Basics of package installation

• Package installation must be done while logged in as root or su'd to root.
• Before installing any packages, it is a good idea to update the list of all currently available packages by issuing the command "apt-get update".
• To install package XX, we simply issue the command "apt-get install XX".
• After installing KDE, the gui application kpackage is available to give a much better visual experience for managing packages for those who prefer to work with a GUI.
• To learn the details of the Debian package installation process, read the Apt Howto.
• To stay current on all updates and additions to the packages, subscribe to the debian-devel-changes mailing list.

Change Default Distribution to Unstable

By default, the debian installer initializes the apt settings to use "testing". In order to set the system to use "unstable", modify the sources.list file and add references to "unstable" in addition to the ones for "testing". For completeness, make sure there are references to "stable" as well. Additionally, you may wish to add support for the "contrib" and "non-free" packages. For example, our sources.list was modified to be as follows:

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib non-free
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main

Additional System Packages to Install

• openssh-client
• openssh-server
• tcsh
• sudo
• cvs

Additional Kernel Packages

To make better use of the features in the 2.6.* kernel, we installed the following packages:

• sysfsutils
• udev
• acpid

Custom Kernel Packages

We have compiled and packaged custom 2.6.* kernels and placed them in our public Debian repository. These kernels are compiled from the Debian kernel sources plus the host-skas3 patch (either v7 or v8, depending on the kernel). The host-skas3 patch is for use with User-Mode Linux, but it should be harmless on a system that is not intended to be used with User-Mode Linux.

Additional gui packages to install

• firefox
• openoffice.org
• gimp
• xpdf
• k3b
• mozilla-thunderbird
• kdepim
• koffice
• kdemultimedia
• kdeadmin
• kdeutils
• kdetoys

Activating the sound card

The ALSA sound system is built in to the default 2.6.* kernels provided by Debian. However, the initial ALSA settings are all output channels disabled with volume levels of 0. This makes it appear that the sound card is not functional. To modify the settings on the sound card, use one of the many available mixer programs. Since We have KDE installed, we used kmix (part of the kdemultimedia package) to bring up a panel that allowed us to change the settings to something more reasonable.

Linksys WUSB11 v2.6 wireless adapter

We have a Linksys WUSB11 v2.6 (based on the Atmel chipset) that needed to be connected to one of our machines. We use the at76c503a drivers found at http://at76c503a.berlios.de.

1. To help prepare the system to build the loadable kernel drivers, install the package module-assistant. After installation, run module-assistant as root and choose the "PREPARE" option to install all the packages and tools necessary for the build. The module-assistant contains a number of built in driver packages that can be built directly, but the at76c503a driver is not one of them.

2. Download and unpack either the released driver or the latest cvs tarball, then cd into the unpacked directory, do a "make" to compile the drivers, followed by a "make install" to install the drivers into /lib/modules.

3. Install (if not already installed) the wireless-tools, hotplug, and ifupdown packages to make sure we have all the tools necessary to use the wireless adapter. Then modify /etc/network/interfaces by adding the following lines to the end of the file:

   allow-hotplug wlan0
   
   iface wlan0 inet dhcp
       wireless-mode Managed
       wireless-essid <SSID>
       wireless-key <KEY>
   

   Make sure to replace <SSID> and <KEY> with the SSID and wep-key for your wireless access point.

4. Plug in the USB adapter to see if it all works. Finally, shutdown and reboot to make sure the adapter is loaded properly in the boot sequence.

We have compiled and packaged a recent cvs version of the at76c503a driver for use with the kernels that we have made available in our public Debian repository. These versions now support a pseudo-monitor mode that allow the wireless adapter to be used with tools such as kismet.

DLink DWL650 wireless card

We have the original DWL650 card which has a triangular antenna and is based on the Prism2 chipset. Newer DWL650 cards (rectangular antenna, same model number, different chipsets) will not work the same way. Installing this was fairly automatic once PCMCIA was working, since the prism2 chipset is well supported by the standard kernel driver modules.

This card was detected as eth1, not wlan0, so the entry to add to /etc/network/interfaces is:

iface eth1 inet dhcp
    wireless-mode Managed
    wireless-essid <SSID>
    wireless-key <KEY>

Make sure to replace <SSID> and <KEY> with the SSID and wep-key for your wireless access point.

