured correctly, you should be able to run the command {{cmdroot|hibernate}}. The system will save the current contents of RAM to the swap partiton (make sure you have set the correct {{bootparm|resume2|swap:}} parameter in your bootloader config or else it will not work). The next time you restart the system it will detect that the swap partition contains the suspended information and automatically restore the system. If there is a problem with swsusp2 it may freeze while resuming. The only time that I personally experienced a resume problem was when I was running the {{cmdroot|top}} command in a gnome-terminal during a suspend operation.
+In order to get Software Suspend 2 fully working you also need to download and install the hibernate-script from the [http://www.suspend2.net/downloads/ Software Suspend 2 site]. This will install a shell script called "hibernate" in {{path|/usr/local/sbin}} and also a configuration directory {{path|/etc/hibernate}}. Once installed, if your kernel was configured correctly, you should be able to run the command {{cmdroot|hibernate}}. The system will save the current contents of RAM to the swap partiton (make sure you have set the correct {{bootparm|resume2|swap:}} parameter in your bootloader config or else it will not work). The next time you restart the system it will detect that the swap partition contains the suspended information and automatically restore the system. If there is a problem with [[Software Suspend 2]] it may freeze while resuming. The only time that I personally experienced a resume problem was when I was running the {{cmdroot|top}} command in a gnome-terminal during a suspend operation.
 ===ibm-acpi===

@@ Line 73: / Line 73: @@
 I chose to append the name of the kernel with â€œ-uniâ€ as a shorthand for â€œuniprocessorâ€. This Pentium 4 CPU supports hyperthreading which when enabled causes the single CPU to appear as 2 separate CPUs which makes the system a Symmetric-Multiprocessing (SMP) system. However, currently there are issues with swsusp2 and SMP so we will leave hypterthreading disabled in the BIOS settings (under â€œPowerâ€) so that the CPU appears as a uniprocessor, and then build the kernel for a uniprocessor. If you want to experiment later, you can build another kernel version linux-2.6.13-rc3-smp which has Symmetric-Multiprocessing support enabled in the kernel. If you do this, you would set the maximum number of CPU's to â€œ2â€ in the kernel config and be sure to enable hyperthreading in the BIOS settings under the â€œPowerâ€ section. (NOTE: If you do in fact build an -smp kernel and accidently boot the machine with hyperthreading disabled using a kernel compiled without SMP support, or vice-versa, you run the -uni kernel but have hyperthreading enabled in the kernel, there will probably be a loss of performance but it should not harm your system.)
-{{HINT|'''A note on Hyperthreading/SMP vs. non-Hyperthreading/Uniprocessor'''
+{{HINT|
 One further note about using hyperthreading or not: In order to find out if running the machine without hyperthreading and an SMP kernel was any slower than with hyperthreading/SMP, I ran a test in which I timed a complete kernel compilation. The compile times were identical in both cases. If you check <tt>/proc/cpuinfo</tt> you will see when hyperthreading is enabled (and you are running an SMP-enabled kernel) that two processors will show up each with a bogomips value of about 3320. With hyperthreading disabled and a uniprocessor kernel, only one CPU will appear in <tt>/proc/cpuinfo</tt> with a bogomips value of around 6640. This is not to say that there are not instances in which hyperthreading/SMP might provide better performance, but that in one fairly typical task it made no difference whatsoever.}}