RedHat Linux 9.0 on an HP pavilion ze5470us

The ze5470us is a very nice laptop loaded with lots of features. For the money you get the most features. I have had problems with the built-in wireless accessing my linksys 802.11b wireless router under XP.

System Specs

Intel Pentium 4 2.66 GHz

ATI mobility radeon IGP 340M 64 MB shared memory

15” XGA TFT (1024x768)

512 MB (Can expand to 1GB) 2x256

80 GB Hard Drive

Built in 10/100 Ethernet (NSC DP83815—MacPhyter)

Built in wireless 802.11g (Drivers available from http://www.linuxant.com )

Ali M5457 AC-Link Modem (Conexant)

3-USB 2.0 ports

IEEE-1394

DVD+RW/R, CDRW Combo drive

Preloaded with WindowsXP

What you need

RedHat 9 Installation CDs

Latest Kernel and Kernel Source from RedHat (I have not tried the development kernels)

Current release at time of writing 2.4.20-20.9

ACPI Patch (acpi-20021212-2.4.20.diff.gz) – http://acpi.sourceforge.net/

ACPI Daemon -- http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshrpms/redhat/9/acpid/

Partition tool if you wish to keep original XP partition—I used Partition Commander Ver 8, It worked great, it handles reiserfs as well as ext2 and ext3. Feature rich product.

HSF (softmodem) driver for modem— http://www.linuxant.com/drivers Download the Source RPM

Broadcom Drivers -- http://www.linuxant.com/drivers_bcmwl/ Download the Generic packages with source RPM (will also need windows .inf and .sys driver files)

Xfree ATI drivers (These are from ATI and are part of the rawhide release) --ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris/radeon-igp

How to Install

Adjust the Partition using the partition tool.

Boot the first installation cd and at the boot prompt enter: linux nofirewire . Failure to do this will cause the system to hang. Choose your language, disk partition to install to and software packages you suits your needs. I took the defaults for Xconfig (VESA driver) and selected a generic laptop display 1024x768. After you install you can place the new ATI drivers on your system (currently only 2D acceleration).

Important: Select the (Kernel) Development Tools to install. You will need the automake functions and the compilers to rebuild the kernel. You will also need rpmbuild if you wish to build binary rpm from source rpm files (i.e. the modem driver)

After installation of the packages, the computer will reboot. If you are fast enough you can press the “I” key to enter the Interactive startup. Otherwise it will lockup and you will have to cycle power. Accept the default of y for everything EXCEPT kudzu, firewire and pcmcia. Kudzu will crash every startup and pcmcia will crash if you try to stop it, until ACPI is properly configured.

I was not able to hit it fast enough no mater what I tried, so at the grub boot loader screen I pressed “a” to modify the boot string prior to booting. Add nofirewire single to the end of the boot string. This will start the system and place you at a system prompt.

Edit the /etc/grub.conf :

Add nofirewire to the end of linux boot string

kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-8 ro root=LABEL=/ hdc=ide-scsi nofirewire

Disable the services kudzu and pcmcia for now so you do not need to interact with the start everytime you reboot. To do this simply run:

chkconfig --level 3 kudzu off

Do the same thing for pcmcia and also for level 5.

Reboot your system and at this point you should be able to boot with out any user-actions.

Configure ACPI/ recompile kernel

As root, install/upgrade new kernel 2.4.20-20.9 and the kernel source. I prefer upgrading the kernel. rpm –Uvh kernel-2.4.20-20.9.i686.rpm kernel-source-2.4.20-20.9.i386.rpm.

If you want, you can reboot now with the new kernel.

Apply the acpi kernel patch:

Cd to /usr/src/linux2.4

gunzip –c <path to acpi-patch>/acpi-<version>.diff.gz | patch –p1

There is a bug in the patch that requires you to add a line to one of the source files.

Edit /usr/src/linux-2.4/arch/i386/kernel/io_apic.c and add

#include <linux/acpi.h> .

Now you will need to configure the kernel. Run make clean; make mrproper; make xconfig. When the computer finishes cleaning, a gui menu appears. Now use the button “Load configuration from File” and type /boot/config-2.4.20-20.9.

Under the processor type and features button: change the processor family to Pentium-4. Select n for Toshiba and Dell Laptop support. Make sure Local APIC support on uniprocessors is set to n. Return to Main Menu.

Under the General setup button, scroll to the bottom and select the ACPI Support button. Select y for everything except Toshiba Laptop Extras. If you do not care about seeing the acpi message then do not turn on Debug statements. Return to Main Menu.

Since I keep my XP partition which is ntfs I also turned on support for it, by going to the Files systems button and scrolling down and selecting m for NTFS file system support (read only). It did not enable write support. Return to the Main Menu.

There are other things that you can turn on or off to reduce the size of the kernel and eliminate thing you will never use. I didn’t care so I left everything else default. Now Save and Exit. For clarity I modified the Makefile and changed the EXTRAVERSION = to read -20.9-acpi by default it is -20.9custom. Now at the shell prompt type: make dep; make bzImage; make modules; make modules_install; make install

Now get a cup of coffee or whatever you like cause this is going to take a while.

When it is done validate that the new ACPI kernel has been created and has been added to grub.conf. Do an ls on /boot should see new kernel and image. Edit /etc/grub.conf and validate the new entry and remove the nofirewire parameter only from the acpi entry. If you want this new kernel to be you default then change the default setting.

Install the acpid daemon software.

Reboot and load the new kernel. At this point you can re-enable kudzu and pcmcia:

ckhconfig --level 3 kudzu on. Do the same thing for pcmcia and level 5.

Now after reboot things should work right.

I have patched my system and have switched to use Ximian Desktop. Gnome has a Multimedia keys daemon that allows you to configure some of the multimedia (one-touch keys) I was able to assign the Mail, Internet and Up/Down Volume buttons.

Install updated video driver

Download the ati_drv.o and radeon_drv.o drivers from the site listed above and overwrite the existing drivers in /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers. Edit the /etc/X11/XF86Config file and change the driver from Driver “vesa” to Driver “radeon”. Restart the X server and the new drivers should work. ---- Much faster than vesa driver. I have configured my CloneMode successfully and I use the PanelOff option to turn of the laptop screen and this allows me to drive a higher resolution while hooked up to a external monitor.

Install Modem driver

Download source RPM modem driver and run rpmbuild --rebuild <path to src rpm>/hsflinmidem<version>.src.rpm . Install the newly created driver and follow the directions. You should now have a modem that works. (Free driver is only 14.4k but can be upgraded to full version for about $15)

Install Broadcom 802.11g support driver

Download the source RPM driver and unzip the file and then run rpm –ivh bcmwl5driverloader-<version>-i386.rpm. After installation connect the config screen http://localhost:18020/ . The screen should show that no devices are detected and that no windows driver has been uploaded. Click on the upload windows driver button and browse for the .inf and .sys driver files (bcmwl5.inf & bcmwl5.sys). The linuxant web site has a link to the latest support pack from HP which will need to be extracted or you can use the files found under the windows\inf directory on your duel boot – windows mounted partition. You will also need to acquire a license(currently on a 30 day eval is available).

That’s it! I hope this was helpful.

Things, I’ve not checked yet.

TV Out -- Don’t think this is supported yet

Firewire (System sees and has configured it but I do not have any firewire based devices---yet)