IBM R50 - Heads Up!

[Guest sirtaldon]

I ordered an IBM R50 a few days ago. I will be using it for both personal and business use. I chose it because I wanted solid hardware, great battery life, good service, and reasonably good performance along with Linux compatibility. I particularly like that Mdk9.2 currently should work with all the hardware(NDIS wrapper and other workarounds are not a big deal to me).

 

Specs:

IBM R50 18293HU

1.7Ghz Pentium M ( Centrino)

256mb pc2700 DDR memory -- I will add more when I get it, save some $

40Gb 5400 RPM Hard Drive

ATI mobility Radeon 9000 with 32MB

Intel Pro/Wireless LAN 2100 3B mini PCI Adapter, built in modem

CD-RW/DVD-ROM

15" Display (1400 x 1050)

WinXP -- I will be dual booting

 

While not on the bleeding-edge, this is certainly front-line hardware for a laptop. Therefore, getting it to work right should provide valuable information to the rest of the Linux users here.

 

After searching through these and other forums, I have determined that I may be better off with Mdk 9.2 at the moment. Numerous issues with 10.0CE have me wondering if I should wait for 10.0 Official or even 10.1. Any thoughts?

 

Since I will have to dual boot, I was wondering about what some of you would recommend for the partition sizes given my HDD is 40GB. How much should I leave for XP? I will have to use XP at times since some of my programs do not run on Linux. After reading how some others partitioned their laptop drives, I am wondering what would the best method be? If I give XP 20GB, how should the partitions for Linux be created? Should I have separate /,usr,boot,home,var,swap,tmp? What about a fat32 for file sharing between the 2 OS'es? How big should it be and where should it be placed?, between them, at the end of the drive, somewhere else? Any details would be appreciated. Should I get rid of the XP Recovery Parition that IBM hides on the HDD?

 

With the ATI mobility Radeon 9000, do I need to download separate drivers from ATI or will MDK9.2download edition or 10.0CE have them? Will the 3d accelleration work out of the box? Is it harder to do than the Nvidia drivers? The old pc I am on now has Mdk9.2 and an Nvidia Ti 4400. I have installed the nvidia drivers successfully on 3 different machines now, so I am not bashful about working in the XF86Config files anymore.

 

I should get the laptop sometime in the next few weeks(they are building it to order). I will post when it arrives. Hopefully I will be ready to put Mdk on it when it gets here.

 

Thanks.

[energymedia]

Looks like a good laptop to me. I myself have a Compaq Presario 2100 series laptop. Also, like you, I dual boot with XP and am currently using Mandrake 9.2. Also like you, I have a 40Gb HDD. I have it configured as follows:

 

6 partitions

 

/dev/hda1 NTFS 10 Gb

/dev/hda2 NTFS 10 Gb

/dev/hda3 FAT32 5.8 Gb for XP/Linux file passing

/dev/hda5 EXT3 5.8 Gb

/dev/hda7 EXT3 5.0 Gb

Remainder is Swap partition.

 

Also, you ask about the recovery partition. If you have the recovery CD's and/or know what you are doing for rebuilding (just in case) then I would get rid of it. If you are unsure, leave it.

 

As for the ATI card, I believe that 9.2 will discover and configure it for you, but I am sure someone else can confirm this for you.

 

Let me know how it goes.

[Guest sirtaldon]

Thanks for the info, energymedia.

 

/dev/hda1 NTFS 10 Gb

/dev/hda2 NTFS 10 Gb

/dev/hda3 FAT32 5.8 Gb for XP/Linux file passing

/dev/hda5 EXT3 5.8 Gb

/dev/hda7 EXT3 5.0 Gb

Remainder is Swap partition.

 

So, you have your first partition is for XP and is the "C:" drive where Windows resides...

then your second partition is the "D:" drive where you install your programs and keep files...

the third partition being FAT32 is shared, I assume XP sees this as "E:" and you use it to transfer fonts from XP to linux, share mp3 files, etc? anything else? Wow, 5.8GB seems big, do you use much of it?

what are you using the next two partitions for? is the first one /, and the second is home?

 

and lastly, I have seen a lot of posts praising the ReiserFS, but I have only ever used EXT3. Any thoughts about that?

 

Thanks again.

