Redhat 6.2 works very well on this laptop, provided that you upgrade the window system to XFree86 version 4.0.2. Redhat 7.2 gave me enough problems that I reverted back to 6.2. The Redhat 7.2 problems were mainly in the areas of networking, kernel reconfiguration and the window system. The window system that ships with 7.2 breaks when you switch to a text terminal and then back to the window system. This did not happen with XFree86 V4.0.2
The S-4542 comes with a built-in Winmodem. Luckily, it's made by Lucent Technologies, who have provided a Linux driver.
The built-in ethernet interface on the S-4542 does not come back from a suspend. This was fixed with a script in /etc/??? (see below).
Very sweet little machine. Keyboard a little hard to type on (small pitch, short stroke) but I got used to it eventually. People with small hands should have no problems at all.
Biggest annoyance so far: the '/' key and the right-hand meta keys (alt, win1, win2, ctrl) are much too narrow. It would have been better to forget about the right-hand win1 key and make the shift key a little more narrow. A laptop really doesn't need *two* control keys and *two* alt keys and *two* windoze keys. By showing a little restraint, Fujitsu could have built a much more usable keyboard.
DAMN this thing is fast. I type "gzip *.inc" in the keymaps directory, and it's instantaneous.
Volume control on side. Very nice.
Hardware:
what IO IRQ DMA
IR port 118-11f 03 03
2e8-2ef
82440MX PCI 1f0-1f7
ide 1f0-1f7
CD, target 1, lun 0
trident cyber 9525DVD 3b0-3bb 09
PCI/AGP(W98.26) 3c0-3df
000a0000-000affff
000b0000-000bffff
fe800000-febfffff
fe120000-fe13ffff
fe400000-fe7fffff
000c0000-000cbfff
08010000-0801ffff
Fujitsu LB Global LTMODEM
Mouse: PS/2 12
Intel 8255x PCI enet 1440-147f
fe100000-fe100fff
fe000000-fe0fffff
Cardbus controller, TI 1420 09
08001000-08001fff
Cardbus controller, TI 1420 09
08002000-08002fff
audio: 82440mx ac'97, 1000-10ff 09
Sigma Tel Codec 1400-143f
usb: intel 82440mx 14c0-14df 15
The suspend-to-disk function saves the system state to a file in the Windows 98 partition, so it's especially useful to keep Windoze on your machine.
Installed Partition Magic to shrink the Windoze partition to 5G. All remaining disk operations were done with linux fdisk.
Hold down F2 while booting to get to the BIOS setup screen. Examine settings, learn what they mean. Turn off power management. Note the sound chip I/O address, DMA and interrupt.
Also change the boot device order so that the CDROM boots before the hard disk.
Boot Windows and disable power management there for good measure.
Boot Redhat 6.2 from the CD. At the boot prompt, enter
Install proceeded flawlessly except for X configuration. This produced the same screwed-up screen that the GUI install produced. (The RH 7.2 install procedure worked flawlessly here too.)
Note: most of the things discussed here are common to all Linux installs, but I thought the information would be helpful.
This information is specific to Redhat 6.2, but should be pretty close to correct for other variants.
Examine /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia, make sure it looks like this:
Re-enable pcmcia:
Confirm that /proc/devices shows the existance of pcmcia. Note: after new kernel it works, but if rebuilding kernel, remember to enable it in config.
Later, I upgraded to a 2.4 kernel; most of the instructions that follow pertain to that kernel.
I have the following pcmcia cards:
Actually, you can enable both methods if you like; they don't interfere with each other, although it's probably not a good idea to mount the card both ways simultaneously.
Edit /etc/sysconfig/network and set:
HOSTNAME=myhostname
Redhat's netcfg has an interface for setting the hostname, but I just edit the file.
If your machine is going to be connected to any networks, you also need a name for each interface. This is discussed below under networking.
/usr/sbin/makewhatis /usr/man:/usr/X11R6/man
I have windows installed on the first partition of my drive (/dev/hda1). I mount it as "/dos"; it's a vfat file system; any user may mount it; it's not mounted automatically at boot time; it doesn't get dumped automatically and it doesn't get processed by fsck. I don't know what "unhide" means.
