Installing Fedora Core 5 on a
Toshiba Satellite A85-S1072 Laptop
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March 2006
I got this little laptop brand new for $450 at Best Buy (when they had the tax-free weekend for school-related supplies). I added an extra gigabyte of RAM and it's an awesome little laptop for the money. You realy can't beat it.
I have it (Toshiba A85-S1072) successfully running Fedora Core 5 with the sound, wireless networking, and mythtv frontend running. However I've had no luck with getting ATI's proprietary driver (fglrx) working so I can use TV-out. That is really the only thing I can't get working.
Feel free to share these notes with others. If you have something to contribute, let me know.
I am especially interested if anyone gets the fglrx driver working on this machine.
Enjoy,
Bruce
Sound:
Hardware: Realtek ALC250 (use ALSA drivers)
Specific brand: ATIIXP
ALSA Install document:
http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/doc-php/template.php?company=ATI&card=ATI-IXP+southbridge+AC97+audio.&chip=IXP+SB150%2C+IXP+SB200%2C+IXP+SB250%2C+
IXP+SB300%2C+IXP+SB400&module=atiixp You need kernel sources to compile the driver.
To install kernel sources:
1. run yum install kernel-devel
2. run yum update (takes a long time)
4 reboot
4. Download and extract these files to /usr/src:
ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/driver/alsa-driver-1.0.11rc4.tar.bz2
ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/lib/alsa-lib-1.0.11rc4.tar.bz2
ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/utils/alsa-utils-1.0.11rc4.tar.bz2
4. untar each file above: tar xvfj filename
5. go into the driver directory and run
./configure --with-cards=atiixp --with-sequencer=yes;make;make install
6. in the other two directories (alsa-lib-xxxx and alsa-utils-xxx) execute:
./configure; make; make install
7. run alsaconf
8. reboot
9. run alsamix, set volume at maximum
10 Adjust volume using physical volume control knob on front right of computer References:
http://www.alsa-project.org/
http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/doc-php/template.php?company=ATI&card=ATI-IXP+southbridge+AC97+audio.&chip=IXP+SB150%2C+IXP+SB200%2C+IXP+SB250%2C+
IXP+SB300%2C+IXP+SB400&module=atiixp
Wireless network card setup
Hardware: Atheros 802.11 (use Madwifi drivers) Get source and necessary packages by executing:
cd /usr/src
svn checkout http://svn.madwifi.org/trunk madwifi-ng
yum install sharutils (to get uudecode package)
make
make install
Go here: http://hostap.epitest.fi/wpa_supplicant/ and get the latest stable release
Copy the following info to /usr/src/wpa_supplicant-0.4.x/.config :
CONFIG_DRIVER_MADWIFI=y
CFLAGS += -I/usr/src/madwifi-ng
CONFIG_CTRL_IFACE=y
Now build wpa_supplicant by executing:
cd /usr/src/wpa_supplicant-0.4.7
make clean
make
make install
From /usr/src/wpa_supplicant-0.4.x/ execute:
wpa_passphrase My_WPA_Protected_AP_ESSID "YOUR PASS PHRASE" >> /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
That writes:
network={
ssid="My_WPA_Protected_AP_ESSID"
#psk="Some_Decent_PassPhrase_of_up_64_Characters"
psk=701459761a3d17c5ddead0deafbeeffeedbadf00dc659db31e2e3d36f00a12b1
}
to /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf I am using WPA encryption, so I edit /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf and add these lines into
the network section created above:
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
proto=WPA
Assuming you're assigning a static IP address to the card (i.e. not using DHCP) then
this has to be run to turn on the wirelss by hand: ifdown eth0
modprobe ath_pci
iwconfig ath0 essid "yourssidhere"
ifconfig ath0 192.168.1.205 up
/usr/local/bin/wpa_supplicant -Bw -Dmadwifi -iath0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
route add default gw 192.168.1.111 dev ath0 Note: I turn off the other NIC, eth0 here because I want to route all IP traffic thru the wireless.
Here is an init.d script that does all the magic:
#!/bin/sh
#
# Init file for wirless network card
#
# chkconfig: 345 55 25
# description: Wirless network interface
#
. /etc/init.d/functions
stop()
{
echo "Stopping wireless network adapter."
/usr/bin/pkill wpa_supplicant
/sbin/rmmod ath_pci
/sbin/rmmod ath_rate_sample
/sbin/rmmod ath_hal
/sbin/rmmod wlan_tkip
/sbin/rmmod wlan_scan_sta
/sbin/rmmod wlan
/sbin/ifup eth0
}
start()
{
echo "Starting wireless network adapter."
/sbin/ifdown eth0
/sbin/modprobe ath_pci
/sbin/iwconfig ath0 essid "yourssidhere"
/sbin/ifconfig ath0 192.168.1.205
/usr/local/bin/wpa_supplicant -Bw -Dmadwifi -iath0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
/sbin/route add default gw 192.168.1.111 dev ath0
}
# See how we were called.
case "$1" in
start)
shift
start $*
;;
stop)
stop
;;
restart|reload)
stop
start
RETVAL=$?
;;
*)
$"Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|reload}"
exit 1
esac
exit $RETVAL
#End of script Put that file in /etc/init.d then add it as a service by executing:
chkconfig --add wireless Now this will start it:
service wireless start And this will stop it:
service wireless stop
References:
http://madwifi.org/
http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/WPA_PSK_on_Both_Ends
http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/Distro/RedHat
http://madwifi.org/attachment/wiki/UserDocs/Distro/RedHat/rh-wireless
Video:
Hardware: ATI Mobility Radeon 9000
The video works fine with the default install but it uses an open-source driver (ati). I want to use
the TV-out feature which requires ATI's proprietary driver (fglrx) but I am unable
thus far (April 20th, 2006) to get fglrx to work with Fedora Core 5,4, or Ubuntu 5.10 on
this laptop. Here is what I tried so far:
rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-5.rpm
yum --enablerepo=livna-testing --enablerepo=updates-testing install kmod-fglrx
Reboot: won't load new driver
References:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2006-February/msg01178.html
http://clunixchit.blogspot.com/2006/03/fc5-ati-or-nvidia-drivers.html
MythTV: I just use the binaries and let yum do the work and it works just fine:
Add the following to file /etc/yum.repos.d/atrpms.repo:
[atrpms]
name=ATrpms for Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch
baseurl=http://dl.atrpms.net/fc$releasever-$basearch/atrpms/stable
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://ATrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY.atrpms
[atrpms-testing]
name=ATrpms test packages for Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch
baseurl=http://dl.atrpms.net/fc$releasever-$basearch/atrpms/testing
enabled=0
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://ATrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY.atrpms
Add the following to file /etc/yum.repos.d/freshrpms.repo
[freshrpms]
name=FreshRPMs for Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch
baseurl=http://ayo.freshrpms.net/fedora/linux/$releasever/$basearch/freshrpms
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://freshrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY-freshrpms Now execute: yum install mythtv-suite
References:
http://www.mythtv.org/
Other stuff I learned while doing this: Determining kernel version: uname -r
If you want to contribute to these notes or if you learn something new, feel free to drop me a line. Perhaps we can get this inexpensive little computer to fully work with the latest distros.
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