-This document is distributed under the terms of the GNU Public License (GPL). - -
-This document is directly supported by InterWeft IT Consultants -(Melbourne, Australia). - -
-The latest version of this document is available at the InterWeft WWW
-site at
-With available IP network numbers rapidly becoming an endangered
-species, efficient use of this increasingly scarce resource is
-important.
-
-
-This document describes how to split a single IP network number up so
-that it can be used on several different networks.
-
-
-This document concentrates on C Class IP network numbers - but the
-principles apply to A and B class networks as well.
-
-
-There are a number of other sources of information that are of
-relevance for both detailed and background information on IP numbers.
-Those recommended by the author are:-
-
-
-Before diving into the delight of sub-networking, we need to establish
-some IP number basics.
-
-
-Whilst many (if not most) computers on an IP network will possess a
-single network interface (and have a single IP number as a consequence),
-this is not the only way things happen. Computers and other devices can
-have several (if not many) network interfaces - and each interface has
-its own IP number.
-
-
-So a device with 6 active interfaces (such as a router) will have 6 IP
-numbers - one for each interface to each network to which it is connected. The
-reason for this becomes clear when we look at an IP network!
-
-
-Despite this, most people refer to IP Numbers as &dquot;Dotted Quads&dquot;
-
-In the current (IPv4) implementation of IP numbers, IP numbers consist
-of 4 (8 bit) bytes - giving a total of 32 bits of available information.
-This results in numbers that are rather large (even when written in
-decimal notation). So for readability (and organisational reasons) IP
-numbers are usually written in the 'dotted quad' format. The IP number
-
-
-As each one of the four numbers is the decimal representation of an 8
-bit byte, each of the 4 numbers can range from 0 to 255 (that is take on
-256 unique values - remember, zero is a value too).
-
-
-In addition, part of the IP number of a host identifies the network on
-which the host resides, the remaining 'bits' of the IP number identify
-the host (oops - network interface) itself. Exactly how many bits are
-used by the network ID and how many are available to identify hosts
-(interfaces) on that network is determined by the network 'class'.
-
-
-There are three classes of IP numbers
-
-
-There are also special addresses that are reserved for 'unconnected'
-networks - that is networks that use IP but are not connected to the
-Internet, These addresses are:-
-
-
-You will note that this document uses these sequences throughout to avoid
-confusion with 'real' networks and hosts.
-
-
-IP numbers can have three possible meanings:-
-
-
-In summary and to clarify things
-
-
-Almost all IP network numbers remaining available for allocation at
-present are C Class addresses.
-
-
-The network mask is more properly called the subnetwork mask. However,
-it is generally referred to as the network mask.
-
-
-It is the network mask and its implications on how IP addresses are
-interpreted
-The standard (sub-) network mask is all the network bits in an address
-set to '1' and all the host bits set to '0'. This means that the
-standard network masks for the three classes of networks are:-
-
-
-There are two important things to remember about the network mask:-
-
-A subnet is a way of taking a single IP network address and
-The reasons behind sub-networking date back to the early specification of
-IP - where just a few sites were running on Class A network numbers,
-which allow for millions of connected hosts.
-
-
-It is obviously a huge traffic and administration problem if all IP
-computers at a large site need to be connected to the same network:
-trying to manage such a huge beast would be a nightmare and the network
-would (almost certainly) collapse under the load of its own traffic
-(saturate).
-
-
-Enter sub-networking: the A class IP network address can be split up to
-allow its distribution across several (if not many) separate networks.
-The management of each separate network can easily be delegated as well.
-
-
-This allows small, manageable networks to be established - quite
-possibly using different networking technologies. Remember, you cannot mix
-Ethernet, Token Ring, FDDI, ATM etc on the same physical network - they
-can be interconnected, however!
-
-
-Other reasons for sub-networking are:-
-
-Having decided that you need to subnetwork your IP network number, how
-do you go about it? The following is an overview of the steps which will
-then be explained in detail:-
-
-
-For the purpose of this example, we will assume we are sub-networking a single C
-class network number: 192.168.1.0
-
-
-This provides for a maximum of 254 connected interfaces (hosts), plus
-the obligatory network number (192.168.1.0) and broadcast address
-(192.168.1.255).
-
-
-You will need to install the correct cabling infrastructure for all the
-devices you wish to interconnect designed to meet your physical layout.
-
-
-You will also need a mechanism to interconnect the various segments
-together (routers, media converters etc.).
-
-
-A detailed discussion of this is obviously impossible here. Should you
-need help, there are network design/installation consultants around who
-provide this sort of service. Free advice is also available on a number of
-Usenet news groups (such as comp.os.linux.networking).
-
-
-There is a play off between the number of subnetworks you create and 'wasted'
-IP numbers.
-
-
-Every individual IP network has two addresses unusable as interface
-(host) addresses - the network IP number itself and the broadcast
-address. When you subnetwork, each subnetwork requires its own, unique
-IP network number and broadcast address - and these have to be valid
-addresses from within the range provided by the IP network that you are
-sub-networking.
-
-
-So, by sub-networking an IP network into two separate subnetworks, there
-are now
-Quite why one would want to create such a small network is another
-question! With only a single host on the network, any network
-communication must go out to another network. However, the example does
-serve to show the law of diminishing returns that applies to
-sub-networking.
-
-
-In principle, you can only divide your IP network number into 2^n (where
-n is one less that the number of host bits in your IP network number)
-equally sized subnetworks (you can subnetwork a subnetwork and combine
-subnetworks however).
-
-
-So be realistic about designing your network design - you want the
-
-The network mask is what performs all the
-So, for the three classes of IP networks, the standard network masks
-are:-
-
-The way sub-networking operates is to
-For a C Class address, this would result in a netmask of
-
-For our C Class network number of 192.168.1.0, these are some of the
-sub-networking options you have:-
-
-
-In principle, there is absolutely no reason to follow the above way of
-subnetworking where network mask bits are added from the most
-significant host bit to the least significant host bit. However, if you
-do not do it this way, the resulting IP numbers will be in a
-Having decided on the appropriate netmask, you then need to work out
-what the various Network and broadcast addresses are - and the IP number
-range for each of these networks. Again, considering only a C Class IP
-Network number and listing only the
-Netmask Subnets Network B'cast MinIP MaxIP Hosts Total Hosts
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
- 128 2 0 127 1 126 126
- 128 255 129 254 126 252
-
- 192 4 0 63 1 62 62
- 64 127 65 126 62
- 128 191 129 190 62
- 192 255 193 254 62 248
-
- 224 8 0 31 1 30 30
- 32 63 33 62 30
- 64 95 65 94 30
- 96 127 97 126 30
- 128 159 129 158 30
- 160 191 161 190 30
- 192 223 193 222 30
- 224 255 225 254 30 240
-
-
-
-As can be seen, there is a very definite sequence to these numbers,
-which make them fairly easy to check. The 'downside' of sub-networking is
-also visible in terms of the reducing total number of available host
-addresses as the number of subnetworks increases.
