Solaris on a Tablet PC

Solaris on a Tablet PC

A bunch of parts that comes together:

Just a nice dragon.

  • Fujitsu Stylistic 5010D
  • 120 GB Laptop Disk
  • Solaris Express, Developer Edition DVD
  • External USB dvd drive
  • USB mouse
  • USB keyboard
  • USB hub
  • Power Strip

  • Voiding any and all Fujitsu warranty

    The system has spent the better part of two years in my closet of doom, a giant walk in closet filled with abandoned technology. About ten minutes with a screw driver later, the new, blank, 120 GB laptop drive was happily reloacted from an anti-static bag to inside the Fujitsu Tablet.

    The origional drive was tucked safely away, on the off chance that I ever want to go back to Windows XP Pro/tablet edition.

    Everything fit in nicely, you just have to remember to be careful of the wireless ethernet switch.

    Knowing who and where you boot

    I use my system differently than many people -- I move it from network to network. Frequently I'm not using it as a graphical device but a Solaris system on the network. One of the things I wanted was to be able to boot the system, and look at it to see what ip address it picked up.

    First up I needed a way to add my ip address into the login screen. I couldn't find a way to do this with an option like %IPAddress%, so I had to settle for the following cluge. Please contact me if you know a more elegant way to do this!

    I added the following function to /lib/svc/method/svc-dtlogin

    	update_ipaddress() {
    	   TARGET="/etc/dt/config/Xresources"
    	   grep=/usr/bin/grep
    	   awk=/usr/bin/awk
    	   HOST=`/usr/bin/hostname`
    	   IPADDRESS="`$grep ${HOST} /etc/hosts | $awk '{print $1}'`"
    
    	   if [ -f ${TARGET}.skel ]; then
    		  cp ${TARGET}.skel ${TARGET}
    		  echo "Dtlogin*greeting.labelString:       %LocalHost% ${IPADDRESS} using /etc/dt/config/Xresources" >> ${TARGET}
    	   fi
    	}
    

    Then just before the check for dtlogin's existance, I put in a call to update_ipaddress. For completeness, I also added the function and the function call to /etc/init.d/dtlogin.

    Now when I boot, my system's ip address is visible on the log in screen.

    It is a pointer...

    I got the pointer working by following Phil Brown's Advice. To summarize, you will need to make the following change to /boot/solaris/devicedb/master:

    Look for the following line:

    	PNP0500 ...
    

    Change it to:

    	WACF004|PNP0500 ...
    

    And then do a reconfigure reboot. That will make the pointer available to you. After that you will need to make some changes to the xorg.conf file in /etc/X11. The changes should look something like the following:

    	Section "InputDevice"
    		Identifier  "Mouse1"
    		Driver      "wacom"
    		Option      "Device"      "/dev/cua/0"
    		Option      "Type"        "stylus"
    		Option      "Mode"        "absolute"
    		Option      "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"
    		Option      "BottomX"     "24576"
    		Option      "BottomY"     "18432"
    		Option      "BaudRate"    "19200"
    	EndSection
    
    
    	Section "ServerLayout"
    		Identifier  "Simple Layout"
    		Screen      "Screen 1"
    		InputDevice "Mouse1"        "CorePointer"
    		InputDevice "Keyboard1"     "CoreKeyboard"
    	EndSection
    

    Really the first bit is all important, because it defines the pointer as Mouse1 and then in the second part, you find the server layout and add in the definitation for Mouse1 without changing the other parts!

    External Links:

  • Phil Brown's Fujitsu tablet conversion notes.
  • Gentoo Linux on a Stylistic 5010.


  • Return to Matt's Home Page

    Please feel free to mail me with suggestions, comments.