RedHat 9.0 Setup notes

NEWS

• 2003-05-13: Added a link to the noflushd section
• 2003-05-01: Updated /etc/sysconfig/apm-scripts/apmcontinue-pre to use suspend and resume on WLAN card instead of eject. Also irda is now reloaded
• 2003-04-30: Updated /etc/sysconfig/apm-scripts/apmcontinue-pre to eject WLAN card before inserting it on resume
• 2003-04-29:
  • Made CpuFreq work with the standard RH9 kernel, see Setup CpuFreq
• 2003-04-18:
  • hacked a lot on the wireless configuration. RedHat has a pretty stupid way of setting up networking.
• 2003-04-17:
  • Fiddled with the APM section, to properly integrate APM and wireless
  • removed link to 7.3 install section
  • Moved stuff to the tweaking section
• 2003-04-14: Added a KDE section
• 2003-04-14: Fixed winmodem setup.
  Thanks to Jan Andersen for pointing me to a path to the patch needed, and John D. Tanner for noticing that I had DL'ed the wrong diver
• 2003-04-11: Added i8kutils description

What Works (right now, for me!)

Color-codes (requires CSS to work, so if you can't see colors, download mozilla):

Install

I completely wiped the laptop before installing, making a ~30Gb partition for windows, ~7Gb for linux and ~512Mb swap. I did not reserve any space for suspending to disk, since I was unable to make that work.

I chose "custom" and selected almost everything.

• Network: I selected DHCP for eth0, which worked fine
• X11: worked out of box, just said OK to everything

Complete install took about 45 minutes.

I decided to not install the nvidia X11 drivers since I really don't use 3D acceleration on linux, and suspend is supported nicely on the XFree86 included nv driver.

Tweaking

USB

changed /etc/modules.conf:

alias usb-controller usb-uhci

alias usb-controller uhci

UTF and LANG

set /etc/sysconfig/i18n to not use UTF8 as standard. UTF8 is OK, but we'll wait for a while before using it as std

X11

I added some inputs and some reasonable naming to /etc/X11/XF86Config

To enable the multimedia-keys, change the

Option      "XkbModel" "pc105"

Option      "XkbModel" "inspiron"

Note, if I define multiple core-keyboards for an X configuration, the xkbmodel doesn't seem to be honored by X. That's why the "KeyboardUSB" is commented out in the "default" "ServerLayout".

AntiAlias'ed fonts

AntiAlias'ed fonts works out of the box, you should not enable subpixel hinting

APM

PCMCIARESTART="no"
PCMCIABIOSBUG="no"
PCMCIAWAIT="no"
NET_RESTART="no"
NETFS_RESTART="yes"

created /etc/sysconfig/apm-scripts/apmcontinue-pre to eject the wifi-card when suspending, since it doesn't work well with suspend. When RH9 did the suspend it didn't init the PCMCIA card before the network, so I had to workaround.

Note, I have setup wireless networking to use a route metric, so I can have both wireless and wired ethernet connection on the same sub-net

Note, that the

NET_RESTART=no

KDE

Default is to have KDE auto-check the CDROM for insertion and auto-mount when a CD is inserted. I hate that, and it makes the HD-lamp flash so I removed the "Autorun.desktop" file from "~/.kde/Autostart"

In order to let users suspend the machine I did (as root):

chgrp users /usr/bin/apm
chmod u+s,o= /usr/bin/apm

IrDA

/sbin/chkconfig --levels 345 irda on

ifplugd

Ifplugd detects when you plug/unplug the network cable and runs "ifup" or "ifdown" accordingly, very nice for a laptop that you move around.

It works right out-of-the-box, Get it at: http://www.stud.uni-hamburg.de/users/lennart/projects/ifplugd/, i did:

# get
wget http://www.stud.uni-hamburg.de/users/lennart/projects/ifplugd/ifplugd-0.13.tar.gz
# build
rpmbuild -tb ifplugd-0.13.tar.gz
# install
rpm -Uvh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/ifplugd-0.13-2.i386.rpm
# start, ifplugd is default enabled in run-levels 3,4,5 -- we want it now
/sbin/service ifplugd start

wireless

added:

alias eth1 orinoco_cs
# load the eth0 driver before orinoco_cs, so we get proper order
above orinoco_cs eth0

I have both wireless and wired ethernet at home, the solution that I have come up with allows me to use the wireless interface whenever I am not connected through a CAT5 wire, and wired ethernet otherwise.