-
- With this information, you are now in a position to assign host and
-network IP numbers and netmasks.
-
-
-If you are using a Linux PC with two network interfaces to route between
-two (or more) subnets, you need to have IP Forwarding enabled in your
-kernel. Do a
-
-
-You should get back something like...
-
-If you do not, then you do not have IP-Forwarding enabled in your kernel
-and you need to recompile and install a new kernel.
-
-
-For the sake of this example, let us assume that you have decided to
-subnetwork you C class IP network number 192.168.1.0 into 4 subnets
-(each of 62 usable interface/host IP numbers). However, two of these
-subnets are being combined into a larger single network, giving three
-physical networks.
-
-
-These are :-
-
-Note: the reason the last network has only 124 usable network addresses
-(not 126 as would be expected from the network mask) is that it is
-really a 'super net' of two subnetworks. Hosts on the other two networks
-will interpret 192.168.1.192 as the
-So, if you use 192.168.1.191 or 192 as host addresses on the third
-network, then machines on the two smaller networks will not be able to
-communicate with them.
-
-
-This illustrates an important point with subnetworks - the usable
-addresses are determined by the
-Let us assume that a computer running Linux is acting as a router for
-this network. It will have three network interfaces to the local LANs
-and possibly a fourth interface to the Internet (which would be its
-default route.
-
-
-Let us assume that the Linux computer uses the lowest available IP
-address in each subnetwork on its interface to that network. It would
-configure its network interfaces as
-
-
-The routing it would establish would be
-
-
-On each of the subnetworks, the hosts would be configured with their own
-IP number and net mask (appropriate for the particular network). Each host
-would declare the Linux PC as its gateway/router, specifying the Linux
-PCs IP address for its interface on to that particular network.
-
-
-
-Robert Hart
-Melbourne, Australia March 1997.
-
-
-No of No of
-subnets Hosts/net netmask
-2 126 255.255.255.128 (11111111.11111111.11111111.10000000)
-4 62 255.255.255.192 (11111111.11111111.11111111.11000000)
-8 30 255.255.255.224 (11111111.11111111.11111111.11100000)
-16 14 255.255.255.240 (11111111.11111111.11111111.11110000)
-32 6 255.255.255.248 (11111111.11111111.11111111.11111000)
-64 2 255.255.255.252 (11111111.11111111.11111111.11111100)
-
-
-
- cat /proc/ksyms | grep ip_forward
-
-
-
-00141364 ip_forward_Rf71ac834
-
-
-
-Network Broadcast Netmask Hosts
-192.168.1.0 192.168.1.63 255.255.255.192 62
-192.168.1.64 192.168.1.127 255.255.255.192 62
-192.168.1.128 192.168.1.255 255.255.255.128 124 (see note)
-
-
-
-Interface IP Address Netmask
-eth0 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.192
-eth1 192.168.1.65 255.255.255.192
-eth2 192.168.1.129 255.255.255.128
-
-
-
-Destination Gateway Genmask Iface
-192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.192 eth0
-192.168.1.64 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.192 eth1
-192.168.1.128 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.128 eth2
-
-
-
This document has been removed at the request of the author, Martin -Hamilton, because it has been replaced by RedHat's own documentation.
- -For more information on KickStart Installations and Configurations, you -may want to try the following Web sites:
- -
-We will not accept any responsibility for any incorrect information
-within this document, nor for any damage it might cause when applied.
-
-
-Copyright © 1997 - 1998 Jacek Radajewski and Douglas Eadline.
-Permission to distribute and modify this document is granted under the
-GNU General Public Licence.
-
-
-Jacek Radajewski started work on this document in November 1997 and
-was soon joined by Douglas Eadline. Over a few months the Beowulf
-HOWTO grew into a large document, and in August 1998 it was split into
-three documents: Beowulf HOWTO, Beowulf Architecture Design HOWTO, and
-the Beowulf Installation and Administration HOWTO. Version 1.0.0 of
-the Beowulf HOWTO was released to the Linux Documentation Project on
-11 November 1998. We hope that this is only the beginning of what
-will become a complete Beowulf Documentation Project.
-
-
-
-The writing of the Beowulf HOWTO was a long proces and is finally
-complete, thanks to many individuals. I would like to thank the
-following people for their help and contribution to this HOWTO.
-
-
-As the performance of commodity computer and network hardware
-increase, and their prices decrease, it becomes more and more
-practical to build parallel computational systems from off-the-shelf
-components, rather than buying CPU time on very expensive
-Supercomputers. In fact, the price per performance ratio of a Beowulf
-type machine is between three to ten times better than that for
-traditional supercomputers. Beowulf architecture scales well, it is
-easy to construct and you only pay for the hardware as most of the
-software is free.
-
-
-This HOWTO is designed for a person with at least some exposure to the
-Linux operating system. Knowledge of Beowulf technology or
-understanding of more complex operating system and networking
-concepts is not essential, but some exposure to parallel computing
-would be advantageous (after all you must have some reason to read
-this document). This HOWTO will not answer all possible questions you
-might have about Beowulf, but hopefully will give you ideas and guide
-you in the right direction. The purpose of this HOWTO is to provide
-background information, links and references to more advanced
-documents.
-
-
-
-There are probably as many Beowulf definitions as there are people who
-build or use Beowulf Supercomputer facilities. Some claim that one
-can call their system Beowulf only if it is built in the same way as
-the NASA's original machine. Others go to the other extreme and call
-Beowulf any system of workstations running parallel code. My
-definition of Beowulf fits somewhere between the two views described
-above, and is based on many postings to the Beowulf mailing list:
-
-
-Beowulf is a multi computer architecture which can be used for
-parallel computations. It is a system which usually consists of one
-server node, and one or more client nodes connected together via
-Ethernet or some other network. It is a system built using commodity
-hardware components, like any PC capable of running Linux, standard
-Ethernet adapters, and switches. It does not contain any custom
-hardware components and is trivially reproducible. Beowulf also uses
-commodity software like the Linux operating system, Parallel Virtual
-Machine (PVM) and Message Passing Interface (MPI). The server node
-controls the whole cluster and serves files to the client nodes. It
-is also the cluster's console and gateway to the outside world. Large
-Beowulf machines might have more than one server node, and possibly
-other nodes dedicated to particular tasks, for example consoles or
-monitoring stations. In most cases client nodes in a Beowulf system
-are dumb, the dumber the better. Nodes are configured and controlled
-by the server node, and do only what they are told to do. In a
-disk-less client configuration, client nodes don't even know their IP
-address or name until the server tells them what it is. One of the
-main differences between Beowulf and a Cluster of Workstations (COW)
-is the fact that Beowulf behaves more like a single machine rather
-than many workstations. In most cases client nodes do not have
-keyboards or monitors, and are accessed only via remote login or
-possibly serial terminal. Beowulf nodes can be thought of as a CPU +
-memory package which can be plugged in to the cluster, just like a CPU
-or memory module can be plugged into a motherboard.
