40.41 Ipex (Atom)

Atom is a standalone with 4GB of memory, a 120GB hard disk, a DVD\(\pm\)RW Dual Layer burner, and a removable caddy-based 40GB hard drive (but not hot swappable). Initially it had no network connection and the installation was from DVD, preserving a pre-installed MS/Windows XP.

A default install using the Release Candidate 3 Debian Installer, booting from a DVD+RW was performed. The DVD image was obtained using jigdo-file (see Section ??).

40.41.1 Atom Specifications

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

Spec Details
Machine: Ipex T400
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz
Bogomips: 5976
Memory: 4GB
Network: 82562EZ 10/100 Ethernet Controller (e100)
Disk: 120GB SAMSUNG SP1213N
40GB SAMSUNG SP0413N
Video: Intel 82865G Integrated Graphics Device (i830)
Audio: Intel 82801 EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) AC’97 Audio Control
CD/DVD: PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-108
Hostname: atom
Domainname: togaware.com
Boot: Grub
Kernel: 2.6.11-1-686-smp, 2.4.27

40.41.2 Atom Install Log

40.41.2.1 17 Dec 2005

Standard install with no issues: lang=English, location=Australia, kb=American English, no network, hostname=atom, erase disk, multi-user workstation, write partition changes, install grub, reboot.

Root passwd, user account, apt install.

Install sudo for wajig.

Package installs. StartX (choosing defaults for setup) has no problems.

Install kernel-image-2.6.8-1-282-smp, with acpi=off.

40.41.2.2 12 Apr 2005

The internal disk failed. System started freezing up and the disk drive was ``clicking.’’ A temporary install to the removable hard drive followed the above steps, installing kernel-image-2.6.11.

Default partition was:

Spec Details

40.41.2.3 4 May 2005

Installation repeated that of 17 Dec 2004 except that the disk was repartitioned to retain MS/Windows XP installation. During the partition step of the install: manually edit partition table, go with the current 40GB NTFS and 80GB partitioned for GNU/Linux using auto partition for a Desktop machine:

Spec Details

Choose to dual boot.

40.41.3 Troubleshooting

40.41.3.1 ACPI Kernel Freeze

While kernel-image-2.6.11-1-686-smp now works just fine on this machine, the original upgrade to kernel-image-2.6.8-1-686-smp resulted in the boot freezing after ACPI appeared to kick in. Turning acpi off resolved this. This involved adding acpi=off to the kernel line in the file /boot/grub/menu.lst:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8-1-686-smp root=/dev/hda1 ro acpi=off

The option needs to be added to any 2.6 kernel (prior to about 2.6.10), but is not needed for 2.4 kernels. So add a new line for the 2.6 kernels and add in the new flag:

# kopt_2_6=root=/dev/hdd1 ro acpi=off
# kopt=root=/dev/hdd1 ro

40.41.3.2 Removable Hard Disk

The removable hard disk is being shared with a MS/WindowsXP host, and seems like it needs to be NTFS for access on the MS/Windows host. Attempt formatting with VFAT:

  # cfdisk /dev/hdd
    Partition type = 1B (Hidden W95 FAT32) ?? 
  # wajig install dosfstools
  # mkfs -t vfat -F32 /dev/hdd1

But can’t be read on MS/Windows host yet/



Your donation will support ongoing availability and give you access to the PDF version of this book. Desktop Survival Guides include Data Science, GNU/Linux, and MLHub. Books available on Amazon include Data Mining with Rattle and Essentials of Data Science. Popular open source software includes rattle, wajig, and mlhub. Hosted by Togaware, a pioneer of free and open source software since 1984. Copyright © 1995-2022 Graham.Williams@togaware.com Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0