Post-Installation Configuration of a Dell Laptop

In my last article, I discussed the installation of Debian GNU/Linux on my Dell Latitude C800 laptop, as well as the installation and configuration of XFree86 4.1.0. But I left out a lot of other configuration issues. In this article, I will discuss further configuration of this laptop, including:

Currently, there are two main series of 2.4 kernels. The Linus kernel series are the kernels released by Linus Torvalds, and they have version numbers like 2.4.7, 2.4.8, etc. The Alan Cox kernel series kernels are maintained and released by Alan Cox. They have version numbers like 2.4.8-ac3, 2.4.9-ac2, etc.

One of the major differences between the two kernel series is that ext3 has been integrated into the -ac (Alan Cox) kernels for quite some time, while the Linus kernels require a version-specific patch to add in ext3 support.

Another recent major difference is that with the 2.4.10 kernel release, Linus introduced a new VM system while Alan Cox has continued to stick with the previous VM. A consequence of this VM change in the Linus kernels since 2.4.10 is that there have been stability issues with the ext3 layer, not all of which have been resolved at of the time of writing this article.

However, the ext3 patches integrated into the -ac kernels are considered very stable. Based on this knowledge, and on my e-mail exchanges with Andrew Morton, one of the two ext3 maintainers, I will compile the current latest -ac kernel, which at the time of this writing happens to be 2.4.12-ac3.

If you are wary of trying out an -ac kernel and prefer to stick with a Linus kernel, I recommend the 2.4.7 Linus kernel. I have run this kernel along with the specific ext3 patch for it for some time on a desktop system and encountered no problems. Caveat: YMMV (your mileage may vary).

Having decided to go with the above kernel, we need to download the source code. I always like to keep kernel sources in /usr/src, with /usr/src/linux as a symlink to the currently installed kernel's source directory.

First, we will download the full source to kernel-2.4.12 using wget (apt-get install wget, if you haven't installed it). As root, type::

    cd /usr/src/
    wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/linux-2.4.12.tar.gz

Alan Cox kernels are distributed as patches that have to be applied against the specific Linus kernel for which they are meant. So, let's download the -ac3 patch to kernel-2.4.12. While still in the /usr/src directory, enter:

    wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/alan/linux-2.4/2.4.12/patch-2.4.12-ac3.gz 

Now that the 2.4.12 kernel and -ac3 patch sources have been downloaded, extract them as follows, again from the /usr/src directory.

tar zxvf linux-2.4.12.tar.gz

To apply the -ac3 patch, enter

 cd linux
 gzip -dc ../patch-2.4.12-ac3.gz | patch -p1

And then fix up the source directory permissions, the name and set up the symlink:

   
 cd ..
 chown -R root:src linux
 mv linux linux-2.4.12-ac3
 ln -s linux-2.4.12-ac3 linux

Your /usr/src directory should now appear as follows:

matrix:/usr/src# cd /usr/src/
matrix:/usr/src# ls -alF
total 30516
drwxrwsr-x    4 root     src          4096 Oct 21 20:32 ./
drwxr-xr-x   16 root     root         4096 Oct 18 23:19 ../
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     src            16 Oct 21 20:32 linux -> linux-2.4.12-ac3/
drwxr-xr-x   14 root     src          4096 Oct 21 20:29 linux-2.4.12-ac3/
-rw-r--r--    1 root     src      28459381 Oct 11 02:59 linux-2.4.12.tar.gz
-rw-r--r--    1 root     src       2729744 Oct 15 17:45 patch-2.4.12-ac3.gz
drwxr-xr-x    7 root     root         4096 Oct 19 19:31 rpm/

The following packages are needed to build kernels on Debian:

If you like to configure kernels using the GUI xconfig method, you don't need to install the libncurses5-dev packages. Likewise, if you like to configure kernels using the menuconfig method, you don't need to the tk-dev package.

Even though I like to configure kernels using the GUI kernel configuration tool, I will install libncurses5-dev just in case:

apt-get install make gcc libc6-dev kernel-package bin86 tk-dev libncurses5-dev

Apt will take care of installing all required dependencies for the above packages.