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Add an article about using FreeBSD on laptops. This document aims to

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be a quick HOWTO for the various issues likely to be interesting for
laptop users; such as power management, winmodems, XFree86 on laptop
hardware, etc..

This is just a start, and there is plenty of room for improvement.

PR:		docs/30199
Submitted by:	Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in>
Reviewed by:	dd
This commit is contained in:
Murray Stokely 2001-09-17 03:25:06 +00:00
parent 946624fd79
commit 7408b262df
Notes: svn2git 2020-12-08 03:00:23 +00:00 
svn path=/head/; revision=10706
3 changed files with 199 additions and 1 deletions
en_US.ISO8859-1/articles
Makefile
laptop
Makefilearticle.sgml

3
en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/Makefile
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@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
# $FreeBSD: doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/Makefile,v 1.16 2001/09/09 02:21:57 rpratt Exp $
# $FreeBSD: doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/Makefile,v 1.17 2001/09/13 07:46:02 murray Exp $
SUBDIR = committers-guide
SUBDIR+= console-server
@ -11,6 +11,7 @@ SUBDIR+= freebsd-questions
SUBDIR+= fonts
SUBDIR+= formatting-media
SUBDIR+= ipsec-must
SUBDIR+= laptop
SUBDIR+= mh
SUBDIR+= multi-os
SUBDIR+= new-users

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en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/laptop/Makefile Normal file
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#
# $FreeBSD$
#
# Article about using FreeBSD on laptops
#
DOC?= article
FORMATS?= html
INSTALL_COMPRESSED?=gz
INSTALL_ONLY_COMPRESSED?=
SRCS= article.sgml
DOC_PREFIX?= ${.CURDIR}/../../..
.include "${DOC_PREFIX}/share/mk/doc.project.mk"

