Fedora 8 On the Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook T4220
From Linux & Open Source @ NUS
The following howto describes howto setup Fedora Core 8 on the Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook T4220U tablet PC. This document has only just been created and is far from finished. The instructions are written on a very basic level. A completeley new user should be able to follow it. If there are any ambiguities feel free to ask questions in the Discussion page, or change this document to be more clear.
Contents |
Introduction
Fujitsu is not exactly well-known for their astonishing Linux support. Neither is Intel. Fortunately this model has been on the market for some time now, and most hardware issues have been fixed. I have successfully setup Fedora on my Laptop and got most things working. This guide will require you to type or paste a lot of text in something called the terminal. Do not be worried that Fedora is difficult though! Most of these things can be done with the graphical tools, it is just much much faster and easier to write a guide where all the readers needs is paste text in another window.
What works in the default installation
- Optical drives
- Screen resolution
- Wireless
- Ethernet
- Hibernate
- Suspend
- Thermal ACPI
What works with fixes
- The pen
- Screen rotation
- The LCD-screen buttons
- The fingerprint reader
What doesn't work
- Screen brightness cannot be changed. This is a known bug and will hopefully be fixed in the next kernel release.
What hasn't been tested
- CPU-scaling (has reportedly been hitchy)
Conventions
Everything inside one of these boxes:
is important. The lines that are prefixed with a dollar sign are commands you want to type in a terminal. You can open a terminal by clicking on Applications (in the top-left corner of the screen)->System Tools->Terminal. You can paste commands into the terminal with Ctrl-Shift-V. You do not type or paste the dollar sign that prefixes any lines. The dollar sign is a convention. If you look at your terminal you will see that the last character before the text-cursor is a dollar sign. If the lines are not prefixed with a dollar-sign the text is probably part of a file. If you read the instructions around you will understand the context.
Installation
Get the installation media
Get install media at fedoraproject.org You want to download the Live DVD for the x86_64 architecture. If you are lazy here is the direct link:
http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/8/Live/x86_64/Fedora-8-Live-x86_64.iso
Fedora defaults with GNOME but there is also a KDE version available. Download whichever you prefer, this guide applies in either case.
Burn the ISO on a DVD. If you are using a flavour of linux already you may start a terminal and type:
$ cdrecord -v Fedora-8-Live-x86_64.iso
If you are using Windows you may use your favourite DVD burning software or download ISORecorder from http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/
Installation
If you wish to dual boot with Windows XP or Vista, there are many guides on how to set that up. Google for it.
Reboot your computer with the DVD in the drive. Let Fedora load, this may take a few minutes. Once loaded click on the blue icon labelled 'Install to Hard disk'. Follow the instructions.
Make sure you have removed the DVD from your drive and reboot.
Perform updates
It is important that you update the system once we have finished installation. You can do this by clicking on the ugly brown applet in the top bar and then 'Apply updates'. The updater will download several 100 Mb's of updates so go get a cup of coffee. You can also type:
$ su -l $ yum update
Congratulations, you now have a working copy of Fedora running.
Configuration
Enabling sudo
First off we will enable a program called sudo. Sudo allows a regular user to execute commands as the superuser.
Open up a terminal and type
$ su -l
Enter your root password and press enter. Now type
$ visudo
Scroll down to the lines
## Allows people in group wheel to run all commands # %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
with the arrow keys. We are in a program called vi which is quite difficult to master. But fear not! Here's a simple instruction. Press 'i'. We are now in insert mode. Use arrowkeys, and backspace to modify the lines to look like this:
## Allows people in group wheel to run all commands %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
Now press ESC. Type
:wq
You should see the text showing up in the bottom-left hand side. Press enter and you should be back in the terminal. Still as root type
$ adduser yourname wheel
Remember to replace yourname with your name. Heh. Type
$ exit
to log out from the root account. Now type
$ export PATH=$PATH:/sbin
This command makes sure that you look in the directory /sbin when you are executing commands. If we do not look there, we might get strange 'No such command' errors when invoking superuser commands with sudo.
Installing additional software
Type the following in a terminal to install a few useful programs that we will be using during the installation.