[energymedia]

Your welcome for the info. You hit the configuration right on the money for the partitions. For your question regarding the size of the FAT32 partition, and do I use much of it, the answer is yes. I am a computer consultant for many different clients and I need to have access to many files from both Windows and Linux while out of my office. What I do is copy my working directory off of my servers (Mandrake 9.2 and Windows 2000 in a domain configuration) and place it on the FAT32 drive. This way I can modify files from linux and then be able to access them in Windows (and reverse). It is a system that works quite well for me.

 

Your question about ReiserFS is unfortunately not one I would be able to answer for you, as I too have only used EXT3.

 

Let me know how everything goes when you do recieve the laptop. Good luck!

[arthur]

ReiserFS is the recommended filesystem for PCs, I don't know why Mandrake has Ext3 by default.

 

ReiserFS 4 is supposedly four times faster than NTFS. B) I can't wait for it B)

[Guest sirtaldon]

Thanks, arthur.

Further research I have done does make ReiserFS 4 look very good, but since it deosn't seem to be in the Mdk10 yet, or even in the 2.6.x kernel yet, I think I will go ahead with Ext3. From what I have read, work on Ext3 is still moving ahead, and it is a bit more stable and easier to recover from sudden crashes like power failures. Mandrake seems to have made it default because of this. Once ReiserFS 4 is available, I will likey switch to it on my laptop for the increased speed and improvements it will offer.

 

...I just received an email from IBM saying that my order has shipped and I should have it no later than this coming Monday(possibly sooner-UPS-heh)! :D

 

I also saw a sale on certain memory at www.shop.kingston.com (Kingston Memory). I picked up a SODIMM of pc2700 made for my R50 for $295.00. No tax and free shipping! And it is a 1GB module. :) When I was configuring the notebook on the IBM site, a 1GB module was $940.00! KA-CHING!

The only caveat is that the memory won't be available for shipment until approx 3/20/2004. So I will have to make due with the default 256MB it comes with for now. Still, that $295 is about $100-$200 lower than any other price I found on the net, and Kingston has a great rep(IBM uses a lot of their memory)

 

NEW QUESTION: Should I make many separate partitions for my linux? or just / and home and swap? Anyone want to chime-in on what they think would be the best setup? My home pc is not a dual-boot, but I did make /, usr, var, home, swap, tmp partitions at install time. I had read that this can be helpful for security and maintenance on server installs and can help with performance(not sure if that is true). I know at the minimum I should separate / and home , and possibly usr, but I don't really see much info as to why one way or another...anyone?...anyone?...Bueller?...

[arthur]

/var stores files a server normally shares, /usr stores your programs (OpenOffice, etc). Servers use /var and /tmp a lot, and it makes sense to make it more secure by separating them. Are you going to use your laptop as a server? :o

 

I have 4 partitions, /, /home, /usr and swap. I also have 1Gb FAT32 for sharing with Windows.

 

I put /usr on a separate partition just because it's neater and easier to see how much disk space my programs are using. I don't have very much. :( Makes it easier to delete programs without destroying my install.

 

The "server" layout has /var and /tmp on separate partitions, but is your laptop running as a server? I recommend *my* setup of course :)

[coverup]

I own T41, dualboot XP+MDK9.2. My partitions are:

 

Windows XP - NTFS, 11Gb (77% full, only software!)

FAT32 (vfat) partition, 1.7GB, to exchange files between XP and Linux (10% full, I keep my stuff on /home),

The rest are Linux ext3 partitions,

/ 2.4GB (17% full)

/usr 4.8GB (74% full)

/usr/local 2.9Gb (42.3% full)

/home 9.6Gb

/var 1 Gb (22.8% full)

/swap 512Mb

 

As you may know, MDK puts all software on /usr. I put non-MDK stuff on the separate partition /usr/local, in case I have to reinstall the system. I created /var as a separate partition, only to make diskdrake happy. Some suggest that for Hibernate to work, you will need to create a separate FAT16 partition roughly of the size of your RAM. I never tried that.

