Linux on Compaq EVO N115 laptop
Paolo Subiaco - psubiaco@creasol.it http://www.cresol.it/ 13 luglio 2002
Sommario This document illustrates the Linux installation procedure on the Compaq laptop EVO N115 (the same information is right for other Compaq laptops with AMD Duron cpu and VIA chipset). Ive test the information below on a Mandrake Linux 8.2, but i suppose that other distributions are similar (just change some program path in the scripts below). Knowledge about kernel compilation and bash script development is required!

1 Introduction

Linux installation on notebooks is not so easy as desktop computers because the relevant of certain aspects as like as power management and software suspend. Using this document you can install Linux on your Compaq laptop enabling power management (through ACPI) and software suspend/resume; also your sound card will work, but you need to make several patch to your 2.4.18 linux kernel. Please consider that this information may be out-of-date soon, due to the fast patch available for the linux kernel! Finally, i would thank Juliusz Chroboczek for his very useful document about linux installing on Compaq Presario 711EA, that you will nd at the URL http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/ jch/software/presario/

2 Kernel patching

Download a clean (vanilla) 2.4.18 kernel from http://www.kernel.org and uncompress it to /usr/src: the /usr/src/linux directory will be created.
Download the acpi-20020709-2.4.18.diff.gz patch from http://sf.net/projects/acpi/
Download the kacpid.patch from http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/ jch/software/presario/kacpid.patch Download patch-vanilla-2.4.18-swsusp9.gz from http://sourceforge.net/project/showles.php?group_id=25964
Download ad1886-presario.patch from http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/ jch/software/presario/ad1886-presario.patch

3 SOFTWARE SUSPEND SETUP

Apply all these patches: cd linux zcat./acpi-20020709-2.4.18.diff.gz | patch -p1 patch -p1 <./kacpid.patch zcat./patch-vanilla-2.4.18-swsusp9.gz |patch -p1 patch -p1./ad1889-presario.patch Dont worry if swsusp9 patch return one error (a le is missed due to the previous acpi patch, which delete some les used by swsusp9).
Congure kernel appropriately: you must chose Athlon CPU, disable SMP and Local APIC, disable Advance Power Management and select all feature of ACPI. Select in the File systems menu, Kernel automounter version4, Ext3 jurnalling, DOS FAT, MSDOS, VFAT, /dev le system support and Network File Systems -> SMB Select Sound card support (M), VIA 82c686 Audio Codec (M), VIA 82C686 MIDI, OSS sound modules (M). In the Kernel hacking menu select Software suspend. Now is time to compile kernel, with the make dep && make bzImage && make modules && make modules_install command, than cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/bzImage-2.4 : if you got an error in kernel_stat.h, modify that le adding the line #dene smp_num_cpus 1 Add the new kernel two times to the lilo.conf le; note that my root partition is /dev/hda6 and my swap partition /dev/hda5 : the latter is the place where swsusp will save computer conguration before suspend. The rst lilo istance, linux-resume, will load conguration from previous suspend, instead of linux-noresume which will load linux normally. When lilo.conf will be modied, call lilo to update boot sectors with the new lilo conguration, and then restart computer. default=linux-resume image=/boot/bzImage-2.4 label=linux-resume root=/dev/hda6 append="devfs=mount resume=/dev/hda5" read-only image=/boot/bzImage-2.4 label=linux-noresume root=/dev/hda6 append="devfs=mount resume=/dev/hda5 noresume" read-only