Hopefully the cdrom and floppy entries are self-obvious.
The last entries are for my external scsi disks (/dev/sda1, /dev/sdb1). These are connected via a pcmcia scsi card. Plug the card in, wait while the system probes the drives (takes a while) and then go ahead and mount them.
Note that I do not have fsck run automatically on the scsi drives (that final '0' on the line.) This is because fsck will fail if the drives are not connected, and boot-up will fail. This means that it's a good idea to run fsck manually on the drives after mounting them.
Finally, don't forget to mkdir the /dos, /mnt/cdrom, /mnt/floppy, /mnt/dosfloppy directories and so on.
In addition, Redhat Linux, for some reason, has seen fit to define the
backspace key as returning 0177 (delete) and the delete key as
returning the sequence "
Copy /usr/lib/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/defkeymap.kmap.gz to falk.kmap.gz
Uncompress (gunzip) falk.map.gz; edit it.
My changes:
Keycodes of note:
But if you must; copy the XF86Config file from
If you've already installed 3.3.6, make a backup.
Grab XFree86 from www.xfree86.org:
Run "Xinstall.sh -check" to verify that you grabbed the right
files for your configuration. If not, go back to xfree86 and
grab the right files.
Run "Xinstall.sh" to install XFree86 v4.0.2 on your system.
It's just that simple.
Redhat's netcfg program comes in very handy here, but there
are a few caveats:
You can determine your current host name by using the hostname
command.
If you don't have any networking on your laptop, just put this one
line in /etc/hosts:
If you want to set your machine's domain name, enter this:
Edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ppp0
Edit /etc/hosts and add an entry for your ppp interface.
Install ppp-2.2.0f-3 rpm package if not already installed.
Ethernet is easiest to configure with netcfg, but here's
how to do it manually anyway.
Edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0:
You should also add a line to your /etc/hosts file for the interface.
If you use the DHCP protocol, it is not necessary to specify
an IP address, network address or broadcast address. It is not
necessary to add an entry to /etc/hosts. This is all handled by DHCP.
Issues: The default power management settings disable
ethernet when AC power not plugged in. This causes Kudzu to try to
uninstall the ethernet driver from system.
Solution: reconfigure ethernet to "always on" or disable Kudzu.
You should have a line somewhere in /etc/hosts that has the
fully qualified domain name as the first name on the
line, followed by the short hostname. Something like this:
You can determine your current dns domain by using the
dnsdomainname command.
In this example, I'm configured for both my PPP connection and my
ethernet connection at work. The nameserver entries
are the IP addresses of your DNS servers (your network admin will
give these to you.) It may be possible to specify these by name
if the names occur in /etc/hosts.
I also edited /etc/host.conf:
To use NIS, your system needs to have an NIS domain name. (Some systems,
e.g. Solaris, use the same domain name for DNS or NIS, but Redhat Linux
has seperate domains. I don't know why.)
1) Install ypbind package. It's also a good idea to have yp-tools.
2) Set the NIS domain name
of your system. Edit /etc/sysconfig/network and add a line
like this:
3) Edit /etc/yp.conf, and add a line like this:
You can determine your current NIS domain by using the domainname
command.
If you don't have DNS or NIS, then this file can get pretty large,
as it must contain the name of every computer you communicate with.
Otherwise, it usually just holds the names of your own computer, and
the few systems it needs to communicate with before DNS or NIS starts
up.
Here's an example, assuming a ppp connection from home and an ethernet
connection at work. My machine is named foo, and has
two distinct domains. If I were to connect to my ISP and my ethernet
at work simultaneously, chaos would probably result -- or at least
a pretty serious firewall breach.
If you've configured your kernel for NFS client support and enabled
networking, then nothing more needs to be done to be an NFS client.
You simply add entries to /etc/fstab as needed. However, you may want
to enable the automounter to make life easier.
To export NFS file systems for other hosts to mount, edit /etc/exports
and add a line like this:
The automounter is a very convenient feature to have. You can refer
to any system on your network simply as /net/remotehost/...