-
- Beowulf is not a special software package, new network topology or
-the latest kernel hack. Beowulf is a technology of clustering Linux
-computers to form a parallel, virtual supercomputer. Although there
-are many software packages such as kernel modifications, PVM and MPI
-libraries, and configuration tools which make the Beowulf architecture
-faster, easier to configure, and much more usable, one can build a
-Beowulf class machine using standard Linux distribution without any
-additional software. If you have two networked Linux computers which
-share at least the /home file system via NFS, and trust each
-other to execute remote shells (rsh), then it could be argued that you
-have a simple, two node Beowulf machine.
-
-
-
-Beowulf systems have been constructed from a variety of parts. For the sake
-of performance some non-commodity components (i.e. produced by a single
-manufacturer) have been employed. In order to account for the different
-types of systems and to make discussions about machines a bit easier, we
-propose the following simple classification scheme:
-
-CLASS I BEOWULF:
-
-This class of machines built entirely from commodity "off-the-shelf" parts.
-We shall use the "Computer Shopper" certification test to define commodity
-"off-the-shelf" parts. (Computer Shopper is a 1 inch thick monthly
-magazine/catalog of PC systems and components.) The test is as follows:
-
- A CLASS I Beowulf is a machine that can be assembled
- from parts found in at least 3 nationally/globally circulated
- advertising catalogs.
-
-The advantages of a CLASS I system are:
-
-CLASS II BEOWULF
-
-A CLASS II Beowulf is simply any machine that does not pass the Computer
-Shopper certification test. This is not a bad thing. Indeed, it is merely a
-classification of the machine.
-
-The advantages of a CLASS II system are:
-
-
-
-I think that the best way of describing the Beowulf supercomputer
-architecture is to use an example which is very similar to the actual
-Beowulf, but familiar to most system administrators. The example that
-is closest to a Beowulf machine is a Unix computer laboratory with a
-server and a number of clients. To be more specific I'll use the DEC
-Alpha undergraduate computer laboratory at the Faculty of Sciences,
-USQ as the example. The server computer is called
-
-Now that we have some idea about the system architecture, let us take
-a look at how we can utilise the available CPU cycles of the machines
-in the computer laboratory. Any person can logon to any of the
-machines, and run a program in their home directory, but they can also
-spawn the same job on a different machine simply by executing remote
-shell. For example, assume that we want to calculate the sum of the
-square roots of all integers between 1 and 10 inclusive. We write a
-simple program called sigmasqrt (please see ) which does exactly that. To
-calculate the sum of the square roots of numbers from 1 to 10 we
-execute :
-
-The computer laboratory described above is a perfect example of a
-Cluster of Workstations (COW). So what is so special about Beowulf,
-and how is it different from a COW? The truth is that there is not
-much difference, but Beowulf does have few unique characteristics.
-First of all, in most cases client nodes in a Beowulf cluster do not
-have keyboards, mice, video cards nor monitors. All access to the
-client nodes is done via remote connections from the server node,
-dedicated console node, or a serial console. Because there is no need
-for client nodes to access machines outside the cluster, nor for
-machines outside the cluster to access client nodes directly, it
-is a common practice for the client nodes to use private IP addresses
-like the 10.0.0.0/8 or 192.168.0.0/16 address ranges (RFC 1918
-Before you purchase any hardware, it may be a good idea to consider
-the design of your system. There are basically two hardware issues
-involved with design of a Beowulf system: the type of nodes or
-computers you are going to use; and way you connect the computer
-nodes. There is one software issue that may effect your hardware
-decisions; the communication library or API. A more detailed
-discussion of hardware and communication software is provided later in
-this document.
-
-
-
-
-
-The main goal of this document obviously is to make the new user
-friendly with the many terms of connecting your Linux PC up to
-the Internet, obtaining IP addresses, domain names, and setting things
-up. This guide is intended for the intermediate user in mind, although
-intelligent newbies shouldn't have any problems.
-
-
-
-
-New versions of this document will be periodically posted to
-
-
-
-In addition, you should generally be able to find this document
-on the Linux Documentation Project page via:
-
-
-
-
-
-I certaintly welcome any feedback about this HOWTO, spelling mistakes,
-how it all worked out, thankyou notes and critisisms. I hope I helped
-a few people with this HOWTO, and if I did, I'd be really happy to
-hear from you.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-No liability for the contents of this documents can be accepted.
-Use the concepts, examples and other content at your own risk.
-As this is a new edition of this document, there may be errors
-and inaccuracies, that may of course be damaging to your system.
-Proceed with caution, and although this is highly unlikely,
-I don't take any responsibility for that.
-
-Naturally, there are probably better and easier ways to do things
-in this document. There will always be another way in the Linux
-World. This is the way I've done things, and that's the way I'll
-be presenting them in this HOWTO.
-
-
-
-
-This document is copyrighted (c)1997 Michael Strates and
-distributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License,
-which can be obtained from
-http://www.fsf.org/licenses/fdl.html.
-
-
-
-In this document, we'll explain how to do this using PPP (Point
-to Point Protocol), a popular protocol nearly always used over the
-Internet. It allows your modem to speak to the outside
-world. This is what applications like Trumpet Winsock in Windows
-3.x did, and many other programs that you've probably have never
-seen.
-
-In Linux, we use a thing called chat to do the dialing up to the
-ISP and then use a utility called pppd to 'use' the connection. In
-a sense, chat is your dialer, and pppd is your protocol. We'll
-describe how to setup both below.
-
-
-Probably the easiest way to go about things is to make a shell
-script in root's home directory called ppp-connect and
-involke the script whenever you wish to make your connection. We'll
-discuss this method.
-
-Open up your favourite editor as root on ~/ppp-connect. You'll
-then have to decide on your parameters.
-
-
-pppd involkes /usr/sbin/pppd on my system, then loads up chat to do the
-dialing. Chat sends
-The last of the command specifies your modem port (mine's /dev/ttyS1). In
-most cases it will be ttyS1 (COM2: in DOS), ttyS0 (COM1: in DOS), or if
-your using Slackware, cua1 or cua0. The speed is the speed of the modem. I
-use 115200 for my modem (a 33.6k). If you have got a fairly recent
-computer (one with a 16550 UART), then I wouldn't go any lower than 57600.
-Otherwise, for 14.4k 38400. Modem just tells pppd that it's a serial/modem
-based connection. Remove the -v option if you don't want verbose logging
-to your logfiles.
