Upgrading an IBM ThinkPad 570 to Threads Linux 7.3

ZOIS Technical Note TN-2002-11-01.

Author and Audience

This TN is intended for owners of the IBM ThinkPad 570[1] who may be contemplating or in the middle of an upgrade to Threads Linux 7.3 (the fully free Red Hat 7.3). Written by Martin Sullivan[2], ZOIS Limited, Cockermouth.

Abstract

The IBM ThinkPad 570 is a two year old laptop from the largest computer company in the world and a particular expample has been the authors constant companion for that length of time. A hard disk failure requried it to be upgraded to a later version of Linux (it had been at Red Hat 6.2) and have Windows 95 reinstalled. The Linux, including the installation of a Linux compatible Winmodem driver, went by the book. Reinstalling Windows was slightly more problematic.

Introduction

The trusty IBM ThinkPad 570 (TP570) has been a constant companion for some two years now. It has withstood some physical abuse, but as is the way with such things, it suffered a hard-disk failure and thus an upgrade was necessary. Physically this was no great deal. A new disk was bought and since it was found, that under Linux, some Java programs tend to be very memory-hungry an extra 128 MBytes of memory was purchased too. With these two items installed as per the handbook it was time to install/reinstall software.

Materials and Platform

IBM ThinkPad 570, Type 2644-3AG. IBM ThinkPad UltraBase equipped with a CD-ROM drive. Software on CD, product recovery disks for Windows 95 (IBM supplied), Threads Linux 7.3.

Method

It was decided to reinstall the as-distributed Microsoft Windows system in a 2 GByte patition of the single new disk. The rest could then be dedicated to Linux. In the light of experience, as you will read, Linux should be installed first, but the partition that the Windows recovery disk uses has to be the first one. The inital disk partitioning should therefore take this into account.

Installing Linux

The Linux distribution chosen for this was Threads 7.3. Threads Linux is Red Hat's[3] `free' distribution provided by The Linux Emporium[4]. Threads Linux is so called for it does not contain official Red Hat goodness and the name "Red Hat" is cherished, a trademark that we duly acknowledge (as we indeed acknowledge everything that might be a trademark). As you might guess, Threads Linux 7.3 approximates to Red Hat 7.3.

Since this was a new installation on a relatively well known and common PC the installation went by the book. The only point to note was that the initial disk partitioning has to allow DOS/Windows to be installed on the first partion (see the Windows Installation section for the reason). The Threads Linux install uses Disk Druid as its partitioning program and this too is easy.

The Linux fdisk(8) command reports the following when asked to print the disk partition table (command 'p');

Disk /dev/hda: 240 heads, 63 sectors, 2584 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
   /dev/hda1   *         1       277   2094088+   6  FAT16
   /dev/hda2           278       284     52920   83  Linux
   /dev/hda3           285      2532  16994880   83  Linux
   /dev/hda4          2533      2584    393120    f  Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
   /dev/hda5          2533      2584    393088+  82  Linux swap

Disk Druid insisted that the Linux Swap partion be in a Extended Partion.

After all the standard things had been done a number of `extras' were installed for Linux on the ThinkPad. See the section on this.

Reinstalling Windows

While Linux proved to be a relatively simple affair (see above) re-installing Windows proved to be somewhat harder. The ThinkPad is provided with two "Product Recovery" CDs, one bootable and the other not. A special floppy disk is also provided to boot the machine if one uses the non-bootable CD. The bootable CD booted to DOS and then ran some cursory checks. Finding that it didn't recognise the newly installed hard-disk it terminated the install. It was found that the boot floppy was corrupt and so the alternative path of booting from floppy and then using the other CD didn't work either. Unfortunately it appears that this floppy contains more than just a bootable DOS, and simply subsituting it with one that did boot didn't get the process any futher.

The "Product Recovery" CDs were examined elsewhere and discovered to contain large ZIP files full of Windows programs. A DOS partition was prepared and formatted on the ThinkPad after booting from a special floppy prepared on another machine complete with the DOS programs FORMAT and FDISK.

Having installed Linux on the ThinkPad and mounting this DOS filesystem in Linux, these recovery CD files were then unzipped into it. This partition then proved to be bootable but the installation failed further into the boot sequence. After some experiment, which involved re-installing Linux, it was found that this process will only work if the ZIP files are unloaded into the first partition on the disk. The initial boot process could then proceed. At this point the Windows 95 activation key was prompted for. The key supplied on the front of the Windows book was entered but failed, the book was for Windows 98. It would seem that an incorrect book or CDs were shipped. Fortunately the Windows activation key for another copy of Windows 95 worked and one could proceed to reload this legitimate copy of Windows.

Extras for Linux - Modem

The most important `extra' is the installation of a driver for the Winmodem that the ThinkPad is equipped with. Winmodems are modems which, for the sake of cost, have only part of their functionality held in firmware. They rely for the rest on the machine's main CPU and specialised software. The specialised software is ususally binary only, contains proprietery information and code and is only available under Microsoft Operating Systems. Since Laptops are practically universely equipped with Winmodems their internal modems are all but useless with third-party Operating Systems, such as Linux. The IBM ThinkPad 570 is no exception, but fortunately has a Lucient Winmodem chip-set. A `binary' only driver exists for this, kindly provided by Lucient, as a compiled object for Linux. This driver has been incorporated into an appropriate kernel `mod' for a variety of Linuxes by Chrisoph Hebeisen[5] amongst others.

