Running Linux 2.6 on LT9399 (or MD9399) Laptops

The LifeTec LT9399 (or also called Medion MD9399) is a P-III 600Mhz laptop once sold by Aldi. This page describes the settings to get Linux 2.6 to work on one of these laptops.

Actually there is nothing difficult about this. You just have to know which drivers are needed, and with what parameters, and this page describes just that. I won’t go into details on how to compile kernels, change settings of XFree, … That is very distribution-specific information, and would lead me too far from the point of this page.

This page is not very elaborated (yet). I will probably add more specific information in the future, when i have more time. For now, this page should give you all the information you need.

If you have comments or suggestions for this page, please drop me a note.

The Linux 2.6 Kernel

I prefer to have a monolithic kernel, with as least modules as possible. Since you don’t need any external modules at all to get the hardware of the LT9399 to work, this makes it a very easy section to configure, as there is no need for distribution-specific things to get the modules installed, …

In my Linux 2.6.4 config file, you can find all the settings needed to get everything working. Just rename it to /usr/src/linux/.config, and run make menuconfig once.
There are some things in the kernel which are not strictly necessary, and which you can remove if you don’t want them. Some of these are:

CONFIG_SYSCTL: SysCtl interface. Useful for all kinds of stuff such as IP forwarding etc.
CONFIG_MODULE* + CONFIG_KMOD: If you want to load external modules (such as i do for my WLAN card), you need this.
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SD: SCSI disk support is needed if you want to attach USB sticks.
Networking: I didn’t take the time to remove my personal network settings. Tweak to your own likings.
I2C Support: This comes from an attempt to get the sensors to work. Hasn’t succeeded yet though, so you can remove it (for now).
CONFIG_USB_STORAGE: Again for the USB sticks.
CONFIG_USB_HID*: If you want to attach an external mouse or keyboard to your USB port.
CONFIG_USB_USBNET + CONFIG_USB_ARMLINUX: I use this for my iPaq running Opie. You probably don’t need this.
Filesystems: Select the filesystems you want and unselect those you don’t want.

That should be about it. If you find other things that aren’t necessary at all, please tell me.Some things are not yet included in the kernel (mostly because i don’t really need them):

Temperature & fan sensors
The IR port
The modem

Once i need them (or somebody asks me to make them work), and once i have the time to get these working, i will update the config file.Finally, you can get a nice graphical framebuffer console by passing the parameter vga=0x317 to the kernel (e.g. by putting it in your /etc/lilo.conf)

XFree 4.3.0

With the settings from my XF86Config-4 file, everything should work fine. You can even attach an external USB mouse. External PS/2 mouse and keyboard hasn’t been set up and tested though.

However, there still is a problem with the keyboard under XFree 4.3. It seems that the keymap of this release has a bug in it. If you can’t type backslash properly, edit the file /etc/X11/xkb/symbols/pc/be, and add the following line to the `xkb_symbols "basic"' block:

key   { [ less, greater, backslash, backslash ]};

El Tramo