ToshibaNB205

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Intro

Hello Slakers!

I will talk about how to installing and use Slakware in a NB 205 from Toshiba. First of all i have to admit that i stayed really impressed with the design of NB205, he's fully portable and light, the screen with a 10.1" have a bad news: she only can do 1024x600 of size but not for us, slackers! ;) Even being netbook this machine has a good performance and excelent battery duration time! Generally this happens because of his ATOM N280 1.6GHz that use minus power and are designed for running in two units of execution even that is not a dual-processor. He has a beautiful keyboard design, a nice webcam of 1.3 megapixels and a good acceleration in multimedia applications. So before anything else, lets see some more informations about his technical specifications, down:

Technical Details

• Motherboard: Toshiba KAVAA - Chipset: Intel Callistoga-GSE i945GSE
• Processor: Intel Atom N280 1.6GHz
• Memory: DDR2-800/400/333/266 MHz - Comes to 1GB but you can upgrade to 2 GB.
• Video: Intel GMA 950 (1280x600)
• Hard Disk: 160 GB 5400 RPM SATA-II
• Webcam, Bluetooth, Ether/Wifi Network gigabit, Battery Life is 8 Hours!!!

CPU

# cat /proc/cpuinfo 
processor	: 0
vendor_id	: GenuineIntel
cpu family	: 6
model		: 28
model name	: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N280   @ 1.66GHz
stepping	: 2
cpu MHz		: 1000.000
cache size	: 512 KB
physical id	: 0
siblings	: 2
core id		: 0
cpu cores	: 1
apicid		: 0
initial apicid	: 0
fdiv_bug	: no
hlt_bug		: no
f00f_bug	: no
coma_bug	: no
fpu		: yes
fpu_exception	: yes
cpuid level	: 10
wp		: yes
flags		: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl est tm2 ssse3 xtpr pdcm lahf_lm
bogomips	: 3325.16
clflush size	: 64
power management:

PCI Devices

# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
03:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 02)

USB Devices

# lsusb
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 04f2:b128 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd 
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0bda:0159 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. 
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Hard Disk

# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x91c391c3

Netbook Slakware Configuration

Here i post some of my tips to setup slakware with this hardware.

Screen

The netbook video driver can only hit a 1024x600 size of screen, but we can change this using the 'xrandr' command to hit 1280x750 virtual. For do that you need to change '~/.xinitrc' and before you call your window manager you make a call of these command:

xrandr --output LVDS --mode 1024x600 --scale 1.25x1.25

Here is my /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section "Module"
          Load        "dbe"   # Double buffer extension
          SubSection  "extmod"
            Option    "omit xfree86-dga"   # don't initialise the DGA extension
          EndSubSection
          Load        "type1"
          Load        "freetype"
          Load       "glx"
EndSection

Section "Files"
          RgbPath     "/usr/share/X11/rgb"
          FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/local/"
          FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/misc/"
          FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/OTF/"
          FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/TTF/"
          FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/Type1/"
          FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/CID/"
          FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/Speedo/"
          FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
          FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
          FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/"
          FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi/"
          FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/cyrillic/"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
          Driver      "kbd"
          Option     "XkbRules"      "xorg"
          Option     "XkbModel"      "pc105"
          Option     "XkbLayout"     "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
          Identifier  "Mouse1"
          Driver      "mouse"
          Option "Protocol"    "PS/2"
          Option "Device"      "/dev/mouse"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
          Identifier  "My Monitor"
          HorizSync   31.5 - 50.0
          VertRefresh 40-90
EndSection

Section "Device"
          Identifier  "Intel GMA950"
          Driver      "intel"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
          Device      "Intel GMA950"
          Monitor     "My Monitor"
          DefaultDepth 24
          Subsection "Display"
              Depth       8
              Modes "1024x600" "800x600" "640x480"
          EndSubsection
          Subsection "Display"
              Depth       16
              Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
          EndSubsection
          Subsection "Display"
              Depth       24
              Modes "1024x600" "800x600" "640x480"
              Virtual 1280 750
          EndSubsection
          Subsection "Display"
              Depth       32
              Modes "1024x600" "800x600" "640x480"
              Virtual 1280 750
          EndSubsection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
          Identifier  "Simple Layout"
          Screen "Screen 1"
          InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
          InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Network

• 03:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
• 04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 02)

With those cards the netbook can give a improve in network performance and will grow like a little monster in your network, with a wifi module called 'ath9k' and network module called 'r8169' they can do great things :)

Bluetooth

To get things done you will need to download the 'omnibook' package and compile in your slackware version. Once you do it you can follow these commands to test your connection:

# modprobe -v omnibook
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.29.6-smp/extra/omnibook.ko ectype=12 userset=1 wifi=1 bluetooth=1
# hciconfig   
hci0:	Type: USB
	BD Address: 00:22:58:FF:C2:DC ACL MTU: 310:10 SCO MTU: 64:8
	UP RUNNING PSCAN ISCAN 
	RX bytes:692 acl:0 sco:0 events:24 errors:0
	TX bytes:581 acl:0 sco:0 commands:24 errors:0

# hcitool scan
Scanning ...
	00:21:FC:B1:AC:97	Rosangela

To be honest thats the best i could do with Bluetooth right now.

Ethernet

The easy way to setup your network is with DHCP. To make this you must change the file: /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf to:

IFNAME[0]="eth0"
USE_DHCP[0]="yes"

Or with IP fix:

IFNAME[0]="eth0"
USE_DHCP="no"
IPADDR[0]="192.168.0.10"
NETMASK[0]="255.255.255.0"
GATEWAY="192.168.0.254"

Or you can set your ip manually in console with these commands:

# ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.25
# route add default gw 192.168.0.254

Wifi

If you want to use WPA/PSK:

wpa_passphrase <ESSID> <Passphrase>
# wpa_passphrase house littled0g > /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf.home 

If you see the file '/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf.home'

network={
	ssid="house"
	#psk="littled0g"
	psk=9dbaaf7031fd8cbc03674337ee9c724b65811b36546d2234676060b4144872b8
}

Tests of Performance

# time dd bs=1k count=1000 if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/zero
1000+0 records in
1000+0 records out
1024000 bytes (1.0 MB) copied, 0.588823 s, 1.7 MB/s

real	0m0.593s
user	0m0.003s
sys	0m0.582s
# time dd bs=1k count=100000 if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/zero
100000+0 records in
100000+0 records out
102400000 bytes (102 MB) copied, 56.0481 s, 1.8 MB/s

real	0m56.053s
user	0m0.131s
sys	0m55.874s
# time dd bs=1k count=200000 if=/dev/urandom of=/tmp/mkshit
100000+0 records in
100000+0 records out
204800000 bytes (205 MB) copied, 120.184 s, 1.7 MB/s

real	2m0.189s
user	0m0.445s
sys	1m58.237s

My Opinion About the Slakware in this Netbook

• You will not be unsatisfied.
• You need to buy at least one in your life. Only $490.
• Excelent to use like a second 'notebook' in your home and your work.