 

My experience can be rated as Ok, but I wouldn't say I am 100% happy with 9.2 (not IBM's fault!). The main disappointment is Mandrake's ATI drivers for ATI Radeon 9000 (aka Radeon M9) that ship with the PowerPack. On the positive side, XFDrake recognises the videocard and installs the drivers, so you'll be able to use X right away. 3D works out of box, too. However.... Those drivers are kernel dependent, so if you upgrade the kernel (you may have to, on my T41 suspend/resume does not work well with kernel 2.4.22-10mdk included in PowerPack), you will have to upgrade the drivers as well unless, of course you don't care about 3D acceleration. Be aware that only Club members can upgrade. The upgrade didn't go smoothly for me, I ended up with anATI driver and ATI_GLX libraries that don't match each other (otherwise, I was losing 3D or couldn't start KDE at all). Surprisingly, the weird combination works! The ATI's configuration tool fglrxconfig is missing, I can't configure X to use an external monitor and/or lower resolution with a depth less than 24bpp (those things work under WinXP, so it's not a hardware related problem). Those on this forum who compiled their own ATI drivers don't have those problems, I suppose.

 

The second disappointment is the power management. It turned out that some things work well with ACPI, some require APM for power management. Some things work well with kernel 2.4.22-26mdkenterprise, and some with with kernel 2.4.22-26mdk. It looks like some of the nuissances could be fixed by recompiling the kernel, but hey, that's not what I was paying for...

 

The modem and infrared do not work. Rather than waste my time on tweaking, I will use WinXP, in case I need them in the future.

 

Please post your experiences here, I will be glad to help if I can...

Edited March 17, 2004 by coverup

[Guest sirtaldon]

Thanks arthur and coverup. This info helps a lot.

 

arthur, no I won't be running servers, but further reading has indicated that making separate partitions, while not necessary on a laptop, won't hurt so long as you don't under-size them. I have also been looking at my previous partition setups for Mdk on home and office pc's, and I have a good base from which to determine how to size each partition now so that I don't waste space in places like /var, and don't under-size /usr or even /tmp.

 

I guess my only remaining question about this is whether or not all these partitions affect performance? I haven't found any info one way or the other so far, and my own reasoning can't come up with why the partitioning should make it any slower. Anyone ever see anything about this?

 

On a laptop or home pc not being used as a server, /var is really only holding some log files and handling minor jobs in the /var/spool for things like printing. None of the workstation pc's I have setup have used more than 400MB of space of what was allocated to /var, and most used less than 300MB of the available space. I think if I do make this a separate partition on my laptop, 500-700MB would be more than enough. Unless of course someone knows something about laptops using /var or /var/spool for something that would require more space? Keep in mind, this laptop will not be running Postfix or Apache or other servers. (Okay, CUPS, but that doesn't really count, neither does Webmin or X.)

 

coverup, since my 9.2 is the free download version I will grab the video driver from the ATI website and install it.

 

I should receive the laptop by Monday or Tuesday. I will PartitionMagic it and get XP set up, then install Mdk9.2. Since I will need to use XP for a good deal of my work, I will be giving it about 16GB of space, 4GB for the FAT32 shared partition, and the rest to Mandrake( I will remove the hidden "restore" partition. According to a post I read, IBM will send me "Restore CDs" if I call and ask them to do so after receiving my laptop.

 

I will post more as I get going.

 

Thanks

[coverup]

In regard to the system restoration CDs, you better check this with IBM. According to a letter published in the Australian PC magazine, IBM charges for those CDs.

 

A followup to my post. Agere has a driver for the softmodem that IBM puts in their recent ThinkPads. You will have to compile it from the source, provided RPM are only good for RH8 and RH9, kernel 2.4.20. When using those drivers, the modem was detected and kppp was able to establish connection, but pppd failed to start and timed out. I think one of the modules was complaining about kernel unresolved symbols at boot. On the other hand, the same kppp script perfectly worked with a 3COM PCMCIA modem. I just pushed the card into the slot, and the kernel loaded the module right away. Also, I discovered that infrared was disabled in BIOS.

Edited March 18, 2004 by coverup

[Guest sirtaldon]

I am posting this from my couch using my laptop. Mdk9.2 installed with no problems, and I am already using Opera for my browser. I still have a great deal of configuration to do, and I haven't tested everything just yet, but obviously the LAN and display work. BTW 1400x1050 looks incredible, and I can't find a single bad pixel anywhere on the LCD. Wow. :D Shorewall is also up and running. I will configure Evolution next.

