Fujitsu Stylistic LT C-500
Running Debian with LightWeight X11 Desktop Environment (LXDE) Windows Manager
For that reason, I am going to break down the installation and configuration of Debian on to the Fujitsu Stylistic, more for my own reference and memory jogger than for anything else, however if this proves useful to anyone else, great.
Problem 1 - Crummy Bios Hardware Detection
The only way to install any operating system on this beast without its docking station is to remove the hard drive, attach it to a desktop system using an IDE adapter, and install to the hard drive from there. The latest bios version (1.05) will not recognize usb as a boot device. There may be other ways to do this, but starting cold with no installed system and no docking station, you need the adapter and a desktop.
Currently I am running Debian Lenny, the stable release as of July 19, 2009, the day of this writing. (Update : Sept 5, 2009) That can be found here:
http://www.debian.org/CD/http-ftp/
Go with the stable release for the i386. Look for the first CD which includes LXDE or go with the first CD in the list. Download and burn with your tools of choice. Remember to burn as an image as it needs to be bootable. Obviously.
Remove the hard drive from the tablet, plug the adapter into your desktops primary harddrive ide cable (YES, UNPLUG YOUR DESKTOP'S HARD DRIVE), and plug in the little 2.5" tablet hard drive into the adapter. Adjust your bios to boot from the cdrom, and boot from your burned debian install disk.
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Install with the defaults. I used guided partitioner / whole disk when it asked, but you can also partition manually if you are setting up a dual boot system. Include the laptop package and install GRUB when asked. Once the CD ejects and it is time to reboot, shut the machine down and remove the hard drive from your desktop. (Don't reboot your desktop with the fresh install, reboot in the tablet once you have reinstalled the hard drive.)
Reinstall the drive in the tablet and boot up. With any luck the BIOS will agree that GRUB exists in a readable format in your MBR and boot from it. Once the kernel is loaded, the init scripts start running and hopefully your hardware is configured. Auto configure is nice and thats why we do it. Everybody say it with me... AUTOCONFIGURE! Of course, not everything will autoconfigure so we have to iron out the problems.
I use the 3Com PCMCIA network card. I didnt have internet when I logged in. I went to the command line and typed "ifconfig", but only loopback info appeared. Weird thing was if I typed "ifconfig eth1", I would get the eth1 card info. If I typed "ifup eth1", it gave me the error "Ignoring eth1=eth1". Anyways, long story short, the actual problem lies with udev persisting the MAC addresses of the network interfaces which existed on the desktop machine where debian was installed from the cdrom. The way udev works, the first network interfaces that are found are designated eth0, eth1, etc. and wireless nics are designated wlan0, wlan1, etc.
Resolution: Edit /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules with the following command.
"nano /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules"
Look through the file and comment out any nic cards which were configured while installing on the desktop machine. If you didnt have any network cards on the desktop, well then, aren't you lucky, you don't have this problem and you can enjoy network connectivity right out of the gate. For me, I had 1 built-in nic and 1 wireless pc card. I have given a before and after of the config file in the /etc/udev/rules.d/ folder.
| /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules (before) | /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules (after) |
|
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:0f:3d:50:25:a8", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="wlan*", NAME=wlan0" SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:0c:6e:bb:5b:8c", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME=wlan0" SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:10:4b:e3:a1:12", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME=eth1" SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:12:17:3a:77:7e", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME=wlan1" |
#SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:0f:3d:50:25:a8", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="wlan*", NAME=wlan0" #SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:0c:6e:bb:5b:8c", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME=wlan0" SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:10:4b:e3:a1:12", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME=eth0" SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00:12:17:3a:77:7e", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME=wlan0" |
I realize that this edit is a bit confusing so I bolded the parts of the file that have to be changed from the original. Hopefully you be able to follow that and remove the references to no longer existing NICs.
The network will still have to be configured onn boot up, so edit /etc/network/interfaces with the following command.
"nano /etc/network/interfaces"
Add the configuration info for your network under the loop back info which should be present there. I have given a before and after of the config file in the /etc/network/ folder.
| /etc/network/interfaces (before) | /etc/network/interfaces (after) |
|
auto lo iface lo inet loopback |
auto lo iface lo inet loopback auto eth0 iface eth0 inet static address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx netmask xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx gateway xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx |
Save and close as above. Finally, create the file etc/resolv.conf and add your dns server address into it with the following commands.
"nano /etc/resolv.conf"
nameserver xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Save and close as above. That should get network up and running enough to connect to the debian update sites.
Problem 2 - Lousy Touchscreen Support
The touchscreen has always been a bit of a holy grail, I can see from googling my little nubs off. We will get the parts in place and then set up the Xserver to cooperate with us. Ready? Ok!Open up a terminal and su yourself root. I hope you can follow me. This means type "su" then enter the root password when prompted. You knew that? Ok, just checkin. That being said, there are a dozen ways to do this properly, so don't get too hung up if this way doesn't work, we will work through it and with a little help from google you should be fine even if you get stuck.
Type in "nano /etc/apt/sources.list". This file editor will let you make changes to the repository list that our package manager, apt, uses to download and install software from. Its important to be able to get that free software! Ok, in that file you will see references to the cdrom installer files, you can replace those with "deb http://ftp.ca.debian.org/debian lenny main contrib non-free". Uncomment the "deb http://security.debian.org lenny/updates main" so that you can get updates, too. Again, I will do a before and after so we can see what has changed.
| /etc/apt/sources.list (before) | /etc/apt/sources.list (after) |
|
deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/ Linux 5.0.2_Lenny_ - (etc) #deb http://security.debian.org lenny/updates main |
deb http://ftp.ca.debian.org/debian lenny main contrib non-free deb http://security.debian.org lenny/updates main |
Note here that if you are very l33t, you noticed that the repository is in Canada by the .ca in the address ftp.ca.debian.org. With a little help from google, you can find the repository that is maintained in your country, and that would be faster and give us Canadians more bandwidth. So do that if you can figure it out, ay. Ok? Ok! At this point, Ctrl O and Enter saves the file, Ctrl X exits the editor.
