Installing WBEL4 (RHEL4) on an Averatec 6200 Laptop
- -- As an early Father’s Day 2005 present, I received a new Averatec 6240 laptop. Being the Linux enthusiast - that I am, within 24 hours of getting it, I had wiped the Windows XP Home Edition® that came on it. The - previous week, I had downloaded White Box Enterprise Linux - (http://www.whiteboxlinux.org) version 4, with an eye to upgrading my existing computer, so I had a recent set - of CDs burned already. (WBEL is a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, as is CentOS, so these instructions may be - helpful for all RHEL derivatives.) I’ve organized this into topics – just click one to jump right to - it. -
-- (Note: This information is provided as information only, and a reflection of what I did to get my - laptop running the way I wanted it. It may or may not work for you – no guarantee is specified or implied, - and I cannot be held responsible for any hardware failure or data loss you may encounter by following any of the - steps in this guide. At any rate, it’s still probably worth double what you’re paying for - it… ;>) -
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- A Work in Progress – This page is not complete – check the “What’s
- Left?” topic to see what changes still need to be made before I’ll consider it
- “complete”.
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- This page is as complete as it’s ever going to be.
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What Do I Have?
-- To determine what type of hardware you have, you can use the command /sbin/lspci. On this laptop, I was - able to boot with Knoppix, one of the most feature-rich Linux Live CD - distributions out there. The list on this laptop is shown below… -
---0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 760/M760 Host (rev 03) -0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SG86C202 -0000:00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS85C503/5513 (LPC Bridge) (rev 25) -0000:00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE] -0000:00:02.6 Modem: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AC'97 Modem Controller (rev a0) -0000:00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Sound Controller (rev a0) -0000:00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f) -0000:00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f) -0000:00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller -0000:00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 PCI Fast Ethernet (rev 91) -0000:00:0a.0 CardBus bridge: ENE Technology Inc CB1410 Cardbus Controller (rev 01) -0000:00:0e.0 Network controller: RaLink Ralink RT2500 802.11 Cardbus Reference Card (rev 01) -0000:00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge -0000:00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge -0000:00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge -0000:00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge -0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 661FX/M661FX/M661MX/741/M741/760/M760 PCI/AGP-
- This may seem like a waste of time (especially if you don’t have a Knoppix CD lying around already, but this - information can be invaluable when you try to get these devices working. A couple of things jump out from the - above list – most of the hardware in this box was made by Silicon Integrated Systems, with the notable - exception of the cardbus controller and the 802.11 (wireless) network adapter. -
-Partitioning
-- Partitioning was a particular concern for me, as I wanted to set up a dual-boot Windows/Linux installation. - Windows must have its files on the first partition for it to successfully boot, so I set up Windows first. I - messed up a bit, as I tried to declare a 100MB boot partition as the first partition. Windows insisted on - formatting it, so it could put its boot files on it, so I basically have a wasted 100MB at the front of my drive. - (Not a big deal…) -
-- I created a 12GB partition for Windows, and a 15GB partition for “shared” data – I formatted it - as FAT32 (vfat), so that both Windows and Linux can read it. This was fine, but combined with my extra 100MB - partition, the WBEL installer was unable to automatically partition the remaining free space. This - isn’t a big problem – there’s are two pretty simple rules to remember about partitions that - Linux needs… -
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- - There must be a root (“/”) partition (I calculated the size of this by subtracting the amount of - swap space I needed (see the next rule), then allocating the remaining free space to the root partition) - -
- - There must be a swap partition (actually the “swap” filesystem type) that is twice as big as your - RAM (for this machine, that meant 1024MB) - -
Here is my current partition table…
---# /sbin/fdisk -l - -Disk /dev/hda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes -255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders -Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes - - Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System -/dev/hda1 * 1 13 104391 6 FAT16 -/dev/hda2 14 7295 58492665 f W95 Ext'd (LBA) -/dev/hda5 14 1580 12586896 7 HPFS/NTFS -/dev/hda6 1581 3589 16137261 b W95 FAT32 -/dev/hda7 3590 7158 28667961 83 Linux -/dev/hda8 7159 7289 1052226 82 Linux swap-
Installing
-- Installing Linux is naturally the first thing you’ll need to do. However, the default install options did - not work for me. What did work was linux nofb xdriver=sis. This tells anaconda to not use a framebuffer - (which, as I read, is incompatible with most of the LCD flat-panels that laptops have), and to use the - “sis” (Silicon Integrated Systems) driver. Even with this, the installer will not detect the SiS video - card or the flat-panel display – but that’s okay, just let it install with the VESA driver and a - generic 1024×768 layout. It’ll be stretched, but definitely readable. (See the “video” - topic for how to fix this.) Also, if you really mess something up, you’ll need to pass those parameters in - the rescue mode – the full command is linux rescue nofb xdriver=sis. -
-- I picked the server install, and selected most packages – this setup allows me to run both GNOME and KDE, - and build applications for either. Be sure to install the system files, so you can compile kernel modules if you - need them (which you’ll need to do for the xdriver and wireless driver). Do not skip the OpenOffice.org I18N - libraries – even though they’re huge, it won’t run without them. (I learned that the hard way.) -
-Video
-- I mentioned that during the install, the monitor would not be detected. Using the system viedo config, you can set - the LCD panel to 1280×800. Then, head over to Thomas - Winischhofer’s site about the SiS video driver. He is the author of the SiS driver that’s - distributed with Linux, and his site has a lot of information about this chipset. On his site, he has built on - that base, in his own time, and created a very usable driver for the SiS chipset. There are links to download - various products – I downloaded the driver and the sisctrl program, and built them. -
-- Once I restarted the machine, it was better, but not quite there. I posted on the forums (also on the Winischhofer - site) about my problem, and the author himself responded - (the thread is here). In my case, - 1280×800 was not put in by the driver – but, I think it may have been because I hadn’t set the - LCD panel settings when I installed the driver. -
-Wireless Networking
-- The RaLink wireless ethernet card has a very capable open-source driver. It can be downloaded from - SerialMonkey’s web site. I downloaded - the driver, followed the instructions, and couldn’t get it to work. It installed the adapter as ra0, but - Linux was finding it as eth1 - and I couldn’t get eth1 to change to ra0, or ra0 to change to eth1. I finally - posted a message on the - driver’s - SourceForge.net forums, and the author told me that I needed to use make install-fedora instead of - just make install. -
-- Every so often, I had problems getting the wireless card to connect with my home LAN. I changed my DHCP lease - times from two weeks to two hours, and that problem cleared up. I think, for some reason, the router was not - sensing when the wireless card would disconnect – so, when it tried to connect again, the router would just - ignore it. Windows didn’t seem to have similar problems, but that’s a small tweak to make that - hasn’t affected any of the other computers on the network. I have gotten good responses from the developers - of the wireless driver, and hope to be able to help them track this down if they’re interested. (They are - concentrating most of their new work on a new driver called “rt2x00″ that will work for all RaLink - RT2400 and RT2500 series network adapters, so this feature may be available in them. They’ve also moved - their forums - the official support forms can be found - here.) -
-Other Tweaks
-They’ll be here soon!
-What’s Left?
-Issues I’m still working on…
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- - PCMCIA – This is so slow initializing that rhgb (Red Hat’s graphical booter) - actually switches back to console one. I’m sure there’s a way to make it not take so long, I just - need to figure out what it is. - -
- - Audio Input – I tried to use the microphone in jack, and nothing would take sound from - it. - -
- - Shared Data Between XP and WBEL – This is working differently than WBEL3 did – once - I figure it out, it’ll be here too - -