-
-The scenario below is one of a person who dials up an ISP that
-automatically starts PPP for them, ie; they don't have a shell that
-actually starts. This is his command in his ~/ppp-connect:
-
-
-But for some people, they're ISP starts up a shell and doesn't
-automatically start PPP this may be a problem. Luckily, chat can deal with
-that too. You just add another command to your chat script. For example,
-below this johnny character is using an ISP that just dumps him to a
-shell, requiring him to type ppp to get a ppp connection. His shell prompt
-ends with a $.
-
-If it's more than one word, ensure you quote it. I hope you can see the
-drift of this, and are able to create your own script up to suit your
-connection. Simply modify either the first johnny or the second johnny
-script to suit your taste, port, server, etc and save the file.
-
-Now you've made your file, ensure that only root can execute, read or
-write to it. This is extreemly important. Also make sure nobody can
-read your logfiles, if you decide to leave the -v option in, as your
-password is seen in cleartext in the logs (I don't see much need for -v,
-if you don't know what I'm talking about, leave -v out).
-
-
-For most people using the options above, a changing IP address won't
-bother them. These people include basic, easy going users, that just have
-dialup accounts, and aren't very technically minded. For those people,
-skim read this section, I'll come to important things you need to do to
-setup your system properly. Newbies, skip the sections dealing with
-permanent IP, Domain Names, Subnets, and just read the last bit of this
-section.
-Getting a permanent IP address might be free for your ISP, so if in doubt
-ask them. Personally, I'd pay for a permanent IP address. It lets you send
-e-mail to and from using a unique IP or domain, etc. If you want to get
-yourself a permanent IP, write an e-mail to root@yourisp.com, and ask him
-nicely if he can arrange a permanent IP for you.
-
-When you get your permanent IP address, grep through your /etc directory
-to find where your old IP addresses are. I had to change files in my
-sendmail directory and /etc/hosts. There are some other key files that you
-will only discover with grepping. Open up /etc/hosts, and add your new IP
-address in the standard format. Reboot your computer, and you should be
-ready to go.
-
-You'll now need to change your chat script to reflect your new settings.
-If you are forced into PPP as soon as you start your connection, you'll
-need to tell your System Administrator of your ISP to ensure their PPP
-system recognises that you have a permanent IP address and allocates you
-that instead of a changing one. If you get dumped at a shell prompt, and
-you need to type ppp or something to start the connection, instead of
-typing that, change your ~/ppp-connect script to send this instead of just
-ppp or whatever when it sees $ or whatever your shell prompt is.
-
-
-Substitute your IP address for the IP address your ISP gave to you. Be
-sure you encapsulate the thing in " " marks when you put it into your chat
-script. If this doesn't work, consult your ISP where your PPP daemon is
-located, and ask him for the command to give. You could just try leaving
-it as is and seeing if the server will recognise you and give you your
-rightful address.
-
-The next thing probably to do is to get yourself a domain name. I know
-that in Australia, .asn.au and .org.au are free. In the United States, you
-can get a .us domain for free, but they tend to be long. If your in
-Australia, you must go to
-
-To register domains you need to be able to provide DNS services, and gorey
-stuff like that. If your ISP can't provide these, throw out an official
-.asn.au or whatever domain out the window, and get a Monolith Internet
-Domain.
-
-Monolith offer free domains to anybody and anyone all around the world.
-Everything is done without human interaction, via a web forms interface
-with your browser. Your domain comes in the form of Your_Choice.ml.org.
-Monolith will then host the DNS locally for you. If you want to send and
-receive mail from that domain, ask your ISP to become a mail exchanger for
-you.
-
-Go to
-
-Okay now, we'll move onto the newbies section, or for those people who
-can't get a permanent IP address or a domain name. All you have to do is
-edit /etc/hosts as root, call your site something that won't clash, give
-it a 10.10.10 or something for an IP address and reboot your computer.
-
-There you go, you've just setup your computer with pppd and chat in just
-ten minutes. Now let's move onto the next section, which deals with
-Electronic Mail.
-
-
-One of the most important aspects of the Internet, is it's fasinating
-capaiblity to transfer mail to and from countries, or more locally
-perhaps. Linux is extreemly strong in easy mail packages for the console.
-The one we're going to document today is called Pine (Program for Internet
-Mail and News), made by the University of Washington, and to download the
-mail, a program called Fetchmail, made by Eric S. Raymond. Both should be
-included in your Linux distribution.
-
-Fetchmail is a program that downloads your e-mail from your server using
-POP, transfers the mail onto your computer and then deletes it off the
-server, much like programs like Eudora or Microsoft Internet Mail/Exchange
-do. To configure and automate fetchmail, you use a file in your home
-directory called .fetchmailrc. Simply open up ~/.fetchmailrc
-(Remember: your doing this bit as yourself, not as root) with your
-favourite editor and observe the command lin eoptions below:
-
-poll mail.yourisp.com proto pop3 user login_name password your_passwd
-
-user login_name with pass your_passwd is login_name here
-
-All you have to do is replace mail.yourisp.com with the name of
-the mail server of your ISP, your_passwd with your password, and
-login_name with your login name.
-
-An important thing to note. For Pine and this procedure to work correctly,
-your login name must corrospond with the login name you use on your ISP.
-That is your local login name must match the one you use on your server,
-and your e-mail address.
-
-Next, ensure that .fetchmailrc has the correct permissions (user
-read/write only) and your laughing. Fetchmail can be started in two ways,
-in standard mode (where it'll fetch messages from the server and
-terminate), or in daemon mode (where it will stay active, and
-check/download mail every X seconds). To use daemon mode, type
-
-Next, you need to setup Pine. Open up Pine, by typing pine at your prompt,
-choose Setup - Configuration. Setup your userdomain as the domain in your
-e-mail address, for example jack@linux.org, would be linux.org. Next,
-setup smtp-server as your POP mail server (the same you used in the
-fetchmail setup). So we enter www.linux.org. If you want news, setup your
-nntp server to your ISP's news server.
-
-So there you have it folks, everything should be working now. To connect
-up to your ISP, just run ~/ppp-connect as root. Then, to get your e-mail
-run fetchmail -a as yourself. To browse your e-mail and news, use
-Pine. Install a text-based browser such as Lynx to browse the web if you
-like.
-
-
-
-
-This HOWTO briefly describes how to use the RedHat Linux -KickStart system to rapidly install large numbers of -identical Linux boxes. For advanced users, we describe how to modify -the KickStart installation procedure to do your own thing, and give a -quick guide to building RPM packages of your own. -
-
-Copyright (c) 1998 Martin Hamilton, All rights reserved. This is free
-documentware; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of
-version 2 or later of the
-
-
-
-
-If you got this document from a Linux HOWTO mirror site or a CD-ROM,
-you might want to check back to the
-
-
-
-
-RedHat Linux version 5 comes with a a little-known (and until now, not
-hugely documented) feature called KickStart. This lets you
-automate most/all of a RedHat Linux installation, including:
-
-
-
-Eagle eyed RedHat users will probably have realised by now that these
-are essentially the main steps involved in the manual installation of
-a RedHat Linux system. KickStart makes it possible for you to script
-the regular installation process, by putting the information you would
-normally type at the keyboard into a configuration file.
