Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 13:50:28 -0400
From: Christopher Kalos <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [LIB] Re: Back, with Linux!
Hello again!
On May 25, 2005, at 1:22 PM, Richard Mittendorfer wrote:
Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 19:20:52 +0200
From: Richard Mittendorfer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [LIB] Re: Back, with Linux!
hi libretto users!
Also sprach "T. Ribbrock" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (Wed, 25 May 2005 08:13:37
-0700):
On Mon, May 23, 2005 at 04:04:12PM -0700, Christopher Kalos wrote:
[...]
1) Installation of Fedora Core 2
One question: Does FC2 use kernel 2.6? I'm asking 'cause under
Mandrake 10.1, I can only use kernel 2.4, as the Libby's IDE chipset
is not recognized. I'm wondering whether that's a "kernel 2.6 problem"
or a "Mandrake's kernel problem"...
2.4 and 2.6 series work fine here. ide chipset ist just a generic ide -
so there should be no problem at all. as it's isa'ish dma mode sure
isn't possible.
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDISK=y
CONFIG_IDE_GENERIC=y
..the rest of IDE is unset.
The principles will remain the same for most systems, but here's
what I went through, starting with a desktop IDE adapter.
Just as an aside: I was able to install Mandrake 10.1 without having
to remove the harddrive. Mandrake's PCMCIA install floppy luckily also
had the driver for my PCMCIA SCSI-card. I was then able to install the
base system from a SCSI CD-ROM drive... :-) Might be worth a try to
see whether a USB CD-ROM or suchlike works as well.
to introdce myself & my lib ;)
debian sarge, 110ct, 64M, 4327M, cardbus netgear WG511t or a pcmcia
10/100Mbit card. i've bought a 2.5" adapter to set up the initial
system. last time i used it was back in 2000 :)
as i play lill' bit jazzguitar i was surprised to find gtkguitune (a
guitar tuning program) working perfect with the old yahama onboard
sound, so the lib now is with me at every jam session. :) even
recording is possible.
_love_ this little thingy.
* X, and how to get around it.
I went for less memory usage, you may want more speed.
For the default Neomagic chipset driver, go to this URL, it's got a
Fedora-compatible replacement for /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
http://wiki.bsdforen.de/index.php/Toshiba_Libretto_100CT
I found the most important parts of the X setup are:
1) The mode lines in the "Monitor" section:
ModeLine "800x480" 29.59 800 832 944 976 480 490 495 505
ModeLine "640x480" 24.11 640 672 760 792 480 490 495 505
these seem to work also
Modeline "800x480" 40 800 864 928 1088 480 481 484 509
+hsync
Modeline "800x480" 35.26 800 856 1040 1056 480 480 486 488
+hsync +vsync
2) Telling XFree86 or X.org to ignore conflicts with mode lines:
Option "overrideValidateMode"
(in the "Device" section)
Option "StrangeLockUps" "false"
i use this option too. "true" it actually suggested, but i havn't
spotted any troubles with "false" - might be chiprevision thing. if it
works,
you'll get better acceleration (XFree 4.3). see XFree86.0.log if it's
turned
on on your box.
i also disable most of lines in the modules section. exept "extmod".
* Not out of the woods yet, or what fits in 64MB?
[...]
1) fluxbox - Fluxbox window manager
I also had good experiences with Window Maker. A bit bigger, but still
very usable on the 1x0CT.
twm, fluxbox, openbox, all the small windowmanagers do fine. XFree 4.x
itself is a little big:
-------8<-------
top - 18:01:52 up 9 days, 21:45, 3 users, load average: 0.04, 0.06,
0.08
Tasks: 43 total, 1 running, 42 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 3.9% us, 2.6% sy, 1.1% ni, 92.3% id, 0.0% wa, 0.1% hi,
0.0% si
Mem: 62084k total, 54552k used, 7532k free, 3364k
buffers
Swap: 200804k total, 35548k used, 165256k free, 17288k cached
PID USER PR NI SWAP VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+
COMMAND
11117 root 4 -11 22m 42688 18m 1280 S 3.2 31.3 30:45.07
XFree86
13538 ritch 14 -1 7880 13672 5792 4012 S 0.6 9.3 1:25.99
sylpheed
11167 ritch 15 -1 6768 9272 2504 1572 S 0.6 4.0 1:29.88
fluxbox
9126 ritch 14 -1 3504 5248 1744 1352 S 0.1 2.8 0:01.44 aterm
------8<-------
kdrive, framebuffer version: 12.1% memory usage, 14272 VIRT, 7452 RES,
1312 SHR. The neofb module to make this work may suck up a bit more
RAM on top of that, but right now, with multi-aterm, galeon, and
gkrellm running, I'm only 9 megs into swap. sshd runs via init, I'm in
runlevel 5, and no ftpd, as I tend to know what I'm looking for, and
can use SSH to grab/drop it off.
i use to stop unnecessary services, have two mingetty's to log in and
don't start [xgk]dm. ssh & proftpd from inetd.
