TuxMobil: Debian GNU/Linux on a Toshiba Satellite 3000-214 Laptop

	Author:	Benedikt Garski <benedikt.garski_at_web.de>
	Public Key:	http://www.keyserver.net(http://www.keyserver.net)
	Creation Date:	4. November 2001
	Last Change:	20. February 2002

What are my intentions. Who you are!

Hello there!
In this Howto I'll try to give you a overview over the hardware specs of the Toshiba Satellite 3000-214 and how to handle them within a Linux based System. I'll also describe the Installation procedure of an GNU/Debian Linux distribution. I do not guarantee anything!

In the best case you have some knowledge about handling a Linux system. I expect that you know what you're doing and what the commands do you enter. You should also know, why you've choosen Debian and of course you should have compiled at least one time your own kernel ;)

If you have only little knowledge about Linux you should first try another distribution like Novell/SuSE or Mandriva (Mandrake) Those distributions are known for their user friendly interfaces, a good help, automatic hardware detection and a lot of other stuff which is important for people who used tho work with MicroSoft-Windows. Me, for example, started with a Novell/SuSE 6.4 Distribution my Linux Career ;). Hint for you beginners. In a GNU/Linux system, there is ever a solution! Read a lot, commands like "man", "apropos", "find", "locate" and of course the internet will help you. Restart does not solve any problems! Reinstallation is unnecessary. There is (nearly) every time a way to reanimate a broken system. Good luck!

You're just here because you've heard Linux is cool. You've problems installing a printer driver in MicroSoft-Windows? What the heck is an IP Address? DMA, IRQ, bash, root, user, POP3 ever heard about that? You like your (original?) MicroSoft-Windows? Read and learn more (no Microsoft Press please), buy 100 licences of MicroSoft-Windows 2000 AS, do real work on a pc, install servers and services, never forget about security! After you've done all this with MicroSoft-Windows boxes, you know why to chose Linux!

Anyway you have no time? No knowledge? Let some professionals do this for you. There are enough companies in any part of the world which offer services for Linux. E.g. Xtops.DE(http://www.xtops.de) by Werner Heuser for Germany.

A good laptop for a good price

The Toshiba Satellite 3000-214 is very fine laptop wich has all the features to substitute a common pc. The price was unbeatable (3.999,- DM [app. 2050 EUR] sold by Saturn in Winter 2001) in fact it was lower than on Toshibas homepage (they sold it for app. 4.300,- DM). Just the right time for starting mobile computing!

Getting some hardware info really was fun! Toshiba is not able to put some facts anywhere! So "lspci", the internet and some emails had to help me! So I hope I got the exact hardware configuration together. Let's take a closer look to the hardware.

Machine Configuration

Technical Data for the Toshiba Satellite 3000-214 Laptop.
This information is the essence of what I have found out and what I was able to make work.
But you know: "The net is fast and infinite."

I also found Information about:

CD_Int (Intel ICH3-M), HDD_Int (Intel ICH3-M), Wireless (Lucent ORiNOCO), Mini_PCI (Texas Instruments PCI 1410)!

But I don't know about those components and could not determine if they are in the Satellite 3000-214 or not. If you know more, mail me.

Connections of the Satellite 3000-214:
Audio in/out/mic, smart card reader, IrDA, monitor-out, tv-out, LAN (RJ45), modem (RJ11), parallel (printer), 3x USB, 2x PCMCIA slots.