Having updated the list that apt uses to download files, we have to let apt know we changed it, otherwise it will be none the wiser. Issue the command "apt-get update" to give the word to the apt package manager. Then we should be ready to install whatever the hell we want. Lets keep it with just the stuff we need for now. We're doing the touchscreen, remember? Ok, next command. "apt-get install setserial". No problems? Ok. Next one. "apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-fpit" Whew! This is starting to get freaky, I know! Ok, we have installed the driver, fpit, and the serial manager, setserial, in order to take control of that little beasty UART in the touchscreen. Lets take a break here and talk about what we're going to do next.
Setserial is an application which lets us control how the serial ports are recognised by the kernel. This is important because... it just is. Ok we want to configure the setserial app to do what we want, but we don't know for sure which serial port is the one which the touchscreen is connected to. This may require some trial and error. Googling this, I have seen touchscreens working on /dev/ttyS1, /dev/ttyS3, and possibly /dev/ttyS4, I forget. Mine is /dev/ttyS1, so thats what I will use. Yours may be different, but try /dev/ttyS1 first, and one of the other ones if this doesn't work.
What am I talking about? Let's use the command setserial so you can see a little better what we can do. Issue "setserial -g /dev/ttyS*". This lists the serial ports that are configured by default when you boot up. Mine looks like this:
/dev/ttyS0, UART, 16550A, Port: 0x03f8, IRQ:4
/dev/ttyS1, UART, 16550A, Port: 0xfd68, IRQ:5
/dev/ttyS2, UART, unknown, Port: 0x03e8, IRQ:4
/dev/ttyS3, UART, 16550A, Port: 0x02e8, IRQ:3
The port is what you want to be looking for here. Most every touchscreen for the Fujitsu Stylistic LT C-500 has a hardware device which is mapped to address 0xfd68 at boot. This is specific to the LT C-500, if you have a different model, then I don't know what I'm talking about, and this won't help you. But if you have this address in your serial port listing. make a note of which one it is, and use that serial port when we do the configuration file edit. Which we are going to do now. See, I told you we needed to take a break! Ok, let continue.
Type in "nano /var/lib/setserial/autoserial.conf". Comment out every line except the one line that has the serial port that you noted earlier. (Just add a # to the front of the line to comment it out.) Then change the line that reads "/dev/ttyS1 uart 16550A port 0xfd68 irq 5 baud_base 115200 spd_normal skip_test" to "/dev/ttyS1 uart 16450 port 0xfd68 irq 5 baud_base 115200 spd_normal skip_test". Tiny little change, no big deal. (If you missed it, the "16550A" changes to "16450", thats it, that all.) Ok. Save and close that. (Ctrl O and Enter, Ctrl X.) Now type "dpkg-reconfigure setserial". Hit enter when it gives the first prompt, and then select "manual" with the arrow keys when it ask what type of configuration you want. Hit enter and you're done. Setserial, like apt, likes to know when its config files have changed, so we're simply being polite. So that should take care of the serial driver, although we will have to log off the xserver for our changes to take effect. We aren't done yet anyways.
One more file to change, but typical of any problem, it's always the biggest and nastiest that we save for last. Wait, come back! I'm going to give you the whole thing to copy down, don't worry. Ok, relax and lets have a look at this beaster. Type "cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf". Wow. That is one huge file! Wait, it didn't print for you? Oh, yours must be blank, yeah mine is too. Funny haha, right? Ok, dont worry, we'll fix it up right now. Well, you should do some googling too. But I've already got mine working, so why don't you cut and paste mine in there? Ok!
| /etc/X11/xorg.conf |
Right click and Save As.. or however you want to get that file saved and onto your tablet. Put the whole thing into /etc/X11 by copying it there. Let's see, how to do this... Open a browser in your tablet and browse to this page. Right click and Save as, should put it on the desktop in a folder called Downloads. Get back to your terminal, and issue the following command, "cp /home/your_user_name/Desktop/Downloads/xorg.conf.txt /etc/X11/xorg.conf". Check to make sure its there: "cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf". Yah ok then! If you are having problems with that, check you are using your user name in the command. I trust you didn't type in "your_user_name" there, did you? Ok, if you're not sure, check the home directory with the command "ls /home". Use that name in your command. Also be sure to type in capital letters for the first letter of "Desktop" and "Downloads", Linux is case sensitive, you know. Yes, I know you knew.
At this point we are ready to test out touchscreen, are you excited? Well don't be, even if it does work, you are sure to screw up something once this is done and then you will reading this again to make sure you get everything set up in the right order. Hmfph. Well, go ahead, reboot with the command "reboot". I sure hope this works.
Ok, well mine works. I don't know if you are still with me or not. We are definately going to celebrate now, right? If not, don't panic. Try to get as much info as possible about the problem, whether it is from the boot time log or from the command line. Play with the stylus (you are using a stylus, right? If not, your fingernail with light pressure is all thats needed to register with the screen).
I have a usb mouse plugged in and an IR keyboard which are both mentioned in xorg.conf. If you don't have those try different settings in xorg.conf.
Thanks to others who have got this working: Frank Neurath, Mark Dennehy, and Ferdinand Grassmann.
Cheers!