Redhat Linux 9 Professional on Toshiba Tecra S1
Contents
Introduction
Changelog
Installation
First Run
Kernel
Video
Sound
Keyboard
Touchpad
ACPI & APM
PCMCIA
USB
LAN
Wireless
Modem
DVD/CD-R Combo
Unresolved Issues
Conclusion
Introduction
The following is a guide/howto on installing Linux on a Toshiba Tecra S1. Tested here was the
Pentium-M 1.5Ghz model (Part Number PT831A-01DXN) with Redhat Linux 9 Professional.
As a side note if you are interested in purchasing a notebook/laptop with Linux pre-installed and
you live in Australia please visit our website at www.vgcomputing.com.au.
Changelog
Initial Document - 13 May 2003
Installation
The first thing which needed to be done was to resize the Windows (NTFS) partition from 60GB to 30GB. I used
Partition Magic to achieve this task. There are several open-source
tools to do this as well but since I had Partition Magic handy I just used that. I also
created 4 other partitions, a 2GB FAT32 partition to share files between Windows
and Linux, 1GB swap partition, a 50MB /boot partition and the remaining space for Linux itself.
Booting from the Redhat Linux 9 DVD did not work, it froze during the kernel load,
so I used the regular CDs which worked fine. Not sure why it wouldn't work from the DVD,
it booted from the DVD fine but hung during the initialisation, but since the CDs
work I didn't worry about it too much.
From there the installation went fine. I chose a custom install and installed most of the packages.
Most of the hardware was auto-detected and setup properly such as the video card, sound, PCMCIA, USB and LAN.
What wasn't setup automatically was the IDE & AGP controller and the modem. More information on this is below.
First Run
No problem here. Booted up to the GUI interface fine with the login prompt (gdm) working.
Kernel
As mentioned before the IDE and AGP controllers do not work by default. The result is the IDE
controller uses generic mode (with no DMA) and the 3D is very slow.
The solution to this was to install the 2.4.21-rc1-ac4 kernel (of course you should install the latest kernel).
There are plenty of kernel howtos on the Internet so I wont go through it again. This then got the IDE and AGP
controllers working as well as adding ACPI support (more info on this further down).
Video
No problem here. RedHat automatically detected it as a 'ATI Mobility M9' and installed it properly.
Even 3D worked fine (with the updated kernel).
Sound
Works fine. Use the i810_audio driver.
Keyboard
Works fine.
Touchpad
I had a few problems here. The touchpad would only work properly when I configured it as a PS/2 mouse.
It would not work properly when trying to use IMPS/2 which means I wasn't able to get the scrolling
feature of the touchpad to work. However the scroll wheel on a external USB mouse worked fine.
ACPI & APM
With the 2.4.21-rc1-ac4 kernel both ACPI and APM modes mostly worked properly. There were a few issues
however.
In ACPI mode battery/AC status among other information was reported correctly however suspend mode did not
work at all. Suspend-to-RAM (echo "3" > /proc/acpi/sleep) did not do anything at all. Suspend-to-Disk
(echo "4" > /proc/acpi/sleep) shut down the machine but did not recover.
In APM mode Suspend-to-RAM mode now works (apm -s) however battery status is no longer available.
PCMCIA
Works fine.
USB
Works fine.
LAN
Works fine. Use the e100 driver.
Wireless
This model does not include a built-in wireless LAN controller. You should note however if you do
buy a Tecra S1 model which has a built-in wireless LAN controller (the PT831A-146KG) at the time of writing there
is no driver for this controller available for Linux.
Modem
I had some major problems with this one. I took quite a while of trial and error to get it to work but after many hours
I figured this one out. To get it to work download the slmdm-2.7.10.tar.gz
drivers. Next unpack these drivers (tar xzvf slmdm-2.7.10.tar.gz) and edit the file amrmo_init.c with your favourite editor.
Go down to line 75 and change the value at the end of this line from 0x2486 to 0x24C6 (yes, it should look
like the line below it). You can then follow the instruction in the README file to install the driver.
Its amazing how such a simple thing can take such a long time to figure out. :)
Note: Don't use the slmdm-2.7.14 drivers. These may seem to install properly but when it goes
to dial out it dials the WRONG number (in fact it dials more numbers than it should).
DVD/CD-R Combo
The DVD works fine. I played a DVD movie through Mplayer without problem. The burning however causes
a kernel crash when using the 2.4.21-rc1-ac4 or even the 2.4.21-rc1 kernels. The default Redhat kernel
works fine however.
Unresolved Issues
As mentioned above the burning causes the kernel to crash when running kernel 2.4.21-rc1-ac4 and 2.4.21-rc1.
The default Redhat kernel works fine.
If you are in Windows XP and try and reboot to Linux the kernel will stop with a 'Keyboard not found' error.
Only solution is to turn the notebook off and on.
When in X (the GUI) if you close the lid on the notebook and then reopen it the screen display is corrupted and the notebook
will no longer respond. You should switch to text mode (CTRL-ALT-F1) and then close the lid and then
after opening the lid again you can switch back to the GUI (CTRL-ALT-F7).
As mentioned above suspend does not work in ACPI mode and battery info is not available in APM mode.
Finally the scroll functions on the touchpad do not work.
As a tip if your system does freeze just hold down the power button and after roughly 5 seconds your
notebook will switch off. Don't be like many people who pull out the battery to turn a frozen notebook off.
Conclusion
All in all this notebook mostly works fine with Redhat Linux 9. There are a few annoyances remaining
but nothing too serious. I can recommend this notebook.
If you have any queries, suggestions, updates or issue fixes feel free to contact me
at general@vgcomputing.com.au.
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