This is the third release of a supported notebook configuration, after a first year of experience with SuSE 8.2 on the Dell C400 and a second year with SuSE 9.0 on the C400, D600, and X300. It is an attempt to provide easy, failsafe yet flexible handling by the user while keeping support cost low.
If you think have a case for the continuation of this support, please let us know.
November 19, 2005 |
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October 17, 2005 |
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August 20, 2005 |
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August 14, 2005 |
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August 8, 2005 |
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August 5, 2005 |
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August 1, 2005 |
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Older news items are here.
The X300 has a broken DSDT that prevents ACPI from working properly unless the patched kernel is used and the DSDT overridden. This is dependent on the BIOS version. The currently supported versions are A04 and A07.
Support for older C-Series models (C6x0, C8x0)could be added, probably with little effort, if development hardware were available.
The Dell D400 has the same DSDT problem as the X300, but no fixed DSDT is available. This model would work, but cannot be recommended for Linux use.
The hardware configuration must be approved by - DV - before purchase, or certain features (in particular, wireless LAN) may not be available.
These features are available on all supported models:
Upgrades will not preserve /usr/local.
We do not support using the notebook as a substitute for your desktop PC or your private PC at home. This includes using external monitors and keyboards, docking stations and printers. Even though much of this is now possible, it's still unsupported.
Using ISDN, DSL and modems should finally work, but is still unsupported. Using an ISDN/DSL to LAN/WLAN router appliance is recommended instead. These are quite affordable today, and allow using the fully supported LAN/WLAN interface of the notebook without additional effort.
Support options are limited to reinstallation if any configuration is modified by means not explicitly approved, or root access was granted.
Please address support requests to uco-zn@desy.de and make sure the notebook is accessible via ethernet (not WLAN). Before, please
nbctl sync
)
No phone calls or office visits, except in emergencies, please.
nbctl sync
.
There are no passwords set for any account.
Login to any account is possible on the local gdm login screen only,
without having to provide a password. Home directories are
created automatically during the first login.
Users can arrange for secure, password-less access to their notebook account over the network through ssh public key authentication:
~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub
in your AFS account.
ssh-keygen -t dsa
on any SL3 system. You probably
want an empty pass phrase.
lan afs kinit (enter your AFS password) mkdir ~/.ssh/ cd ~/.ssh cp /afs/ifh.de/user/j/johndoe/.ssh/id_dsa.pub authorized_keys2
ssh
from
your ifh.de account without password. Don't try this in the opposite
direction, it won't work (properly). The id_dsa.pub file is not secret,
hence you
needn't worry about sharing the notebook with a colleague afterwards.
The DESY registry should now allow managing passwords for notebook accounts, and this functionality may be added to supported notebooks in the future. But ultimately, securing local accounts on notebooks is impossible without hardware tokens.
The guest home directory is handled specially: It will be removed
during every boot process. Up to three instances are kept as
/home/guest.1, /home/guest.2, /home/guest.3
, and older
ones are deleted.
nbctl
.
Run nbctl help
and read the output for more info.On request, a valid root password can be set. Afterwards, we will not provide any support for the device except a complete reinstallation from scratch
Each time a network interface is started, an automated check for available updates is performed in the background. If any are found, the user is presented with a pop-up window allowing to either perform all updates, exclude certain packages from being updated, or not to perform any updates at this time. Usually, all updates should be applied as soon as possible. Certain critical packages will have the "exclude" box checked by default although even kernel and glibc updates should work without problems and have been tested successfully. Unless you're at the other end of the world and critically depend on your notebook before you can get to our support again, please uncheck all of them and click ok.
A local firewall is now set up. It should not cause any problems, and obviously should be kept running at all times.
nbctl sync
can be run to trigger this manually.
nbctl yum
(or you
, for
backward compatibility)
can be run to only update SL the packages, without running the
DESY synchronization (for example, known accounts and software in
/opt/products).
During your first login, you'll receive a warning that xscreensaver is not available. This is intentional (and the warning is hard to get rid of), so just check the "don't bother me again" box.
To add a battery monitor icon to the panel, right-click the panel, select "Add to Panel", and choose "Battery Charge Monitor". See below for more information about power management.
~/.xlockrc
. If you forgot the
password or want to change it, just delete this file.
It is of course still possible for anyone having physical access to your notebook to crash your X server and log in under any account. But your sessions to remote systems will not be accessible.
nbctl software
will allow you to install additional
SL packages from either our installation server or FNAL.
Check the nbctl
documentation for details.
The default layout after installation is U.S. English,
and the right If the system has a german keyboard, and
it was forgotten after installation, any user can change the layout
to German (latin1 w/ no deadkeys)
with the command
By default, an external mouse will not disable the
touchpad, but see the next item.