To enable NFS automounter:
Install the am-utils RPM if it's not already installed.
Automounter works automatically.
Go to http://walbran.org/sean/linux/stodolsk/
download tar file
http://216.243.177.83/sean/linux/stodolsk/ltmodem-5.78e.tar.gz
Unpack tar file.
Following the directions in 1ST-READ:
I have unable to get PPP to work with the winmodem.
Create .Xmodmap file in your home directory or in
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/.Xmodmap and add these lines:
What you do with the two windoze keys is entirely up to you. The one on the
right has a menu icon on it, so you might assign it to pop up window menus.
The .fvwmrc code to do this might look like:
Download apm package from
Build apm, xapm, etc.
Device will only operate in 16-bit, stereo, 48000
hz. VERY disappointing.
Problems:
Freezes during shutdown when accessing aumix. Other web page
says the problem is related to apmd. Modify /etc/sysconfig/apmd:
make bzImage, install, run lilo.
Unpack alsa-driver, configure, compile, install.
Add these lines to /etc/modules.conf:
First, the software for CD-RW's only deals with SCSI devices, so you
need to make the IDE drive emulate SCSI.
Configure the kernel. Under ATA/IDE/MFM/RLL support/IDE, ATA, and ATAPI
Block Devices, set "Include IDE/ATAPI/ CDROM support" and
"SCSI emulation support" to Y.
Do "ls -l /dev/cdrom". You'll probably see that the cdrom is /dev/hdb.
Add
Reboot.
Cat /proc/devices; note the presense of "sr" under Block devices.
Execute "cdrecord -scanbus"; note the presense of the CD drive
as scsi unit 0,0,0. Hot dawg. This means that the CD is no
longer /dev/hdb, but /dev/scd0. Change the /dev/cdrom link
accordingly.
Optional: edit /etc/group and add yourself (and other worthy
users) to the "disk" group so that you can access the drive
(e.g. eject it) without becoming super-user.
Install the distribution disk, and:
If you find this is the case, rename the default vimrc
file:
The SCSI card came with a mail-in card for a free DB-25 cable. If you
plan to connect really cheap hardware (e.g. zip drive) with non-standard
connectors, you want to get this.
Earlier, I had tried a model called the
New Media Basics SCSI.
It did not work under Redhat 4.2 so I sent it back. It may be supported
with newer kernels.
I executed these commands (as root):
I've had much better luck with the Lucent/Orinoco wireless card. The
"silver" card is the best.
install 2.4.17 sources. make mrproper ; make xconfig
(You may get undefined symbols even after a make clean, e.g. if
you disable SMP. When this happens, backup your
.config file, do "make mrproper", restore
.config and try again.)
(There's a bug in 2.4.14 when you enable loopback file system.
There's a patch for this, but simpler to get a newer kernel.)
The
Battery Powered Linux Mini-HOWTO says that the pcmcia drivers should
also be re-compiled to take advantage of power management.
Both OS's installed flawlessly and recognized all hardware. Both
came up with an X-windows login, which looks much nicer and is more
newbie-friendly than the old login prompt.
The fvwm window system is not present in RH7, ruining my own windows
environment. Rather than learn how to configure fvwm2, I simply
restored fvwm from backup tape.
There were too many quirks in the networking code to go into here. It
mostly worked, but sometimes it didn't.
The netcfg program is missing in 7.2, replaced by something else that
doesn't work and isn't as functional.
I was never able to make the pcmcia-cs modules compile and work with
the 2.4.x kernels. I'm told it has something to do with Redhat's version
of the modutils. It worked with no problems under 6.2
When I discovered that "ifconfig eth0 up" would not work under 7.2,
I gave up and reverted to 6.2.
< keycode 14 = Delete
to
> keycode 14 = BackSpace
> plain keycode 111 = Delete
Recompress (gzip)
115 left windoze
116 right windoze
117 menu
X-windows Config
XFree86 3.3.6
NOT RECOMENDED. This is the window system that
comes with 6.2. It works, but scrolling is very slow. Use XFree86 4.0.2
instead.