component	technical name	supported by Linux?
chipset	Intel Corp. 82820 820 (Camino 2) Chipset PCI (-M) (rev 41)(http://developer.intel.com/design/chipsets/datashts/290630.htm)	YES
sound	Intel Corp. AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)	YES
graphics card	nVidia Corporation GeForce2 Go (rev b2) - 16 MB DDR-RAM(http://www.mobilityguru.com/2001/05/31/toshiba_launches_its_satellite_into_orbit_with_nvidia/index.html)	YES
CPU	Intel(R) Pentium(R) III Mobile CPU - 933MHz(http://support.intel.com/support/processors/mobile/pentiumiii/)	YES
RAM	256 MB (2x128 of 2 available slots) PC 133 SDRAM	YES
Modem	Askey 1456VQL4(INT) (Lucent SCORPIO) Softmodem(http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Winmodems-and-Linux-HOWTO.html)	DUNNO
IrDA	Super IO SMSC LPC47N227(http://www.smsc.com/main/datasheets/47n227.pdf) [PDF]	DUNNO
USB	Intel ICH2-M(http://developer.intel.com/design/chipsets/datashts/290687.htm)	YES
PCMCIA	Texas Instruments PCI 1420	YES
Bluetooth	TAIYO-YUDEN	DUNNO
ACPI	v 1.0b(http://developer.intel.com/technology/iapc/acpi/downloads.htm)	NO
mouse	PS2 - Touchpad	YES
network	Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139 (rev 10)(http://www.realtek.com.tw/)	YES
smart media	Toshiba TC6371AF	DUNNO
tv out	uses graphics card	DUNNO
sreen	14" TFT-Display (1024x768) - High Quality	YES
CD-R/RW/DVD	UJDA710 CD-RW/DVD DVD 8x, CD 24x, CD-R 8x, CD-RW	YES
harddisk	20 Gb Toshiba MK2017GAP(http://www.toshiba.com/taissdd/techdocs/Mk2017gap/2017gapspec.shtml)	YES

What was in the box?

So Saturn delivered the Satellite 3000-214 with:

Laptop.	Of course ;)
AC adapter.	Tada!
LIO accu.	In normal usage it keeps ~3 hours.
CD-R/RW/DVD.	This combo drive only fits in the left bay!
Floppy drive.	This floppy drive only fits in the left bay!
Dummy.	This is an dummy for the left bay, so you have no blank bay if your floppy or CD-R/RW/DVD drive get lost :-P
Cables for the tv-out -> tv.	Hmm ...
Cables for the Laptop (RJ11) -> TAEN.	Hmm ...
Some cds.	Easy CD Creator 5.10, M$ Works Suite 2001 (hui), Win XP recovery CD and a CD with Toshiba Utilities (for win).
An extended two year guarantee.	Yeeeees it was sold by Saturn with one year!
Handbook and some prospects	Standard Stuff - read the chapter about ergonomic Workspaces.

First steps (hardware check)

Before doing anything with the laptop I have to make sure it works fine. Hmmm... MicroSoft-Windows XP runs well (it was preinstalled so I didn't expect any problems). Running some graphics card benchmarks (mad onion 2000, 2001) showed excellent values! Sound works. TV out does its job well. CD-Rom OK. DVD works. I did not try to burn a CD. TFT excellent. Did not try USB, firewire and the smartcard reader. After all - to be sure - I checked the drive with scandisk for bad clusters and some hours RAM check with a MemTest86 boot floppy (data throughput values can't be real! 80 MB/s? Joking?). No problems with the RAM.

Mind mapping

No! I don't want to use a proprietary, insecure and buggy OS for my work! The base for the beginning information age must be a free OS. Based on trust and independency. Human evolution will flash up on the evolutaion scale again. Star Trek in this century! Not in the 24st century!

In Conclusion of this I decided to use a GNU/Debian Linux. Why! Take a short view on http://www.debian.org/social_contract(http://www.debian.org/social_contract). This is the base for a good future in prosper! Not the EULA of M$. Support and help! If every user is doing a little bit (e.g. translate some man-pages) will be better and faster than any company.

Installing the kernel + a base system

MicroSoft-Windows XP is occupying the whole hard disk. Bad, we need some place for Linux. All my Partition Magic and Drive Image disks did not work with XP so I had to use the boot floppies of them. Shrinked the Win XP (FAT 32) partition down to 3.2 Gb and moved a little bit backward. Then creating the EXT2 Partions it looked like:

10 Mb for /boot (primary)
3.2 Gb for MicroSoft-Windows XP (primary)
128 Mb for the swap Partition of Linux (logic)
16.5 Gb for / (logic)

Happy mind I tried to boot the laptop with some of my beloved Debian 2.2R2+4 CDs. All failed! All the kernels stopped (without message) shortly after initializing the 1.44 Floppy. An old Red Hat 6.2 just booted up the machine. Uncool. Using my floppy box and some boot floppies, I found out that the Debian Potato ide-pci kernel made it. So I installed the base system with the floppies.

