Redhat 8.0 on an IBM ThinkPad T30
ThinkPad T30
Technical specifications

* Model: 236641U
* Intel Mobile Pentium 4,  1.80 MHz Processor, 512Kb
* 256 Mb
* 8X-3.3X DVD-ROM (bootable)
* 36 GB HDD - Intel 82801 CAM Ultra ATA
* 14.1" IBM TFT 1024x768 LCD Panel
* ATI Mobility Radion 7500
* Intel PRO/100 VE Network Connection
* SoundMAX Integrated Digital Audio.
* Li-Ion battery
* IBM Link

Getting the Drives Ready

I purchased the computer new from IBM - I tried to get one without having to pay the Microsoft Tax, but was unable to. Several reliable tech people I know using/supporting XP have said that XP gets flaky after about a year, but 2k seems to be ok so far.  So I got a computer with Windows 2000 pre-installed. I decided to keep W2k and make this a dual boot system

I was pleased to see that the hard drive was formatted as FAT32 which meant that FIPS would work well to re-partition the hard drive w/out having to re-install Windows. The standard T30 does not come with a floppy drive, just a DVD drive. I purchased the floppy drive (you remove the DVD drive and replace it with the floppy drive)  - but in theory one could just as easily make bootable CDs to run FIPS.

The stock IBM install comes with two primary partitions
    * one for the OS (/dev/hda0)
    * one for system recovery.  (/dev/hda1)

I defragmented the HD, booted from the floppy and ran FIPS (it comes with the RedHat install). It gave me a warning about how the logical cylinder didn't match the physical one, but not to worry about it. With FIPS, I broke the first 36 GIG partition into two partitions of about 18 Gig. I rebooted into Win2k and ran scandisk on the new C drive to make sure all was ok. There is a good description of FIPS installation at http://www.wiu.edu/users/mflll/linux1.html and the RedHat site has a nice description on FIPS at http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-8.0-Manual/install-guide/s1-x86-dualboot-fips.html

Note: since the disk here is 40 Gig - you can't break the partition below 1024 cylinders with FIPS. As I stated above, I split the partition evenly with about 18gig each for Win2k and for Linux - that is ok to do (see below). During the Linux install I partitioned the Linux partition further (see below).


Installing Linux

How not to do it:

I first thought "Oh no! I have to have the /boot partition below 1024!" and tried using Ghost to move around partitions - moving the Win2k partition into the second partition created with FIPS and installing RedHat on the first partition. Dual booting was fine - except that stupid Windows couldn't find its paging file after logging in. (The error is in the Microsoft KB 249321: Unable to Log on if the Boot Partition Drive Letter Has Changed ) I tried hide/unhide, makeactive, map, and chainloader commands in grub to no avail. I could have followed the Microsoft published fix 249321 - but it is common knowledge that what is published in the KB is usually missing steps (I think its so that you have to call and pay for support). It was more work than Windows deserved.
Fortunately - I came to my senses when I realized the T30 supports LBA32! Time to start over from scratch: IBM comes with a system restore partition - I booted into it (see later) reformatted the disk and reinstalled Windows. It took at least an hour and many reboots - but eventually I got back to the original state. By the way - the IBM restore program is GREAT. Even though it was windows (which meant it had to reboot many times) the reinstall didn't require my input. I was relieved that I didn't have to sit there like one of those chickens trained to press a key when it lights up. Nb: if you do a re-install - make sure the DVD drive is in the system - otherwise you won't get the DVD software installed.

Ok - now that we learned what not to do.....

How to do it:

My hat is off to Linus and the folks who went into making the install go smoothly.
  1. Break the partition into two and reboot (See FIPS above)
  2. Run fdisk and delete the blank partition. 
  3. Boot with the RedHat CD (press F12 to select booting from the DVD drive), 
  4. Ignore the warnings about having the /boot partition above 1024, just use GRUB and have it install to the MBR.  This computer accepts up to 1 Gig of memory so I made the swap partition 2 Gig just on the off chance I up the memory to 1 Gig later. (2 to 1 ratio of swap to memory) 
  5. Set the mouse to 2 button PS/2 (emulate 3 buttons) 
  6. Let everything else go as is - the network, video, sound are all detected and setup correctly for you.
One reboot later and I'm running a dual boot Win2k and Linux system.

 X worked perfectly - I'm running at 1024x768 with 24bit color. On laptops I like to set the alias
 
alias startx="startx -- -nolisten tcp"


When you install GRUB on the MBR you loose the F11 option at boot that allows you to boot into the IBM rescue partition. If you want it back add the following lines in the grub.conf file in the /boot/grub/ directory

title IBM Rescue
    rootnoverify (hd0,1)
    chainloader +1

Modem/NIC
Didn't test the modem

Network card works fine - (detected during setup and configured automatically: uses eepro100 module) 

Sound
Works perfectly right from the start: left, right and stereo.

Detected during setup and configured automatically (uses i810_audio module) 
The volume buttons at the top of the keyboard work - no special configuration needed.
Reading the driver documentation for the i810_audio module - I found it recommended setting esd (if you are using it) to probe at 48000 with a "-r 48000" flag so I modified the file /etc/esd.conf and added it to the end of the line that starts with "spawn_options=". I didn't notice any difference but then I don't typically work with the computer making sounds.

Hard Drive Speed Tweaking
There was an excellent article on Oreiley's website about hdparm and using it to improve the speed of reads and writes on the hard drive, "Speeding up Linux Using hdparm by Rob Flickenger." In a nutshell, don't waste your time trying to tweak hdparm to speed up the T30. The default settings are excellent and fast already. I tested several of the tweaks and it made little to no difference in speed. Here's a typical test while the system is under a medium to heavy load (e.g. not under ideal testing conditions). 
/dev/hda:
  Timing buffer-cache reads:   128 MB in  0.35 seconds =368.20 MB/sec
  Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in  3.21 seconds = 19.94 MB/sec
APM
Works great. I've let the machine run down to 1% battery and it turns itself off. Plug it in and it comes back to life w/out error. Likewise the Fn-F4 key for sleep works well.
DVD/ SVCD Movies
A friend brought over a SVCD movie. I tried it in Windows 2000 and the Microsoft media player choked on it. So I tried vlc under Linux and it worked well. Intead of using the RPMS I compiled which was a bit tricky but that's another article.
Other choices I have not tried but are reported as working well also : mplayer,  and OGLE.

Custom Kernels
This is not necessary - but if you are going to recompile for the T30 these are some settings that you may find useful