I purchased my Dell Inspiron 8000 in August 2001. It came with the following:
Installation was basically easy - boot up off a Debian 2.2r3 cd, follow through the normal install. One problem was with the pcmcia slots - you have to disable this after installation otherwise it will hang the machine. The easiest way I found was reboot to single user mode, and remove the execute bit on the init script.
The first thing I did after installation was compiled a 2.4 kernel (2.4.9 in this case) and upgraded to the latest unstable.
Edit /etc/default/pcmcia and set:
PCIC=yenta_socket
instead of:
PCIC=i82365
Edit /etc/pcmcia/config.opts to remove references to `port 0x800-0x8ff' from the include port line. Also, you should add an exclude for this port range. My config.opts is included here for reference.
The appropriate kernel config settings are:
CONFIG_PCMCIA=m
CONFIG_CARDBUS=y
CONFIG_I82365=y
To set up a compact flash pcmcia adapter to work with a 2.4 kernel you need to edit /etc/pcmcia/config and replace all the references of ide_cs with ide-cs.
Ensure you have the appropriate device by the following:
$ lspci | grep -i ethernet
08:04.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82557 [Ethernet Pro 100] (rev 08)
If the output is similar to above, the ethernet setup is simple - just use the eepro100 driver.
The kernel config line is:
CONFIG_EEPRO100=y
Similar to the ethernet, the sound was simply a matter of using the maestro3 driver.
The kernel config line is:
CONFIG_SOUND=y
CONFIG_SOUND_MAESTRO3=m
To optain the Nvidia kernel modules and XFree4.x xserver, I installed the nvidia-glx-src and nvidia-kernel-src packages. Assuming you want 3D graphics hardware accelleration, you'll also need the xlibmesa3 package installed.
After compiling and installing the kernel as above, to compile the nvidia kernel driver is a simple matter of:
$ cd /usr/src/linux
$ make modules_image
$ cd ..
$ dpkg --install nvidia-kernel-_*deb
The simple instructions for installing the xserver is:
$ cd /usr/src/nvidia-glx-
$ debuild
$ cd /usr/src
$ dpkg --install nvidia-glx*deb
You then need to modify /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 to use the nvidia server, rather than nv (which is distributed with XFree86 4.x). My XF86Config-4 is a working example.
Here is a newer version of XF86Config-4.
To use a Microsoft Intellimouse USB mouse, you require a couple of things - one is kernel support for USB and USB mice, and the other is an appropriatedly configured XF86Config-4.
The kernel options required are:
CONFIG_INPUT=m
CONFIG_INPUT_MOUSEDEV=m
CONFIG_INPUT_MOUSEDEV_SCREEN_X=1024
CONFIG_INPUT_MOUSEDEV_SCREEN_Y=768
CONFIG_MOUSE=y
CONFIG_PSMOUSE=y
CONFIG_USB=y
CONFIG_USB_UHCI=m
CONFIG_USB_HID=m
The XF86Config-4 extract for the mouse is:
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "USB Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection
To enable Firewire support, there are several kernel options that are required. This assumes you want to have a reasonably full set of firewire modules. The kernel options are:
CONFIG_IEEE1394=y
CONFIG_IEEE1394_OHCI1394=y
CONFIG_IEEE1394_SBP2=m
CONFIG_IEEE1394_ETH1394=m
CONFIG_IEEE1394_DV1394=m
To use a firewire enclosure, such as I have, you also need a few other modules. These include:
CONFIG_SCSI=m
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SD=m
To enable hotplugging of the device, you will also need hotplug installed. Under Debian, this is a simple matter of apt-get installing it.
If the firewire enclosure gets upset and not responding, the modules to try removing and reinserting are:
sbp2
sd_mod
scsi_mod
To enable IR support, you need to add a few modules into the kernel configuration. The necessary ones are IrCOMM, IrCOMM-TTY, IrTTY, and IRDA. The appropriate kernel options are:
CONFIG_IRDA=m
CONFIG_IRLAN=m
CONFIG_IRCOMM=m
CONFIG_IRTTY_SIR=m
CONFIG_IRPORT_SIR=m
You also need the irda-tools package installed. Install it by:
$ sudo apt-get install irda-tools
then edit /etc/irda.conf so it looks something like the following. This assumes you have the IR port enabled in the bios, set to COM1.
IRDADEV=/dev/ttyS1
DONGLE=none
DISCOVERY=-s
ENABLE=yes
To test if you can see an IR device, place it next to the IR port, run irdadump and wait a few seconds.
To talk to a Nokia 6210 over infrared, download a cvs version of gnokii and compile it. For more details on this see http://www.gnokii.org/. Then create a ~/.gnokiirc that contains the following:
port = /dev/ircomm0
model = 6210
connection = infrared
You should then enable IRDA reception on the phone, by going to Menu | Infrared. You should then simply be able to run xgnokii and talk to the phone.
Install coldsync or pilot-link, and use /dev/ircomm0 as the port.
Download ltmodem from http://www.linmodems.org/, compile and install. You then need to load lt_serial and lt_modem. This will allow you to use /dev/ttyLT0 as the modem device.
Here is my .config for kernel 2.4.18. Note it includes IPSec and a few other things you may not need.
To compile a kernel with this config, do:
$ cp /path/to/config-i8000-2.4.18 /usr/src/linux/.config
$ cd /usr/src/linux
$ make-kpkg --revision=host1.0 config
$ fakeroot make-kpkg kernel_image
$ cd ..
$ dpkg --install kernel-image-*deb
$ reboot
Included here is my .config for 2.4.20
And here's my .config for 2.6.0-test6.
I've tried using devfs, and it doesn't work real well for me, mostly because I occasionally use vmware. It doesn't seem to play very well at all.