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SuSE Linux professional on a SCENIC Mobile 710 notebook

This document describes my attempt to run SuSE Linux professional on a SCENIC Mobile 710 notebook. I have also added sections for general administration (i.e. eMail) which are not notebook but distribution related. It took me quite a while until everything worked to my satisfaction. Well, at last I have succeeded.

TOC

SuSE Linux 7.0 professional
Update to SuSE Linux 7.3 professional

SuSE Linux 7.0 professional

Things that worked from start

The SuSE installation routine managed the following features:

PCMCIA Ethernet

I have a XIRCOM CEM33 ethernet&modem PCMCIA card which was plugged in while installation. YAST correctly recognized the card. Within YAST I had to activate the network by Administration des Systems->Netwerk konfigurieren->Netzwerk Grundkonfiguration. There I have also chosen Auto-IP by dhcpclient (must be installed previously). After reboot ethernet worked flawlessly.

X11

If you have thought that X configuration might be easy since we have nice setup tools like SaX and SaX2 you are wrong. So I have used SaX2 which probes the hardware and finds a Chips&Technology 65554 graphics chip (for LCD display) and a Cirrus Logic ... chip for extra monitor and 4MB RAM. Well, the C&T chip is able of doing 1024x768 in true color. Mind that this depends on the LCD resolution. As Siemens points out there has been a SCENIC Mobile 710 with 800x600 LCD display. Anyway I have a 1024x768 XGA display (which I have chosen from the monitor list in SaX2). You will find out that SaX2 only runs X11 in 1024x768 with 256 colors. This is caused by a wrong calculated modeline! I have changed the modeline in /etc/X11/XF86Config as follows:

(the wrong modeline is commented out)

#  Modeline  "1024x768" 90.82 1024 1056 1208 1280 768 783 793 829
  Modeline  "1024x768" 49.93 1024 1040 1216 1328 768 773 802 829

The complete XF86Config file.

This configuration allows 1024x768 with 65536 colors. Well, it is not true color but good enough. If somebody has achieved a better setting please let me know.

Sound

An ESS Technology 1878 sound chip is onboard which is handled by kernel module sb.o. The BIOS setup has a section for varying I/O and interrupt parameters of the sound chip. This is the place to take the parameters from. For my notebook IRQ 5 is set. Strange enough sb.o REFUSES to load with irq=5! I had to set irq=7 even if this is not the value set up by BIOS. Life is stranger than fiction (does anybody have an explanation for this?). I modprobe the driver within /sbin/init.d/boot.local to have it prefetched. Otherwise kaudioserver refuses to run at KDE startup. I have thought that kerneld loads modules whenever needed - does not work in this case.

Changes in /etc/modules.conf:

(comment out the following lines)

#alias char-major-14 off
#alias sound off
#alias midi off

(comment in the following lines and apply parameter changes)

#*****************************************************************************
#    module : sb.o               Soundblaster 16, SB Pro + Clones
#                                Also needed for AWE32/64
#
#    Dcoumentation available in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/sound/Soundblaster
#    and in /usr/src/linux/drivers/sound/sb.c .
#
#    Possible configuration :
#
alias char-major-14 sb
post-install sb /sbin/modprobe "-k" "adlib_card"
options sb io=0x220 irq=7 dma=1 dma16=3 mpu_io=0x300
options adlib_card io=0x388

Changes in /sbin/init.d/boot.local:

(add the following lines)

#this will prefetch the sound driver - kaudioserver will start
/sbin/modprobe sb

Alternatively you may try OSS (pay packet section) to enable the sound. I am not using it because it is a commercial product and not available in source code.

Mail

Sending eMails

Gosh - this is the most annoying part! I am using a modem to connect to my ISP. Most of you will configure Netscape to run eMail. Because I want to use other mail clients also I have made up my mind to configure sendmail - this is where the problem starts! In YAST I have chosen "Rechner mit temporärer Netzverbindung" for sendmail configuration. As my linux username is not equal to my eMail username I am using genericstable for substitution. And it did not work at all! I had a /etc/sendmail.cf from SuSE Linux 6.2 with which substitution worked very well. After comparing the configuration I discovered that ruleset 93 was not executed for the new sendmail.cf. So I replaced ruleset 94 by the old rule. Now everything works fine.

Changes in /etc/sendmail.cf:

###################################################################
###  Ruleset 94 -- convert envelope names to masqueraded form   ###
###################################################################

SMasqEnv=94
#R$* < @ *LOCAL* > $*   $: $1 < @ $j . > $2
R$+                     $@ $>93 $1

Debugging this problem:

For debugging I have used the -d21 option of sendmail. So I have su to the user for which substitution has to happen. Then I have tried /usr/sbin/sendmail -d21 <receiver address>. Actually you can NOT see the substitution this way, even if it takes place (do not ask why). So my way of debugging is:

  1. Switch off the modem so no dialing can happen (makes sendmail queue mail)
  2. su to the user for which substitution should take place
  3. use mail to send an eMail which has to be relayed via your ISP (outside your LAN) - this eMail will be queued
  4. su to root
  5. Use sendmail -d21 -q to take a look at executed rules (if ruleset 93 is executed genericstable is used) while queue is flushed
Receiving eMails

