Fedora Core 5 on Asus Z63A Notebook

Personal Installation Notes by Jim Cota

Last updated January 01 2007 Rito with Asus Z63A

Background

I purchased an Asus Z63A barebones notebook in December 2005. After installing the CPU, RAM, hard disk, and wireless module, I chose to install the Fedora Core 4 GNU/Linux operating system with Christine Joseph's Fedora Core 4 on Asus Z63A page for guidance. The fact that her page exists influenced my decision of installing the Fedora 4 distro, since I was worried about hardware issues with my newly built notebook and her notes are hardware specific. As a novice, configuring the Z63A's 1280 x 768 widescreen to display properly with the Intel 915 graphics driver was tricky. After two or three kernel upgrades I was getting the hang of it. What gave me the most trouble was the Intel Pro Wireless 2915 drivers. I never was able to compile them without errors. The most useful guidance that I've come across relating to the IPW2915 is the Clemson Linux Initiative. This is also an excellent GNU/Linux resource in general. Fortunately, workable driver modules were included with the upcoming kernel releases and I was at least able to have workable wireless access through my home network. Another invaluable resource for me was Stanton Finley's Fedora Core 4 Linux Installation Notes. His guides are methodical, well organized and pleasing to the eye.

During all of these trials, I wished I had taken notes of all of the details as I went along the previous time. Many of the steps that I thought I would remember were forgotten the next time around and I ended up having to go through much of the learning process again. It was good practice but disorganized and time consuming.

These notes are not complete for the entire installation and configuration, but should fill in some specifics of my installation that were not covered by Stanton Finley's excellent Fedora Core 5 Linux Installation Notes.

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Hardware Configuration

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Partitions

Before beginning the installation process, I booted Damn Small Linux and using fdisk, created three primary partitions and four logical partitions. For an example, I referred to Bill Moss' published partition table for a dual boot system with a 60 GB drive along with detailed notes on his Fedora Core 5 setup. His partition table was a useful example and I modified it to suit my single boot system with an 80Gb HD.

The following is my partion table, created with fdisk and the guidance of The Linux Documentation Project's Partitioning with fdisk.

	Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80060424192 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9733 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1          13      104391   83  Linux
/dev/sda2              14          76      506047+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3              77        9733    77569852+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5              77        1293     9775521   83  Linux
/dev/sda6            1294        1416      987966   83  Linux
/dev/sda7            1417        1429      104391   83  Linux
/dev/sda8            1430        9733    66701848+  83  Linux

Next, reboot with the FC_5 installation disk and follow Stan Finley's installation proceedure. When given the partition options, I chose "Create Custom Layout" and manually mounted each partition. This is how it looks now in qtparted:

qtpart gui screen shot

While selecting the installation options, I selected "Advanced Boot Loader Options". I entered "vga=792" for the kernel parameters. This provides small and nice looking text similar to what I get when booting Knoppix or DSL live. FC5 does a full install by default which takes about two and a half hours and installs every package available from the fedora repositories. I reinstalled using the "custom" option and selected only the packages that I wanted. After selecting a variety of packages, including webserver, desktop environments and office suite, the rest of the install took about 40 minutes.

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Monitor Configuration

There are a few steps necessary for the Z63A's widescreen monitor configuration. First, edit /boot/grub.conf

Next, download the 915Resolution Intel Video BIOS Hack source code. The current version is 915resolution-0.5.2.tar.gz. Unpack the archive in the home directory and follow the step by step instructions in the INSTALL file. 

	$  su
	#  make
	#  make install
	#  915resolution 38 1280 768

Add the following line to /etc/rc.local

	/usr/sbin/915resolution 38 1280 768

Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf by adding the "1280x768" resolution and setting vertrefresh 60.0 - 60.0. This is a copy of my xorg.conf.

Log out and log back in. On the KDE panel: System > Display > Hardware > LCD Panel > 1280x800. Then: System > Display > Resolution > 1280x800 On Gnome: System > Administration > Display > Resolution 1280x768

Now the screen should be configured properly

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Wireless

I was told by someone at the Fedora booth at the Desktop Linux Summit in San Diego that the Intel Pro Wireless 2915 has the best support of any wireless driver in Fedora Core 5. I believe it because it practically works out of the box. I say practically because the proprietary IPW 2200 drivers still need to be installed. I even used yum to install them from the Livna repository. See Fedora Core 5 and the IPW2000 Wireless Driver for detailed info on updating to the latest drivers and firmware. I just used the drivers that came with the Core 5 kernel and the collection of drivers from Livna repository.

I hope you find these notes useful and enjoy using GNU/Linux.

-Jim Cota

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