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Linux

Linux and me

How you can see above I am a registered Linux-User, at "Linux Counter". I am interested in Linux since 1999 and I work with it since the beginning of the year 2000 and use it exclusive since the beginning of 2001.
My favorite Linux/Unix-book is "Just for Fun" by Linus Torvalds, who invented Linux. It is a kind of biography of Linus und Linux, very nice and exciting written, also an introduction to the Open Source philosophy. For the advanced I recommend books from O'Reilly, i.e. Linux in a Nutshell, etc.
I began with Debian 2.2rc2 (potato), although Debian is thought to be no good for beginners, it had the straightest installation and I found my way around very fast. Now I use Debian on every computer I have. I don't like distributions like SuSE, Mandrake and RedHat, because of that there isn't a link to them, hi.

At the moment I use fluxbox as Windowmanager and I'm astonished by his flexibility. My latest screenshot is here: Screenshot.

Linux on FSC Amilo A

In Spring 2003 I bought a laptop, a Fujtitsu-Siemens Amilo A, with a mobile AMD XP 2400+ processor and an ATI Radeon IGP 320m graphicscard. After searching the internet for a short time I found the site Linux on Laptops, here you'll find the following pages, one in english by Janne and a german one by Lucky, a part of the explainations I offer here are from these sites.

In the meantime this page is listed on TuxMobil. There you find additional information similar to Linux on Laptops.

PCI - Hardware

While installing Debian Woody (meanwhile upgraded to Sarge) the first problems appeared. After the startup with CD the keyboard did not want to work, you can solve this problem by pressing the "MagicButton", the eMail button. Then there where no further problems with the installation. I already fetched the newest pci.ids from pciids.sf.net to see what the machine contents.
Here is the lspci output:

00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc AGP Bridge [IGP 320M] (rev 13)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc PCI Bridge [IGP 320M] (rev 01)
00:02.0 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03)
00:03.0 Modem: ALi Corporation Intel 537 [M5457 AC-Link Modem]
00:04.0 IDE interface: ALi Corporation M5229 IDE (rev c4)
00:06.0 Bridge: ALi Corporation M7101 PMU
00:07.0 ISA bridge: ALi Corporation M1533 PCI to ISA Bridge [Aladdin IV]
00:08.0 Multimedia audio controller: ALi Corporation M5451 PCI AC-Link Controller Audio Device (rev 02)
00:09.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
00:0a.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 46)
00:0b.0 CardBus bridge: ENE Technology Inc CB1420 Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
00:0b.1 CardBus bridge: ENE Technology Inc CB1420 Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
00:0f.0 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03)
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility U1

Graphics- and soundcard

The next two problems were the graphics- and soundcard. Because the Woody-XFree86-4.1 does not support the Radeon 320m you have to take the 4.3 from here, in addition you need the radeon drivers from Jannes site. But you are able to use the graphicscard with 4.1, then you have to use the vesa driver and with it it's no fun to watch movies with xine, if it works at all ;-)
According to my informations 3D acceleration works, with XFree86 develsnaps and addional patch! I will try on it soon.
Here is a XF86Config-4 that fits well, if it's needed.

The TV output works, too, with the atitvout program. You can download it with apt and the commands atitvout -f t (to turn on) and atitvout -f l (to turn off) will be available. But this works only, when the laptop is connected to an active video port. Ohterwise the TV card will not be turned on, this is described in the handbook, too.

Unfortunately the soundard does not like the Woody's 2.4.18-686 trident module, there are only write-/readerrors. So you have to compile a kernel (>=2.4.20 fits best). In the meantime ALSA has been added to the kernel source of 2.6, the correct module ist snd-ali5451. The volume is divided, for internal use it's Vol (normally 70%), for the speaker jack it's Pcm and Pcm2 (90% both).

ACPI

Until now I only had the standard kernel 2.4.18-686 on the machine, so I decided to compile my own kernel namely "The Debian Way", additionally I patched it with ACPI, because the laptop does not support APM. So you get the kernel (2.4.20) from www.kernel.org and then the correct ACPI patch from acpi.sourceforge.net and follow the instructions in Emma's article. All but the fan give informations.
At the moment I am already using 2.6 kernel, which I recommend every laptop user! I made a .config, if necessary I am able to provide the .deb kernel.
With the available modules processor, thermal, battery, ac und button (fan did not work on my Amilo) you can read the status from /proc/acpi/ and the laptop does the power off independent.