-
-But wait - there's more :-)
-
-Having finished the normal installation process, KickStart also lets
-you specify a list of shell level commands which you would like to be
-executed. This means that you can automatically install extra local
-software not distributed as part of RedHat Linux (yes, there are even
-more free software programs than the ones you get with the RedHat
-distribution. Some can't be distributed by RedHat on legal grounds,
-e.g. the ssh and PGP encryption systems) and carry
-out any tidying up you may need to do in order to get a fully
-operational system.
-
-
-
-
-There are two approaches to a KickStart install - one is to simply
-copy your KickStart configuration file to a RedHat boot floppy. The
-other is to use a regular boot floppy and get your KickStart config
-file off the network.
-
-In both cases, you'll need:
-
-
-
-If you want to fetch your config file over the network, you'll need to
-export it via NFS - this is the only access method supported at the
-moment. The config file lets you specify a different NFS server to
-fetch the RedHat distribution itself from.
-
-You can configure a static IP address for your machine - e.g. a special
-one reserved for KickStart installations. Alternatively, if you don't
-want to hard code an IP address in the config file you can tell KickStart
-to use a BOOTP/DHCP server to fetch this. Some servers will allocate new
-addresses in a given range automatically, e.g.
-
-More information on NFS and BOOTP/DHCP is in Appendix A.
-
-
-
-
-Essentially, all you have to do is copy your KickStart config file
-to /ks.cfg on the RedHat boot floppy, e.g.
-
-
-
-However - the RedHat boot floppy is pretty full, and you may find that
-you have to delete some of the other files to make room for the
-KickStart config file. I was able to make enough room for mine by
-deleting the various message files normally displayed by the
-SYSLINUX boot loader, e.g.
-
-
-
-Another approach would be to throw away the drivers for some of the
-hardware you don't have - see the section on modifying the boot
-floppy below.
-
-You may also want to edit syslinux.cfg, the SYSLINUX
-config file. This also lives in the top level directory of the RedHat
-boot floppy. For instance, the following syslinux.cfg will
-cause KickStart mode to be entered into automatically as the machine
-boots up, without the normal delay:
-
-
-
-Note that you almost probably want to base your boot and supplementary
-floppies on the most recent disk images available in the
-updates/i386 on your local RedHat mirror site. Older images
-may be buggy or have driver support for less hardware.
-
-
-
-
-There are three main sections to the config file:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-The available directives which I've been using are:
-
-
-
-Note that the directory where KickStart is looking for the RedHat
-distribution should have a subdirectory RedHat, which
-contains the RedHat distribution tree for the platform in question.
-In the above example, we should see something like the following files
-and directories:
-
-
-
-If you're installing off a CD-ROM rather than off the network, the
-contents should look something like this:
-
-
-
-If you have the RedHat distribution for multiple architectures (e.g.
-on an NFS server - they're too big to fit more than one architecture's
-version onto a single CD-ROM), you'll notice that each distribution
-has the same files and directories under a subdirectory, e.g.
-
-
-
-There should be a file architecture/Redhat/architecture,
-e.g. i386/Redhat/i386.
-
-If you want to create your own encrypted passwords, it's very easy
-using Perl, e.g.
-
-
-
-Other options (or mooted options), which I've not tried:
-
-
-
-I've not delved too deeply into this last one, because I'm not ever
-planning to run X on the console of any of my KickStarted machines.
-I'm told that running xconfig within KickStart itself is a
-bit flaky, but the same functionality is also available from the
-command line via Xconfigurator - so you might be best off
-leaving this to the post-installation script.
-
-Here's how this first part of a KickStart config file looks when we
-put all the bits together:
-
-
-
-Note that some of the RedHat documentation refers to an invocation
-of the network directive which doesn't actually work in
-practice: network --option. The correct invocation is to
-put network followed by --static, --bootp
-or --dhcp. Be aware that the BOOTP and DHCP options are
-different - to the extent that they even use different code.
-
-You can add the --grow parameter to a part
-directive to indicate that it's OK to grow the partition beyond
-the size you specify. It probably only makes sense to have one
-partition tagged with --grow.
-
-
-
-
-The start of the packages section of the KickStart config file is
-indicated by the presence of a %packages directive on a line
-of its own. This is followed by one or both of two types of package
-specifier - individual packages may be installed by giving the name of
-their RPM (excluding the version and platform information), and groups
-of packages may be installed by giving their group name.
-
-Here's a sample packages section for a KickStart config file:
-
-
-
-So, what are these groups ? Well, there are a number of groups
-defined by default in a file called base/comps under the
-RedHat distribution's top level directory. Here are the ones which
-were current at the time of writing:
-
-
-
-You'll notice that they correspond to the various configurations which
-you're prompted for during a manual installation. Note that some of
-the packages in a given package group are duplicated in other groups,
-and that you can install multiple groups of packages without this
-causing problems. Each group's entry in the comps listing
-looks similar to this:
-
-
-
-It seems that groups with a 1 next to their name (the first
-line above) are selected for installation by default. You can customise
-the Linux installation process even further by creating your own groups
-or redefine existing ones by editing this file.
-
-
-
-
-This is probably the best feature of all, and something which there is
-no direct equivalent to in the manual installation process. What we
-can do here is specify a sequence of shell level commands which should
-be executed after the main installation (disk partitioning, package
-installation, and so on) is complete.
-
-The beginning of this section is signified by the %post
-directive in the KickStart config file. In what follows you can take
-advantage of all of the utilities which have been installed on your
-newly built Linux system, e.g.
-
-
-
-You can also use I/O redirection and here documents:
-
-
-
-Modify the run-time startup scripts:
-
-
-
-Set up crontab entries:
-
-
-
-And even install other RPMs which you made yourself:
-
-
-
-Note that you can achieve the same effect by making your own RPMs
-containing the commands you want executed - see below for more
-information. Give them a carefully chosen name and you can force them
-to be installed first (e.g. name starts with 'aaa') or last (e.g.
-name starts with 'zzz').
-
-Be aware that a less painful way of doing root crontab entries is to
-create them as files in one or more of the directories
-/etc/cron.hourly, /etc/cron.daily,
-/etc/cron.weekly and /etc/cron.monthly.
-
-More information about making your own RPMs is available in Appendix B.
-
-
-
-
-Boot the to-be-installed machine off your RedHat boot floppy as usual,
-but instead of pressing RETURN at the SYSLINUX
-prompt, type linux ks.