Hostap drivers

NOTE: The Hostap drivers are now part of the default Linux kernel as of version 2.6.14. For older kernel versions, one is required to download, compile, and install the additional kernel modules in order to have this functionality.

Although support for wireless cards based on prism chipsets are built into the standard Linux kernel, one may still wish to install the hostap drivers from http://hostap.epitest.fi in order to have access to advanced capabilities. The hostap drivers provide for a monitor mode that is required by applications such as kismet, a host ap mode that allows the wireless card to operate as an access point, and an implementation of WPA.

The hostap drivers are separated into four parts, hostap-driver, hostap-utils, hotapd, and wpa-supplicant. These are downloaded separately and can be compiled and installed in a similar way as the at76c503a drivers. We have compiled and packaged the hostap drivers for use with the older kernels that we have made available in our public Debian repository.

The hostap drivers will detect the wireless card as wlan0, not eth0 or eth1, so all entries in /etc/network/interfaces and elsewhere will have to be modified accordingly.

Belkin F5D6020

We have an old Belkin F5D6020 adapter, which is based on the Prism2 chipset as well. Unfortunately, the firmware on this card was too old to work with any of the available Linux drivers. After a little digging, we were able to upgrade the firmware on this card using information from this site. After the firmware upgrade, the hostap drivers installed flawlessly.

Dynamic wireless adapter configuration

On a portable that can connected to different APs with different characteristics depending on where we are, it would be useful for the wireless network configuration to be able to adjust its settings dynamically. This article from arstechnica reviews a method to set up the network connection for this purpose. Unfortunately, we did not have much luck configuring guessnet for use with our DLink wireless adapter, as guessnet keeps complaining that our adapter did not support some features that it required.

We ended up writing our own script to provide this functionality. With our home-brewed script, we can set up our wireless adapter to automatically sense if we are at home, at work, or at an open wifi hotspot by adding the following to /etc/network/interfaces:

mapping wlan0
    script detect_network
    map test_wireless home <HOME-SSID> <HOME-KEY> <HOME-AP-MAC>
    map test_wireless work <WORK-SSID> <WORK-KEY> <WORK-AP-MAC>
    map test_none open

iface home inet dhcp
    wireless-mode Managed
    wireless-essid <HOME-SSID>
    wireless-key <HOME-KEY>

iface work inet dhcp
    wireless-mode Managed
    wireless-essid <WORK-SSID>
    wireless-key <WORK-KEY>

iface open inet dhcp
    wireless-mode Managed
    wireless-essid any
    wireless-key off

The detect_network script can be found in the alyznettools package in our public Debian repository.

Kismet

Kismet is a very useful tool that can monitor the 802.11 wireless space to sniff and detect wireless network activity. Kismet works with any card and driver combination that supports the raw monitoring mode, including the at76c503a and hostap drivers.

Installing kismet in Debian is very simple: Issue the command "apt-get install kismet", then modify the "source=" line in the /etc/kismet/kismet.conf file to tell the system about the installed wireless adapter and drivers.

For the hostap drivers:

source=hostap,wlan0,prism2source

For the at76c503a drivers:

source=orinoco,wlan0,prism2source

To run kismet, su to root, then issue the command "kismet" to start up the monitor. Watch the screen as all wireless networks in your area are detected and displayed. Commands are simple one character keystrokes. Important ones to remember are "h" for help and "Q" to quit. Logs of the kismet session are stored in /var/log/kismet for further analysis.

BIOS Settings

At bootup, press F2 to get into the BIOS settings. From there, disable the "Legacy USB support". This helps avoid the "dead keyboard" issue that occurs under many flavors of Linux.

Repartitioning the hard drive

Before attempting to repartition the hard drive, the NTFS partition that is taking up the entire drive must be properly prepared. If the drive has had a fair amount of use, the disk should be defragmented using the system tools in order to pack the used portion of the disk to the beginning of the partition. Then any errors on the drive (there are errors by default in the factory install) must be corrected by executing "chkdsk /f" from a command prompt, then rebooting into Windows XP.