Note: The ide-pci kernel (which worked) was also on the boot cds. But I didn't manage to handle LILO params. You know how? Mail me benedikt.garski_at_web.de!

One hour later it was done and I had a basic Debian Potato 2.2 on my laptop.

System Installation and Tuning

Having the Base and the suitable Realtek module (8139too) it was fun now. As a owner of ADSL I used the strength of my bandwidth for installing a most modern system, of course a Debian unstable. Adding the default gateway to my internet server, changing the /etc/apt/sources.list from stable to unstable, than updating (apt-get update) and than upgrading (apt-get upgrade). To have HD performance I switched all the nifty options on: "hdparm -d1 -X68 -u1 -c3 -m16 /dev/hda" (catch it with apt-get install hdparm).

So the base was up to date. Now, the actual kernel - the 2.4.17. Compiling it (hui, how fast). Here some points: Toshiba laptop support does not work on a Satellite 3000-214. Also the nv (rivafb.o) Framebuffer wont run. APM can power off but does not switch on when resuming from suspend or standby mode.

You can manage Debian packets with commands like "dpkg", "apt-[tab]" and "dselect". No idea which packets are cool? Check out the next section.

Program Proposals

So after we have a slim base system we need some usable programms, here is what I found to be useful (often the Debian packages have the same name). Some programms are also included in the base system. Do you know one really cool proggi which should be added here? Mail <benedikt.garski_at_web.de>!

text based tools
section	programms + paths
package management	dpkg, apt-[tab], dselect, orphaner, deborphan, deity
system functions	top, atop, lsof, pstree -uhp, ps -aux, lsmod, free, du, df, ide-smart, cpuid, beep, tzconfig+tzselect, /proc/*

user management	w, whowatch, slay, adduser, deluser, groups, members, /etc/passwd + /etc/groups + /etc/shadow
documentation	man, apropos, [programm name] --help, RFC s, /usr/share/doc,
security	chmod, chown, chgrp, iptables, portsentry, tripwire, tiger, logcheck, loop-AES, gnupg, vlock, lockvc, arpwatch, john, hunt (be careful with this!), /var/log/*
net	ifconfig, ping, traceroute, ssh, telnet, whois, tcpdump, dsniff, ethtool, nmap, dnstracer, rdate
file browser	mc
programming	vim, motor
web	vim, lintian, links, lynx, lftp, apache+ssl+php4+mysql
database	mysql
audio	cdcd, sox, aumix, mp3blaster, mpg124, esd
burning	kernel scsi support, cdparanoia, mkisofs, cdrecord [-scanbus],
typeset	vim, pdflatex

graphics based tools
section	programms
Windowmanager	Windowmaker (are there others?), twm (slim, little -> backup wm)
package management	deity-gtk
processing	wmcube, wmsysmon, wminet, wmapm, wmCalClock, wmfsm, wmtop

user management
documentation	xman
security	seahorse
net	wmnd, wmnet, ethereal, cheops, xchat, licq, kmail, gftp, gabber, wmWeather
database	mysql-navigator, phpMyAdmin
Xshell	aterm, Eterm

programming
web	konqueror, mozilla, quanta, screem, tidy, gnobog
audio	Xmms, Freeamp, xaumix, wmusic, shoutcast(http://www.shoutcast.com)
burning	kreactecd
translation	ding, kdict
typeset	tk_brief
office	Star Office 5.2, Kate, kivio, dia, mgp, korganizer, gaby, kate
graphics, 3D	gimp, blender, eeyes
multimedia	xine, sinek, aviplay, mplayer, lopster, ogle, grip
games	Civilization CTP, TuxRacer, Heroes of Might and Magic 3, PrBoom, Freeciv, Falconseye, Gunocide II EX

