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| Linux on the Panasonic CF-35 |
This page contains information helpful in configuring a Linux/Win98SE dual-boot system on the Panasonic CF-35 laptop computer. Please note that the procedure involves swapping the floppy drive and the CD-ROM, rebooting the computer many times, and some familiarity with disk partitions. The Pansonic CF-35 is a very capable laptop, but it has a restriction of using either the CD-ROM or the floppy diskette - you can't use both at the same time without a special adapter cable. This can make installing Linux challenging to say the least.
If you only want to use the Panasonic CF-35 for Linux, follow the same procedure and leave out the Windows partition. It might be a good idea to have a minimal Windows installation for legacy files....
If you have anything to add to this page, or would like to tell me about your success, just send me an e-mail
It is crucial that you back up any files that you can't afford to lose from your laptop. I really shouldn't have to say this - but who hasn't lost a file and then sworn to do regular backups? So, consider yourselves warned. I prefer to do clean installs, which means that the entire contents of the hard drive are lost in the process. If you are unsure of the implications of this, stop right now!
The procedure also involves running some of the utilities found on the Panasonic 1st Aid diskette manually. Normally, they run automatically from a batch file, but we're going to be setting up the hibernation partition ourselves. The hibernation capability is one of the most useful features of the CF-35. Besides the excellent battery life you get from the laptop in the first place, you can save a snapshot of the current state of your session and restore it the next time your laptop wakes up.
Please read this entire document before you start the installation process. Then read it again. Then read the Installation Guides for Win98SE and Caldera OpenLinux eDesktop 2.4. If you have doubts or questions, ask someone that you trust to give you a well thought out answer. You should be familiar with basic DOS commands like fdisk and be able to set up your laptop BIOS to boot from the CD-ROM.
I spent the better part of a week getting this to work properly, between trying different distributions and verifying the instructions in this note. I didn't really need to get Linux onto the laptop, but I figured it would be a good way to test my Tcl scripts in both environments.
The CF-35 went through a number of processor and hard-disk options before it was discontinued. Mine is the CF-35????CAM model, with a Pentium 266MMX, 32Mb of RAM, and a 3 Gb hard-drive. I've upgraded the RAM to 96Mb and still get decent battery life of around 4 hours.
The Panasonic website has a complete list of the updates you need. Make sure you get the latest BIOS and drivers for your particular model of CF35! The items I used for my installation include:
The next thing to do is make a bootable diskette. If you already have a computer running Windows9x you can open a DOS window and type "format a: /s/v" to format a diskette and copy the operating system over to it. Then run CF35_MK3_1st_Aid.exe and extract the files on top of the bootable diskette.
Now you're ready to start the actual procedure, so grab a warm or cold beverage of your choice, some snack food, and settle down for a few hours of everybody's favorite pastime - installing operating systems.
The Panasonic 1st Aid diskette is used to get your system back on its feet to a clean, known state. Unfortunately, it does some nasty things behind your back and makes bad assumptions about the state of the hard disk before it goes to work. Specifically, it assumes that there is only one partition on the disk before it starts. This may not be true if you've got an old installation of Linux that you want to upgrade, or if you've made more partitions on your drive.
The first step is to get yourself a clean hard disk. Because Windows is a bit aggressive in its use of the Master Boot Record on your hard drive, you should normally install it first. Unfortunately, the PartitionMagic software only gives you limited choices for the partition sizes. We'll install Linux first, since you'll probably end up reinstalling Windows before you upgrade Linux again...
Also, the DOS fdisk program makes some assumptions about the contents of the boot sector partitions that is incompatible with Linux fdisk. It all boils down to making the installation as painless as possible, so we're going to do this in the right order. Trust me, after spending almost a week doing this, I've installed Windows and Linux about 8 times before getting it right. I'm surprised I haven't chucked all my computers out in the trash.
No two users are alike in their needs, so the partition selections I have made here reflect the fact that I'll be using Linux primarily to test TclTk scripts. This means that a minimum installation including X is all I really need. I don't need a development system for recompiling the kernel, or StarOffice to edit documents. I figure that a 16 Mb boot, a 64 Mb swap, and a 320 Mb root partition will do just fine. They will each live in an Extended partition on the hard drive that is about 384 Mb.
Generally, you can't pick exactly how much disk space you'll get, because the partitions boundaries are on whole cylinder numbers, but I'm allocating about 400 Mb for Linux, and leaving the rest for Windows. Your needs may differ from mine, but I'll just step through my procedure here. I'm not going to spell out each key press, just the actions.
At this point, we have a clean hard disk with one Primary DOS partition and the laptop is in a known default state.