Models with a Synaptics touchpad (sadly, only the X300, X1, C400 and older
C-Series) now have an enhanced driver enabling some nifty
features:
On the X1, single taps are currently recognized as two finger taps.
As a workaround, two finger taps have been remapped to left clicks,
and three finger taps to middle clicks. For right clicks, the
touchpad button must be used. Corner taps do not work as well as
they do on the X300 and C400.
Only tapping to emulate a left-click is generally supported on all
models.
Using the enhanced driver on models with ALPS touchpad (C840,
all D-Series) requires the patched kernel.
Even then, it does not work quite as well as a Synaptics pad,
and the results are somehwat model specific:
There is no backup for any
filesystem on the notebook.
Please keep in mind that
disks do break, and that they break much sooner if
used for tasks a
notebook is not designed for, like data taking or large scale
data analysis.
There's a partition mountable under
Don't forget to unmount the device before you unplug the stick,
or you will damage the filesystem on it.
The interface can be started with the command
The wired LAN interface is configured for dynamic dhcp by default,
but any local user has full control over the device and its
configuration. The default configuration can be restored with
the command
WLAN is
only supported with a Linux compatible device. These include the
Dell TrueMobile 1150 (PrismII chip), and the Intel pro Wireless
2100/2200. All notebooks purchased by DESY with Linux in mind
have such a card fitted. Notice there are notebooks that were
deliberately bought with an incompatible card.
There's a
Check the
The first start of the AFS client on a newly installed notebook may
take a minute or two for the cache initialization. Subsequent starts
will be faster.
Time is generally a problem on dual boot
systems because MS Windows
is not capable
of calculating the current local time from a system clock set to GMT.
Instead, Windows needs to have the CMOS clock set to local time and
will, twice a
year, shift it forth or back by an hour. Of course Linux has no chance
of knowing
whether that already happened.
The only workaround for dual boot systems is: After the change to
daylight saving
time or back, you must boot Windows first. Automatic drift
rate calculation by Linux has been turned off to minimize the effect
of failure to do so.
As a very last resort only,
run
By
default, all network printers in Zeuthen and most of those in Hamburg
are known to LPRng. You may configure additional printers to use in
the file
It is now also possible for a local user to start, stop, and configure
the cups printing system and then use commands like
There are some model specifics as well:
For up to ten minutes, changes will NOT be written to
disk, but kept in memory only. You can however force
this by executing the command
In addition, the hard disk spindown timeout is set to
a very short time, and the internal hard disk power
management is set to "aggressive", if possible (models
with PATA drive only, until support for this is added
to the SATA driver in the kernel).
All eligible filesystems are remounted with
the "noatime" option, disabling access time updates,
because access time updates - which happen for every
read access - are writes.
To make these measures effective, also the syslog
configuration is generally modified to prevent syncing after
every logged message.
What users can do to save battery power:
With these measures in place, all our "normal" notebooks should work on battery
for more than four hours (at low display brightness and CPU usage).
The extremely small and light models X300 and X1 should still exceed 2.5 hours.
Alt
key acts as a Compose key:
To enter
the character ä, press Alt
, then
"
,
then a
.
system-config-keyboard
(of course you'll have to type szstem/config/kezboard
,
though).
This GUI application is also available from the GNOME menu ("System
settings" -> "Keyboard").
ctrl-alt-F2
and back with alt-F7
.
tp off
and
enabled again with tp
. Check the
nbctl
documentation for details.
synclient
man page.
Users may eventually find settings that work better by experimenting
with synclient
. Just run synclient -l to see
the current settings, and commands like
synclient TopEdge=150 to change them.
/usr1/scratch
directory available, like
on any SL3 host in Zeuthen.
/windows/D
that can be read and written from both operating systems. The drive
letter under windows may actually be E or anything else.
lan
, stopped
with the command lan stop
, and checked with
lan status
. Check the nbctl
documentation by running nbctl help
for details and additional options.
nbctl restore netconfig
. This is
not an invitation to play with the settings. Only touch
the configuration if you absolutely have to.
wlan
command with the same semantics as
lan
. In addition to start/stop/status, there are
options available for setting the ESSID and WEP key, if necessary,
and some more:
wlan essid ESSID
Sets the (extended) SSID if it's not broadcasted. The value
is supplied by whoever runs the network you want to use.
wlan key KEY
Sets the WEP key if one is needed to access the network.
