This is a wiki dedicated to getting Debian to work optimally on the TUXEDO Infinitybook S14 v5

About this page

This page is designed to help with installation of Debian GNU/Linux on the TUXEDO Infinitybook S14 v5 Netbook. 'It is early stage!' There will be additional information on installation of necessary drivers and other optimizations.

Prerequisites

There are many ways to install Debian. One way to install Debian on the Infinitybook S14 v5 is to use a flash USB drive. This might be your first choice since the Infinitybook S14 v5 does not ship with a CD-ROM drive. You will need a flash USB drive that is 256MB or larger. The below method outlines how to modify a flash drive putting the Debian installer on it. For other methods of installation please refer to the section Alternative Installation Methods or see the install guide.

Preparing the USB flash drive

Get the latest daily build of Lenny (stable) image: link

kernel version?

Creating a USB flash boot drive

As the Installation Manual states: "The easiest way to prepare your USB memory stick is to download hd-media/boot.img.gz, and use "gunzip" to extract the 256 MiB image from that file."

This method temporarily limits your memory stick to 256 MiB and destroys all data on it, but is simple to get working. You can chose to re-partition your memory stick once you are done installing Debian with it. To keep the memory stick, (hereafter called a flash drive) in its current size and still have the installer on it, follow the Formatting your drive with additional software for booting directions below.

Before you put the boot image (boot.img) and the netinstall image on your flash drive, make sure you have a recent backup of your data, both on your flash drive and on your Infinitybook S14 v5. First find the device node of your flash drive on the command line. Note that using the wrong node will destroy data on that node (note also that using the correct node will destroy anything on the flash drive as well). Assuming your flash drive is /dev/sdz, execute this command as root (or, if possible, a user with write access to /dev/sdz):

# zcat /path/to/boot.img.gz > /dev/sdz

Afterwards, mount the flash drive and copy over the net-install ISO file.

# mount /dev/sdz /mnt # certain desktops such as gnome will do this stage for you
# cp /path/to/netinst.iso /mnt
# umount /mnt

Now go to the Install section.

?Finally, to save yourself from trouble, take a USB key with a sector size of 512 bytes. Couldn't get syslinux to boot on one that had a size of 2048 bytes. --?ViktorHorvath

Formatting your drive with additional software for booting

Todo: Review

This section is for more advanced users, anyone who followed the instructions in the immediately preceding section can ignore all of this.

If you want to fully utilize your flash drive with the Debian net-installer, you can loop mount the boot.img.gz first, copy over the files, and then run SYSLINUX (a bootloader) on your flash drive. If your USB flash drive is already partitioned properly for booting, you can skip this next step.

You can format your flash drive to make it bootable (USB-ZIP compatible). This requires the mkdiskimage script included in the syslinux package. The following table shows commands to create the correctly sized partitions for booting from your USB flash drive, found at this forum post.

Size of drive

mkdiskimage command

1GB or less

# mkdiskimage -4 /dev/sdz 0 64 32

1GB < drive <= 2GB

# mkdiskimage -4 /dev/sdz 0 128 32

2GB < drive <= 8GB

# mkdiskimage -F -4 /dev/sdz 0 255 63

greater than 8GB

# mkdiskimage -F -4 /dev/sdz 1 255 63
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdz bs=1 seek=446 count=64
# echo -e ',0\n,0\n,0\n,,C,*' | sfdisk /dev/sdz
# mkdosfs /dev/sdz4

Next copy over the contents of the boot.img.gz into a directory on your newly formatted USB flash drive;

 # gunzip boot.img.gz; mkdir /mnt/loopback; mount -o loop boot.img /mnt/loopback;
 # mkdir /mnt/usb; mount /dev/sdz4 /mnt/usb; mkdir /mnt/usb/debian_installer;
 # cp -r /mnt/loopback/* /mnt/usb/debian_installer
 # cp debian-XXX-netinstall.iso /mnt/usb
 # umount /mnt/usb; umount /mnt/loopback

Install SYSLINUX on the partition and subdirectory that contain the contents of boot.img:

 # syslinux -d debian_installer /dev/sdz4

If you rename/move/modify this debian_installer directory you will need to run "syslinux" again afterwards or it will not boot.

Install

TODO:

To get the Infinitybook S14 v5 to boot from a USB stick you must enable USB booting from the BIOS. To do this, press ESC as the laptop boots and ensure booting from a USB is enabled in the BIOS.

This will cause the Infinitybook S14 v5 to boot the Debian installer from the USB stick. Now follow the instructions in the installer.

Troubleshooting

Problems booting the installer

Problems with the installer itself

Problems with older Debian releases

Other

Setup

The installation will produce a usable Debian installation. However, some configuration is needed to get everything working.

Wireless LAN

Webcam

Frequency scaling

Screen resolution: 11 inch model

Quiet Fan

Suspend to RAM

Suspend on lid closure

Other distributions

Where to buy

External Links


CategoryLaptopComputer