Installing Debian on a ThinkPad G41

IBM does not provide the rescue/recovery CD set with this model so I suggest before anything else that you immediately boot into Windows and create the set. You could always order one from IBM and pay $45. The set from IBM consists of a "Rescue and Recovery" CD plus 6 "Product Recovery" CD's which contain the actual image that gets written to the hard drive. As mentioned in other places the default drive image contains two VFAT partitions: one large Windows XP partition and one smaller recovery partition. After creating the recovery CD set I recommend going into the BIOS and setting the "IBM Predesktop Area" in the BIOS under "Security" to "Disabled" so that it can be removed. It is pretty much useless.

Disk Preparation and Partitioning

If you want to keep the Windows XP partition you should seriously consider whether you want it to be VFAT or NTFS, because on the very first bootup of the system it will automatically run a command to convert from VFAT to NTFS. I recommend disabling the automatic conversion as per instructions here, i.e.:

boot into Knoppix, mount the XP partition, and move the following files:

• windows/system32/convert.exe

# mv /target/windows/system32/convert.exe /target/windows/system32/convert_.ex_

• windows/system32/autoconv.exe

# mv /target/windows/system32/autoconv.exe /target/windows/system32/autoconv_.ex_

• i386/convert.exe

# mv /target/i386/convert.exe /target/i386/convert_.ex_

• i386/autoconv.exe

# mv /target/i386/autoconv.exe /target/i386/autoconv_.ex_

Next, I ran the QTparted graphical disk partitioning tool to alter the partition layout of the drive. I deleted the recovery partition (partition 2) and shrunk the XP partiion to 8 GB. QTParted will correctly resize the XP partition regardless of whether it is VFAT or NTFS. Finally, I created a 2300 MB swap partition as the second partition and used the remainder of the disk (partition 3) as one large XFS filesystem for Linux. The reason I chose the high value for the swap partition size was so that it can accomodate suspend to disk, which requires a swap partition larger than the amount of installed RAM.

After this I installed Debian using an official i386 Debian minimal bootable CD netinst image obtained from http://www.us.debian.org/CD/netinst/

When the CD booted I pressed the F3 key which gave instructions to type "expert26" at the boot prompt in order to install in expert mode using a more recent 2.6 Linux kernel. I accepted the defaults for all questions except that when it asked about partitioning the disk I chose the option to "manually edit the partition table". This is because I already partitioned the disk with QTParted above and created the swap and XFS filesystems I plan to use. So in the manual partition setup section I simply told it to use hda2 as swap and to use hda3 as xfs, assign the mount point "/" to it, and to format the filesystem. Once this is done the rest is simple. When it asked about making Linux bootable directly from the hard disk, it is important to NOT chose the Grub boot loader since the version included with the installer has a serious problem dealing with XFS filesystems. Choose Lilo instead and everything will be fine.

After the first reboot during the install it asks to set up apt sources. I chose to use http and selected a local mirror in my country. It then asked if I want to choose packages to install and I said no. My philosophy is to install Debian with the minimal amount of stuff, get it working, and then later on install any other applications I want. Also, if you plan on dist-upgrading from stable to testing or Sid then it is easier to do with only a minimal installation.

Installing a few important packages

Here are a few important packages that it is good to install right away:

# apt-get install less vim

# apt-get remove --purge nvi

vim is a much better than nvi. Less is much better than more which is installed by default.

The next thing I did is immediately build my own kernel. This involved installing:

# apt-get install ncftp build-essential bin86 libncurses-dev bzip2

I then used ncftp to retreive linux-2.6.12.tar.bz2 from ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6

  cd /usr/src
  ncftp
        open ftp.kernel.org
        cd pub/linux/kernel/v2.6
        get linux-2.6.12.tar.bz2
        bye

   tar -xjf linux-2.6.12.tar.bz2
   ln -s linux-2.6.12 linux
   cd linux
   make menuconfig

There are a few important things in the kernel config to be aware of.

• Since this Pentium 4 chip supports hyperthreading, you should enable symetric multiprocessing support and set the max number of CPUs to 2
• under ATA support be sure to select Intel PIIXn chipsets support
• under Networking, in the Ethernet (1000 Mbit) section, select Broadcom Tigon3 support
• enable /dev/agpgart (AGP Support)
• You must enable Direct Rendering Manager support (without selecting any of the driver modules, since we will build our own later)
• In the Graphics section select VESA VGA graphics support but DO NOT select nVidia Framebuffer Support as it interferes with the nvidia DRM driver we will install below
• Make sure you enable XFS filesystem support if you are using XFS
• for sound, in the Sound section under Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA), PCI section, select the Intel ICH4 driver

  # cp .config ../dot-config-2.6.12 #good to save a copy

  # make

  # make modules_install

  # cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12

  # cp System.map /boot/System.map-2.6.12

  # vi /etc/lilo.conf

  #stanza for image from lilo.conf image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12 label=2.6.12 read-only

  # lilo

  Setting up graphics

  First, it is necessary to install the minimal essential components necessary to get the graphical environment working:

  # apt-get install x-window-system-core

  Then you need to set up the nvidia driver. The easiest way to do this is with the module-assistant utility:

    apt-get install module-assistant
    m-a prepare
    m-a a-i nvidia
    apt-get install nvidia-glx nvidia-settings
    echo nvidia >> /etc/modules
    modprobe nvidia
    dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86  
    #if you are using Sid, then use dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
  

  At this point you should be able to start X from the command line with the startx command. But there it will not look very appealing. Install a window manager/desktop environment, e.g.,

    apt-get install openbox fbpanel
  

  and then have these invoked when you run start X by creating a .xsession file in your home directory:

    #!/bin/sh
    # ~/.xsession: stuff to do when starting X
    #
    xsetroot -solid DarkSlateGrey  #set the background
    xset m 4 1  # increase the mouse sensitivity a bit, good for Trackpoints
    fbpanel &  #run fbpanel
    exec openbox  # run openbox, our window manager
  

  Setting up the Wireless driver

  lspci listing should show the Atheros Communications 802.11abg adapter. This is how to get it working using the madwifi driver:

  # apt-get install cvs

  # cd /usr/local/src

  # cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/madwifi co madwifi

  # cd madwifi

  # make && make install

  # modprobe ath_pci

  # apt-get install wireless-tools (you will need these to configure the interface)

  # apt-get install dhcp3-client (dhcp client for use with wireless access points)

  See /usr/local/src/madwifi/README for useful information about the configuring the interface.

  # iwlist ath0 scan (scan for available access points (APs))

  Write down a list of the strongest APs, including essid and hexadecimal hardware address

  # /sbin/ifconfig ath0 up

  # iwconfig ath0 mode 0 (mode: 1 = 11a 2 = 11b 3 = 11g 0 = autoselect)

  # iwconfig ath0 essid "foo" (use AP with essid "foo")

  # iwconfig ath0 ap 01:23:45:67:89:AB (associate with hw address of AP "foo")

  # dhclient3 ath0