The actual repartition can be done using a recent version of QtParted that handles the resizing of NTFS partitions. A convenient source of this is the SystemRescueCD. After booting up the latest version 0.2.15 of this CD, execute "run_qtparted" to start up the partition manager. Alternatively, QtParted is on the Knoppix 3.7 CD. Be sure to issue the command "knoppix26" at the boot prompt in order for Knoppix to boot up properly. After booting up, run QtParted from the system menu. Inside QtParted, select the hard drive (/dev/hda) and resize the Windows XP partition to make room for the Debian installation. We resized it down to 16Gb, leaving about 21Gb free for Linux.

Basic Debian Installation

This is the same as the Initial Debian Installation for desktops. We used the latest available version of the Debian-Installer, which was version rc2 at the time of the install.

Fixing the PCMCIA configuration

The basic Debian installation hangs while trying to load PCMCIA. To correct this, boot up in "recovery mode" and edit the /etc/pcmcia/config.opts file to be as follows:

include memory 0x80000000-0x80000fff, memory 0xffeff000-0xffefffff
include memory 0xfbeff000-0xffefefff, memory 0x000d7000-0x000d7fff
include port 0xfd00-0xfdff, port 0xfc00-0xfcff, port 0xff40-0xff7f

exclude irq 1
exclude irq 2
exclude irq 3
exclude irq 4
exclude irq 6
exclude irq 8
exclude irq 9
exclude irq 10
exclude irq 11
exclude irq 12
exclude irq 13
exclude irq 14
exclude irq 15

This configuration file was copied directly from here, which was derived from here.

Installing the 2.6.x Kernel

Installing the 2.6.5 kernel on this notebook is very similar to adding 2.6.5 kernel support for standard desktops as described above. There is only one additional step, which is to add two options to the initial loading of the kernel in order to load up ACPI properly. We do this by adding the options "nolapic noacpi" to the kernel boot line for the 2.6.5 kernel. Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst in the section that begins with "## ## Start Default Options ##", being careful to follow the instructions in the comments. Update: starting with version 2.6.6, the "noacpi" option is no longer necessary, so that we can also add a line for the general 2.6 kernels to only have the extra "nolapic" option. The edited boot section of our /boot/grub/menu.lst looks like this:

# kopt=root=/dev/hda1 ro
# kopt_2_6=root=/dev/hda1 ro nolapic
# kopt_2_6_5=root=/dev/hda1 ro nolapic noacpi

X Configuration

This works well with the vesa driver and at a maximum of 1024x768 resolution at 24 bits. Look here for detailed information and examples of a XF86Config-4 file.

Synaptics Touchpad

The built-in Synaptics Touchpad works out of the box with the default mouse drivers. However, the default "tap-to-click" feature is very annoying as it makes it very difficult to avoid unintended mouse clicks while moving the pointer via the touchpad. In order to turn it off, we need to access the advance options in the synaptics device and set the MaxTapTime option to 0.

The synaptics driver for XFree86 can be found in the xfree86-driver-synaptics package (install with "apt-get install xfree86-driver-synaptics"). After installation, follow the instructions in /usr/share/doc/xfree86-driver-synaptic/README.Debian, then add the option "MaxTapTime" "0" to the synaptics device section.

Battery Monitor

The KDE KLaptop application works to monitor the battery status as long as a recent 2.6 kernel is in use. Install the "acpid" and "kdeutils" packages to make sure the necessary software is in place, then use the KDE Control Center to change the Power Control settings and to display the battery monitor in the system tray.

Modem

We were not successful at installing a driver that would allow access to the built-in M5457 AC-Link Winmodem. If you wish to give it a try, the information found here may help. Please drop us a note if you can get this working.

LiveCDs

We downloaded various LiveCDs and tried to boot up the Compaq Notebook with them to see how well they worked.