Again, the value is supplied by whoever runs the network you want
to use. Keys may be supplied as ASCII strings, or, more commonly,
as hexadecimal numbers. In the latter case, you have to prefix
them with 0x
(that's zero-x) when feeding them to
wlan. Only WEP is supported, more advanced encryption methods
like EAP, WPA etc. are not.
wlan desy
Sets KEY and ESSID to the right values for the DESY internal
network (for registered and supported/trusted devices).
wlan reset
Sets KEY and ESSID to the default empty values (automatic
ESSID detection with no encryption) typical for guest networks.
nbctl
documentation for details.
afs {start|stop|status}
. You can obtain a token
with the command kinit
. Check the nbctl
documentation for details. Remember that your credentials are valid
for about 25 hours. If a notebook is passed on to another user within
this time, the token may be used to access your files in AFS.
To prevent this, use the command kdestroy
to delete
your Kerberos5 tickets and AFS tokens.
nbctl
provides support for using and
configuring these, and it should no longer interfere
with the operation of LAN and WLAN. Check the nbctl
documentation for details.
nbctl setclock
to start the configuration
program for time and timezone.
Please make sure you know what you're doing and understand the
interaction with
windows.
/opt/products/bin/lpr
etc. precede the SL
default ones from cups in the PATH.
~/.printcap
with the following format:
myprinter| What a nice printer
:rp=myprinter
:rm=printsrv1.desy.de
and then use lpr -Pmyprinter
. If a site has no
restrictions to using their print servers, you can also use
commands like lpr -Psomeprinter@someprintserver.some.domain
,
without having to configure this printer before.
lpr.cups
. This makes it possible to use locally
attached printers. Note that we cannot give any support for things
like locally attached inkjet printers.
and rerun the beamer's automatic adjustment.
You should (re)start your presentation application after
changing the resolution.
Screen Size and Rotate
utility from the KDE menu "System Tools" or choose
Screen Resolution
from GNOME's "Preferences" menu)
Fn-F8
key combo does not work with the current
version of the i810 driver. Instead, use the command
[nbctl] beamer [{on|off}]
which invokes a software
switching on and off the VGA output in addition to the LCD panel.
Fn-F8
key combo allows switching between
the LCD panel and the VGA output. To have both active simultaneously,
use the command
[nbctl] beamer [{on|off}]
.
Fn-F8
key combo does not work. The VGA output
is always active by default, but can be toggled with the command
[nbctl] beamer [{on|off}]
.The signal is hard to digest at
least for some beamers.
Fn-F8
key combo does not work.
With the patched kernel, it does work but still should not be used.
Instead, use the command
[nbctl] beamer [{on|off}]
.
[nbctl] beamer [{on|off}]
. The native
display resolution (1280x768) is not available on the external port.
Hence the resolution should be changed to 1024x768 for presentations.
This is no loss of functionality, since presentation applications
typically only use a 4:3 format anyway. It is recommended to disable
display stretching in the BIOS, which makes the X1 very suitable for
presentations.
xset dpms force off
.
These measures are not available on the X300 if a stock kernel is running,
due to broken
ACPI tables (no battery/AC adapter events). Hard disk power
management is not available on the D610 yet (SATA disk).
This prevents CPU/disk-intensive background
tasks from being performed, like prelinking, or updating
the whatis and locate databases.
The services are restarted as soon as an AC
adapter is plugged in.
This will tune the virtual memory subsystem to
minimize disk accesses: Readahead is increased, and
write accesses will be clustered as much as possible.
sync
anytime you like.
It is possible to install the matching kernel-module-openafs-`uname -r`
package manually with yumex (nbctl software
) though.
Missing openafs kernel modules are installed automatically when the
notebook is synced in the internal network the next time.
lan
to stop all interfaces and start eth0
nbctl restore netconfig
if in doubt, then restart it
wlan reset
or wlan desy
or whatever
is appropriate, then restart; reboot if desperate (the WLAN chip
sometimes gets hooked on the wrong ESSID in environments where
more than one of them works)
nbctl setclock
date
command
nbctl sync
, unless this part has already been run
during automatic updating after starting the network interface
uname -r
) and provides
Using such a patched kernel has the disadvantage that it will have to be recreated with every kernel update. This may be impossible to do timely, or with all features (previous patches will not necessarily work with the latest kernel release). In addition, such kernels will only be available from the Zeuthen repository.
Installing and using the stock kernel will not break the notebook since the additional features are all autodetected, but functionality will be reduced. On the other hand, even after a new vanilla kernel was installed, the old enhanced one will still be available to boot by simply choosing from the boot screen. However, kernel updates are usually due to security reasons, and users are advised to use the latest kernel at least when the notebook is attached to any network. A new release of the enhanced notebook kernel will then be offered as an update as soon as it has been built.