After close examination of the files on the 1st Aid diskette, I concluded that three programs do the bulk of the automatic work for us. Unfortunately, the procedure set out by Panasonic is for restoring Windows 95, which is not what we want to do. By using the strings utility in the MKS Toolkit, I have been able to extract command-line options or execs within the programs and figured out what they actually do.
FDISK < A:\MKD\YY
CD MKD
EDPART /m110,102
COPYUTIL /UUUTIL.BIN
COPYUTIL /FLAG1:0=0000
The FDISK command just enables FAT32 support, and then creates a primary DOS partition of the maximum available size and makes it active. If there is more than one partition already on the drive, it will use the maximum size of the first partition, which is not what we want.
The EDPART command makes the special hibernation partition and writes out a new partition table.
Finally, the COPYUTIL writes out the special file that saves and restores the contents of RAM to the special partition. It can also be used to look at BIOS flags for setting up USB support, but we'll look at that later.
So it's clear that this program controls the entire process, but can we learn anything about the others?
/M xx=Size of the special partition (MB)USAGE:EDPART [/Mxx,yy] or [/R(file)] or [/r(file)]
yy=Size of the data save area for Hibernation
/R :Copy the special partition to the file.
/r :Copy the partition table to the file.
/V :Show Version Number of EDPART.EXE.
/UU Load UTIL.BIN and write to HDDUSAGE:COPYUTIL [/UU(FileName)] or [/FLAGx:y] or [/FLAGx:y=z]
/FLAGx:y x=1 or 2,y=OFFSET / Show current value.
/FLAGx:y=z z=data / Set specified data.
The engineer in me hates to waste any space on a hard drive. Having a 3.1 Gb drive is a luxury compared to what was available 10 years ago, but it's not very big by today's standards. The EDPART program should make a partition large enough to hold all of your available RAM. I tried to make it allocate less than the ammount of RAM that I had installed, and it was smart enough to gave me an error.
Figure out how much RAM you have, or are likely to get, and then do the following steps to get the hibernation partition enabled:
Now we have a clean hard drive with a hibernation partition, and the hibernation function is enabled.
Now we're going to resize the Primary partition we're going to use for Windows, and then add an Extended partition we'll use for Linux. As mentioned before, I'm allocating 400 Mb for the extended partition. If you have any questions about partitions, the Caldera OpenLinux eDesktop 2.4 manual has a section on manual partitioning which will help answer them.
Now we have a laptop with a Primary bootable DOS partition, an Extended partition for Linux, and a hibernation partition. At this point, we could either install Windows or Linux - but we'll do the Linux install first.
Installing Caldera OpenLinux eDesktop 2.4 is pretty much a no-brainer - but don't be tempted to use the default graphical installation. It hangs the CF-35. After checking the Caldera knowledge base, it seems that there may be a conflict with the IR port. We coul;d disable the IR port, but that might cause other problems and not fix the real one. The text based install works - use it.
At this point, I should mention that of all the Linux distributions I have played with, Caldera's on-line support seems to be the best. Their Kowledge Base is crammed full of useful procedures, and I have used it more than once in getting me out of a jam here. Learn to use it - it is your friend - even if you're not installing a Caldera distribution.
We'll be doing the text-based install, and I recommend that you follow all the suggested defaults. We might change a few things after the install, and I'll indicate where my minimal installation differs from the default.
Now we're into the partitioning for Linux. We've done most of the work already, all we're doing here is defining /boot, root, and swap partitions.
Have a few sips of your beverage, clean up the office, or go outside and get some fresh air for between 10 and 30 minutes. After all of the packages are installed, we're ready to configure the rest of the system including X. Take a deep breath, we're almost done!
The Linux install procedure should have put LILO on the master boot record, but the laptop may still not boot. In my case, I was able to boot using my floppy and discovered that there was no partition marked as bootable. The DOS fdisk comes in handy to mark the primary partition active which makes it bootable.
That's all there is to it, you can always get back to Linux if you have the boot floppy. Next, we'll install Windows 98.
Installing Windows 98 Second edition will clobber your MBR. That means all the work we went to to install Linux will be overwritten. Don't worry, the next section shows how to boot using the Installation CD to get your system back on its feet.
I won't go through all the steps involved in getting Windows 98 Second Edition installed on your laptop. If you turn the laptop off it will save everything to disk first. My laptop wouldn't boot from the Windows 98 Second Edition CD, so here's what I did to get around it...
In an emergency, you can boot your Linux partitions from the GRUB loader on the Binaries CD. Here's how...
This was really an exercise in perseverance. I had a working Linux distribution about 4 out of the 8 attempts, but I was always looking for ways to simplify the process. If you have any further suggestions, or would like to let me know if this note has helped, send me an e-mail.
| ©2000 Ralph Hempel | For more information contact rhempel@bmts.com | Modified at 10/3/00; 12:42:56 AM |