Debian GNU/Linux on a HP Omnibook 500

I'm running a Debian GNU/Linux (potato) on an HP Omnibook 500, with a 2.2.19 kernel.
I must say it's a very good combination :)

Installing Debian

The first thing I did was resizing the pre-installed Windows 98 partition with GNU Parted.
Warning: don't remove the first partition, it's used for hybernating !
I downloaded the disk-i386 directory on the windows partition, rebooted on dos mode, and launched install.bat. The rest went all right.

XFree86

The installation was extremly easy. I installed XFree 3.3.6, with the MACH64 server. I chose a 1024x768 @ 60-70hz monitor, and it worked on the first try !
Here's my XF86Config (for XFree86 3.3.6).
More details on Chris Hanson's page.

The sound card

With kernel 2.2.18, I had troubles to get it to work, but now it's playing fine. First, I had to download and install the kernel patch for maestro3. This patch is now included in kernel 2.2.19, I don't know about 2.4.x.
It worked after a BIOS upgrade.
Have a look at my kernel configuration.

The network card

It's a 3com 3c556 10/100 mini pci card. The kernel module for it is: 3c59x.o.
I still have some power management trouble: upon resuming, the network card does'nt wake up. I have to reload the 3c59x module to have it work again.
See my /etc/network/interfaces file, and my /etc/apm/resume.d/network file.
With those, the network is not configured at boot time. You have to do a ifup eth0 to load the module and configure eth0 by dhcp.
If the system is suspended with network configured, it will reload the 3c59x module and reconfigure the network at resume time.

The modem

It does'nt work. PCI identification:
Vendor id=10b7. Device id=1007.
Here's a list of interesting links about winmodems:

Advanced Power Managment (APM)

With the original bios, hybernating didn't work.
But after patching the BIOS, it worked fine !
I just had disk trouble: the ext2 file system was corrupted after suspending the system. The problem is easy to fix: I just force apmd to sync all disks before suspend.
Have a look at my /etc/apm/event.d/sync file.
Here's my kernel configuration.

Other resources

A final word

You can contact me if you have any question or suggestion.

Leto, May 2001