Sarge Installation on W3H00N

These notes are very schematic, but I hope they can be useful anyway.

Summary

HW Working? Notes
CPU OK need module speedstep-centrino;
LCD OK
Video OK Not yet acceleration with Xfree86 driver;
Keyboard OK
Touchpad OK need specific driver to work properly; almost work with PS/2 from Xfree86;
Mouse
Sound OK
DVD+RW DVD OK; CD OK tested both DVD+R and DVD-R with growisofs
USB OK
Ethernet OK need module sk98lin;
Wifi OK but not tested with wep need module ipw2200 and firmware;
Irda OK (SIR mode)
Firewire Not Tested
Bluetooth Not Tested
Modem Not Tested
Card Reader Not Tested
Battery OK Cannot read status because of broken DSDT

Overview of the system

The computer comes with 2 FAT32 partitions of (C:) 32.4G and (D:) 21.5G.
I configured the wireless under windows and downloaded updates...
I downloaded knoppix V3.8.2 from ftp.belnet.be and burnt a CD in order to repartion the HD.
I changed boot order from BIOS (use [F2] at the boot).
Knoppix detects
Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processore 1.6GHz, 2048 Kb cache
ACPI
PCMCIA
USB
Firewire
Mouse Generic PS/2 /dev/psaux
Soundcard 
AGP
Video
Monitor
and _correctly_ starts wireless (eth0) with the proper parameters.

Running parted

From command line in a console (not from an xterm where you have not root privilegies) I checked the HD with
fdisk /dev/hda 
p
/dev/hda1 	1 	243	1951866	1b	Hidden QW95 FAT32
/dev/hda2	244	4480	340337202+	c	W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda3	4481	7296	22619520	f	W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 	4481    7296    22619488+       c       W95 FAT32
q
then I used parted to repartition the HD as follows
parted /dev/hda
print
Minor	Start	End	Type	Filesystem	Flags
1	0.031	1906.149	primary	fat32	hidden
2	1906.150	35142.187	primary	fat32	boot,lba
3	35142.188	57231.562	extended		lba
5	35142.188       57231.562	logical	fat32	
rm 5
rm 3
resize 2 1906.150 25142.187
mkpart extended 25140.784 57231.562
mkpart logical 25140.784 34140.784
mkpart logical 34140.785 32140.785
mkpart logical 36140.786 57231.562 
mkfs linux-swap 6
mkfs ext2 7
q
then I made the linux partition with
mkfs.ext3 -c /dev/hda7 
and I waited for a couple of hours for checking for badblocks.

Installing sarge

Followed the hints from here but I had to add by hand some mirrors in /etc/host since resolv failed after chroot.
Since this is a centrino notebook I downloaded also the following packages (or newer packages in your case if present)
kernel-headers-2.6.8-2_2.6.8-15_i386.deb
kernel-headers-2.6.8-2-686_2.6.8-15_i386.deb
kernel-kbuild-2.6-3_2.6.8-2_i386.deb
wireless-tools_27-3_i386.deb
ipw2200-source.deb
and ipw2200 firmwire from here
ipw2200-fw-2.2.tgz
I installed grub from a normal console using the command
grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/hda7
after making the configuration file in /boot/grub/menu.lst (wrt the chrooted filesystem and not grub.conf as in FC)
default 1
timeout 25
color light-gray/blue black/light-gray
# 0 entry
title Debian (2.6.8)
root (hd0,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8-2-686 root=/dev/hda7
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.8-2-686

# 1st entry
title XP
root (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1
I wrote the following /etc/modules file
# /etc/modules: kernel modules to load at boot time.
#
# to be loaded at boot time, one per line.  Comments begin with
# a "#", and everything on the line after them are ignored.
#CENTRINO
ipw2200
firmware_class
ieee80211
ieee80211_crypt
speedstep-centrino
#####################
#FS
autofs4
md5
ext3
#cloop
#####################
#NET
#x25
#ipv6
sk98lin
af_packet
#####################
#VIDEO
agpgart
intel_agp
#radeonfb
drm
#####################
#AUDIO
snd_mixer_oss
snd
i810_audio
ac97_codec
soundcore
i2c_i801
i2c_core
#####################
#PARALLEL PORT
parport_pc
parport
8250
serial_core
#####################
#INPUT FROM SYNAPTICS
psmouse
evdev
#####################
#USB
usb_storage
ub
ohci_hcd
uhci_hcd
ehci_hcd
usbcore
usbhid
#####################
#PCMCIA
pcmcia
yenta_socket
rsrc_nonstatic
pcmcia_core
#####################
#ACPI
video
thermal
processor
fan
container
button
battery
asus_acpi
ac
rtc
sbp2
#FIREWIRE
ohci1394
ieee1394
# IR
irlan
irtty
irport
ircomm
I added myself to the audio, cdrom and dialout groups (in Debian these devices are not automatically owned by the user on the console as in FC).
If in rebooting you experience some problems remember that grub is able to read your files on the harddisk and you can use tab completion for the names (which is very useful if you do not remember the exact kernel version).

CPU Installation

You need the module speedstep-centrino for having the dir /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/ filled with files you can use to control the clock of the CPU. You can then also choose the CPUfreq policy governor.

LCD and Video Installation

You need to add the proper resolution to /etc/X11/XF86Config-4.
You can control LCD luminosity from the /proc filesystem with asus4linux.
HW acceleration is not yet working with XFree86 drive. It should work with ATI proprietary drive.

Synaptics Installation

Download the latest version of the drive from here and follows the instructions.

Wireless Installation

I made and installed the debian package from the ipw2200 drive source with
module-assistant a-i ipw2200

Then I inserted the driver, configured the wireless network.

Infrared Installation

Download irda-utils package and insert the proper modules as from /etc/modules.
Make your device (if not already present)
mknod /dev/ircomm0 c 161 0
In order to see whether your device is responding, after inserting modules and activating your device, you can issue
irattach /dev/ttyS1 -s
irdadump

If you have a mobilephone you can also download gammu and wammu from here.

Linmoden Installation

Download the sources from linuxant.
Note that with the free version you can use the modem only at 14.4K speed.
The modules recognize the modem which answers to AT commands but I have not yet tested with a true connection.

ACPI and Battery

Under Linux you cannot read the status of battery because of a bug in the DSDT tables. My first attempt to fix the problem ended with error free DSDT table but which made the laptop unbootable..
A useful reading on the subject is HOWTO Fix Common ACPI Problems .
Last changed may,31st 2005