40.47 Dell Latitude C600 (Inci)

This is a laptop used for developing and delivering presentations and for note taking and working whilst travelling. It has a 1GHz Pentium 3 processors, 512MB memory, 18GB of disk and Rage M3 video.

The base install (27 Feb 2004) was with the beta2 Debian Installer, which was under development for the next stable release of Debian. A partition of 12GB was used for / and 1GB for swap. (The rest was for a pre-installed Windows2000 system, drives C and D using about 7GB there.)

40.47.1 Inci Specification

From the lspci and lshw commands and /proc/cpuinfo:

Spec	Details
Machine:	Latitude C600, BIOS A16
CPU:	Intel Pentium III (Coppermine) 1.0GHz/700MHz
Bogomips:	2000
Memory:	512MB
Network:	3Com 3c556 10/100 Mini PCI Adapter (3c59x)
Disk:	18GB TOSHIBA MK2017GAP, ATA DISK drive (/dev/hda)
Video:	Rage Mobility M3 AGP 2x 64MB 66MHz (ati/r128)
Audio:	ES1983S Maestro-3i (maestro3)
CDRW/DVD:	Samsung CD-RW/DVD-ROM SN-308B, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
Hostname:	inci
Domainname:	togaware.com
IP Address:	105.229.8.156
Netmask:	255.255.255.192
Broadcast:	105.229.255.255
Gateway:	105.229.8.190
DNS	125.83.72.15 125.83.72.1
Boot:	Grub
Kernel:	2.4.24-1-686

40.47.2 Inci Install Log

The beta release of the Debian Installer, identified as Sarge i386 Netinst and dated 26 Feb 2004, was downloaded as an ISO image from . This failed to install GRUB - it simply froze. Reverting to the beta2 release from succeeded.

Boot from the CD-ROM. For the Debian install choose English (Australian). There is no DHCP on the local network so a static network was configured.

Configure the time zone as Australia/ACT. Add Root and User accounts. For apt choose CDROM. Don’t do any task selection for now. No specific exim4 options need be selected - set up as a local system.

Note that to reconfigure, run the base-config program.

Install ssh and then copy a master sources.list file, follwoed by apt-get update and then apt-get install wajig to get things going:

  # mv /etc/apt-get/sources.list /etc/apt-get/sources.list.orig
  # scp athens:/etc/apt-get/sources.list /etc/apt-get/sources.list
  $ apt-get update
  $ apt-get install wajig
  $ wajig update
  $ wajig dist-upgrade

Now the setup begins. Install emacs21 less most zile python-glade2 python-gnome2.

The /etc/resolv.conf didn’t include my usual search line so it was added:

  search togaware.com

Set up, for the user account, ssh for access to remote accounts if you like, to avoid repeatedly typing a password:

mkdir .ssh
scp athens:.ssh/id_dsa .ssh/
scp athens:.ssh/authorized_keys2 .ssh/authorized_keys
ssh-agent bash
ssh-add

Enter passphrase for /home/kayon/.ssh/id_dsa: 
  Identity added: /home/kayon/.ssh/id_dsa (/home/kayon/.ssh/id_dsa)
```%s

Now copy setup files from remote hosts:

```bash
scp athens:{.bashrc,.bash_profile} . 
scp athens:{.emacs,.emacs-custom,.emacs-kayon} . 
scp athens:{.xsession,.Xresources} . 

Copy the same files for root.

Use visudo to set up wajig usage for a user. Install grub:

  $ wajig install grub
  $ wajig remove lilo
  $ sudo grub-install /dev/hda
  $ sudo update-grub

Apart from adding a Windows2000 boot option to /boot/grub/menu.lst, the configuration should be fine (finding /dev/hda3 as the Linux boot). For convenience, add the following to /etc/kernel-img.conf:

  postinst_hook = /sbin/update-grub
  postrm_hook = /sbin/update-grub

Install kernel-image-2.4.24-1-686.

Install ntpdate to set the system clock accurately from a reliable server (e.g., ntp.togaware.com).

Get X Windows working with the Rage card by installing x-window-system gnome gdm, gdm, gdm, gdm, gdm, gdm gdm-themes cinepaint, cinepaint, cinepaint, cinepaint xine-ui.

Install openoffice.org xmms apache

Run tasksel to install groups of packages.

Install vrms.

I’ve chosen a 1024x768 resolution. This is not so nice since it can handle 1400x1050, but it does make plugging into data projectors easier. However, the screen goes into a funny mode which can be fixed by Fn-F7 (compress/uncompress). The chosen ranges are 30-100 kHz for hsync and 50-160 Hz for vsync. Simply use wajig reconfigure xserver-xfree86 to force choice of 1024x768 when required.

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