I am using fetchmail to retrieve eMails from my provider by POP3. Per default fetchmail forwards incoming eMail to sendmail. Somehow the eMails ended up in the mail queue and have been delivered only by flushing the queue with sendmail -q. So I have decided to shortcut sendmail and directly use procmail. The following $HOME/.fetchmailrc does the trick:

poll <POP3 servername>
protocol POP3
username <username>
password <password>
mda "/usr/bin/procmail  -d %T"

Accessing Windows network drives with Samba

I need access to Windows shares. I have a Windows account registered on a domain server. When I log on, I am logging into a Windows domain. When accessing Windows shares my user info is verified by the domain server. That means that additionally to user and password the domain name has to transferred to access the Windows share. For windows there is a notation of <domain>\<username> which can be used whenever the username is asked. This will NOT work for smbclient. Instead I have found out that the workgroup has to be set to the domain. So use smbclient like this:

smbclient //server/share <password> -U<username> -W<domain>

Mind that there is no option before <password>.

Mount an Windows share like this:

mount -t smbfs //server/share <mountpoint> -o username=<user>,password=<password>,workgroup=<domain>

Printing with Samba using a Windows print server

After I have established access to Windows network drives I have tried to enable network printing using a print server within our Windows domain. I assume that you have established access to the network drives as described before.

Update to SuSE Linux 7.3 professional

General

I have executed an update installation updating SuSE Linux 7.0 professional to SuSE Linux 7.3 professional. For this reason I have booted SuSE Linux 7.3 from CDROM and chosen update installation and updating ALL installed packages.

Sound

I have switched to the ALSA sound architecture. The following section is affected part of /etc/modules.conf. Search for the first few comment lines to find the section  to replace in your /etc/modules.conf.
#*****************************************************************************
# Example configs for ALSA
# You don't need to run isapnp with ALSA, it has full PnP support.
# See /usr/share/doc/packages/alsa/README.SuSE
#*****************************************************************************
#
# ALSA native device support and OSS emulation support. Uncomment these
# lines to enable ALSA:
#
alias char-major-14      soundcore
alias char-major-116     snd
alias sound-slot-0       snd-card-0
alias sound-service-0-0  snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1  snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3  snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8  snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss

alias snd-card-0 snd-card-es18xx
options snd-card-es18xx snd_port=0x220 snd_mpu_port=0x300 snd_irq=5 snd_dma1=1 snd_dma2=3 snd_isapnp=0
#
# Uncomment this line too, you can setup your ALSA device permissions here:
#
options snd snd_major=116 snd_cards_limit=1 snd_device_mode=0666 snd_device_gid=17 snd_device_uid=0
ALSA stores additional parameters in /etc/asound.conf. This file contains for example volume information. The device is turned mute by default so do not wonder if you hear nothing before you have changed this file. My /etc/asound.conf (low volume) looks like:
# ALSA driver configuration
# This configuration is generated with the alsactl program.

soundcard("card1") {
  mixer("ESS AudioDrive ES1878") {
    element("Master Switch",0,100,Switch1(on,on))
    ; Voice 0 : Min 0 Max 63
    ; Voice 1 : Min 0 Max 63
    element("Master Volume",0,200,Volume1(25,25))
    ; Voice 0 : Min 0 Max 7
    element("PC Speaker Volume",0,200,Volume1(3))
    ; Voice 0 : Min 0 Max 15
    ; Voice 1 : Min 0 Max 15
    element("Aux Volume",0,200,Volume1(0,0))
    ; Voice 0 : Min 0 Max 15
    ; Voice 1 : Min 0 Max 15
    element("CD Volume",0,200,Volume1(0,0))
    ; Voice 0 : Min 0 Max 15
    ; Voice 1 : Min 0 Max 15
    element("MONO Volume",0,200,Volume1(0,0))
    ; Voice 0 : Min 0 Max 15
    ; Voice 1 : Min 0 Max 15
    element("FM Volume",0,200,Volume1(0,0))
    ; Voice 0 : Min 0 Max 15
    ; Voice 1 : Min 0 Max 15
    element("Line Volume",0,200,Volume1(0,0))
    ; Voice 0 : Min 0 Max 15
    ; Voice 1 : Min 0 Max 15
    element("MIC Volume",0,200,Volume1(0,0))
    ; Voice 0 : Min 0 Max 1
    element("MIC preamp Volume",0,200,Volume1(0))
    ; Voice 0 : Min 0 Max 15
    ; Voice 1 : Min 0 Max 15
    element("PCM Volume",0,200,Volume1(15,15))
    element("Record Monitor",0,401,Mux2(element("Output Accumulator",0,300)))
    ; Voice 0 : Min 0 Max 15
    ; Voice 1 : Min 0 Max 15
    element("Input Gain Volume",0,200,Volume1(0,0))
    element("Input MUX",0,401,Mux2(element("MIC",0,0)))
  }
}
Change "PCM Volume",0,200,Volume1(15,15) to larger values for (15,15) to increase volume. Alternatively use /usr/bin/aplay to change settings.


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