Installing Fedora Core 3 on a ThinkPad T41

Updated: 4/4/05

In March, 2005, I acquired a ThinkPad T41 2373-JU9. Here are the hardware specs:

• Pentium M 1.6GHz
• 512MB RAM
• 60GB 7200rpm HDD
• 14.1 SXGA+ (1400X1050) TFT LCD
• 32MB ATI Radeon 9000
• 16x10x24x/8x CD-RW/DVD
• Intel 802.11b wireless (MPCI)
• Bluetooth/Modem (CDC)
• 1GB Ethernet (LOM)
• UltraNav

Fresh out of the box, this machine would have had Windows XP Pro installed. I got this machine used, however, with XP blown away and replaced with Gentoo Linux. My preference is for a dual boot machine, but the Predesktop Area (a portion of the hard disk, protected by the BIOS, with recovery disk images) was corrupted, and I didn't have copies of the recovery CDs. I settled for installing Fedora Core 3 first, leaving some room on the hard drive for a Windows XP install when I get the recovery CDs.

Below is a step-by-step description of the install process.

1. Turn off the Predesktop Area in the BIOS.

This takes up a little over 3GB, and why waste the space? I'm going to have the Windows recovery CDs anyways, so I don't need a backup copy on the hard drive itself.

Enter the BIOS, then go to Security/IBM Predesktop Area/Access IBM Predesktop Area and select "disable". This will make that portion of the hard drive visible to the Fedora installer and allow you to format and partition that space.

2. Run the Fedora installer.

During the install, you will be asked to partition your hard drive. My drive is 60GB. I set up the follow partitions for Fedora, all of them primary.

/ 25 GB
/home 15 GB
swap 1 GB

I left the rest (c. 18GB) unpartitioned space for a later Windows XP install.

When selecting packages, I did an "everything" install, and the rest of this documentation assumes that.

3. Post install configuration.

Rebooting after the installer finishes, you'll go through a set of configuration screens. Note: If, after any reboot, kudzu (Fedora's hardware detection app) reports that it found the Intel 2100 wireless card, choose "Do Nothing". We'll configure it later.

For your monitor, choose Generic LCD screen 1400x1050. Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf later to specify what resolution you want to run at. I currently run at 1152x864 because of the small (14.1") screen.

After the first-boot configuration is done, I set the initlevel to 3 so i can log in from the console, and then set KDE to be my default GUI. Then I customized KDE to my liking, changing stuff like the number of desktops, window behavior, etc.

Now it's time to turn off unneeded services. Run system-config-services as root. I have the following services turned on in runlevel 3:

chkconfig —list | grep "3:on" | sort | awk '{print $1}'

acpid
anacron
atd
autofs
cpuspeed
crond
cups
cups-config-daemon
gpm
haldaemon
iiim
iptables
kudzu
lm_sensors
messagebus
named
network
portmap
rhnsd
smartd
sshd
syslog
sysstat
xfs
xinetd

For runlevel 5, I also have:

readahead
readahead_early

4. Run up2date.

We're late in the FC3 game, and the update list has gotten rather extensive (418 packages, about 1.2GB, when I last ran it on a fresh FC3 install), so I saved the RPMs and burned them to CDs in case I have to do the install again. I was always disappointed in the burner speed of my last laptop, a Toshiba M35, but the CD burner on the Thinkpad goes much faster (about 12x).

5. Install wireless networking drivers.

Go to ipw2100.sourceforge.net to download the driver sourcecode and firmware. I installed version 1.0.5. Follow the instructions to install the module, then install the firmware files in /lib/firmware. Reboot. Kudzu should detect the device, click to configure.

I had to sweat a little to get this working for me. This was mainly due, I think, to mistakenly trying to set the WEP key before specifying the access point (duh). I can't remember if I would have had problems had I done the right thing in the first place, but at some point a reboot seemed to help, so why not reboot after installing the drivers just to be sure?

6. Configure ACPI.

I turned off APM, and I'm using ACPI. Most of IBM function keys worked right from the start, including the volume controls, screen brightness, and (seemingly) the bluetooth toggle (F5). I don't need the machine to suspend to disk (and, from what I've seen, you need a special FAT32 partition to enable that feature), but I did want to be able to suspend to RAM, either by hitting F4 or by closing the lid. I found a handy set of instructions here, and downloaded a package of scripts that I dropped into /etc/acpi.

From what i understand, you must have at least the 2.6.10 kernel with the ibm_acpi module loaded. This was already the case for me. You will also need to enable the IBM hotkeys at boot; see the section on editing rc.local below.

If you use a USB mouse, you might find that USB is disabled after waking up. Also, the clock is likely to be wrong. To fix these problems, I put the following commands in a bash script called 'wakeupfix':

#!/bin/sh

# restart usb
sudo /sbin/rmmod uhci_hcd
sudo /sbin/rmmod ehci_hcd
sudo /sbin/modprobe uhci_hcd
sudo /sbin/modprobe ehci_hcd

# reset clock
sudo rdate -s ntp0.cornell.edu

If I'm on the same wireless network when I wake up, I experience few problems. Evolution is the exception — it has problems connecting to my IMAP servers, but it will usually eventually re-establish the connections. Also, if you need to connect to a new network, run these commands first as root:

/sbin/rmmod ipw2100
/sbin/modprobe ipw2100

7. Configure startup options.

I need to set up an annoying number (> 0) of things in my startup script, /etc/rc.d/rc.local. Here's what I added:

# enable ibm hotkeys
echo enable > /proc/acpi/ibm/hotkey
echo 0xffff > /proc/acpi/ibm/hotkey

# keep my dsl router from dropping idle connections
echo 900 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_keepalive_time

# make sure the pc speaker is working
/sbin/modprobe pcspkr

The last item fixes a rather odd problem where sound is very faint, even with all volume controls turned up to maximum.

8. Install extras.

Based on Mauriat Miranda's FC3 install guide, I did the following:

• Install XMMS's MP3 plugin
• Install Flash plugin
• Install Java
• Install MS TT fonts
• Install Realplayer

For additional video capabilities, I also installed MPlayer.

Conclusion.

At this point, almost everything I need to work is working. I haven't tried to do anything with BlueTooth yet, so I can't comment on that.