$ sudo yum install wget
The pen
Make sure you are connected to the internet then open a terminal. Type
$ sudo yum install linux-wacom
This command will install the linux-wacom drivers.
Type:
$ sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Append the following at the end of the file:
Section "InputDevice" Driver "wacom" Identifier "stylus" Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0" Option "Type" "stylus" Option "SendCoreEvents" "true" Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY EndSection Section "InputDevice" Driver "wacom" Identifier "eraser" Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0" Option "Type" "eraser" Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY EndSection Section "InputDevice" Driver "wacom" Identifier "cursor" Option "Device" "/dev/input/ttyS0" Option "Type" "cursor" Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY EndSection
Next modify the Section called "ServerLayout" (at the very beginning of the file). It should look like this:
Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Default Layout" Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0 InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard" InputDevice "Synaptics" "CorePointer" InputDevice "stylus" "SendCoreEvents" InputDevice "cursor" "SendCoreEvents" InputDevice "eraser" "SendCoreEvents" EndSection
Save our changes. Now press Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to restart X. The pen should be working now.
The LCD-screen buttons
Make sure your system is up-to-date. Type:
$ sudo yum update
Reboot if you are asked to.
We will need to install several development packages to compile drivers for the buttons. This list may be incomplete. If compilation does not work for you, submit the error to the discussion page.
$ sudo yum install libX11-devel libXi-devel libXext-devel libXtst-devel libXrandr-devel kernel-devel modules-devel hal-devel
Go to: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=196222 and download the latest version of fscd and fsc_btns (at the time 1.2) to your desktop Open your terminal and type:
$ cd ~/Desktop; tar -xvf fscd-1.2.tar.gz; tar -xvf fsc_btns-1.2.tar.gz; cd fsc_btns-1.2; make modules; sudo make modules_install
Hopefully all went well. Type:
$ modprobe fsc_btns $ lsmod | grep fsc_btns
These two commands load the fsc_btns module into the kernel, and the second command makes sure the module was loaded successfully. If you get 'command not found' errors you forgot to setup /sbin in the PATH variable, as described in the section 'Enabling sudo'
The last command should output fsc_btns. If it does proceed by typing:
$ sudo sh -c 'echo "fsc_btns" >> /etc/modules'
This commands adds a line fsc_btns to the end of /etc/modules. This way the file will be loaded automatically the next time you start the computer.
The kernel module fsc_btns should now be successfully installed. We now need fscd to make something happen when we push the buttons. Type:
$ cd ~/Desktop/fscd-1.2 $ ./configure
If this fails, please post the message in the discussion board for this page.
$ make $ sudo make install $ sudo fscd &
You will get a warning about brightness. Ignore it. Brightness does not work. Try out the buttons. Some people have reported a redraw problem when in tablet mode. There is a temporary fix, but there is a tradeoff. You have to disable 3D support for your video card (and with it those beautiful desktop effects). See the instructions under Other tweaks for instructions.
The fscd program will start automatically the next time you login, so there is no need to make any additional changes.
The fingerprint reader
$ sudo yum install libfprint libfprint-devel pam_fprint
You can now enroll your fingers. For instructions on how to do just that type:
$ pam_fprint_enroll -h
You wil want to use the -f switch and enroll as many fingers you like. To enable fingerprint reader authentication upon login and when performing administrative tasks type:
$ sudo gedit /etc/pam.d/system-auth
You will want to change the first paragraph to look like this:
auth required pam_env.so auth sufficient pam_fprint.so auth sufficient pam_unix.so nullok try_first_pass auth requisite pam_succeed_if.so uid >= 500 quiet auth required pam_deny.so
(You are adding auth sufficient pam_fprint.so). Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to logout and test your new fingerprint config.
All done! You should now have all the hardware (except LCD-brightness) working on the machine.
Other tweaks
Here are some other changes you may wish/need to perform:
Disable 3D
If you are having trouble in tablet mode, you can disable 3D and desktop effects as follows. Type:
$ sudo gedit /etc/X11/Xorg.conf
Find the section that looks like this:
Section "Device" Identifier "Videocard0" Driver "intel" EndSection
Change it to:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "intel"
Option "DRI" "false"
EndSection
Save and quit. The changes will take effect as soon as you restart X. (You can do it immediately by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Backspace)
