Installing GNU/Linux on a Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo D Notebook

This documents the installation of GNU/Linux on a Fujitsu-Siemens notebook Amilo D. The distribution was SlackWare 8.0. Aparanetly the hardware detection capability of Kernel 2.4 is much superior to that of 2.2. You find a newer, and more successful effort here.

Note that Fujitsu-Siemens does not support Linux on their notebooks. This is NOT an official site of Fujitsu-Siemens!

Last updated: 2002-01-19 10:45:00 +0100

BIOS Setup, booting

The BIOS parameters are rudimentary. There are not many things to set.

There's no HDD translation method parameter. The usual selection between standard (Unix, no translation) and Extended (Windows, with translation) is missing. So no way of setting or checking the number of cylinders/heads/sectors.
There is a parameter called Installed OS where you have the choise between Win98/Me/2K/XP or Only WinNT4.0 I've set it to the former although this laptop is going to be Microsoft-free.

It booted from SlackWare 8.0 (selfburned) CD-ROM immediately.

Here are the Kernel messages dmesg.

Partitioning, Installation

fdisk reported C/H/S of 1222/255/63. So there must be a translation behind the scences. The rough estimation 10GB/1222Cyl = 8 MB/Cyl was confirmed by making a "single cylinder" partition as in:

Device    Start    End   Blocks     Id   System
/dev/hda1     1      1     8001     83   Linux native

This is how I partitioned:

Device    Start    End   Blocks     Id   System
/dev/hda1     1      2    16033+    83   Linux native  {/boot}
/dev/hda2     3   1206  9671130     83   Linux native  {/}
/dev/hda3  1207   1222   128530     82   Linux swap    {swap}

The standard installation procedure went smoothly and installed a full system with Kernel 2.2.19, XFree 4.1.0 and KDE 2.1.2. But it failed to recognize neither the built in modem nor the Ethernet LAN interface.

Built-in modem

Checking the # lspci -vx (see output) and # cat /proc/pci (see output) I see that it is one of these cursed Winmodems:

00:10.0 Communication controller: Lucent Microelectronics LT WinModem

A posting in LKLUG took me to Linmodems.org and then to heby.de/ltmodem/.

I downloaded the ltmodem-6.00b9.tar.gzand realized that the kernel tree and the running kernel have to be in place. So the next step was a standard kernel recompilation. Here were the steps with a single comment Dont't forget to include Plug-and-Play support!

# file /usr/src/linux
/usr/src/linux: symbolic link to linux-2.2.19
# cd /usr/src/linux
# make mrproper
# make menuconfig {Don't forget to include PnP Support!}
# make dep
# make clean
# make module
# make modules_install
# make bzImage
# cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/bzImage-2.2.19

add to /etc/lilo.conf

image = /boot/bzImage-2.2.19
  root = /dev/hda2
  label = Linux-2.2.19
  read-only

run lilo

# lilo
Added Linux *
Added Linux-2.2.19

Now I can compile the LT driver and load the module. Following its docs :

# cd /usr/local/src
# tar xzvf ltmodem-6.00b9.tar.gz
# cd ltmodem-6.00b9
# ./build_module {See output}
# ./ltinst2 {See output}
# ./autoload {See output}

Testing the modules

# insmod -p lt_modem
Using /lib/modules/2.2.19/misc/lt_modem.o
# insmod -p lt_serial
Using /lib/modules/2.2.19/misc/lt_serial.o

Got the ppp configured using pppsetup. This is the /etc/ppp/options file. Run ppp-go and Voila it works!

Current State

Still couldn't get the LAN, nor Sound working.
Timo Weggen (tweggen_at_loewe-komp.de) reported that SuSE 7.3 worked out of the box - modem, LAN and sound! (comp.os.linux.portable 2002-01-02)
Filippo Panessa (kalem_at_linux.it) reported that Debian Woody works too.
I must check with Kernel 2.4.9 or higher.

Send your comments to visvanath_at_ratnaweera.net