Fedora Core 4 on HP nx7010

Contact: xavier at rootshell dot be

Table of contents


History

2005/06/17Added: Upgrade to Fedora Core 4
2005/04/25Added: fixing USB stick default file permission
2005/04/14ipw2200 on kernel 2.6.11
2005/04/13VMware on kernel 2.6.11
2004/12/07Page created

Introduction This document describe the installation of Fedora Core 3 on a HP nx7010 notebook. It covers the installation as the day-to-day usage. I'll try to keep this page up-to-date as long as possible. I'll not cover the base installation which occured without any issue but the extra features such the wireless network card, the USB or SD ports.

Wireless network My notebook was delivered with an Intel 2200BG chipset, which is not supported by FC3. Here is my adpater info (lspci output):


02:02.0 Network controller: Intel Corp. PRO/Wireless 2200BG (rev 05)
        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company: Unknown device 12f6
        Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
        Status: Cap+ 66Mhz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- SERR- 

There exists a project for this network adapter:
http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/. Since a few releases, the ipw2200 module is provided in standard kernel.

ipw2200 with kernel 2.6.11

After the upgrade to 2.6.11, my network card was not properly initialized:

ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, 1.0.0
ipw2200: Copyright(c) 2003-2004 Intel Corporation
ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection
ipw2200: ipw-2.2-boot.fw load failed: Reason -2
ipw2200: Unable to load firmware: 0xFFFFFFFE
ipw2200: failed to register network device
ipw2200: probe of 0000:02:02.0 failed with error -5

A firmware upgrade was required! RPMs with firmware are available here. I installed ipw2200-firmware-2.2-5.at.noarch.rpm. Then, unload the module and restart your interface:

# rmmod ipw2200
# cd /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts
# ifdown eth1
# ifup eth1

(Replace eth1 with your interface)

USB devices

USB is fully supported with the default setup. I had nothing to install manually.

USB sticks

USB sticks are detected as SCSI devices. Once inserted, mine was detected immediately:

kernel: usb 1-2: new high speed USB device using address 4Dec  7 13:03:51 moove kernel: SCSI subsystem initialized
kernel: Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
kernel: scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
kernel:   Vendor:           Model: USB DISK Pro      Rev: 1.09
kernel:   Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 02
kernel: usbcore: registered new driver usb-storage
kernel: USB Mass Storage support registered.
scsi.agent[9899]: disk at /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb1/1-2/1-2:1.0/host0/0:0:0:0
kernel: SCSI device sda: 484352 512-byte hdwr sectors (248 MB)
kernel: sda: Write Protect is off
kernel: sda: assuming drive cache: write through
kernel:  sda:<7>ipw2200: U ipw_send_cmd Sending SCAN_REQUEST_EXT command (#26), 96 bytes
kernel:  sda1
kernel: Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0

I use the automount feature to access the stick. autofs is configured via 2 files:

/etc/auto.master:


#
# $Id: auto.master,v 1.3 2003/09/29 08:22:35 raven Exp $
#
# Sample auto.master file
# This is an automounter map and it has the following format
# key [ -mount-options-separated-by-comma ] location
# For details of the format look at autofs(5).
/auto   /etc/auto.misc

and /etc/auto.misc:

#
# $Id: auto.misc,v 1.2 2003/09/29 08:22:35 raven Exp $
#
# This is an automounter map and it has the following format
# key [ -mount-options-separated-by-comma ] location
# Details may be found in the autofs(5) manpage

usbstick        -fstype=msdos           :/dev/sda1

USB Sticks and HAL daemon

When I setup my notebook, I disabled the HAL daemon at startup. (For security, run only the piece of software you really need ;-). But, the new Network Manager requires this daemon. I was forced to use it and my USB key was then mounted thru HAL insteal of the automountd!
No problem at all, my files were available. But! I store my SSH keys on the USB device and ssh started to complaint about my keys security. In fact, HAL mounts the USB key with a default umask: 0022 (0755 on the file system). See the mount(8).


# ls /media/USBDISKPRO
drwxr-xr-x    2 xavier   users        4096 Apr 24  2005 foo
#

To fix the correct permissions, edit /usr/share/hal/fdi/90defaultsecurity/storage-policy.fdi, search for vfat and add the following lines:

<match key="volume.fstype" string="vfat">
  <merge key="volume.policy.mount_option.umask="0077" type="bool">true</merge>
</match>

Remove the USB stick, re-insert it. Device is mounted with the right options:

# ls /media/USBDISKPRO
drwx------    2 xavier   users        4096 Apr 24  2005 foo
# mount | grep USBDISKPRO
/dev/sda1 on /media/USBDISKPRO type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,sync,noatime,umask=0077,iocharset=utf8,fscontext=system_u
:object_r:removable_t,user=xavier)
#


Bluetooth

Bluetooth worked "out of the box". Don't forget to change your PIN! (/etc/bluetooth/pin)

OBEX file transfer

To be able to transfert files via OBEX, I had to install 3 extra RPMs: (All of them are available on rpmfind.net)

Applications

VMware

I use VMware workstation with a Windows XP guest. I still need some Wintel environment to be able to run very specific applications @ office.
VMware doest not officially support FC3. There are three important steps to perform to run VMware with FC3:

First, VMware setup did not find suitable modules for the running kernel, no big surprise! But the module compilation failed!
You need to apply some patches found here: http://ftp.cvut.cz/vmware/. Use the latest provide patch. Current is vmware-any-any-update84.tar.gz. Extract the files and execure the runme.pl script (don't care about warnings).

Second problem, once the VMware modules are successfully compiled, VMware still complaints of a bad kernel. Issue the following command:


# cp -rp /dev/vm* /etc/udev/devices/

Finally, it was impossible to properly shutdown the nx7010. Remaining message was:


Unregister_net device: waiting for vmnet8 to become free. Usage count=1

Automatic shutdown of VMware is disabled for level 0! Just issue the following command as root:

# chkconfig --level 0 vmware off

Running VMware with kernel 2.6.11

VMware modules compilation is broken with kernel 2.6.11. You need to install the latest any-any patch provided here. The lastest is vmare-any-any-update90.tar.gz.

# cd 
# tar xvzf vmare-any-any-update90.tar.gz
# cd vmware-any-any-update90
# ./runme.pl

Follow the script questions. One the modules are properly compiled. Copy once again the /dev/vm* to /etc/udev/devices (see above).

Upgrade to Fedora Core 4

Fedora Core 4 was released on June 13th 2005. This time, I decided to download only the DVD ISO. DVD burned, tested, let's go!