[3522] in Release_7.7_team
Re: Urgent issue: How does booting the Maintenance partition work?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Pam Huntley)
Mon Sep 23 18:45:40 2002
To: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
Cc: Michael Schmedlen <mschmedl@us.ibm.com>, owls@MIT.EDU,
release-team@MIT.EDU, Steven Sakata <ssakata@us.ibm.com>,
Steven Stiles <sastile@us.ibm.com>,
Victor R Rios <riosvic1@us.ibm.com>
Message-ID: <OF29AD884B.70901031-ON87256C3D.0079B4C6@boulder.ibm.com>
From: "Pam Huntley" <phuntley@us.ibm.com>
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 18:45:33 -0400
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Hi Bill,
I might have a few solutions for you.
<snip>
In spite of us carefully not touching the maintenance partition in any
way, the BIOS F11 key no longer will boot it. (We use partition magic
to shrink the NTFS partition, and leave the maintenance partition
exactly where it came on the drive, and in the partition table.)
We would like to have our Linux install NOT leave the laptop in a state
that prevents people from using the IBM maintanence partition to restore
if they so-choose.
</snip>
You can get the same functionality as F11 by adding the recovery partition
to your boot loader as a boot option, much in the same way as you would add
a windows partition on a dual boot system. I've only done this on one
machine - please let me know if it works for you. If not, I can certainly
examine it on more machines and get back to you with more details.
Also, I'm sure you know this, but the recovery partition will restore the
original preload from IBM, ie Windows. I'm sure you have a way of letting
people know this...
<snip>
2. Fixing a newly discovered X server bug that affects the SXGA+
configuration only: (BIOS screen blanking does not recover unless you
suspend/resume the system. (It's still better than the Dell with the
same problem. You have to power cycle the Dell.))
</snip>
Hitting Fn-F7 a couple of times will also wake up the screen without
suspending. You can also disable BIOS screen blanking and just use X
screen blanking. Again, most of my experience is on the T-series. If this
doesn't work on the R series, let me know and I'll track one down here to
figure it out.
<snip>
3. Understanding what seems to be a pre-install problem with Wireless.
The wireless network interface does not work properly under either
Windows or Linux until you use Windows to disable and then re-enable the
card.)
</snip>
This one I'll have to look at more. Let me know how urgent it is...
<snip>
4. Getting save to disk and hibernate to work. (Hitting the hibernate
key does nothing.)
</snip>
Hibernation is kind of tricky. The research I've done indicates that you
have to:
1. create a fat or fat32 partition to hold the data
2. get the IBM dos-based tool (stndalhd) to format the partition from here
http://www.pc.ibm.com/qtechinfo/MIGR-4PESMK.html
3. use Fn-F12 or tpctl --hibernate to hibernate
I haven't had a chance to test this yet, here is the source of my
information:
http://www.bm-soft.com/~bm/archives/200203/msg00047.html, along with other
messages posted to this mailing list.
Here's the URL to join the mailing list (a good one for thinkpad owners)
http://www.linux-thinkpad.org/bm/tp_mailing.html
<snip>
5. Getting auto-suspend to work. (Leaving a system powered up over
night, you come back to a dead battery, not a system that suspended.)
</snip>
tpctl will probably allow you to control this, although it might also
require some scripting.
http://tpctl.sourceforge.net/tpctlhome.htm
(tpctl has some of the functionality of ThinkPad Configuration Utility
under Windows, including ability to suspend/hibernate from command line).
I hope that at least gives you a good starting point for solving these
issues. Please keep me informed of how things work out!
Thanks,
Pam
============================================
Pamela Huntley, IBM PCD Software Development
Phone: (919) 543-3598 Email: phuntley@us.ibm.com
Bill Cattey
<wdc@MIT.EDU> To: Steven Sakata/Waltham/IBM@IBMUS
cc: Victor R Rios/Raleigh/IBM@IBMUS, Pam Huntley/Raleigh/IBM@IBMUS, Michael
09/23/2002 05:38 Schmedlen/Hamden/IBM@IBMUS, Steven Stiles/Minneapolis/IBM@IBMUS, owls@MIT.EDU,
PM release-team@MIT.EDU
Subject: Urgent issue: How does booting the Maintenance partition work?
Steven:
I was just about to announce that Linux Athena was fully supported on
the IBM R32 and T30 laptops when I discovered a problem:
In spite of us carefully not touching the maintenance partition in any
way, the BIOS F11 key no longer will boot it. (We use partition magic
to shrink the NTFS partition, and leave the maintenance partition
exactly where it came on the drive, and in the partition table.)
We would like to have our Linux install NOT leave the laptop in a state
that prevents people from using the IBM maintanence partition to restore
if they so-choose.
Which of the contacts you gave can help us understand this problem and
expedite its solution? (I've taken the liberty of CC'ing everyone
because I want to get this resolved QUICKLY!)
-wdc
P.S.
If your folks are wondering about the total scope of Laptop issues now
and for the future they are:
1. Getting F11 to work.
2. Fixing a newly discovered X server bug that affects the SXGA+
configuration only: (BIOS screen blanking does not recover unless you
suspend/resume the system. (It's still better than the Dell with the
same problem. You have to power cycle the Dell.))
3. Understanding what seems to be a pre-install problem with Wireless.
The wireless network interface does not work properly under either
Windows or Linux until you use Windows to disable and then re-enable the
card.)
4. Getting save to disk and hibernate to work. (Hitting the hibernate
key does nothing.)
5. Getting auto-suspend to work. (Leaving a system powered up over
night, you come back to a dead battery, not a system that suspended.)
As far as I know, the five issues above are the TOTALITY of getting
Linux completely happy here on laptops. The most urgent is the restore
partition thing. The others are in priority order based on a rough
guess of the customer impact.
