Installing FC5 on the Toshiba Tecra M3

On April 11, I finally transitioned from Fedora Core 4 (FC4) to Fedora Core 5 (FC5) on my Tecra M3-S331 laptop. (See my FC4 page for previous details.) Since I rely on the M3 for daily use, I held off on installing FC5 until the nVidia driver issues were resolved. All in all, the installation went smoothly. Here are the details!

Comments, suggestions, and corrections are welcomed. Send them to dancorkill@comcast.net.

M3 Hardware Specifications

Hardware Components
Status under FC5
Notes
Pentium M 740 Sonoma processor, 1.73GHz Worked immediately  
14.1 XGA TFT Display Worked immediately  
nVIDIA 64MB GoForce Go 6200 TE Video Working initially only 800x600 generic; install nVIDIA accelerated driver 8756 (see below)
512MB, 533MHz SDRAM, 2.5V SODIMM Worked immediately  
60GB Toshiba MK6025GA ATA-6 Hard Drive Worked immediately  
Floppy Drive Not tested optional hardware with the M3
Analog Devices AD1981B Sound Card Worked immediately  
Integrated Marvell PC Express EtherNetwork Card Worked immediately  
Internal PRO/Wireless 2200GB Wireless Networking (Wi-FI) Working requires ipw-2.4 firmware download
(install in /lib/firmware)
24X Max Variable CD-RW/DVD Drive Worked immediately  
i.LINK IEEE-1394 Port Not tested  
TV-Out (S-video) Not yet tested  
Integrated V.92 Modem Not tested  
ExpressCard Not tested  
SD Card Not tested  
4700mAh Lithium-Ion Battery Worked immediately charge reporting appears reasonable

The initially-installed FC5 kernel version was 2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.
My current FC5 kernel version is 2.6.16-1.2080_FC5.

Installing FC5

I opted for a fresh install of FC5, rather than an upgrade. I retained the same partitions present in the FC4 installation: 
/winc          (shrunken original XP NTFS partition)
/wind 2GB      shared FAT partition
/boot 100MB    (reformatted)
swap  1GB
an LVM physical volume using the rest of the disk space
  /home      20GB logical volume 
  /          10GB logical volume  (reformatted)
  /usr/local 3G logical volume

First, I backup everything important—just in case. I also keep the /lib/firmare and an archive of /etc handy (on /usr/local) for restoring individual configuration files, etc., after the installation.

I put FC5 disc 1 (from the 5 disk CD installation set) in the drive, rebooted, and began a graphical FC5 install. Except where noted, I accepted the default values when given a choice.

I requested “Custom” partitioning, entering each of the mount-point names (it would be nice if the old names were the default!) and requesting reformating on the / and /boot partitions.

I kept the all default grub settings.

I kept "Office and Productivity" selected and added "Software Development" and specified "Customize later" for further customization.

Installation went without incident, and both XP and FC5 booted smoothly using grub.

Working Hardware Without Effort

Intel 10 Base-T/100 Base-TX/1000 Base-T Ethernet

It just worked!

DVD Drive

CD reading is working fine; still need to test other operations.

USB

Tested with a Microsoft wireless laptop mouse, which worked fine including the scroll wheel. Also worked fine with a 256MB Lexar JumpDrive.

Power Management

Suspend to disk is working under FC5.

Hardware Requiring Post-Install Effort

nVIDIA Video

Initial installation resulted in only 800x600 generic video. I upgraded to the latest kernel, installed kernel-devel, and then downloaded and installed the latest nVIDIA driver (8756) as follows:
  • download nVIDIA NVIDIA-Linux-x86.1.0-8756-pkg1.run file from http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux.html
  • change to runlevel 3: 
         # init 3
  • disable SELinux: 
         # setenforce 0
  • run the *.run script: 
         # sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86.1.0-8756-pkg1.run
  • ask to have the driver recompiled
  • create the following symbolic links: 
         # cd /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers
     # ln -s /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libglx.so .
     # ln -s /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.so .
  • change to runlevel 5 or reboot: 
         # reboot

Not yet working

Touchpad scrolling

I haven't looked into enabling scrolling actions on the touchpad.

Untested

Fast Infrared (4Mbps) port

TV-out (S-video)

i.LINK IEEE-1394

ExpressCard

SD card

Integrated V.92 modem

Additional Installation Items

I added the following packages, using yum: 
     # yum install kernel-devel
     # yum install emacs
     # yum install nautilus-open-terminal
     # yum install fnfx
     # yum install tetex-latex
     # yum install auctex
     # yum install gstreamer-plugins-ugly
     # yum install videolan-client
     # yum install mplayer mplayer-skins mplayer-fonts
Mplayer also requires downloading essential-20050412.tar.bz2 from http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/codecs.html.

Links

Back to my home page.

Last updated: April 11, 2006