• Knoppix 4.0.2 CD or DVD - Knoppix Version 4.0.2 boots up with a 2.6.12 kernel by default, and everything appears to work as advertised. With an ethernet cable connected to the network via the ethernet port, Knoppix 4.0.2 booted up completely, allowing instant access to the Internet. With the DLink DWL650 in the PCMCIA slot and without the wired connection, this version of Knoppix also booted up to completion. If an open wireless access point is within range, then instant access to the Internet is available. In order to access an encrypted access point, we were able to use either kwifimanager or iwconfig to set up the wireless card parameters, then netcardconfig to start up the wireless interface with a dhcp client or static ip address. This is a vast improvement over Knoppix 3.7, which required manually specifying that it boot up with a 2.6.* kernel, after which the PCMCIA system hangs with any card inserted.
• SimplyMEPIS 2004.06 - While not perfect, this is a drastic improvement over versions we tried less than a year ago. The default boot (kernel 2.6.7) with the wired ethernet cable connected worked flawlessly. We were able to use the Internet immediately with the installed Mozilla browser. When we disconnected the ethernet cable and plugged in the DLink DWL650 into the PCMCIA and restarted, the boot process went to completion, but the wireless card was not initialized properly, so there was no connectivity. Manual configuration with the installed iwconfig and wlancfg tools do not appear to work either. Although we were not able to get the PCMCIA wireless card to work (possibly due to the invalid /etc/pcmcia/config.opts file described above), this combination no longer hangs the computer on bootup, so the system is still usable.
• FreeSBIE 1.1 - This FreeBSD 5.3 based LiveCD booted up perfectly on the notebook. Even the PCMCIA drivers worked out of the box. With our DLink DWL650 card plugged in, we were able to surf the net with the installed Mozilla Firefox without modifying any setup other than calling "ifconfig" to set up our ssid and wepkey, and even that would not have been necessary if we had an unprotected wireless access point.
• SystemRescueCD 0.2.15 - This CD boots up properly to the UNIX command prompt. However, eth0 was not initialized properly with DHCP so that no Internet connectivity is available by default. However, all of the tools on the CD, including QtParted is available and functional.

GUI

Since the hard drive was only 1.5Gb in size, it was important not to allow the Debian-Installer to install the standard desktop, which takes up around 1.4Gb all by itself. Instead, we manually used apt-get afterwards to install x-window-system, xfce, and mozilla-firefox in order to get a light, but functional GUI. We also installed links2, for those occasions where mozilla-firefox loads up too slowly for our tastes.

PCMCIA

In order to get the PCMCIA drivers to work, the PCMCIA mode in the system BIOS must be set to "PCIC Compatible". If set to "Cardbus/16-bit", Linux will identify all of our PCMCIA cards as unsupported external memory cards. To get into the system BIOS, hold down the ESC while turning on the computer. After a few seconds, it will output "Check system. Then press [F1] key." Pressing F1 will let you change the BIOS settings.

After getting the PCMCIA system to work, our generic ethernet adapter was auto detected and worked with the standard kernel. However, our DLink DWL650 wireless card was autodetected, but the orinoco_cs module failed to load properly. Apparently, this card only works in cardbus mode, which we are no longer using. Fortunately, our old Belkin F5D6020 adapter with the upgraded firmware worked fine. We were even able to install and run kismet, allowing the 225CDS to function as a 802.11b packet sniffer.

Revision History

8.13.2006

• Updated for debian-archive-keyring.

5.17.2006

• Added update on availability of Java in official Debian repositories.

1.25.2006

• Updated Knoppix to version 4.0.2.

1.9.2006

• Updated many sections with more current information after installing Debian unstable on a Dell Inspiron 600M.

8.22.2005

• Revised hotplug information for wireless adapter due to new policy in hotplug version 0.0.20040329-25 released on 8/4/2005.

6.1.2005

• Added instructions to turn off "tap-to-click" feature of Synaptic Touchpad on the Compaq Presario 2178CL.

3.22.2005

• Updated Compaq Presario 2178CL section based on new experiences from reinstallation after replacing hard drive.

1.23.2005

• Added Installing Java section.

12.22.2004

• Added LiveCDs section for Compaq notebook.

12.13.2004

• Reorganized wireless networking section.
• Removed references to kdm problems.

11.14.2004

• Added hostap section.
• Added compiled kernels and modules to public Debian repository.

10.24.2004

• Added section on creating our own Debian package repository.
• Added section on dynamic wireless adapter configuration.
• Reformatted package installation section.

10.14.2004

• Revised hotplug information for wireless adapter.
• Added external links to package installation section.

9.27.2004

• Updated status on kdm.
• Added Toshiba Satellite 225CD section.

9.20.2004

• Updated information for kernels 2.6.6 and up.
• Updated information for the OSS vs ALSA driver problem in discover.
• Improved modifications for /boot/grub/menu.lst.
• Noted problems in kdm 4:3.3.0-1.
• Added note about modem on the 2178CL.

4.27.2004

• Initial document.