Slackware Linux on HP Pavilion 7880(uk) - Issues
Here I go into a little more detail about specific issues I faced installing Slackware LInux 9.0 onto my Pavilion. This is specific to my Pavilion - yours is probably different; you may get different mileage out of the advice below. I accept no responsibility if you damage your computer - but don't worry that's highly unlikely. Everyone will tell you you shouldn't do stuff as root, for simplicity, I'll show the command prompt as #, be careful as root you can damage your system, but nothing a good old re-installation won't fix (barring losing all your data of course) - as you're using slack I'll assume you're the experimental type and leave it up to you whether or not to login to a # or $ [and then use su, see man su for details]. Note: I use bash.
I started this page on 21 May 2003 ... I'm still looking to start an IT job. :0)>
USB support?
First thing to note is that USB support has now been included into the bare.i (.i stands for IDE, the usual PC hard-drive type) kernel. This is the default so when you get the boot: prompt just hit enter to choose the bar.i kernel - if you know better then you probably don't need to read this page!
Now I had major problems with the USB support when it came to recompiling my kernel. Even re-installing didn't work unless I chose to format the partition that my root (the base directory '/') was on. This proved quite annoying. I had a copy of slackware CD that didn't include the kernel. So I had downloaded the kernel 2.4.20 and installed it myself. If you're not recompiling a kernel you should be OK.
I had some problems with my mouse not being recognised. I solved these by placing a symlink to the /dev/input/mice from /dev/mouse. Most programs look for your mouse at /dev/mouse ... this install placed mine at the other place; the code is # ln -s /dev/input/mice /dev/mouse [the -s means it's a soft link, whatever that means?]
You might get an error that the device already exists (or something like that), in which case do # rm /dev/mouse and try again (up arrow to get the previous entered command!).
XF86Config
XF86Config is the file used by X-windows for configuration purposes. After the full Slackware install I typed # xf86setup (# is the prompt, it shows you are logged in as root user; $ is used for non super-users). The script xf86setup attempts to automatically create an XF86Config file in the /etc/X11/ directory. Next you can type startx to enter X windows.
I wasn't happy with the basic configuration here. I closed X-windows with the ctrl-alt-backspace key combination. Then I copied my old XF86Config - # cp /etc/X11/XF86Config /etc/X11/XF86Config_old1 . And ran xf86config. This is a question and answer series that enables the XF86Config file to be setup. Read the text on the screen carefully, it helps to have your computer documentation to hand: for example my system has a nvidia card and mx70 monitor.
Cutting a long boring story short - I didn't like the outcome again. I ended up compiling a concoction of the two XF86Config files (saving the originals as fallback). The xf86setup prog appeared to recognise hardware better and the xf86config prog allowed me to set the display resolution I wanted.
If you get X to crash it always gives nice little error messages, just look at the console window after the crash (use shift-pageUp, to see stuff that's disappeared up the screeen if necessary). Alternatively look in /var/log for a file called XF86Config.log.0 , or similar, that will have all the error messages in. Errors are marked with (EE). So you could do a grep, something like # cat /var/log/XFree86.0.log | grep EE
Installing PCTel World Micromodem
This computer has a winmodem, oh dear. Never fear though, because ... linmodems are here.
You'll need to see the PCTel HSP MicroModem Configuration mini-HOWTO site for information on how to configure. Pretty basic really. You'll also of needed to get the driver files. I used the # ./configure --with-hal=pct789 option and this worked fine (bit slow) under Slack 8.1. However, the 2.4.20 kernel I compiled used the gcc v.3 compiler whilst the pctel-0.9.6.tar.gz files used gcc v.2 - this mismatch can apparently be solved using a fixscript ... haven't tried yet though.
Sounding better
Getting the AC97 VIA audio to work. I never thought to check the BIOS. At boot type F1 (or F11 for slightly more options) move to the advanced BIOS setup screen, down to sound devices, enter that menu, set the sound to 'auto', everything else disabled ... this works for me. Occassionally sound will stop working (usually I think after a hard reset) and I'll need to reboot and go back into the BIOS and reset this? Strange indeed!?
Via offer drivers downloads for all of their drivers. Here we have the vt82c686 (b?).
Partitioning
Well I installed a second drive to put my linux system on in order to prevent messing up the windows in any way - so that Fiona wouldn't get ratty with me when windows wouldn't boot up any more!!
In the slackware setup I chose to use three partitions (which I made with linux fdisk, just follow the instructions on screen, or use cfdisk). One root, one swap and one for /usr/local/ (as this was the suggestion made during the install process). This means that if I need to reinstall everything on my hdb3 (which is mounted at /usr/local/) is safe.
Kernel (re)compiling
Slackware 9 uses the 2.4.20 kernel. My distro CD didn't have the source so I downloaded it from kernel.org. It's about 26 MBytes so took quite a while (!!) over my 56k modem using smartFTP.
Why recompile? To get a meaner, leaner, faster machine! The less the kernel has in the less rubbish starts at boot, the less things there are to exploit for hackers, the less software is running to cause errors, the less memory is needed and the faster amd more robust is the system ... or so the saying goes.
There is an excellent guide on linuxquestion.org in the slackware forum for kernel recompilation. Read it and follow the instructions.
Lilo installation and configuration
I had a lot of problems at first as I was trying to boot from floppy. When I made my own kernel it just bottomed out on me and refused to recognise my USB keyboard at the login: prompt. Major frustration ensued leading me to reinstall Slack and then install the lilo bootloader. KDE 3.1 (my window manager and all round eye candy adapter) includes a lilo utility as part of the system configuration thingy. Alternatively you can edit lilo.conf yourself ... just google for it.
Lilo has the benefit that you can choose which kernel to boot, so if a new one doesn't work you can reboot and use the old one, neat!
GRUB is an alternative about which I know nothing.
MySQL
I haven't even started on this yet. The basic reason I'm installing, other than to learn about linux, is to get a LAMP system up so I can further enhance my web development skills, improve my CV and determine how to setup the Gaer Community Network site to allow easy addition of local events using a browser based editting system ... the hope being that the community can host this site over a broadband connection in one of our community bases (Gaer Shops?).
