Mandrake 10.0 Official Powerpack Edition installation
As I subscribed to MandrakeClub as a Silver member, I could download the 5 ISO images of the Mandrake Linux 10.0 Official Powerpack Edition, which comes with all commercial and contributed packages, via BitTorrent.
Once burned the 5 CDs, I rebooted with the first CD inserted, pressed F1 and passed "vgahi expert" at the "boot:" prompt.
vgahi enables a nice 1024x768 framebuffer console, and with expert it is possible to change the keyboard layout used in the installation process, and even select the available CDs to get the corresponding package list.
HINT:Parameters' order is important to use all of them.
In the packages selection, I use to deselect all package groups and check "Individual package selection".
Then I check "With basic documentation (recommended!)" and "With X", toggle to "flat" packages view, leave "Show automatically selected packages" checked and check all the packages I want to use.
Additional steps
After packages installation, I follow these additional steps in the "Summary" screen:
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System
- Keyboard: Italian
- Country: Italy
- Timezone: Europe/Rome
- Mouse:Any PS/2 or USB Mouse
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Hardware
- Printer: I use to start the configuration, as it installs required packages, without adding any printer. (If security level is set to "higher", answer "Yes" to "Do you really want to configure printing on this secure installation?")
- Sound card: The soundcard is detected as "[SiS]|SiS7012 PCI Audio Accelerator", and it works (using ALSA) with the auto-selected snd-intel8x0 driver
- Graphical interface: Select "Flat Panel 1400x1050". Don't enable 3D acceleration on the autodetected "Radeon (fglrx)" card, because it will freeze the notebook (see here for further details).
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Network & Internet
- Network: Configuration correctly detects the network card, using sis900 module. After setting up the network, firewall configuration starts.
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Security
- Security level: If security level is set to "higher", check "Use libsafe for servers"
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Boot
- Bootloader: Configure LILO enabling ACPI, forcing no APIC and no local APIC and checking "clean /tmp at each boot".
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Services
- Services: Check all the needed services to start at boot.
First boot
I reboot and kernel 2.6.3-7mdk loads without big issues (see dmesg).
Urpmi
While waiting for all Mandrake mirrors to be updated, I configured urpmi to get all packages from the downloaded ISO instead of the CDs, and only added an urpmi source for the updates.
See Easy urpmi page for urpmi configuration.
Type
[root@localhost root]# urpmi --auto-select
and your RPMs will be up to date.
NOTE: This will update package kernel-source to the latest version available (2.6.3-16mdk as of August 26, 2004), but won't install the new kernel package.
Kernel installation is very well documented here, and can simply be done typing
[root@localhost root]# urpmi kernel-2.6.3-16mdk
This will install kernel image, initial ramdisk and modules, adding an /etc/lilo.conf stanza for the new kernel and running LILO.
Here is the new dmesg after reboot.
Wireless networking
The wireless card works perfectly using the drivers built with ndiswrapper project.
As stated in the README file, many things changed between versions 0.4 and 0.5, and since I encountered some problems using the latest version (0.8 as of June 9, 2004), I still use version 0.4 (released January 6, 2004).
Once downloaded ndiswrapper-0.4.tar.gz, do the following (as root):
[worm:~] # cd /usr/src
[worm:/usr/src] # tar zxf ndiswrapper-0.4.tar.gz
[worm:/usr/src] # cd ndiswrapper
[worm:/usr/src/ndiswrapper] # sh install.sh (*)
(*) this script asks for the full path of the Windows XP driver's .inf and .sys files, which are respectively bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl5.sys, compiles the module against the running kernel and updates /etc/modprobe.conf to load the driver at boot.
Once loaded the driver, eventually using
[worm:~] # modprobe ndiswrapper
the wireless interface can be configured manually or using the Mandrake tools from drakconf.
If you use shorewall, while configuring it from Mandrake Control Center you will be asked to select one (and only one) interface to connect to the Internet.
In my case, I use one interface (eth0) from office, and another (wlan0) from home: I simply added wlan0 interface to the "net" zone (instead of the auto-set "loc" zone), editing /etc/shorewall/interfaces.
XFree86
For the moment, I could only get the X Window System work with the autodetected "Radeon (fglrx)" driver, but WITHOUT 3D acceleration.
Enabling 3D acceleration causes the X server to freeze, and it's impossible to go back to a working situation without turning off the system.
This is the auto-generated XF86Config-4 configuration file (note that the unique mouse entry uses device /dev/mouse and works for both the touchpad, although a little roughly, and the USB Mouse).
A quick look at the documentation files installed by synaptics-0.12.4-1mdk package shows how to add an InputDevice for the touchpad only, resulting in this XF86Config-4 file.
Minor issues
BitchX and Konsole
In Mandrake 10.0 (both Community and Official) I encounter a strange issue when using BitchX from within a Konsole terminal.
Once reached the bottom of the window, the chat log doesn't scroll, and in turn the last line is overwritten every time a new message line is displayed.
The quickest way to get BitchX and Konsole work properly is setting TERM environment variable to "rxvt", for instance appending this line
alias BitchX='export TERM=rxvt && BitchXX'
to ~/.bashrc file.
TODO list
I still have to make ATI drivers and touchpad work properly, and post information about asus_acpi (to use leds and quick launch buttons), firewire and modem.
I hope you will find some of these information useful.
If you have any suggestion for helping me to get everything to work, please email me.
bibe at atworkonline dot it