Properties of the solution are:

• plugging in the network cable makes network-traffic faster
• unplugging the network requires 10 sec. of "waiting" then traffic continues over the wireless net

Setup

The solution is to have the same IP number for both interfaces and a metric on the route for the wireless link. I have setup my dhcp server (and DiVX player, router, CPU-VCR, printserver, ...) to give the same IP-address to two mac addresses, here is the relevant part of dhcpd.conf:

subnet 172.16.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
  ...
    host ikaros { 
	option host-name "ikaros";
  	fixed-address 172.16.0.4;
  	hardware ethernet 00:06:5B:BC:BA:07;
    }
    host ikaros-wlan { 
	option host-name "ikaros";
  	fixed-address 172.16.0.4;
  	hardware ethernet 00:02:2D:5B:FD:2C;
    }
}

/sbin/ifconfig eth0
/sbin/ifconfig eth1

Next, you need to edit the /sbin/dhclient-script a bit, in line 191, add "dev $interface":

--- dhclient-script~    2003-04-10 08:56:46.000000000 +0200
+++ dhclient-script     2003-04-18 11:55:04.000000000 +0200
@@ -188,7 +188,7 @@
       route add -net $new_network_number $new_subnet_arg dev $interface
     fi
     for router in $new_routers; do
-      route add default gw $router
+      route add default gw $router dev $interface
     done
   fi
   if [ x$new_ip_address != x$alias_ip_address ] && [ x$alias_ip_address != x ];

You also need to edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup, commenting out the lines that remove DHCP created default routes, so you can have multiple default routes. Rewrite the way the zeroconf route is added so that it is present on all interfaces:

--- /root/ifup  2003-04-18 12:03:09.000000000 +0200
+++ ifup        2003-04-18 12:07:12.000000000 +0200
@@ -265,10 +264,10 @@
     NUMDEFROUTES=`ip -o route | \
                   grep "^default" | \
                   awk '{ nlines++ } END { print nlines }'`
-    if [ -n "$NUMDEFROUTES" -a "$NUMDEFROUTES" -gt 1 ]; then
-       # remove the default route for the new device (old route wins)
-       ip route del default dev ${DEVICE}
-    fi
+#    if [ -n "$NUMDEFROUTES" -a "$NUMDEFROUTES" -gt 1 ]; then
+#      # remove the default route for the new device (old route wins)
+#      ip route del default dev ${DEVICE}
+#    fi
 # end dynamic device configuration
 else
     if [ -z "${IPADDR}" ]; then
@@ -342,7 +341,7 @@

 # Add Zeroconf route.
 if [ -z "${NOZEROCONF}" -a "${ISALIAS}" = "no" ]; then
-    ip route replace 169.254.0.0/16 dev ${REALDEVICE}
+    /sbin/route add -net 169.254.0.0 netmask 255.255.0.0 dev ${REALDEVICE}
 fi

 # IPv6 initialisation?

Now, all i have to do is "break in" the DHCP-client setting up the route to networks, this is done by creating /etc/dhclient-exit-hooks, to set a metric on the route for the wireless card so that the wired connection will be preferred over the wireless.

Together with ifplugd this makes a really spiffy solution for wireless/wired auto transition

Note, that most of the work done here undoes weird decisions from RedHat like, "you should not have multiple default routes" and "routing is only based on IP, not device"

i8kutils and the volume keys

Massimo Dal Zotto has produced some utilities, called i8kutils, for accessing the SMM BIOS of the inspiron-i8k's. I have made a source RPM, and a binary i386 RPM with the i8kutils, which enables support for the volume-keys using the i8kbuttons program.

WinModem

After searching the web for a while, I found out that the WinModem in my inspiron 8200 is an HSF softmodem. Fortunately, Conexant Systems Inc. has teamed up with MBSI and Open Source developers to provide a driver, available from MBSI. Downloading the original source rpm I tried to compile, but got some errors when compiling, concerning some structs and functions for kernel signal-handling. I made a patch and produced a source RPM and i386 RPM.

Next step is compile and install

# download
wget http://slog.dk/~jensen/inspiron8200/redhat9/hsflinmodem-5.03.27mbsibeta02122600-1.src.rpm
# compile
rpmbuild --rebuild hsflinmodem-5.03.27mbsibeta02122600-1.src.rpm
# install
rpm  -Uvh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/hsflinmodem-{,doc-}5.03.27mbsibeta02122600-1.i386.rpm
# configure
/usr/sbin/hsfconfig

Just give the default answer to the hsfconfig tools

John D. Tanner reports, that he has been able to use the WinModmem for 5 hour continuous connection to his ISP.

Setup CpuFreq

The RH9 precompiled kernel contains support for frequency stepping of the Intel P4-cpu of the inspiron. 2 things are needed:

1. activation of speedstep support
2. something to change the speedstep from LOW->HIGH->LOW->... when stuff happens

CPUFREQ="yes"
[ "x$CPUFREQ" == "xno" ] || [ -e /proc/cpufreq ] || modprobe speedstep

After restarting apmd:

/sbin/service apmd restart

[jensen@ikaros tmp]$ cat /proc/cpufreq
          minimum CPU frequency  -  maximum CPU frequency  -  policy
CPU  0      1600000 kHz (100 %)  -    1600000 kHz (100 %)  -  performance

[jensen@ikaros tmp]$ cat /proc/cpufreq
          minimum CPU frequency  -  maximum CPU frequency  -  policy
CPU  0      1200000 kHz ( 75 %)  -    1200000 kHz ( 75 %)  -  powersave