-
-If you're lucky, this will be all you have to type!
-
-If you customised your RedHat boot floppy as outlined above, you won't
-even need to do this bit :-)
-
-Since we're really just automating the normal steps involved in a
-RedHat installation, the normal dialogs may appear if/when KickStart
-gets confused about what to do next. The most likely case is that
-your network interface won't be detected automatically, and you'll be
-prompted for its IRQ and I/O address space. KickStart tends to need
-help for ISA bus cards, but detects PCI bus cards automatically.
-
-You can keep an eye on what KickStart is doing by by switching virtual
-consoles as usual:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-The RedHat boot disk boot.img is in MS-DOS format, using the
-SYSLINUX program to boot up. The supplementary disk
-supp.img is a Linux ext2 filesystem. If you have
-support for the loopback filesystem in your Linux kernel, you can mount
-both of these files in your filesystem and hack at them:
-
-
-
-Now you should be able to see and manipulate the files on the boot and
-supplementary disk under /mnt/boot and /mnt/supp
-respectively. Phew! Note that older versions of mount may
-not be able to handle the -o loop option. In these cases
-you'll need to explicitly use losetup to configure the
-loopback device for each file, e.g.
-
-
-
-You might also need to explicitly use the -t ext2 option when
-mounting an ext2 filesystem like the one on the supplementary disk.
-But, it looks like people with modern Linux distributions shouldn't have to
-worry about this.
-
-Of course, if you don't want to mess around too much, you can cut a
-corner and manipulate actual floppy disks rather than these floppy
-disk images. If time is important, you'll probably prefer to use the
-loopback devices, since you can hack around with the disk images
-without incurring the latency associated with a genuine floppy disk
-read/write.
-
-
-
-
-If you want to mess around with the installation procedure itself, the
-source code can be found on the RedHat CD-ROM or your local RedHat
-mirror site. It's in misc/src/install under the
-i386 distribution top level directory.
-
-If you examine the RedHat boot disk you'll see that, in addition to
-the Linux kernel vmlinuz, there's a large file
-initrd.img:
-
-
-
-You guessed it, this is another ext2 filesystem saved as a file
-- - but with a twist. It's actually compressed as well. You can uncompress
-it and then mount the result, e.g.
-
-
-
-Probably the most important part of this filesystem is the collection
-of loadable kernel modules which are included with the boot disk. If
-you need to merge in a new version of a driver, you'll need to either
-replace vmlinuz with a new kernel which has this statically
-linked, or replace it in the modules collection. What's more, you may
-need to throw other modules away to make room.
-
-The modules collection is the file modules/modules.cgz.
-Wondering what that might be ? It's actually a compressed
-cpio archive, believe it or not! And you thought nobody used
-cpio any more... Actually RPM itself uses cpio
-internally, too. Here's how to hack around with it:
-
-
-
-I don't believe that there is currently a way under Linux (at least in
-mainstream distributions) to transparently access compressed
-filesystems. Let me know if you know better!
-
-If you change anything, remember to:
-
-
-
-Finally, you can now create new boot floppies using this modified boot
-disk setup, e.g.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-and it will start the ypbind level on the 345 level.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-Thanks to Eric Doutreleau for the info about chkconfig, the
-SYSLINUX config file hack, and the Perl script for updating
-your distribution server's RPMs. Thanks to Robert Kaminsky for
-extensive investigations. Thanks to Piete Brooks, Flavia Regina
-Munhoz, Tom Toffoli, Bob Robbins, Charlie Brady and Ragen Herrington,
-for their comments and questions.
-
-
-
-
-If you're wondering what on earth this BOOTP and DHCP stuff is, more
-information is available at
-
-In the BOOTP/DHCP + NFS configuration we're discussing, the KickStart
-config file should be NFS mountable by the machine being installed
-from /kickstart/IPADDR-kickstart on the BOOTP/DHCP server,
-where IPADDR is the IP address of the new machine, e.g.
-/kickstart/198.168.254.254-kickstart for the machine
-198.168.254.254.
-
-You should be able to override this location by returning
-the bf parameter (boot file) in your BOOTP/DHCP response. It
-may even be possible to have this NFS mounted off another machine
-entirely.
-
-To NFS export some directories from an existing Linux box, create the
-file /etc/exports with contents something like:
-
-
-
-Note that if you didn't register the IP addresses you're going to be
-using in the DNS, you may be told to get lost by the NFS server and/or
-the RPC portmapper. In this you can probably get away with putting
-IP address/netmask pairs in the config files, e.g.
-
-
-
-and in /etc/hosts.allow:
-
-
-
-This is because most Linux distributions use TCP wrappers to do
-access control for some or all of the NFS related daemons. Be aware
-that the /etc/exports syntax tends to be different on other
-Unix variants - the NFS servers bundled with Linux distributions
-tend to offer a much wider range of options than the ones shipped
-with other versions of Unix.
-
-Be aware that if you include a root password in your KickStart config
-file, or NFS export directories containing sensitive information, you
-should take care to expose this information to as few people as
-possible. This can be done by making the NFS export permissions as
-fine grained as you can, e.g. by specifying a particular host or
-subnet to export to rather than a whole domain. If you keep a special
-IP address free for KickStart installations, everything's nice and
-simple, but you'll have to change it later - or reconfigure the
-machine to get its IP address via BOOTP/DHCP.
-
-Most NFS servers require you to tell mountd and nfsd
-(on some versions of Unix they're prefixed with a rpc.) that
-the /etc/exports file has changed - usually by sending a
-SIGHUP. There's often a program or script called
-exportfs, which will do this for you, e.g.
-
-
-
-If you didn't have NFS up and running when this machine was booted,
-the directories may not be exported automatically. Try rebooting, or
-running the following programs as root:
-
-
-
-As noted, on some systems the rpc. prefix isn't used. In
-most modern Unix distributions, these programs can be found in the
-/usr/sbin or /usr/libexec directories. These might
-not be in your path already, e.g. if you used su to become
-root. The portmap program is also sometimes called
-rpcbind, e.g. on Solaris, some versions of nfsd
-require a command line argument specifying the number of instances of
-the server to run, and you may find you also need to run another
-daemon called biod. The above should suffice on most (all?)
-Linux systems.
-
-If you're using the CMU BOOTP server with DHCP and dynamic addressing
-extensions referred to earlier, a sample /etc/bootptab entry
-(/etc/bootptab is the normal location of the BOOTP/DHCP
-configuration file) would look something like this:
-
-
-
-(wrapped for clarity)
-
-This says to allocate IP addresses dynamically on encountering new
-machines, starting at 198.168.254.128 and continuing for the
-next 48 (the hexadecimal value 30) addresses. Each client
-will be passed back the value of T250. In this case that
-sets:
-
-
-
-There seem to be a number of other versions of this server kicking
-around which do not support dynamic addressing. For these, you would
-have to list the hardware (typically Ethernet MAC) address of each
-to-be-installed machine in /etc/bootptab, and the entries
-would look something like this:
-
-
-
-(wrapped for clarity)
-
-Note that the parameter ha corresponds to the hardware
-address of the machine being installed.
