evought 0 Report post Posted October 17, 2011 Panasonic Toughbook CF-29 and CF-30 Fedora Linux install; Part I This are notes from installing Fedora Core 15 Linux on a Panasonic CF-29 and a CF-30 Toughbook. The Toughbooks are a line of rugged and semi-rugged laptops which are often used for military and law enforcement applications but can be useful for farms, fieldwork, factories, disaster relief or other situations where equipment has to deal with a punishing environment and used laptops can be had for decent prices off-lease. The CF-29 is a dated model based on Intel Pentium Mobile processors, Mil-Spec 810F for shock and vibration, with niceties like a builtin harddrive heater for extreme cold, and the CF-30 with Intel Core Duo processors is more recent, but the 29 is still popular with law enforcement in our area. There are actually a number of pages on the Internet about these laptops and set-up on linux, but they are outdated and therefore confusing. This tutorial is an attempt to put all the information I needed up-to-date and in one place. It will be posted in a few pieces because it is long; as I figure more things out, I intend to post updates as well. The CF-29 The CF-29 has a Pentium Mobile processor of up to 1.6 Ghz depending on exact sub-model or "mark". The letters in the model number after the 29 tell you what hardware the laptop came with (some of which may have changed if you got it used): MK1 = 29C, 29D MK2 = 29E, 29F MK3 = 29H, 29J MK4 = 29L, 29M MK5 = 29N, 29P Mine is an "F" with a 1.3 Ghz processor, touchscreen, builtin smartcard reader, and no TPM chip. It has been upgraded to a CD/DVD writer, 500 Gb hard drive, and 768 MB RAM--- One of the earlier Toughbooks but still quite servicable. One of its major failings is that it has but a single USB port (but it does have PCMCIA). The CF-29's touchscreen/touchpad combination is quite unusual and historically caused problems for Linux users. The touchscreen, touchpad, and keyboard are all wired internally as PS/2 devices and use the same chipset as the Fujitsu Lifebooks. It used to be necessary to go through all kinds of hijinx to recognize and then configure the input devices, most of which was done with an external mouse taking up the precious USB port. You will see quite a lot of discussion involving 'evtouch' and 'hal' about setting this up. For Fedora Core 15 and other recent distributions, do not follow those instructions. Things are much easier now; updated instructions will be given below. The integrated video uses an Intel 82852/855GM chipset. As with many similar chipsets, a portion of main memory is used for video memory (up to 64 MB). The hardware acceleration with this chipset was quite buggy and many of its features are disabled in Linux to avoid crashes. This means, in particular, that Gnome 3 and it's compositing features do not work and Gnome runs in the dreaded "Fallback mode". It does function, however, and you will have no trouble during the installation. The integrated smartcard reader was one of the most difficult things for me to puzzle out because it is not autodetected and has no identifying marks unless it is disassembled. It turns out to be some relative of a "GemPC Twin" serial reader which supports the CCID standard and is therefore recognized by the Linux card reader daemon, pcscd with the right settings. There is special support in Linux for odd features of the Panasonic laptops, including detecting when the lid opens or closes, sleep, hibernation, battery charge status, brightness, sound controls, and so forth. There is a bit of a quirk with my unit and the MP ("Multiport") removable CD/DVD writer. It is often not powered up on startup unless you push it in just prior to booting. By the time you get to the blue BIOS screen, you should have a green light below the trackpad labelled "MP". If not, reboot and reseat the drive (release is on the underside) or you will not be able to boot the install. CF-30 The CF-30 is a good deal more modern, is faster, and has better supported drivers. The keyboard, touchpad, and touchscreen are internal USB devices. The graphics chipset is still an integrated Intel chipset, but is fully supported by Gnome 3 and uses up to 128 MB of RAM. It has an internal TPM ("Trusted Platform Module" --- onboard encryption and security support), more memory, etc. The unit I am working with has integrated wi-fi/bluetooth and sd-card reader but no smartcard support. It has a USB 3.0 port and several USB 2.0 ports as well as one PCMCIA and on EX slot for expansion (above the CD burner on the left side). The CF-30, like some of the later 29s also has a wireless switch on the right side which cuts off the integrated wi-fi/bluetooth. Linux recognizes this and treats it as an "airplane mode" switch to cut off all transmitters for sensitive areas such as hospitals. It also saves power considerably. The internal wi-fi on the CF-30 works flawlessly and gets very good reception with no tweaking. The CF-29 removable harddrive is PATA (Parallel IDE) while the CF-30 has newer SATA. Keep that in mind when upgrading harddrives. Good rugged drives are available into the terabyte range which will work for these beasts. We upgraded the CF-30 with a 640 GB rugged drive from Samsung. Instructions for swapping out the harddrives are available the CF-29 forum.notebookreview.com/panasonic/221725-cf-29-toughbook-hard-drive-swap-tutorial.html and the CF-30 is very similar. In the CF-29, be very careful to make sure the caddy is seated well and mated with the connector inside the slot. This can take some work and if it is not done right, it will not boot. The CF-30 is easier. Making Room For Linux The first step on both machines was getting rid of the existing Windows install to make room for Linux. The CF-29 came with Windows XP pre-installed, the CF-30 with WIndows 7 Professional. Both came with restore disks that allow one to reinstall the original Windows setup if needed or resize it. They both appear to work the same way. For the 29, I simply got rid of Windows entirely. For the 30, my wife will need access to the Windows install for some software through the University which requires it (and to play Civilization IV occassionally) but will be running Linux the rest of the time. When you boot the restore disk, it gives you an option to create two partitions. This is what you want to do. The Windows install will go into the first partition and the second partition will be empty. Both will be NTFS initially, but we will simply delete and recreate the second one from the Linux boot disk. The restore disk has a bug where it will not deal properly with partitions bigger than 512 GB. So, if you have 640 GB and give 60 GB to Windows, the restore will fail and the second partition will not be correct. Don't worry about it. You will be deleting that partition anyway and it won't matter. As long as the program restores the 1st partition correctly with Windows and its drivers, you will be fine. The Linux Install Media You can download Fedora Linux images from https://getfedora.org. Fedora Core 15 was current when I wrote this and 16 was in beta. You can install from either the Live CD image or the DVD. The Live CD let's you play with the system before installing, but because the touchscreen won't work out of the box with FC-15's live image on the CF-30 and the touchpad won't work either with the CF-29, it may be of limited use. I also used the DVD because I have a slow network connection (satellite) and the DVD let me get more of the install done at once. The CD will take more time either during or after the install to add more packages to get a useful system. The CF-29 (or at least the Mk 2) will not boot off of a USB memory stick and cannot be installed that way. The CF-30 can if you enable it in the BIOS. Now you are ready for Part II and the actual installation. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
