Now that I've had some time to hack around with the Lenovo S10, I think someone will find some of this information useful. This entry is about re-installing Splashtop, Lenovo's Quick Start software on the S10.

What is Splashtop

Like I wrote before, the Lenovo S9,S10, and S10e, uses a streamlined Linux based environment that gets you from pressing power to surfing, chatting, Skyping, listening to music or checking out a photo gallery in 30 seconds or less. Oh and the not to be overlooked feature - it works!

The really interesting part is not that it's just one of those quick booting linux OS's like Ubuntu 9.04 is claiming to be. It actually is leveraged by the motherboard by using a small amount of flash memory which stores persistent changes to a location on the hard drive which unfortunately requires windows.

Re-installation

Let me say this right now - reinstalling splashtop is not fun! The only reason that this would happen to you is if you've deleted the files that came with the laptop or there was a problem with the hard drive itself. In mycase, the problem with the hard drive was me re-formatting the entire thing and installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

After a lot of research, here's how you do it:

• Install Windows XP on some partition of the hard drive. This could be interesting if you don't have an external CDROM. If you're good, you can try to install XP from a USB stick like I did with partial success.
• Install the latest Lenovo Quickstart software you can find here. NOTE: There may be an updated version that also works
• OPTIONAL: From Windows XP, upgrade the BIOS of the S10. See Lenovo's Support Site for the latest version.
• Download the patch that came from S10Lenovo.com here.
• Unzip the files and copy them to the C: drive of your computer.

This worked for my Lenovo S10 4231 but the guys at S10Lenovo.com have done a lot of good work on figuring out the quirks. On some S10's all you needed to do was install the newest Quick Start and you are on your way but for me the patch was the key.

If that doesn't work for some reason, I'd be interested in getting the feedback.

Last Security Warnings

I wrote last time that Splashtop was extreme functionality at the cost of security and after more research, it's still true.

In version 1.0.17.0, the Splashtop browser is based off of Firefox 3.0.6, the instant messaging software is based on an old version of Pidgin and Skype is Linux version 2.0.0.72. It's older software but it looks like someone is attempting to update it.

There are some good security precautions in place like you're not allowed to directly access the hard drive and you can't open a terminal and the persistent files are encrypted and signed so not just anyone can make changes to the config.

Still don't belive me? Here's an exploit proof of concept that can crash your browser and possibly allow an attacker to inject a payload:

Do not click if you have Firefox 3.0.8 or less!!

What's Next: BackTrack 4

I'm still working out some of the quirks of using the laptop with BT4 Beta and have gotten them pretty much ironed out but I just want to streamline the process a little better.

External Links

http://www.splashtop.com/ - Official Splashtop Website

http://s10lenovo.com - Great site for S10 hacking

http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-1.9.1/file/cb01d655a1b1/content/xslt/crashtests/ - Exploit for Firefox 3.0.8 or less

http://s10lenovo.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=2283 - forum with more information related to Splashtop on the S10

This will be the first of a few entries about my new Lenovo Ideapad (NOT iDeapad) S10. It's a netbook with great support for Linux and an interesting "Quick Start" environment which is a super fast booting OS that's built into the motherboard. To be honest the only two reasons why I bought it was the low cost (<$300) and I've become a Lenovo fan boy ever since my Thinkpad T43.

Quick Start/Splashtop

The most intriguing part of this laptop is something that Lenovo calls Quick Start. It's a linux based ultra-fast booting stripped down OS that includes things like Pidgin, Firefox, and Skype. It's actually called Splashtop and is made by DeviceVM. The idea here is that the motherboard boots from a small amount of flash memory so that it's extremely quick to start up.

When I opened the S10 I immediately booted into their Quick Start environment, played around with it and then immediately installed Ubuntu's Netbook Remix. I tell you this so you can be very impressed by my radical anti-Microsoftic act (did I mention I'm an MCSE?) but also to tell you that you really shouldn't do this because the Splashtop OS requires files on the FAT32 windows directory. The revolution has a cost. :/

There are a few problems with Splashtop besides the fact that you can't make any customizations to the OS:

• It uses outdated software like Firefox 2 that can't be manually updated
• It requires that you have a windows partition to hold the applications

I just want to say again, I love the idea of a quick boot environment but it seems like Splashtop is going to be another example of when innovation takes precedence over security.

I'm not going to go into this anymore since one of my projects is to get Splashtop to play nicely with Linux and I'll be able to have some more information.

Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope Netbook Remix

Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope was released last month and with this version comes the Ubuntu Netbook Remix distribution or UNR. This is a customized Ubuntu distribution that is specifically designed to make it easier to work with a smaller screen and to maximize the potential of the Intel Atom processor. I'd highly recommend it on a netbook compared to the standard Ubuntu install.

Installation was different but very easy. You need to download the 1GB .IMG file and install it to a USB drive. I found the easiest way to do this is to install the Ubuntu package "usb-imagewriter" which is a GUI that walks you through the steps of putting the image onto a pen drive. Once you've installed it, plug it into the netbook and install it like normal.

Once again, if you delete the FAT32 partition of the S10 hard drive, you will not be able to use the Quick Start environment.

Backtrack 4 Support

I've had this conversation three times now and all my friends want to know is "Does it work with Backtrack 4??" Really this just means does Backtrack support the wifi card to do packet injection. The answer is almost. The internal wireless card is a Broadcom BCM4312 chipset which requires you to use the closed source driver supplied by Broadcom. This causes some other configuration problems you'll need to overcome. I haven't played around with being able to inject packets yet. That will be a subject for another day though.

Next Steps

There's a lot of talk right now about the Splashtop option and a lot of netbooks are using it or something like it for the ultra fast boot. Because nothing comes with recovery CD's anymore, you have to download everything from Lenovo's website at 17kb/s. UNR is going to need some customizations especially for the security tools that I like. There is a BIOS update that came out just yesterday that fixes an issue I was having so more on that later. The biggest problem I'm having is getting people to stop laughing at a 6'5" guy trying to type on this tiny laptop. :)

External Links

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/product.do?doccategoryind=50520&template=%2Fproductpage%2Flandingpages%2FproductPageLandingPage.vm&brandind=10&familyind=431250&machineind=433197&modelind=0&partnumberind=0&subcategoryind=0&operatingsystemind=49979&validate=true - Lenovo S10 Support

http://www.splashtop.com" - Splashtop

http://www.canonical.com/projects/ubuntu/unr - more about Canonical's work on netbooks

http://www.s10lenovo.com/ - great site for S10 specific discussion