Fedora Core 5 was then installed.
With FC5 I had to supply the IPW2200 firmware which FC5 did not come with by default. Firmware was installed following the good instructions on http://www.ces.clemson.edu/linux/fc2-ipw2200.shtml which amount in short to:
su rpm -ihv http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/5/i386/livna-release-5-4.noarch.rpm yum install ipw2200-firmwareThen I could use the wireless from linux with the FC5 ipw2200 module driving the card, although a reboot helps, followed by some use of system-config-network to set up /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-BLAH.
Sound card was detected by fc5, but the ALSA drivers that come with fc5 do not seem to be recent enough to support the sound card, so no sound was produced initially. My system seemed to be using these versions:
[lester@localhost alsa]$ rpm -qa | grep -i alsa alsa-utils-1.0.11-3.rc2 alsa-lib-devel-1.0.11-3.rc2.2 alsa-lib-1.0.11-3.rc2.2The no-sound problem could be cured by downloading the latest versions of the ALSA libraries from their homepage and building and installing them locally. I used:
alsa-driver-1.0.11rc4.tar.bz2 alsa-firmware-1.0.11rc3.tar.bz2 alsa-lib-1.0.11rc4.tar.bz2 alsa-oss-1.0.11rc3.tar.bz2 alsa-plugins-1.0.11rc4.tar.bz2 alsa-tools-1.0.11rc4.tar.bz2 alsa-utils-1.0.11rc4.tar.bz2Once I had built all (or a large number of the above, I don't remember) and installed them, the sound was then fine at next reboot. It's a bit naughty stomping over the rpm version of these utils which fc5 seems to come with - I suspect there will be problems the next time the rpm versions get updated ...
Second the screen appeared fuzzy as the graphics card was writing to the screen at the wrong resolution (1024x760) for the 1280x800 TFT display. (NB there were no black bands or clipping, simply the wrong resolution was being stretched to fill the screen).
The solution was that written in http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/materiel/portable/inspiron_1300 which amounts to using the "915resolution" package.wget http://www.geocities.com/stomljen/915resolution-0.5.2.tar.gz tar -xzvf 915resolution-0.5.2.tar.gz cd 915resolution-0.5.2 make su make install /usr/sbin/915resolution -lI also have 915resolution-0.5.2.tar.gz cached locally. Then you identify a mode you don't want (look in the output of the last command) and overwriting it with one referring to the ACTUAL screen resolution -- i.e, 1280 800 16 ... and finally you put a script to do the "setting" at boot time prior to the start of the X server. For FC5 I chose to create a file "resolution" which I saved in /etc/rc.d/init.d/resolution and which I ask
system-config-servicesto run in run-level-5. Here's a summary taken from http://www.geocities.com/stomljen/readme.html :
Setting
-------
1. Switch to root
# su
2. Display the available resolutions :
# 915resolution -l
Intel 915GM VBIOS Hack : version 0.2
Chipset: 915GM
Mode 30 : 640x480, 8 bits/pixel
Mode 32 : 800x600, 8 bits/pixel
Mode 34 : 1024x768, 8 bits/pixel
Mode 38 : 1280x1024, 8 bits/pixel
Mode 3a : 1600x1200, 8 bits/pixel
Mode 3c : 1920x1440, 8 bits/pixel
Mode 41 : 640x480, 16 bits/pixel
Mode 43 : 800x600, 16 bits/pixel
Mode 45 : 1024x768, 16 bits/pixel
Mode 49 : 1280x1024, 16 bits/pixel
Mode 4b : 1600x1200, 16 bits/pixel
Mode 4d : 1920x1440, 16 bits/pixel
Mode 50 : 640x480, 32 bits/pixel
Mode 52 : 800x600, 32 bits/pixel
Mode 54 : 1024x768, 32 bits/pixel
Mode 58 : 1280x1024, 32 bits/pixel
Mode 5a : 1600x1200, 32 bits/pixel
Mode 5c : 1920x1440, 32 bits/pixel
Mode 60 : 1280x770, 8 bits/pixel
Mode 61 : 1280x770, 16 bits/pixel
Mode 62 : 1280x770, 32 bits/pixel
Mode 63 : 512x771, 8 bits/pixel
Mode 64 : 512x771, 16 bits/pixel