 

The touchpad and nav-stick work perfectly. I have already booted back into XP to be sure it is okay, and it is. Partition Magic 8.0 worked perfectly.

XP 12GB

FAT32 2GB

/home 12GB

/ 9GB

 

As you can see I didn't bother to make a lot of partitions. A friend of mine told me to just try it this way and see how it goes...heh...he knows I can't help tinkering endlessly and will just upgrade to 10.x in a few months anyway.

 

I still have a 1GB sodimm of RAM which I hope to get next week and install.

 

Next up is the wireless and the modem. I will let you all know how it goes.

[coverup]

Sounds very exciting, sirtaldon!

[Guest sirtaldon]

Well, I am not sure if I want to try the new beta Intel Centrino drivers for the wifi or use the ndis wrapper method. I may just wait a couple weeks. I really don't use the wifi at home, and when I am out I end up needing to use XP mostly so far anyway.

 

In other news, I disabled the acpi stuff in the bios, and apm is working great. I edited the /etc/lilo.conf and I get a smooth power-off with no problems. klaptop is working, and shows my batt status just fine. I also put gkrellm plugins in and am using gkx86 to monitor my proc speed. So far it looks like it is staying maxxed at 1.7ghz even when on battery power, so I think I need to do some more tinkering to get speed-step to perform properly.

 

The 10/100/1000 ethernet works fast as hell. I want to read a bit more before I tangle with the modem. Sound works fine right out of the box, as does the video.

 

I may not get around to these for a bit, my older brother just dropped off his toshiba portege 7000ct. It needs a memory upgrade, plus he runs win98se(he refuses to use Linux) and I promised to check it over and make sure it would be okay.

 

Thanks for all the help, everyone. :)

[coverup]

In other news, I disabled the acpi stuff in the bios, and apm is working great. I edited the /etc/lilo.conf and I get asmooth power-off with no problems. klaptop is working, and shows my batt status just fine. I also put gkrellm pluginsin and am using gkx86 to monitor my proc speed. So far it looks like it is staying maxxed at 1.7ghz even when on battery power, so I think I need to do some more tinkering to get speed-step to perform properly.

I'd like to disable ACPI in the BIOS, what setting do I need to change? Also, what's XP reaction to that?

As for processor speed, you will need to load the module speedstep-centrino and start cpufreqd daemon. You can find an cpufreq rpm on a Mandrake contribs website. You may need to edit /etc/cpufreqd.conf before. Specify pm_type=apm (my rpm came with =acpi). Also, if you wish the processor speed to drop when switched to the powersafe mode, edit profile psave to reduce maxfreq from 100% to a lower percent value. I have 1.6Ghz processor, so I set maxfreq to 37.5%, which corresponds to 600Mhz. Just look at what frequency Windows runs when in powersave mode. I haven't worked out how the frequency can be checked afterwards.I can see that the laptop slowes down when the powercord is unplugged but that's all. What's gkx86?

[Guest sirtaldon]

Before disabling the Local APIC in lilo.conf, the BIOS pre-configured screen blanking after some timeout suffered from the same trouble than the key Fn-F3 switch off: the screen stayed black after the resume. In order to fix this, one has to change the BIOS parameters to disable screen blanking: at power switch on, when the screen with the IBM logo appears, press the "Access IBM" blue key. Then double-click on "Start Setup Utility", select

"Config", and then "Power". Set the various parameters to these values:

 

 

Power Mode for AC [Customized]

Power Mode for Battery [Customized]

Customized

 

Processor Speed [Fixed Max]

Suspend timer [Disabled]

LCD off timer [Disabled]

HDD off timer [5 Minutes]

 

Hibernate by timer [Disable]

Low battery action [suspend]

Suspend when LCD is closed [No suspend]

 

here is basically what I added to lilo.conf, then ran /sbin/lilo

append="devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi splash=silent acpi=off apm=on nolapic"

 

I haven't been back in Windows all weekend, so I will have to tell you about that later.

 

gkx86 is a plugin for GkrellM, a system monitor that I really can't live without. gkx86 displays the current cpu speed. If I boot up with the power cord plugged in it reads 1693MHz and stays there after I unplug it. If I boot up on battery only my cpu speed reads 599MHz and stays there even if I plug the ac power back in.

 

Thanks for the info about the cpufreq rpm. I will look for that and try it.

 

Goodnight.