3 Software suspend setup

These are little problem involving software suspend: the ethernet interface must be down, as like as sound module: these module must be reload at the resume
the system clock must be synced with the hardware clock, at the resume

the hard disk write buffer must be disable during suspend and re-enable at the resume
I have write a little shell script to to these functions, which must be called to suspend notebook with root priviledges: due to this reason, you must install sudo program and setup /etc/sudoers le adding the following line: ALL ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/local/bin/suspend.sh
Then create the le /usr/local/bin/suspend.sh with the following lines:
#!/bin/bash warn() { echo "$@" >&2 } die() { echo "$@" >&2 exit 1; } oldconsole=fgconsole /etc/init.d/sound stop /etc/init.d/network stop ifconfig eth0 down /sbin/hdparm -q -W 0 /dev/hda || die "Couldnt disable write cache" #chvt 1 || die "Couldnt switch VTs" #Change line to 2 for debugging purpose! #echo "2" > /proc/sys/kernel/swsusp echo "0" > /proc/sys/kernel/swsusp
sleep 10 echo "Resuming previous configuration." chvt $oldconsole /sbin/hdparm -q -W 1 /dev/hda || warn "Couldnt reenable write cache" /etc/init.d/network start /etc/init.d/sound start /sbin/hwclock --hctosys
Remember to add execution attribute to /usr/local/bin/suspend.sh ! Also control the path of each command/script called by the suspend.sh script! Now you can invoke sudo /usr/local/bin/suspend.sh to try notebook suspend: you need about 10 seconds to suspend notebook! To resume, just press the power button: lilo will load the kernel, then it will resume previous conguration (with all previous open applications) in about 40 seconds.
5 AUTOMOUNTER CONFIGURATION
4 Tips&tricks for WindowMaker users
What is WindowMaker? Is a X11 window manager. Other window managers are KDE, GNOME, FVWM,TWM, SawFish,. Why this chapter? Because i love WindowManager, which permit me to do any conguration i want. I know that the most of you using KDE or GNOME, which are nicier and more integrated with their applications. Although, i prefer Window Maker because it require very few memory, and i can setup for each application where the application must be opened (which desktop), how the window must be designed, which icons display in each desktop, and so on. Using WindowMaker with a laptop, you need an application which display the current battery state, so you must install an application which monitor battery status. Which kind of application? In other window manager there exists applications and applet applied to the panel; in WindowMaker there is a solution similar to the latter, its name is dock. Docks are icons which display something and can implement several controls: for the battery monitoring purpose i have installed wmacpi, but you can nd lot of useful and nice docks at the URL http://www.bensinclair.com/dockapp/showstyle.php3?show=name
5 Automounter conguration
Very often the notebook is used to access SMB shares (i.e. windows shares) in a LAN: for this purpose i think that the best solution consist to setup linux automounter to mount/umount shares when required: this way you can access remote shares just selecting le /mnt/servername/sharename and the corrisponding share will be mounted: after 60 seconds (or similar timeout) which the mounted share is not used, the share will be automatically unmount; this way you reach a good reliability accessing remote lesystem. How to do this? Fist, verify to have compile automount_4 and smbfs in the kernel, then you must install the autofs package: urpmi autofs and congure several les about automounter daemon. Here is an example of conguration les, supposing to have a lan like this: server1

share1 share2 share3 server2 share1 share2 Create the dirrectories corrisponding with the two server names: mkdir /mnt/server1 /mnt/server2 Then edit /etc/auto.master le leaving uncommented the two lines below:
/mnt/server1 /mnt/server2
/etc/auto.server1 /etc/auto.server2
--timeout=60 --timeout=60
Now create the le /etc/auto.server1 within the following 3 lines (one of each share):
share1 share2 share3 -fstype=smbfs,username=paolo,password=AAA ://server1/share1 -fstype=smbfs,username=paolo,password=AAA ://server1/share2 -fstype=smbfs,username=sysadm,password=secretpass ://server1/share3
Finally, create the le /etc/auto.server2 with the following 2 lines:
share1 share1 -fstype=smbfs,username=pippo,password=pluto ://server1/share1 -fstype=smbfs,username=paperino ://server1/share1
Now is time to try the automounter daemon: type /etc/init.d/autofs restart then cd /mnt/server1 Opening this directory, if you type ls -l you will nd nothing, because there are no shares mounted. Just type cd share1 and then ls -l to see the content of //server1/share1 ! If you leave this directory, after 60 seconds it will be unmounted automatically. Now enjoy the unix operating system, which permit you to see all shares/partions in one lesystem!