Modules for the rest

Here is a list of modules you need for the other hardware:

Modul	Hardware	State
snd-ali5451	ALi Corporation M5451 PCI AC-Link Controller Audio Device	works
8139too	Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+	works
ohci-hcd	ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller	works
ohci1394	VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller	I don't have Firewire
yenta_socket	ENE Technology Inc CB1420 Cardbus Controller	works
ide-scsi / sg	to get the cd burner to work (obsolete)	works

and the lsmod output:

Module                  Size  Used by
ppp_deflate             4864  0 
zlib_deflate           21080  1 ppp_deflate
bsd_comp                5312  0 
ppp_async               8832  0 
crc_ccitt               1664  1 ppp_async
ppp_generic            22612  3 ppp_deflate,bsd_comp,ppp_async
slhc                    7296  1 ppp_generic
psmouse                19848  0 
ds                     14020  4 
eth1394                18440  0 
yenta_socket           18624  0 
pcmcia_core            59332  2 ds,yenta_socket
ohci1394               30916  0 
ieee1394               96120  2 eth1394,ohci1394
8139too                20736  0 
mii                     3968  1 8139too
crc32                   3840  1 8139too
ohci_hcd               30980  0 
usbcore               112676  3 ohci_hcd
ati_agp                 6412  1 
agpgart                28072  1 ati_agp
evdev                   7360  0 
snd_ali5451            19528  2 
snd_ac97_codec         68496  1 snd_ali5451
snd_pcm_oss            47912  1 
snd_mixer_oss          17344  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm                81288  2 snd_ali5451,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer              20036  1 snd_pcm
snd                    45668  8 snd_ali5451,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore               6880  2 snd
snd_page_alloc          7560  1 snd_pcm

The buildin modem is a software modem, which does not (yet) work with Linux. But there is a proprietary driver of SMLink, with it wvdial recognizes the modem, but when you dial out the laptop crashes. Also with the newest beta version of this driver, which you can get at SMLink (slmodem-2.8*).

Static DSDT override for Amilo A 7600 with kernel 2.6 on a late Debian

After several hours of reading mailing lists, groups and HowTos I found out that it is quiet easy to override your Differentiated System Description Table for fixing ACPI errors. All you need is:

a customized and fixed DSDT from http://acpi.sourceforge.net/dsdt/index.php
choose the one appropriate for your BIOS version (e.g. I chose Fujitsu-Siemens-Amilo_A_7600-1.10-custom.asl)
the iasl compiler source code from http://developer.intel.com/technology/iapc/acpi/downloads.htm
your linux kernel source code

For compiling the compiler you need to downgrade flex:

[~/src]$ tar -xzvf acpica-unix-20050930.tar.gz 
[~/src]$ apt-get remove flex 
[~/src]$ apt-get install flex-old
[~/src]$ cd acpica-unix-20050930/compiler/
[~/src/acpica-unix-20050930/compiler]$ make
[~/src/acpica-unix-20050930/compiler]$ cd ../../
[~/src]$ apt-get remove flex-old
[~/src]$ apt-get install flex

Now you can compile your DSDT:

[~/src]$ cd kernel-patches/
[~/src/kernel-patches]$ ../acpica-unix-20050930/compiler/iasl Fujitsu-Siemens-Amilo_A_7600-1.10-custom.asl 

Intel ACPI Component Architecture
ASL Optimizing Compiler version 20050930 [Dec 11 2005]
Copyright (C) 2000 - 2005 Intel Corporation
Supports ACPI Specification Revision 3.0

Fujitsu-Siemens-Amilo_A_7600-1.10-custom.asl   187:                     0x0100, 0x00,,)
Error    1084 -                              Missing ResourceSource string (required) ^ 

Fujitsu-Siemens-Amilo_A_7600-1.10-custom.asl   194:                     , AddressRangeMemory, TypeStatic)
Error    1084 -                                                Missing ResourceSource string (required) ^ 

Fujitsu-Siemens-Amilo_A_7600-1.10-custom.asl   201:                     , AddressRangeMemory, TypeStatic)
Error    1084 -                                                Missing ResourceSource string (required) ^ 

Fujitsu-Siemens-Amilo_A_7600-1.10-custom.asl   209:                     , TypeStatic)
Error    1084 -                            Missing ResourceSource string (required) ^ 

Fujitsu-Siemens-Amilo_A_7600-1.10-custom.asl   216:                     , TypeStatic)
Error    1084 -                            Missing ResourceSource string (required) ^ 

ASL Input:  Fujitsu-Siemens-Amilo_A_7600-1.10-custom.asl - 2855 lines, 101357 bytes, 1338 keywords
Compilation complete. 5 Errors, 0 Warnings, 0 Remarks, 400 Optimizations
[~/src/kernel-patches]$ ll
insgesamt 1M
-rw-r-----  1 ******* *******  99K 2005-12-11 14:27 Fujitsu-Siemens-Amilo_A_7600-1.10-custom.asl
-rw-r--r--  1 ******* ******* 108K 2005-12-11 14:27 Fujitsu-Siemens-Amilo_A_7600-1.10-custom.hex

Several errors occure, but they are not as essential as the ones of the original DSDT ;-)
Now you have got the needed hex file!
Before compiling the kernel you have to configure the customization. Therefore choose the following:

Device Drivers  --->
  Generic Driver Options  --->
    [ ] Select only drivers that don't need compile-time external firmware
    [ ] Prevent firmware from being built
     ?  Hotplug firmware loading support

Power management options (ACPI, APM)  --->
  ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) Support  --->
    [*]   Include Custom DSDT
    (/home/user/src/kernel-patches/Fujitsu-Siemens-Amilo_A_7600-1.10-custom.hex) Custom DSDT Table file to include

Now compile your kernel as you like it and be happy about your non buggy ACPI!
Many thanks to all the custom DSDT developer for the Amila A 7600!