Mode 65 : 512x771, 32 bits/pixel
3. I personnaly decided to overwrite the 1280x1024 resolution
because I don't use it :
> 915resolution 38 1280 800
4. Now the bios reports a 1280x800 resolution :
# 915resolution -l
Intel 915GM VBIOS Hack : version 0.1
Chipset: 915GM
Mode 30 : 640x480, 8 bits/pixel
Mode 32 : 800x600, 8 bits/pixel
Mode 34 : 1024x768, 8 bits/pixel
Mode 38 : 1280x800, 8 bits/pixel
Mode 3a : 1600x1200, 8 bits/pixel
Mode 3c : 1920x1440, 8 bits/pixel
Mode 41 : 640x480, 16 bits/pixel
Mode 43 : 800x600, 16 bits/pixel
Mode 45 : 1024x768, 16 bits/pixel
Mode 49 : 1280x800, 16 bits/pixel
Mode 4b : 1600x1200, 16 bits/pixel
Mode 4d : 1920x1440, 16 bits/pixel
Mode 50 : 640x480, 32 bits/pixel
Mode 52 : 800x600, 32 bits/pixel
Mode 54 : 1024x768, 32 bits/pixel
Mode 58 : 1280x800, 32 bits/pixel
Mode 5a : 1600x1200, 32 bits/pixel
Mode 5c : 1920x1440, 32 bits/pixel
Mode 60 : 1280x770, 8 bits/pixel
Mode 61 : 1280x770, 16 bits/pixel
Mode 62 : 1280x770, 32 bits/pixel
Mode 63 : 512x771, 8 bits/pixel
Mode 64 : 512x771, 16 bits/pixel
Mode 65 : 512x771, 32 bits/pixel
5. On some machines 24 bits per pixel is the desired resolution.
An alternate invocation to achieve this would be:
# 915resolution 38 1280 800 24
6. My xorg.conf has the following screen definition :
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen 1"
Device "device"
Monitor "LCD"
DefaultDepth 16
Subsection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1280x800"
EndSubsection
EndSection
7. 915resolution must run before the X server is started. So I don't need to
do this every time I put it in my startup scripts. I'm running SUSE 9.2,
so I put the definition in /etc/init.d/boot.local:
#! /bin/sh
#
# Copyright (c) 2002 SuSE Linux AG Nuernberg, Germany. All rights reserved.
#
# Author: Werner Fink , 1996
# Burchard Steinbild, 1996
#
# /etc/init.d/boot.local
#
# script with local commands to be executed from init on system startup
#
# Here you should add things, that should happen directly after booting
# before we're going to the first run level.
#
/usr/bin/915resolution 38 1280 800
8. Start up the X server
$ startx
You need to do a similar thing if you want to recover from hibernates, for example create a file like /etc/pm/hooks/15resolution. Note -- the link on the left used to point (pre 24th April 2006) to a file called "25resolution" placing this hook AFTER 20video. After help from Matthew Garrett, this file was moved to 15resolution (before 20video) and recovery from suspend has become (so it is beginning to appear) almost as reliable as recovery from hibernate.
Oh and one other thing relating to this. Under many situations, the screen may blank after an acpid event like a lid-close. That's fine. But after such events, the screen fails to come on again. The problem can be solved by following the suggestion in /etc/acpi/events/video.conf:
# Configuration to turn on DPMS again on video activity, needed for some # laptops. Disabled by default, uncomment if your laptop display stays blank # after you close and open the lid. event=video.* action=/usr/sbin/vbetool dpms onwhich again uses the excellent vbetool.
yum install nautilus-open-terminalAlso annoying is the need to do
cd /etc/cron.daily mv beagle-crawl-system.cron ../cron.monthly/beagle-crawl-system-was-daily.cron mv mlocate.cron ../cron.monthly/mlocate-was-daily.cron mv prelink ../cron.monthly/prelink-was-daily mv makewhatis.cron ../cron.monthly/makewhatis-was-daily.cron mv tetex.cron ../cron.monthly/tetex-was-daily.cron cd /etc/cron.weekly mv makewhatis.cron ../cron.monthly/makewhatis-was-weekly.cron cd /etc/yum.repos.d ; wget http://macromedia.rediris.es/macromedia-i386.repo ; yum install flash-plugin