Setting up X and the NVidia Driver

After fruitless tries to set up a frame buffer device (for switching the text mode into higher resolutions) at least the NVidia Driver v1.0-2313 works fine (v1.0-1541 buggy -> little text screen when switching from graphics mode to console). Get your driver from the NVidia Homepage(http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=linux), unpack the tar.gz sources to /usr/src and then "make" the GLX libraries und the kernel module. NOTE: After you've compiled a new kernel you need to recompile your NVidia kernel module. :-? Don't ask me why, at least you haven't to restart the box. For fine tuning see my /etc/X11/XF86config-4 file

Sound Installation

All you need is modprobe the i810_audio and ac97_codec modules. Of course we want to load the modules dynamically so ....

-> /etc/modutils/aliases
alias sound-slot-0 i810_audio
alias sound-service-0-0 i810_audio

Only thing left is a "update-modules" and now the sound modules are loaded dynamically :)

Installing the CD-R/RW/DVD for Burning CDs

First of all, you need a kernel which supports scsi, scsi-emulation and scsi-cdroms! In general the kernel is uses the common ide-cd and cdrom for the cdrom drive. We need to unload them via "modprobe -r ide-cd" and "modprobe -r cdrom". Modprobing now the ide-scsi modul with "modprobe ide-scsi" will include our cdrom as SCSI device (see /var/log/syslog for output). You now have acces to it e.g. over /dev/scd0. A "cdrecord -scanbus" will verify the function. Now you're able to burn and rewrite cds.

USB Mouse Installation

As expected, you need to have a kernel which supports USB. Modprobing "usb-uhci, mousedev, hid" modules worked for this laptop. For wheel mouse functions within X check out my /etc/X11/XF86config-4.

Helpful URLs

Check out:
http://www.linux-laptop.net/toshiba.html(http://www.linux-laptop.net/toshiba.html)
http://www.buzzard.me.uk/toshiba/index.html(http://www.buzzard.me.uk/toshiba/index.html)
http://linux.toshiba-dme.co.jp/linux/(http://linux.toshiba-dme.co.jp/linux/)
http://newsletter.toshiba-tro.de/main/(http://newsletter.toshiba-tro.de/main/)
http://lenz.homelinux.org/portege3440CT/(http://www.lenzg.org/portege3440CT/)
http://newsletter.toshiba-tro.de/main/(http://newsletter.toshiba-tro.de/main/)

Hardware Bugs

boot device sequence
My Satellite 3000-214 is ignoring the boot device sequence (e.g. floppy, disk, network) when I'm using my BIOS user password. There's no access to the floppy drive! It uses some kind of default boot sequence (disk, cdrom, network).

Using the supervisor BIOS password makes the selected boot sequence work! Note: If not expected, you'll have to search for a while if you want to boot your selected boot sequence. And you're wondering why the laptop tries to boot over network because you definitly set it off in the BIOS ;)

switching screen display and beamer/monitor
While everything is allright with the switch mechanism in Win XP (beamer only, screen only, both), you can not switch the graphics output after the kernel booted (used a 2.4.17). Linux will freeze or is at least not accessible.

key problem with "s"-key
Last but not least, the s/S key has a little problem! It doesn't work from the beginning. Just before sending the laptop back to Toshiba I found out, that you have to try a little bit Strg+s, Alt+s and Shift+s and than - after some tries - it works. Very shameful. Showing your new, hot and expensive laptop to friends you have to do the - where is my "s"-key game - Shame! This seems to be no problem under MicroSoft-Windows XP (the laptop was delivered with this).

In the End

You are always welcomed to send me suggestions, ideas, hints, solutions and so on. Remember the goal of this howto is to help users to install Linux on their Toshiba Satellite 3000-214 laptop. Maybe you know something what other people first have to find out within hours. Just let me know.

Thanks for your attention and have nice day.

BEN :)