[ltp] Linux (Red Hat 9.0) on T40p (2373-G1G to be exact)

[Frank Schaeckermann]

> Thanks for the nice summary Frank.

Well... you are welcome! And if I get wine running even with the 
2.4.20-8.9 kernel using your suggestion it was well worth taking the 
time to write it! *smile*

> I've not heard of this before: did others have to do this?  Is it
> fixed in later kernels or the stock RedHat kernel?

The article didn't sound like Mitch was planning to create any official 
patch... but that doesn't mean the people responsible for the PCMCIA 
stuff aren't going to pick up on it. The right thing to do would be to 
create a patch, that makes this one line of code configurable... but I 
am in no position to do that (not having the slightest clue - yet - how 
make xconfig and make config work).

> Have others found laptop-mode significant in terms of increased
> battery lifetime, with no significant loss in performance?  Again,
> has it been integrated into later kernels now..?

I think Andre is definitly planning on getting this code into 2.6.

> This looks good as an alternative to what seems to be other troublesome
> suspend problems: so do I need to pre-create a (FAT32?) partition of
> size (Physical RAM + a bit) to use this?  Would I then run this util
> from boot floppy/CD and it will find it?  I have vague memories of
> the Dell utility to do similar...

You don't HAVE to pre-create anything. The boot-floppy comes up with a 
menu giving you the choice to create a partition or use an already 
defined partition (if it finds one with the type set to a0). I only 
pre-created it because I wanted to have some control over where it goes 
and how big it is. Could very well be, that it is possible to specify 
all that at creation-time using the tool - I just never took chances. 
And you don't have to fool around with FAT32 or stopping Windows to 
convert it to NTFS, since the hibernation file will reside in it's own 
partition which then doesn't need any 'filesystem' per se. As to the 
size of the partition: don't forget to add the VIDEO RAM as well!!! It 
may be best to let the boot-floppy utility create the partition since it 
should be able to determine HOW big the partition really needs to be... 
one could always delete it afterwards, re-create it manually in the 
appropriate place and re-run the utility then using the option to 
re-initialize an already existing partition.

I still think, using the boot-floppy utility and the BIOS APM support 
seems to be the best way getting the machine to suspend and hibernate. 
If you want, I can send you the image of the bootable CD I created to 
run the utility without having a floppy drive.

> I'm surprised to hear the this kernel now works OK for the T40p: does
> it enable DMA safely?  And doesn't break suspend?  Great news if it
> does, but what are the drawbacks over the 2.4.21* kernels for these
> machines?

hdparm reports that DMA is being used on the 2.4.20-18.9 kernel and I 
have had no problems using Fn-F4 and Fn-F12 (except maybe, that waking 
up from hibernation with 1.5GB of memory takes almost as long as a fresh 
boot *grin*)

> For this I can suggest something to try: either rebuild wine from
> source with "configure --with-nptl", or define:
> 
> export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.1
> 
> before starting.

The compile is running RIGHT NOW ;-)

Thanks, Frank