3.1.1. TFTPD

In order to have the TFTPD up and running just issue this command:

/usr/sbin/in.tftpd -l -v -s /var/tftpboot
    

/var/tftpboot is the root directory where to store the bootable image.

3.1.2. PXELinux

The Pre-Boot Execution Environment (PXE) is the way to make a network interface card a boot device. The NIC will contact a DHCP server. The server will provide, through a TFTP, a bootable image.

“PXELINUX is a SYSLINUX derivative, for booting Linux off a network server, using a network ROM conforming to the Intel PXE (Pre-Execution Environment) specification.” (See PXELinux)

At boot time the NIC will requests an ip address and the address of a TFTP server where to get a kernel and the image. The image will be loaded into memory according to a configuration file stored in a pxelinux.cfg directory. Since it is not among the goal of this article to explain how PXE works, nor how to configure a Boot server, you can read more about all that here.

I already prepared everything you need to setup your boot server: a PEXLinux configuration, an initrd image with network support and a ntfsresize binary. You can get it here.

To install it, save it in /var/tftpboot (or wherever you decided to put you tftpd root directory) and:

tar xvfz pxelinux.tar.gz
    

A directory pxelinux will be created. Inside you'll find

initrd.pr100
bzImage
pxelinux.0
pxelinux.cfg/default
    

This is all you need to boot you laptop from the network.

3.1.3. DHCPD

Now it's time to configure your DHCP server for responding to the request of your toshiba. The DHCP server will respond according to the mac address of the NIC making the request.

That's my /etc/dhcpd.conf:

ddns-update-style            none;
default-lease-time           21600; 
max-lease-time               21600;
option option-128 code 128 = string; 
option option-129 code 129 = text;
subnet 10.0.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
option subnet-mask           255.255.255.0; 
option broadcast-address     10.0.1.255; 
option routers               10.0.1.1; 
option domain-name-servers   10.0.1.1; 
option domain-name           "nowhere.net"; 
use-host-decl-names      on;     
option log-servers       10.0.1.1;
next-server 10.0.1.1;
host toshiba {                         
hardware ethernet 00:08:0D:F7:02:67; # change with you mac address                   
filename "/pxelinux/pxelinux.0";
fixed-address 10.0.1.5;
                }              
}
    

Change the ip addresses according to you network configuration: in the above example 10.0.1.0/24 is the network attached to my boot server network interface card.

Be sure to put the correct mac address of you laptop's NIC, otherwise the dhcp server will not recognize your toshiba. In order to discover it I'm afraid you shall boot the proprietary OS that comes preinstalled in the laptop. Check the network properties to find it out.

5.5.1. Linux-2.4.x

APM and APCI both work. There are patches to apply for APCI.

If you suspend from a console, on resume the console will be black. Suspending from X works just fine.

Before suspending (and this is required also by Linux-2.6.x) you should umount USB or PCMCIA devices, stop their services and remove related kernel modules. Otherwise you can get nasty surprises on resuming.

5.5.2. Linux-2.6.x

The new kernel provides software suspend and standby.

My swsuspend script:

#!/bin/sh
/usr/local/sbin/wlan_down #my script to get rid of wireless and related modules
rmmod uhci_hcd 
rmmod ohci_hcd 
rmmod ehci_hcd 
rmmod usb_storage 
clock --systohc 
echo 3 > /proc/acpi/sleep
sleep 3 
clock --hctosys 
modprobe usb_storage 
modprobe uhci_hcd 
modprobe ohci_hcd 
modprobe ehci_hcd
/usr/local/sbin/wlan_up #I need wirless support, after all.
    

And this is my standby script:

#!/bin/sh 
/usr/local/sbin/wlan_donw
rmmod uhci_hcd 
rmmod ohci_hcd 
rmmod ehci_hcd 
rmmod usb_storage 
clock --systohc 
echo 4 > /proc/acpi/sleep
sleep 3 
clock --hctosys 
modprobe usb_storage 
modprobe uhci_hcd 
modprobe ohci_hcd 
modprobe ehci_hcd
/usr/local/sbin/wlan_up
    

So far I did not experience and system crash or data loss. Remember that changing the system during suspend or standby mode will result in the system not being able to unsuspend.