-
-
-
-
-The RPM package format is already very well documented, particularly
-in the book Maximum RPM by Ed Bailey, which you can download
-from the
-
-RPM packages are built from a spec file. This consists (in a
-similar fashion to the KickStart config file) of a recipe of steps
-that need to be taken in order to build the package - it's expected
-that you'll have to build it from source, potentially for multiple
-platforms, and may need to apply patches before compiling. Once built
-and installed, a binary RPM will be created from the files and
-directories you specify as being associated with the package. It's
-important to note that RPM has no idea of which files and directories
-are related to a given package - you have to tell it.
-
-Here's a sample specification for a custom RPM of the
-
-
-
-Here's how to build this RPM:
-
-
-
-This will automatically create a subdirectory under the BUILD
-directory, into which it'll unpack the source code and then apply the
-patch (there are a number of options available for patching - check
-the book for details). Now, RPM will automatically build the package
-by running configure and then make, install it using
-make install, and take a snapshot of the files under
-/usr/squid. It's the latter which will form the binary RPM
-of the Squid software.
-
-Note that we can insert arbitrary shell commands into the unpacking,
-building and installing processes, e.g. the call to perl
-which tweaks one of Squid's compile-time parameters.
-
-The final binary RPM will be left under the RPMS directory in
-the platform specific subdirectory i386. In this case it
-will be called squid-1.NOVM.22-1.i386.rpm. Note that the
-filename is created by concatenating the values of the following
-parameters from the spec file: Name, Version and
-Release - plus the hardware platform in question,
-i386 in this case. Try to bear this in mind when creating
-your own RPMs, to avoid giving them overly long or painful names!
-
-It's also worth bearing in mind that you can build RPMs without having
-to rebuild the whole software package, e.g.
-
-
-
-In this case we simply create an RPM based on the
-/boot/vmlinuz file and the contents of the directory
-/lib/modules/2.0.36, and execute /sbin/lilo after
-the package has been installed on a target machine. Let me know if
-you know much neater way of writing the spec file than this.
-
-
-
-
-Here is Eric's script for munging updated RPMs into the RedHat
-distribution area:
-
-
-
-
-Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding is the third. --
-People like either
-Also I have written some pages about Linux with certain laptops:
-During the work with the Laptop-HOWTO I have collected some surveys about laptop related hardware:
-But I don't claim to be a laptop guru, I just had the opportunity to install Linux on some laptops and I simply want to share the information I collected.
-
-Since I don't own a non-Intel based machine, this HOWTO might not contain all the details for non-Intel systems or may contain inaccuracies. Sorry.
-
-
-This HOWTO is free of charge and free in the sense of the General Public Licence - GPL. Though it requires much work and could gain more quality if I would have some more hardware. So if you have a spare laptop, even an old one or one which requires repair, please let me know. Especially I need one with infrared port, USB port, DVD drive, WinModem and a non Intel machine. The according chapters need a major rewrite. For the curious, this HOWTO is written on a
-Or sponsor a banner ad at my WWW pages
-You can hire me for readings or workshops on
-Many times I have mentioned
-For
-This text is included in the
-Richard Worwood mirrors this HOWTO at
-Lionel, &dquot;trollhunter&dquot; Bouchpan-Lerust-Juery, <trollhunter@linuxfr.org> provides a translation into French. You can download or browse it at
-He has also written a HOWTO about portables and wearables, please look at his pages
-Translations into Japanese (Ryoichi Sato <rsato@ipf.de>), Italian (Alessandro Grillo <Alessandro_Grillo@tivoli.com>), Portuguese (Gledson Evers <pulga_linux@bol.com.br> the translation will be announced at
-Please contact me before starting a translation to avoid double work. Since a translation is a great amount of work, I recommend to do this work as a group.
-
-Nearly all of the programms I mention are available as
-The latest version of this document is available in different formats at
-This document isn't ready yet. If you like to write a chapter or even a smaller part by yourself, please feel free to contact me. Also your suggestions and recommendations and critics are welcome. But please don't expect me to solve your laptop related problems if the solution is already documented. Please read all according manual pages, HOWTOs and WWW sites first, than you may consider to contact me or the other resources mentioned below.
-
-Since I want to write much more stuff about mobile computing and Linux I'm thinking about turning this HOWTO into a book.
-
-Werner Heuser <wehe@tuxmobil.org>
-
-
-Copyright © 1999 by Werner Heuser. This document may be distributed under the terms set forth in the
-This is free documentation. It is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty. The information in this document is correct to the best of my knowledge, but there's a always a chance I've made some mistakes, so don't follow everything too blindly, especially if it seems wrong. Nothing here should have a detrimental effect on your computer, but just in case I take no responsibility for any damages incurred from the use of the information contained herein.
-
-Some laptop manufacturers don't like to see a broken laptop with an operating system other than the one shipped with it, and may reload MS-Windows if you complain of a hardware problem. They may even declare the warranty void. Though IMHO this isn't legal or at least not fair. Always have a backup of both the original configuration and your Linux installation if you have to get your laptop repaired.
-
-Though I hope trademarks will be superfluous sometimes (you may see what I mean at
-
-Portable computers may be divided into different categories. This is a subjective decision, but I try to do so. My groupings roughly follow the generally accepted marketing categories. The criteria could be:
-
-
-Most peripheral cables are appallingly heavy. If you get a subnotebook
-and carry it around with a bunch of external drives, cables, and
-
-Weight greater than 4.0 kg (9 lbs). Features like a PC, but in a smaller box and with LCD display. Examples: lunchbox or ruggedized laptops (e.g.,
-Weight between 1.7 and 4.0 kg (4 to 9 lbs). Features custom hardware and usually a special CPU. Examples: HP OmniBook 3100, COMPAQ Armada 1592DT. The terms
-Weight between 1.3 and 1.7 kg (3 to 4 lbs). Features: external floppy drive, external CD drive. Examples: HP OmniBook 800CT, Toshiba Libretto 100, COMPAQ Aero, SONY VAIO 505.
-
-
-Weight between 0.7 and 1.3 kg (1.5 to 3 lbs). Features: proprietary commercial operating systems. Examples: HP200LX.
-
-
-Weight below 0.7 kg (1.5 lbs). Features: proprietary commercial operating systems and often non-Intel CPU with commercial operating systems like PalmOS, EPOC32, GEOS, Windows CE. Examples: Newton Message Pad, Palm III (former Pilot), Psion Series 3 and 5, CASIO Z-7000.
-
-
-Watches, digital pens, calculators, digital cameras, cellular phones and other wearables.
