Lemote Notes

I have recently acquired a Lemote Yeeloong 8101 laptop. I have created this page as a way of documenting my exploration with this machine, mainly for my own use, but hopefully it is helpful to others as well.

• 2010-07-29 Improved code snippet display
• 2010-05-16 Added the Yeeloong Wireless config section and did some clean up.
• 2010-03-27 Created.

• Somewhere in my search for documentation I read that the USB port near the ethernet port is the fastest of the three, and also the most stable. It is referred to as usb0. The other two are slower and attached to a less stable bus??? inside and are referred to as usb1. Not sure about the accuracy of this because they were writing about a development version of the Yeeloong.
• When booting from the USB I put a flash drive in the port on the left side and still referred to it as usb0 so I'm not sure that the above point is right, with my model of the laptop at least.

PMON is the BIOS software in Lemote machines and I am really starting to like it a lot as I learn more about it.

I am not using GRUB to boot my OS because the PMON bootloader seems to work fine. It seems the PMON boot loader looks in /boot directory of the first partition on the hard drive for a boot.cfg file, which is similar to GRUB's menu.list file, and uses this file to give you a boot menu. Here is my boot.cfg file:

timeout 10
default 0
showmenu 1

title gNewSense metad
        kernel (wd0,0)/boot/vmlinux-2.6.32.3-libre-lemote
        initrd (wd0,0)/boot/initrd.img-2.6.32.3-libre-lemote
        args console=tty no_auto_cmd root=/dev/hda1 rootdelay=8

To load a boot.cfg file (from a different partition) from PMON prompt do this:

bl -d ide (wd0,0)/boot.cfg

Modifying the device (wd0,0) and path (/boot.cfg) to suit. Notice that PMON refers to devices in a similar way to GRUB, starting from zero. i.e. the first partition on the first hard drive (/dev/hda1) is wd0,0 and the fourth partition (/dev/hda4) is wd0,3

To list files in a dir from PMON prompt do this:

dir (wd0,0)/path

Again modifying device and path to suit.

To get a device listing at the PMON prompt do this:

devls

To get help on PMON commands from the PMON prompt do this:

h

There is a PMON user manual in English here: http://olph.gdium.com/wiki/doku.php/manual:pmon_full

I am using gNewSense as my OS on this machine and it certainly feels good to finally have a machine with 100% free (as in freedom) software. This has been something I have wanted for a long time.

I basically followed the install instructions at http://wiki.gnewsense.org/Projects/gNewSenseToMips however here is a run down of the install process for gNewSense metad on the laptop.

1. Get a netboot image
   • Go to http://archive.gnewsense.org/gnewsense-metad/installer/current/
   • Download vmlinux and initrd.gz and put them on an ext2 formatted USB flash drive
2. Insert the USB flash drive in the machine, power it on and hold down the <DEL> key until the PMON prompt comes up.
3. Enter the following commands to load the kernel and ramdisk image you downloaded:

   load (usb0,0)/vmlinux-2.3.31.6-libre1
   initrd (usb0,0)/initrd.gz
   g console=tty no_auto_cmd
   

4. Follow the installer process. Some notes on the install:
   • The first time I installed the download/select mirror section failed to find the file it needed on the mirror even though the connecton was fine. I need to try again many times before it would work. Don't know why this occurred as I havn't had the probem on subsequent installs.
   • I just installed the 'standard system' in the package selection phase. I like to keep it simple and any other packages can be installed later with apt-get or aptitude.
   • I did not install GRUB because I use the PMON boot loader (see the PMON section above).
5. Post install notes:
   • The installer did not ask me for a root password so I'm not sure what the default is but after the install login as the regular user you created and do the following to set the root password:

     sudo su -
     passwd
     

   • Make sure /etc/apt/sources.list contains the following:

     deb http://archive.gnewsense.org/gnewsense-metad/gnewsense metad main
     deb-src http://archive.gnewsense.org/gnewsense-metad/gnewsense metad main
     ## gnewsense security
     deb http://archive.gnewsense.org/gnewsense-metad/gnewsense-security metad main
     deb-src http://archive.gnewsense.org/gnewsense-metad/gnewsense-security metad main
     

6. Post install setup
   • I installed the following aditional packages using apt-get install:
     • openssh-server so I can ssh in from my other machine
     • xorg
     • menu (then do update-menus)
     • ratpoison has recently replaced fvwm and fluxbox
     • rxvt
     • exim4
     • fetchmail

• Changes at PMON prompt to get OpenBSD booting

  set moresz 20                           (was 10)
  set ShowBootMenu no                     (was yes)
  set al /dev/fs/ext2@wd0/boot/boot       (was /dev/fs/ext2@wd0/boot/vmlinux)
  set bsd /bsd                            (was )
  

I found out how to get the battery status from the terminal (at least with the kernel I am using (2.6.32.3). Just do:

cat /proc/apm

Setting up wireless on the Yeeloong with GNewSense

• Update startup link (shouldn't be required if the bug gets fixed (http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/gnewsense-users/2010-05/msg00027.html)

  ln -s /etc/init.d/yeeloong-base /etc/rcS.d/S38yeeloong-base
  

• Make sure wpasupplicant is installed
• Do the following to make sure no one can read pass keys.

  chmod 0600 /etc/network/interfaces
  

• Add the following lines to /etc/network/interfaces

  # wifi
  iface wlan0 inet dhcp
  wpa-ssid YOUR NETWORK ESSID
  wpa-psk YOUR NETWORK PASS KEY
  

• Now just do sudo ifup wlan0 to bring it up

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