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en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/laptop/article.sgml Normal file
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<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//FreeBSD//DTD DocBook V4.1-Based Extension//EN" [
<!ENTITY % man PUBLIC "-//FreeBSD//ENTITIES DocBook Manual Page Entities//EN">
%man;
<!ENTITY % freebsd PUBLIC "-//FreeBSD//ENTITIES DocBook Miscellaneous FreeBSD Entities//EN">
%freebsd;
<!ENTITY % authors PUBLIC "-//FreeBSD//ENTITIES DocBook Author Entities//EN">
%authors;
<!ENTITY % mailing-lists PUBLIC "-//FreeBSD//ENTITIES DocBook Mailing List Entities//EN">
%mailing-lists;
]>
<article>
<articleinfo>
<title>FreeBSD on Laptops</title>
<pubdate>$FreeBSD$</pubdate>
<abstract>
<para>FreeBSD works fine on most laptops, with a few caveats.
Some issues specific to running FreeBSD on laptops, relating
to different hardware requirements from desktops, are
discussed below.</para>
</abstract>
</articleinfo>
<para>FreeBSD is often thought of as a server operating system, but
it works just fine on the desktop, and if you want to use it on
your laptop you can enjoy all the usual benefits: systematic
layout, easy administration and upgrading, the ports/packages
system for adding software, and so on. (Its other benefits,
such as stability, network performance, and performance under
a heavy load, may not be obvious on a laptop, of course.)
However, installing it on laptops often involves problems which
are not encountered on desktop machines and are not commonly
discussed (laptops, even more than desktops, are fine-tuned for
Microsoft Windows). This article aims to discuss some of these
issues.</para>
<sect1>
<title>XFree86</title>
<para>Recent versions of XFree86 work with most display adapters
available on laptops these days. Acceleration may not be
supported, but a generic SVGA configuration should work.</para>
<para>Check your laptop documentation for which card you have,
and check in the XFree86 documentation (or setup program)
to see whether it's specifically supported. If it's not, use
a generic device (don't go for a name which just looks
similar). In XFree86 version 4, you can try your luck
with the command <userinput>XFree86 -configure</userinput>
which auto-detects a lot of configurations.</para>
<para>The problem often is configuring the monitor. Common
resources for XFree86 focus on CRT monitors; getting a
suitable modeline for an LCD display may be tricky. You may
be lucky and not need to specify a modeline, or just need to
specify suitable HorizSync and VertRefresh ranges. If that
doesn't work, the best option is to check web resources
devoted to configuring X on laptops (these are often
linux-oriented sites but it doesn't matter because both systems
use XFree86) and copy a modeline posted by someone for similar
hardware.</para>
<para>Most laptops come with two buttons on their pointing
devices, which is rather problematic in X (since the middle
button is commonly used to paste text); you can map a
simultaneous left-right click in your X configuration to
a middle button click with the line
<programlisting>
Option "Emulate3Buttons"
</programlisting>
in the XF86Config file in the "InputDevice" section (for XFree86
version 4; for version 3, put just the line "Emulate3Buttons",
without the quotes, in the "Pointer" section.)
</sect1>
<sect1>
<title>Modems</title>
<para>
Laptops usually come with internal (on-board) modems.
Unfortunately, this almost always means they are "winmodems" whose
functionality is implemented in software, for which only windows
drivers are normally available (though a few drivers are beginning
to show up for other operating systems). Otherwise, you
need to buy an external modem: the most compact option is
probably a PC-Card (PCMCIA) modem, discussed below, but
serial or USB modems may be cheaper. Generally, regular
modems (non-winmodems) should work fine.
</para>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<title>PCMCIA (PC-card) devices</title>
<para> Most laptops come with PCMCIA (also called PC-card)
slots; these are supported fine under FreeBSD. Look through
your boot-up messages (using dmesg) and see whether these were
detected correctly (they should appear as
<devicename>pccard0</devicename>,
<devicename>pccard1</devicename> etc on devices like
<devicename>pcic0</devicename>).</para>
<para>FreeBSD currently supports 16-bit PCMCIA cards, but not
32-bit ("CardBus") cards. A database of supported cards is in
the file <filename>/etc/defaults/pccard.conf</filename>. Look
through it, and preferably buy cards listed there. Cards not
listed may also work as "generic" devices: in particular most
modems (16-bit) should work fine, provided they're not
winmodems (these do exist even as PC-cards, so watch out). If
your card is recognised as a generic modem, note that the
default pccard.conf file specifies a delay time of 10 seconds
(to avoid freezes on certain modems); this may well be
over-cautious for your modem, so you may want to play with it,
reducing it or removing it totally.</para>
<para>Some parts of pccard.conf may need editing. Check the irq
line, and be sure to remove any number already being used: in
particular, if you have an on board sound card, remove irq 5
(otherwise you may experience hangs when you insert a card).
Check also the available memory slots; if your card is not
being detected, try changing it to one of the other allowed
values (listed in the man page &man.pccardc.8;).
</para>
<para>If it's not running already, start the pccardd daemon.
(To enable it at boot time, add
<programlisting>pccardd_enable="YES"</programlisting> to
<filename>/etc/rc.conf</filename>). Now your cards should be
detected when you insert and remove them, and you should get
log messages about new devices being enabled.</para>
<para>There have been major changes to the pccard code
(including ISA routing of interrupts, for machines whose
PCIBIOS FreeBSD can't seem to use) before the FreeBSD 4.4
release. If you have problems, try upgrading your system.
</sect1>
<sect1>
<title>Power management</title>
<para>Unfortunately, this is not very reliably supported under
FreeBSD. If you're lucky, some functions may work reliably;
or they may not work at all.</para>
<para>To enable this, you may need to compile a kernel with
power management support (<literal>device apm0</literal>) or
add an option to <filename>/boot/loader.conf</filename>, and
also enable the apm daemon at boot time (line
<literal>apm_enable="YES"</literal> in
<filename>/etc/rc.conf</filename>). The apm commands are
listed in the &man.apm.8; manpage. For instance,
<command>apm -b</command> gives you battery status (or 255 if
not supported), <command>apm -Z</command> puts the laptop on
standby, <command>apm -z</command> (or zzz) suspends it. To
shutdown and power off the machine, use "shutdown -p".
Again, some or all of these functions may not work very well
or at all. You may find that laptop suspension/standby works
in console mode but not under X (that is, the screen doesn't
come on again; in that case, switch to a virtual console
(using Ctrl-Alt-F1 or another function key) and then execute
the apm command.
</para>
<para>The X window system (XFree86) also includes display power
management (look at the &man.xset.1; man page, and search for
dpms there). You may want to investigate this. However, this,
too, works inconsistently on laptops: it
often turns off the display but doesn't turn off the
backlight.</para>
</sect1>
</article>