To avoid clashes a package that precisely matched the kernal provided by Threads Linux 7.3, 2.4.18-3, was downloaded[6] and installed as per the read-me file without problems. This modem works fine with previously defined Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) and IP Chains firewall scripts. Those previous PPP settings reduced the Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) size to 552 bytes (512 + header size) and this was left in the new configuration. This smaller MTU size (the default is something like 1500 bytes) had been found to increase through-put on noisy lines and reduced connection failures, particularly with sendmail(8).

Extras for Linux - Other Stuff

IRQ Clash

In order to avoid an IRQ clash between PCMCI cards and the Infra-red port (on 3) /etc/pcmcia/config.opts was altered to specifically exclude this interrupt.

Red Hat "Splash"

While we acknowledge the good works of Red Hat, their logo "splash" that pops up from time to time (primary example -- the login screen) was found iritating. The solution to this was to move program xsri, which is responsible for this to xsri.keep and soft-link program true to xsri so the scripts that call xsri did not fail (all this in /usr/bin).

User Choice in Window Managers

As distributed the Linux distribution makes a choice for the user, or allows the user to chose at the login screen, between Gnome and KDE. While these are both fine desktops, the author being old-school, feels that it is more appropriate to let the user decide via the venerable ~/.xsession file mechanism. This was achieved by setting the variable DESKTOP to "" in /etc/sysconfig/desktop. The subsequently called scripts then default to using ~/.xsession and the author gets his familier twm(1) sessions.

Efax with built-in Winmodem

As seen above, the Winmodem can be made to function under Linux with the appropriate driver. Unfortunately the efax distributed with Threads 7.3 (and therefore Red Had 7.3) seemed to be unsuccessful in connecting with a number of Fax machines via this modem and driver. The solution was to use an "enhanced" efax[7]. Efax is a small fax system suitable for occasional single-user use.

Other Linux/TP570 Information

Dag Wieërs has published a number of "How To Pages" on ThinkPads[8] one of which covers Linux on TP570s.

Conclusion

The ThinkPad in question, a 570, is succesfully being used under Linux (Red Hat 7.3); infact this TN was written on it. Windows 95 is there if required and Linux can use the internal modem. Not detailed in this technical note is the configuration necessary to use the modem to connect to an ISP. This may be the subject of another TN, but for now (2002-11-01) is left as an exercise for the reader.

Updates

As with other Technical Notes, feedback is actively solicited. The author may be contacted via the e-mail address found on his public biography page[2]. Should something require changing or enhancing then the fact will be acknowledged with attribution in an Update section.

Feedback has suggested that the following needed to be changed after this TN had been published:

A Museum Piece

This TN was reviewed when the format was changed to make it more consistent with the rest of the site. Since some time has elapsed since this work was done it is possibly interesting to know the subsequent fate of the machine in question. It is still going strong, but it now runs under the Xfce version of Ubuntu, Xubuntu. Both batteries have failed so it is strictly no-longer a 'portable', but it continues to be used for the occasional editing job. Its CPU and graphics are too weak for Video, YouTube and the like, and the author can thus depend upon its high availability.

The installation of Xubuntu was relatively straight forward, with some of the oddities of the machine, such as its Winmodem, abandoned. Extensive documentation exists elsewhere on Xubuntu installations[9], it is particularly suited to elderly lap-tops. 2011-06-29

References

1. ThinkPads (formally IBM, now Lenovo):

http://www.lenovo.com/thinkpad

2. Martin Sullivan:

http://www.zois.co.uk/people/martin_sullivan

3. Red Hat:

http://www.redhat.com

4. The Linux Emporium:

http://www.linuxemporium.co.uk

5. Chrisoph Hebeisen:

http://www.heby.de (link defunct)

6. LTModem Drivers for Linux:

http://www.sfu.ca/~cth/ltmodem (link defunct)

7. Efax Enhanced:

http://shino.pos.to/linux/efax.html

8. Dag Wieërs's ThinkPad How To pages:

http://dag.wieers.com/howto/thinkpad

9. Xubuntu:

http://www.xubuntu.org

~Z~

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About the Author

His name is Martin Sullivan. He's a fifty-something some-time computer programmer living in the quaintly named town of Cockermouth in north-west England.

The Company

ZOIS Limited is basically a vehicle for Martin and his OLTP work, he owns it. You can find out more about it elsewhere on the main site.

Pro-Bono Plug

Martin is currently on a health sabbatical, but is interested in the odd bit of pro-bono work by the way of therapeutic recovery. So, if you've anything that he can tackle on a non-commercial basis from his base in Cockermouth please let him know. Unsurprisingly, he's particularly interest in biology, again, and the application of computing to it.

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