Installing Slackware 10.1 on a PC110

From ThinkWiki
Revision as of 01:41, 25 July 2006 by Ed (Talk | contribs) (Setting the clock)
Jump to: navigation, search

Kernel configuration




Boot sequence





root@carrot:~# /sbin/pcinitrd initrd
2400+0 records in
2400+0 records out
mke2fs 1.35 (28-Feb-2004)
1836K/2357K used
/lib: -> -> -> ->
root@carrot:~# umount /mnt/
root@carrot:~# gzip initrd
root@carrot:~# cp initrd.gz /boot/initrd


/etc/lilo.conf should look like






/etc/fstab looks like this:

/dev/hda1               /boot                   ext2    ro            1 2
/dev/hdc2               /                     ext3    defaults        1 1
none                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
/dev/hdc1               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
Mounting / with option "noatime" might be a good idea.
For NFS to work properly, make sure /etc/rc.d/rc.portmap is chmod 755.

PCMCIA configuration

The second serial port and the sound card use IRQs 3 and 5 respectively, and the touch pad uses IRQ 10. Edit /etc/pcmcia/config.opts to prevent any PCMCIA devices being assigned these IRQs:

# Second built-in serial port
exclude irq 3
# Sound card
exclude irq 5
# Touch pad
exclude irq 10

Make sure the /etc/pcmcia/config.opts found in the initial ramdisk /boot/initrd has the same IRQs excluded.


This section describes how to configure Hostap to use a Zyxel ZyAir B-100 11Mbps 802.11b WLAN card. This card uses the Prism3 chipset, and identifies itself as a "Linksys WPC11 11Mbps 802.11b WLAN Card". The following guidelines may work with other Prism3 chipset WLAN PCMCIA cards, but have only been tested with the card named above.

Hostap isn't included with the pcmcia-cs distribution, so needs adding to the configuration files. Edit /etc/pcmcia/config and add this to the "Device driver definitions" section at the top of the file:

device "hostap_cs"
  class "network" module "hostap_cs"

and in the "Wireless network adapters" section (about half way through the file) change

card "Linksys WPC11 11Mbps 802.11b WLAN Card"
  manfid 0x0274, 0x1613
  bind "orinoco_cs"


card "Linksys WPC11 11Mbps 802.11b WLAN Card"
  manfid 0x0274, 0x1613
  bind "hostap_cs"

Compile the driver modules and install them in /lib/modules/:


(/lib/modules/2.4.29/pcmcia/hostap_cs.o is a symbolic link to ../kernel/drivers/net/pcmcia/hostap_cs.o).

Build and install wpa_supplicant according to the instructions in the source package. See its README file for details. Configure wpa_supplicant as described in the README, and summarised here.

Create /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf:

	ssid="<the network name>"
	psk="<the key>"

Add the following block to the end of 'start' action handler in /etc/pcmcia/wireless:


Separate 'restart', 'resume', 'check' and 'suspend' action handlers from 'stop', and add the following block to the end of 'stop' action handler in /etc/pcmcia/wireless:

        killall wpa_supplicant

Edit /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts. Remove the section marked "SECTION TO REMOVE" at the beginning of the file and replace it with this:

    ESSID="<the network name>"
    KEY="<the key>"

Configure the network settings in /etc/pcmcia/network.opts. It's easiest if there is a DHCP server on the network, then the only change necessary is to ensure that


dhcpcd will clobber /etc/ntp.conf if you don't tell it not to. Edit /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 and /etc/pcmcia/network and add -N to every invocation of /sbin/dhcpcd. dhcpcd restores the original /etc/ntp.conf when it exits, so kill any running dhcpcd process before editing /etc/ntp.conf.

Setting the clock

NTP configuration is optional but it's nice to have the clock tell the right time, particularly if there are NFS mounts.

The ntpd (version 4.2.0) supplied with Slackware 10.1 is a big program that will hog more than 3MB of memory, so chronyd is probably a better choice for the PC110. chronyd also measures the drift of the hardware clock, so can make a better estimate of the time immediately following a reboot.

Create /etc/chrony.conf containing this:

driftfile /etc/chrony.drift
rtcfile /etc/chrony.rtc
keyfile /etc/chrony.keys
commandkey 0

local stratum 10


deny all
Choose NTP servers located fairly close by geographically, if possible. This particular choice of time servers is appropriate for a computer somewhere in Europe.
Set the time in the BIOS to UTC, or remove the line "rtconutc" from the configuration file. Keeping the time in the BIOS as UTC allows chronyd to keep track of daylight saving time correctly, but has the disadvantage that the time displayed on the front of the PC110 will be UTC not the local time.

Launch chronyd from /etc/rc.d/rc.local:

Create /etc/rc.d/rc.local, chmod 755, if it doesn't already exist. Add

echo "Starting NTP daemon: /usr/sbin/chronyd"

to start NTP when the PC110 boots.

Keyboard map


Serial ports



X.Org configuration