-
-
-Due to a lack of support by some
-Depending on your needs, you might investigate one of the vendors that provide
-laptops pre-loaded with Linux. By purchasing a pre-loaded Linux laptop, much
-of the guesswork and time spent downloading additional packages could be
-avoided. See the
-Besides its Linux features, there often are some
-Don't underestimate the weight of a laptop. This weight is mainly influenced by:
-
-
-Laptops come with one of two types of displays:
-The available battery types are
-
-For details about systems which are supported by the Linux Kernel, see the
-There was a long series of Apple PowerBooks and other laptops based on the m68k chip. Macintosh Portable (an ugly 16-pound first attempt); PowerBook 100, 140, 170, 145, 160, 180c, 165c, 520c, 540c, 550c, 190; Duo 210, 230, 250, 270c, 280. The PowerBook Duos were available at the same time as the PowerBooks, they were a sort of subnotebook, but were designed so that you could plug them into a base station (a DuoDock) with more RAM, peripherals, etcetera, so that they could also act as a desktop computer. The first PowerPC PowerBooks were the ill-starred PowerBook 5300 (after the 190) and the Duo 2300c.
-
-For a complete list of all Macintosh computers ever made, with specifications, see
-Note also that readers should *not* go to www.linuxppc.org for hardware compatibility with 68k laptops--as the name implies, LinuxPPC is only for PowerPC machines. The proper place to go for information on running Linux on m68k Macintoshes is:
-In particular, their hardware compatibility list is at:
-&dquot;Much like laptops of the Intel/Linux world, Mac laptops have generally different setups that can be very hard to figure out. Also, because of a general lack of machines to test, we are only aware of boots on the Powerbook 145, Powerbook 150, Powerbook 170, Powerbook 180, and Powerbook 190. Even if it boots, we currently have no support for Powerbook-style ADB, the APM support, or just about anything else on them. This means the only way to log in is with a terminal hooked up to the serial interface, this has been tested on the 170.&dquot;
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-&dquot;Several Powerbooks have internal IDE which is supported. PCMCIA drivers will be forthcoming if someone can supply the necessary hardware information to write a driver. As always, an FPU is needed also. Many of the later models have the 68LC040 processor without FPU, and many of these processors are broken with respect to the FPU trap mechanism so they can't run regular Linux binaries even with FPU emulation. Current status on Powerbooks 140, 160, 165, 165c, 180c, 190, 520 and Duos 210, 230, 250, 270c, 280, and 280c is unknown.&dquot;
-
-
-Also there are two Atari laptops, for which I don't have enough information. The following quotations are from the
-&dquot;The
-Designed to replace the
-Is there an Amiga notebook?
-
-
-BTW: The team at
-For PDAs with ARM/StrongARM CPU see the PDA chapter below.
-
-
-More about Linux on Wince boxes may be found at
-
-At higher speed, a CPU consumes more power and generates more heat. Therefore, in many laptops a special low-power CMOS CPU is used. Usually, this special CPU doesn't use as much power as a similar processor used in a desktop. These special CPUs are also more expensive. As a side effect you may find that laptops with a desktop CPU often have a fan which seems quite loud.
-
-
-An enormously important issue.
-Anything based on PPC or Pentium will generate enormous amounts
-of heat which must be dissipated.Generally, this means either a
-fan, or a heat sink the size of the case.If it's a fan, the air
-path had better not ever get blocked, or it will overhead and burn
-out.This means machines with a fan mounted in the bottom are a
-big, big mistake: you can't use them on a soft surface.
-
-
-Though you might use your desktop computer to do longer writings, a good keyboard can save you some headaches and finger-aches. Look especially for the location of special keys like: <ESC>, <TAB>, <Pos1>, <End>, <PageDown>, <PageUp> and the cursor keys.
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-
-Laptops are quite expensive if you compare them with desktops. So you may decide between a brand or no-name product. Though I would like to encourage you to take a
-If you travel abroad pay attention to the voltage levels which are supported by the power supply. Also the power supply is often one of the heavier parts of a laptop.
-
-
-Specifications, manuals and manufacturer support often are not helpful. Therefore you should retrieve information from other sources too:
-
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-
-
-
-If you can't find the necessary information through the above mentioned sources, you are on your own. Luckily, Linux provides many means to help. For details see the Hardware on Detail section below. In general you may use:
-
-
-If your laptop came with Windows, you may determine a lot of hardware settings from the installation. Boot into DOS or Windows to get the information you need.
-
-Using Windows9x/NT to get hardware settings, basically boot Windows, then Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> System -> Device Manager and write down everything, or make a hardcopy from the display using the <PRINT> key, plus keep a log of settings, hardware, memory, etc.
-
-Using MS-DOS and Windows3.1x you can use the command msd, which is an akronym for MicroSoft Diagnostics. Or you might try one of the numerous DOS shareware utilities: CHECK-IT, DR.HARD and others.
-
-Sometimes it's difficult to know what manufacturer has built the machine or parts of it actually. The
-
-Many laptops are no more compatible with Windows than Linux. David Hinds, author of the PCMCIA drivers, points out that Toshiba notebooks use a proprietary Toshiba PCMCIA bridge chip that exhibits the same bugs under Windows as under Linux. IBM Thinkpads have serious BIOS problems that affect delivery of events to the power management daemon apmd. These bugs also affect MS-Windows, and are listed in IBM's documentation as
-Some incompatibilities are temporary, for instance laptops that have Intel's USB chip will probably get full USB support, eventually.
-
-
-If you encounter a device which is not yet supported by Linux, don't forget it's also possible to write a driver by yourself. You may look at the book from Alessandro Rubini, Andy Oram: Linux Device Drivers.
-
-
-Some recommendations to check an used laptop, before buying it:
-
-
-Please note this quotation from the disclaimer: &dquot;This program is written with the target audience being a trained, experienced technician. It is NOT designed to be used by those ignorant of computer servicing. Displays are not
-Laptop computers, unlike desktop machines, really do get used up.
-
-It's difficult to give any recommendations for a certain laptop model in general. Your personal needs have to be taken into account. Also the market is changing very quickly. I guess every three months a new generation of laptops (according to harddisk space, CPU speed, display size, etc.) comes into the market. So I don't give any model or brand specific recommendations.
-
-
-
-From the Battery-HOWTO I got this recommendation (modified by WH):
-
-A Message to Linux Distributors
-
-If you happen to be a Linux distributor, thank you for reading all this. Laptops are becoming more and more popular, but still most Linux distributions are not very well prepared for portable computing. Please make this section of this document obsolete, and make a few changes in your distribution.
-
-The installation routine should include a configuration, optimized for laptops. The
-The
-At the end of August 1999 the
-Note: I know other Linux distributions work well with laptops, too. I even tried some of them, see my pages about certain laptops mentioned above.
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