Fujitsu Lifebook S-4546

Compiled kernel 2.4.22.  I've added the following patches:

• Linux NTFS filesystem patch from http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/
• Orinoco driver patch from Shmoo Group, for running Kismet
• usbdnet patch for use with my Zaurus PDA
• squashfs patch - squashfs is a compressed filesystem

To patch the different drivers, use the following commands in /usr/src:

patch -p1 -d /usr/src/linux/drivers/net/wireless/ < orinoco-0.13d-patch.diff
patch -p1 < linux-2.4.22-ntfs-2.1.4c.patch
patch -p1 < squashfs1.3r2-patch
patch -p1 < usbdnet-2.4.20-patch

The usbdnet patch barfs, if you want to use it you'll have to hand-edit the kernel source to add the rejected patches in.  It's pretty straightforward, open the *.rej files, and copy and paste the text into the files that need to be patched.  Those files are:

• drivers/usb/Config.in and
• drivers/usb/serial/Makefile

I created new sets of files that describe how the laptop is configured and running for kernel 2.4.22:

• kernel-config-2.4.22.txt
• modules.deb.11Dec2003.txt
• lsmod.deb.11Dec2003.txt
• dmesg.deb.11Dec2003.txt
  

One thing I did forget to do was build the base SCSI driver as a module, the system complains when it boots.  I'll redo it shortly.

I ditched lilo and installed GNU GRUB instead.  What's really cool is that GRUB supports splashimages, the splashimage will be set as the 'wallpaper' when GRUB starts.  I got the information about how to set up GRUB splashimages from the GNU GRUB splashimage HOWTO.  Here's the GRUB menu.lst file that I'm using to load the splashimage and also set up PCMCIA schemes, and here's a thumbnail of the image I'm using as the splashimage:

http://www.antlinux.com/lifebook/sunspot-bootlogo.png

It looks most excellent!  The already-formatted splashimage shown above can be had here:  http://www.antlinux.com/files/linux/graphics/sunspot-bootlogo.xpm.gz

I've also been toying with ALSA, I upgraded the laptop to ALSA 0.9.6 with no problems.  I tried to make some changes to my asound.conf and ALSA specific additions modules.conf file so that I can get rid of the errors that the ALSA modules throw when they load on bootup. The asound.conf

file has a reference to a few web pages that explain what the settings do. To use the ALSA additions to the modules.conf file, save the file linked above to /etc/modutils, and then run update-modules.  This will automatically add the options and aliases listed in the file to /etc/modules.conf.

streamcast/stream-db

Work on the DocBook documentation continues, I got some of my changes that I put down on my paper notes back into the XML sources. I figure I'm about half way done with the documentation. I also have a lot of ideas about re-writing the code so that it all runs from one single file, and calls functions from different modules depending on how you want to run the application (with database support or without database support). We'll see if I ever get to put my ideas into real code...