The new kernel supports also CPU-FREQ, the ability to change on the fly the CPU frequency. That requires some modules. These are all my ACPI and CPU-FREQ modules.

modprobe p4_clockmod 
modprobe ac 
modprobe toshiba_acpi 
modprobe battery 
modprobe processor 
modprobe button 
modprobe fan 
modprobe thermal 
modprobe cpufreq_performance 
modprobe cpufreq_powersave 
    

The kernel modules centrino-speedstep is actually not working, since Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1000MHz (the model name reported by /proc/cpuinfo) is not properly recognized. BTW p4_clockmod seems to work fine.

To decrease the CPU frequency

cat /proc/sys/cpu/0/speed-min > /proc/sys/cpu/0/speed
    

To restore maximum frequency:

cat /proc/sys/cpu/0/speed-max > /proc/sys/cpu/0/speed
    

modeprobe p4_clockmod
    

use:

mdoprobe speedstep-centrino
    

The /proc/sys/cpu seems to have disappeared in this kernel. In order to control the cpu frequency you must use the new sysfs. To do this you must add a line like this to /etc/fstab:

sysfs  /sys  sysfs  default  0   0
    

then

mkdir /sys
mount /sys
    

Now you can control cpu frequency through /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/*.

For instance, try:

echo 700000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_setspeed
cat /proc/cpuinfo
    

Read more about cpu-freq in /path/to/linux-2.6.1/Documenetation/cpu-freq/user-guide.txt.

5.7.1. Intel Native Linux Driver

On March 9th, 2004, Intel released a native Linux driver under the GNU GPL. You can find it here. The driver requires a binary only firmware, released under a proprietary license. It also requires patching the kernel. Works either with 2.6.3 and 2.4.25.

Here you'll find instructions to build it outside the kernel tree (without patching) with linux-2.6.3.

Get the ipw2100-full-0.29.tgz package and the firmware. Follow the README to install the firmware.

Unpack the package somewhere and edit Makefile.26. Change:

obj-$(CONFIG_IPW2100) = ipw2100.o obj-$(CONFIG_IPW2100_AVERATEC_5100P) += av5100.o
    

to

obj-m += ipw2100.o 
obj-m += av5100.o
    

Then link Makefile.26 to Makefile:

ln -s Makefile.26 Makefile
    

Then

make -C /usr/src/linux SUBDIRS=$PWD modules 
    

where /usr/src/linux is the path to the kernel source.

Then:

cp ipw2000.ko /lib/modules/2.6.3/misc/ 
cp av5100.ko /lib/modules/2.6.3/misc/ 
    

Then:

depmod -a 
modprobe ipw2100 
    

With iwconfig and ifconfig you can now configure you network interface.

At the time of this writing the driver has limited functionalities: ad-hoc mode and WEP are not supported. For these reasons I was only able to bring the interface up, but, since I do not have an Access Point, could not actually test it.

5.7.2. Ndiswrapper

Wireless seems to be working with free (as in beer) binary only drivers (for a proprietary operating system) together with a free (as in freedom) driver wrapper.

You need:

1. Ndiswrapper

2. Binary drivers (you can get the ones I tried directly here)

3. Linux Wireless Tools (you can get them here)

Install ndiswrapper and carefully follow the installation procedure (read the INSTALL!)

Install the linux wireless tools.

modprobe ndiswrapper 
loadndisdriver 8086 1043 /path/to/w70n51.sys /path/to/w70n51.inf
iwconfig wlan0 mode ad-hoc essid you_net
    

Now you can configure your wlan0 interface.

Confession time: at first my wireless card seemed not to be receiving packets (though properly sending). I thought there could be something wrong with it. So I fired up for the second time the proprietary operating system my toshiba came with. The card was working perfectly. So I came back to Linux and tried configuring the card again: it worked perfectly. Something strange, right?

Before suspending you should stop the wireless lan and remove the kernel module.