XFree86 4.0.2
Use this instead; it understands the trident chipset. Much
more civilized.
Configure networking
host name
Your laptop needs a host name (see above). In addition,
every network interface should have one or more names. I don't think
this is a strict requirement, but it's a good idea.
loopback
Every system has a loopback interface.
The loopback inteface is usually named localhost.
PPP
This is easiest to do with netcfg, but here's how to do
it manually anyway.
Ethernet
The S-4542 has a built-in ethernet interface. This has worked
flawlessly on every kernel I've tried it with.
Domain Name
If your computer is going to be connected to the network, it should
probably have a domain name. netcfg does not seem
to set this correctly. By tracing programs, I was able to
determine that Redhat Linux gets the dns domain name by searching
/etc/hosts.
Domain Name Service
DNS allows your system to find the IP address of any other system on
the internet. It really beats adding entries to /etc/hosts.
To enable DNS, set the dns domain name as described
above
and edit /etc/resolv.conf:
Network Information Service
NIS, aka The Protocol Formally Known as YP is a somewhat more
powerful, but less popular way than DNS for computers to get hostname
(and other) information.
/etc/hosts
/etc/hosts holds a list of hostnames and IP addresses. It is used
along with DNS and/or NIS to obtain hostname information.
NFS
NFS is the Network File System. It allows you to mount directories on
other hosts directly onto your own file system. Your machine may be
either an NFS client (mounts filesystems from other hosts) or
an NFS host (exports filesystems for other hosts to mount.)
Configure the Winmodem
Install procedure varies with kernel.
2.2.17:
This driver was compiled against the 2.2.12 kernel (which I
can't use because PCMCIA requires 2.2.16 or better), so insmod
generates warnings. Instead, I followed these steps:
2.4.1
This install did not quite go as smoothly. The ltinst
script tries to put the ltmodem.o file into
Customize X windows keyboard
Advanced Power Management
The original APM patch for 2.0.x included a version of the
apm program that allowed you to disable or enable power
management as needed (e.g. when burning a CD, you'll get a
coaster if the system goes into power-saving mode.)
Suspend:
The page at
http://www.fifthgate.org/articles/fujitsu_lifebook.html
says that if you leave the system suspended overnight, it hangs
on resume due to lost interrupts. I have experienced that exact
same symptom, even when it was Dos that was suspended.
Sound
OSS
The OSS (Open Sound Systems) drivers are bundled into the kernel.
To use them, reconfigure the kernel. Enable sound, OSS, and the
"Intel IHC (i810)" drivers. Rebulid and install the kernel.
Sound using Alsa drivers
Obtain alsa drivers from www.alsa-project.org. Grab these files:
CD-RW
The CD-RW driver that comes with the laptop can be made useable.
VIM
By default, the "vim-minimal" version of vi is installed
under RH6.2. It lacks the key-composition features I like,
so my choices were get the source to vim and recompile, or
install vim-enhanced. The latter option is simpler, at the
cost of about a megabyte of disk space.
SCSI
I use an Adaptec
SCSI pcmcia card. Model 1401.
It works perfectly with external SCSI disks, 8mm SCSI tape, SCSI
zip drive and a SCSI CD-writer.
ZIP Drive
I obtained a refurbished SCSI zip drive and connected it up.
The ZIP drive came with an envelope stuffed with documentation and
software. Ignore it. Don't even bother breaking the seal. There's
nothing in there you need or want for Linux. Assuming
that the kernel is configured properly, it should just plug and play.
Since the SCSI drive was the only thing connected to my SCSI card, the
drive came up as /dev/sda
Wireless 802.11 LAN
This has been the biggest headache of all. I originally purchased
the Netgear MA401 wireless card. It turns out that this card (and many
others) use the PrismII chipset, which is only marginally
supported under Linux.
Reconfigure kernel
It's important to reconfigure the kernel because the default kernel
does not support Advanced Power Management (APM) or sound.
Redhat 7.1 and 7.2
Here are my attempts at installing 7.1 and 7.2 on my S-4542.