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These are my installation notes for the Debian 5.0 GNU/Linux distribution on a Notebook Computer D410E laptop PC. This distribution is also known as Lenny and was the stable Debian distribution at the time of this installation (March 2009). The Debian stable distribution is now Debian 8.0, also known as Jessie. I won't install this new distribution on this PC, as it is definitely out of service.
Page Content
Overview · Basic installation of Debian · Why to use Debian ? · Obtaining Debian · Installing Debian · Post-install modification · Granting the right to all users to shutdown the system · Disabling touchpad tap-to-click feature · Setting up additional features for Debian · Installing Flash plugin · Installing webcam driver · Creating /dev/video (link to /dev/video0) · Configuring the hot keys · Unresolved issues: internal V.92 56 kbps modem · Output of lspci · Output of lsusb · Output of df -hThe laptop is operating under Linux kernel version 2.6.26-1-686 (Debian kernel).
Debian really has a lot of packages. Basic installation is fast and easy.
Please visit the "Getting Debian" page to know how to get Debian. I believe that the best way to install Debian with Xfce is to get the dedicated CD image (debian-500-i386-xfce+lxde-CD-1).
The basic installation is fast and easy. After booting the installation CD-ROM, I chose "Xfce" in the first menu, and then "Graphical install" in the second menu to use the graphical installer. You can see step by step details on my installation (including screenshots).
In default system configuration, non-root users are not allowed to shutdown or reboot the system. To allow every user to shutdown or reboot the system, you can edit /etc/sudoers to tell sudo that every user should be able to use /usr/sbin/xfsm-shutdown-helper without password. Just append /etc/sudoers with the following line:
ALL LOCALHOST = NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/xfsm-shutdown-helper
/etc/sudoers is a very important file and you must be careful not to make any mistake during editing. The safest way to edit this file is to use visudo (as root). This command will start a text editor (you can choose which one with update-alternative) and will check the file before saving the modifications.
root# update-alternatives --config editor
root# visudo
I edited /etc/X11/xorg.conf (as root) to disable the touchpad tap-to-click feature. You can see my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.
The X server must be restarted for the change to take effect. You can restart it using the following command (as root):
root# /etc/init.d/gdm restart
The default Flash plugin for Iceweasel that comes with Debian 5.0 is not very satisfying. It requires to click a play button for every Flash clip in a page. Moreover, on one of the pages I visited, it totally failed to play the Flash clip.
I recommend to install instead the Flash plugin available on Macromedia site (.deb package for Ubuntu 8.04+).
Downloading and installing can be done with the following commands:
$ wget http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player_10_linux.deb
root# dpkg -i ~/downloads/flash_player/install_flash_player_10_linux.deb
I installed and loaded the gspca driver using the following commands (as root):
root# aptitude install gspca-modules-2.6-686
root# modprobe gspca
I installed gqcam to test the webcam:
root# aptitude install gqcam
Then I started the program using the -v option to indicate the device to use (gqcam uses /dev/video by default whereas the webcam on my system is on /dev/video0):
$ gqcam -v /dev/video0
Since some programs (at least gqcam) are expecting the webcam to be on /dev/video, I found it desirable to have /dev/video (as a link to /dev/video0). This could be achieved creating a file (an Udev rule) like my 10-webcam.rules file in /etc/udev/rules.d. /dev/video will be created each time the system starts up.
Some information about the device can be obtained using udevinfo. For example:
$ udevinfo -a -p $(udevinfo -q path -n /dev/video0)|head -16
Udevinfo starts with the device specified by the devpath and then
walks up the chain of parent devices. It prints for every device
found, all possible attributes in the udev rules key format.
A rule to match, can be composed by the attributes of the device
and the attributes from one single parent device.
looking at device '/class/video4linux/video0':
KERNEL=="video0"
SUBSYSTEM=="video4linux"
DRIVER==""
ATTR{name}=="GSPCA USB Camera"
ATTR{stream_id}=="JPEG"
ATTR{model}=="Z-star Vimicro zc0301p"
ATTR{pictsetting}=="force_rgb=0, gamma=3, OffRed=0, OffBlue=0, OffGreen=0, GRed=256, GBlue=256, GGreen= 256 "
The laptop has three hot keys, near the power button (see picture below). The left one is supposed to launch a mail client, the middle one is supposed to launch a web browser and the right one is supposed to launch a user specified application.
The laptop also has volume keys:
To configure all those keys, I used hotkey-setup and xbindkeys. You can install those packages using the following command (as root):
root# aptitude install hotkey-setup xbindkeys
The hotkey-setup configuration must be modified to be able to use the hot key closest to the power button. I pressed this key and read dmesg output:
$ dmesg|tail -4
[ 5637.939660] atkbd.c: Unknown key pressed (translated set 2, code 0x81 on isa0060/serio0).
[ 5637.939660] atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e001 <keycode>' to make it known.
[ 5638.637569] atkbd.c: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0x81 on isa0060/serio0).
[ 5638.637569] atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e001 <keycode>' to make it known.
I replaced the content of /usr/share/hotkey-setup/generic.hk with the following line to make the key known:
setkeycodes e001 $KEY_MACRO
Then I restarted hotkey-setup using the following command (as root):
root# /etc/init.d/hotkey-setup restart
To bind applications to the hot keys, I created the file ~/.xbindkeysrc (you can see my file here), added xbindkeys to the list of autostarted applications (Xfce menu, Settings|Autostarted Applications) and logged out and back in again.
I tried the SmartLink software modem driver (available in the non-free section of Debian) but could not connect to the internet (no carrier). I believe the problem is related to this bug.
00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS645DX Host & Memory & AGP Controller (rev 01)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Virtual PCI-to-PCI bridge (AGP)
00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS962 [MuTIOL Media IO] (rev 14)
00:02.1 SMBus: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS961/2 SMBus Controller
00:02.3 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] FireWire Controller
00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE]
00:02.6 Modem: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AC'97 Modem Controller (rev a0)
00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AC'97 Sound Controller (rev a0)
00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.2 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
00:0c.0 CardBus bridge: ENE Technology Inc CB1410 Cardbus Controller
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV250 [Mobility FireGL 9000] (rev 01)
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 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 001 Device 004: ID 0ac8:301b Z-Star Microelectronics Corp. ZC0301 WebCam
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1 19G 2.8G 15G 16% /
tmpfs 505M 0 505M 0% /lib/init/rw
udev 10M 108K 9.9M 2% /dev
tmpfs 505M 0 505M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda5 192G 14G 169G 8% /home
/dev/hda6 19G 3.6G 14G 21% /var