here's a ps aux directly after logging in:
-------8<------
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 1 0.0 0.7 1584 480 ? S May23 0:00 init [2]
root 2 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SN May23 0:08
[ksoftirqd/0]
root 3 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< May23 0:12
[events/0]
root 4 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< May23 0:00
[khelper]
root 9 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< May23 0:00
[kthread]
root 17 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< May23 0:14 [kacpid]
root 81 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< May23 0:00
[kblockd/0]
root 118 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S May23 0:04
[pdflush]
root 119 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S May23 0:08
[pdflush]
root 121 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< May23 0:00 [aio/0]
root 120 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S May23 0:07
[kswapd0]
root 195 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S May23 0:00
[kseriod]
root 241 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< May23 0:00
[reiserfs/0]
root 693 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S May23 0:00
[pccardd]
root 699 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S May23 0:00
[pccardd]
daemon 930 0.0 0.6 1684 404 ? SNs May23 0:00
/sbin/portmap
root 1091 0.0 0.9 1752 588 ? SNs May23 0:00
/sbin/syslogd -m 0
root 1095 0.0 0.7 1708 440 ? Ss May23 0:00
/sbin/klogd -k /boot/System.map-2.6.11
root 1162 0.0 0.7 1616 444 ? SNs May23 0:00
/usr/sbin/inetd
root 1263 0.0 0.7 1748 496 ? SNs May23 0:00
/sbin/rpc.statd
root 1269 0.0 1.1 1944 692 ? SNs May23 0:00
/usr/sbin/cron
root 1372 0.0 0.6 1696 384 tty2 Ss+ May23 0:00
/sbin/mingetty tty2
root 29015 0.0 1.0 1712 676 ? SNs 06:27 0:03
/usr/sbin/acpid -c /etc/acpi/events -s /var/run/acpid.socket -l
/dev/null
ritch 13488 1.9 2.7 4868 1688 tty1 S<s 18:37 0:00 -bash
-------8<--------
2) dillo - Dillo web browser, often used in Linux handheld projects
Another alternative is Opera. Its speed on the Libby really surprised
me. I'm actually thinking about buying it to get rid of the
advertisement (which takes up precious screen real estate). On the
other hand, if you are using a 800x600 virtual desktiop, you can
scroll the browser window to somewhere in the middle - that way you
get the maximum out the actual page that is displayed, as all other
elements are off-screen (works with other browsers, too, of course).
dillo is great. _truly_ fast. sylpheed as mail client, and aterm/rxvt
as
terminal. mp3blaster or xmms for playing. ecasound fo rrecording.
I'll have to look into mp3blaster, that sounds interesting.
* Trimming the fat
[...]
Disable anything you don't need for a plain laptop. This includes
nfs,
oh, i use nfs (client) quite a lot ;)
actually, i tried to boot from it. it works, but as memory is so
limited
it doesn't help me to have my drive shut down completely as there's a
lot of swapping going on. and swapping to a memory card might not be
the best idea. if you go for a remote X session (real x terminal) it's
no trouble at all.
I'm not running an NFS server, and I use it more like an overgrown PDA,
so I'm never reliably on the same WLAN all the time. I've never been a
fan of that type of remote storage on a laptop anyway, that's what I
use rsync for :)
[...]
* Tiny gotchas
1) Kernel compilation. Just don't. It'll take forever.
You should, however, be able to compile the kernel on a faster
machine, then transfer the files. Fortunately, so far I never had
reason to do so.
it's a good idea to roll your own kernel. you can omit lot of the stuff
and the kernel will become quite small. it's quite a problem as the 2.6
kernels are bigger than 2.4. however 2.6 provides better acpi support
(IMHO) and that's a good thing on notebooks.
The Fedora kernel, which I've rebuilt at times, doesn't seem too
cooperative on the Libretto, even though I've dealt with FC1 and FC2 on
various systems, all the way up to Dual-proc Opterons. On the other
hand, it has EVERYTHING I need available as a module, including Toshiba
ACPI support, Cardbus, and so on.
the CFQ shcheduler is somewhat smaller than the default AS. might give
you better performance. deadline is also there, but this one is IMHO
better at working databases.
I've heard good things about cfq, but it's even more rough around the
edges than anticipatory. Deadline's great on RAID arrays and the like,
though I've got an entire spiel about 2.4, 2.6, Opterons, RAID, and the
like that has nothing to do with the Libby.
question:
has anybody a working thermal sensor on the lib? i get a value
at bootup which looks valid, but it doesn't change then. even unloading
and then modprobe thermal doesn't reread it. if it boots up cold it
say's about 20 degrees. if boot up hot, 50-60 degrees seems quite
possible rihgt.
i don't even know if there _is_ a thermal sensor in there.
GKrellm indicates a temp of about 60 degrees Fahrenheit under normal
situations, spiking to around 140 if I don't force ACPI throttling to
100CT clock speeds.
i compile on a faster local machine which is also the server for bigger
remote apps like audacity, openoffiice, firefox, gimp,...
I do this as needed, but the stuff that I want has been abandoned by
most people, sadly.
I did just rediscover Galeon, and GNOME's been getting on my nerves
lately with that. It seems that nothing I do resets all these Gnome
apps' desire to show toolbars with icons AND text. I'm sorry, but at
800x480, that eyecandy goes right out the window. As do most pixmaps,
since I honestly don't need to suck up more RAM and CPU time loading
and drawing those everywhere. It *is* possible to get a clean, good
looking environment without all the blasted pixmaps, but apparently no
one cares anymore.
[...]
3) Enhanced Port Replicator. Don't disconnect power, Linux will
shit itself if the USB controller and any dock-attached PCMCIA
cards disappear. Did I ever learn this one the hard way...
Yup, that one can be annoying.
have never used this thing. i use the lib as kind of terminal at home.
printing, storage is remote. if i'm on the road i use it mainly as
oggplayer and to work my mail's (via IMAP from home).
[...]
have fun,
ritch.
Thanks for the tips!
CK
