Review by Neil Williams.
The views expressed in this review are those of the author and not
necessarily those of the GLUG.
| Hardware | Availability |
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Installed on: Advent 5372 laptop Intel Celeron 700MHz (Pentium Pro 744.36MHz) PCI ISA IDE bus 8 + 8kb internal cache, 128kb external cache 120MB RAM 1.44MB Floppy drive 6Gb hard disc SiS 630 SVGA 8Mb color video adapter 13.3" TFT screen SiS 630 upto 32MB video ram on demand 16 bit Soundblaster Pro compatible DVD-ROM 56k internal fax modem SiS7013 Internal 10/100 Mbit Ethernet LAN card SiS 630 Sis v3 VESA Windows ME installed at purchase. |
LinuxFormat magazine cover DVD, issue 22, Christmas 2001. Free. (apart from the 3 CD-R's required to copy the images onto.) |
All went fine with the graphical installer until X was considered. The usual selection of Generic Laptop Display Panel 1024x768 didn't appear, and unprobed monitor failed to operate. The usual problem (see previous reviews of this laptop with Mandrake) of a useless screen display and a crashed system. Nothing would get the attention of the system, Ctrl-Alt-Backspace, Ctrl-Alt-del, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-X etc. When I realised that even the CapsLock wasn't engaging, I gave up and attempted to power off. The normal power button failed to shut off power, so I had to remove the mains lead (never try an install on battery power!!) AND flip the battery partially out of the housing. Nasty. So this time I went for a text mode install - that way at least I can skip X configuration until AFTER the install routine has finished and I've had a chance to edit /etc/lilo.conf to set the correct vga=791 mode. No touchpad in this mode. Use tab and space to control text buttons.
Language selection was OK but keyboard defaults to USA. In graphical mode there was a nice test box to check that £ and # work properly. Choose uk from list. Left to the default mouse setting: 3 button mouse with no emulation. RedHat selected Install for Laptop by default.Auto-partitioning allowed easy installation over the existing Linux partition and automatically chose ext3. Interestingly, it also chose a separate partition of 47Mb for /boot.
Changed boot loader to LILO and label for DOS/Windows partition to Windows. I didn't enter anything under Boot loader config. I also couldn't figure out how to change to Windows default boot. I did that later by editing /etc/lilo.conf. DHCP set to off, manually entered the IP and installer created the auto settings for netmask, network, broadcast, gateway and DNS. (Changed the gateway to suit the LAN.) (Changed primary nameserver to this machine's IP.) With all that cleared out of the way, I just had to enter the hostname and workgroup.
I had setup a firewall on a previous install but wanted to try it without.(The previous firewall used ipchains and you'll get an insmod error if you try to use iptables. This confused me as Mandrake 8.1 uses a similar kernel but has changed to iptables:
Linux version 2.4.8-26 (Mandrake)
Linux version 2.4.7-10 (RedHat)
In text-mode package install, you need to know a little about the packages before you select / de-select them as the text install doesn't display the package description information. Alternatively, use rpm -i as root once the rest of the system is installed to add the extra packages you need.
RedHat correctly identified the video card and the memory (8Mb despite what I might have entered on other Mandrake reviews!! Sorry!) BUT on this laptop, it's essential to SKIP X CONFIGURATION! Leave this until AFTER lilo.conf is edited. RedHat completed the post-install config. and installed the bootloader. Rebooted automatically into runlevel 3 - console mode.
/etc/lilo.conf amended to: password=mypassword optional prompt timeout=50 default=windows vga=791 boot=/dev/hda map=/boot/map install=/boot/boot.b message=/boot/message linear image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.7-10 label=linux initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.7-10.img read-only restricted root=/dev/hda3 other=/dev/hda1 label=Windows restricted
Make sure you use chmod 600 /etc/lilo.conf if you use password.
Make sure you run lilo NOW! or your system will not restart when you reboot.
Now reboot so that the vga setting can be activated.
In Xconfigurator, enter these settings to get the Advent working:
Welcome: OK PCI probing: should find SiS630, XF86_SVGA and XFree4 default driver. OK Monitor: Generic Laptop Display Panel 1024x768 Video Memory: 8Mb Clockchip: None. (default) Choose 16bit 1024x768 (using tab to get into the 16bit section and space to select 1024x768) Test. OK.
Test worked, but left me in X again and nothing worked!!! even CapsLock! At least the power button worked (it didn't with the graphical install.)
The laptop restarted without incident. A file system integrity check was offered but the journal recovery was OK without it. I logged in OK, copied an mp3 files across the network and it played from Nautilus first time. (Playback stops as soon as you move the cursor away.) Overall, providing you use text-mode and are prepared for one glitch after testing X, it worked very well.
The internal modem is a LINmodem - it can operate under Linux. I've just got the driver and with a little care (and installing the kernel-source RPM) it worked first time! The driver is available from ftp://ftp.smlink.com/Update/linux/unsupported/ - use the latest driver and read the README carefully.
Neil Williams