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Playing with Dell Inspiron 1100
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Machine Specifications |
command |
relevant output/description |
Mandrake 9.2/(other info) |
| Processor |
cat /proc/cpuinfo |
Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 2.00GHz |
cache - 8KB L1, 128 KB L2, Bus 400MHz |
| Memory |
cat /proc/meminfo |
intitally 128 MB |
3.3-V SODIMM 266 MHz |
| Video |
lspci -vv
/var/log/XFree86.0.log
/etc/X11/XF86Config-4 |
Intel Corp. 82845G/GL
(Probed)Pre-allocated VideoRAM: 892 kByte
module i810 (also get the DRI driver from Intel's site) |
Pre-allocated 1 MB
Intel DVMT upto 32 MB (with 128 MB RAM)
and upto 64 MB (with 256 MB or more RAM)
Needs the patch of Christian Ziet. |
| Audio |
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|
use ALSA - make sure in the mixer, master
volume and PCM are unmuted; see below |
| Modem |
lspci -vv |
Intel Corp. 82801DB AC'97 Modem, PCtel
vendor ID=8086, Product ID=24c6,
IRQ=11, I/O base=c400,c080 |
changes in ptserial.c to match Prod. ID
and in modules.conf to set proper IRQ, IOBASE
See here |
| Ethernet LAN |
lspci -vv
/proc/net/nicinfo/*
| Broadcom Corporation BCM4401 100Base-T
Subsystem: Unknown device 0149:1028 |
Mandrake 9.2 comes with the bcm4400 module. |
| PCMCIA |
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| Wireless Card |
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| TouchPad |
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Synaptic touchpad |
Get the XFree86 driver
here. |
| Battery |
/proc/acpi/battery/0/*
or use the command acpi -V |
Battery 1: discharging, 100%, 04:43:57 remaining
Thermal 1: ok, 49.0 degrees C
AC Adapter 1: on-line |
Get about 4 hours without CPU throttling |
Mandrake 9.2
I have several partitions for working linux (Mandrake) and
Windows-XP professional. Besides them, I have my hdc10 partition, where I
initially installed Mandrake 9.2. Then I got the linux-kernel 2.6.0 and
installed it in the same partition. So, now I have two linux kernels in same
partition and I use chain loading to boot into the bootloader of hdc10
(using lilo).
| The modem is by PCTel Inc. Doesnot work. |
I hope you have already got the
pctel driver package. I presume that even after you tried to do what it says, everything was not OK. There might be
two changes you need to do.
- Go to the src/ptserial directory. Open the ptserial-x.c file. Find the #define of
8086 (should be PCI_VENDOR_ID_INTEL). Check with lspci -n what is your device
id (first check with lspci -vv what is the bus-slot-func of your modem - e.g.
mine was 00:1f.6. Then use that in lspci -n to find out your vendor and device
id. Vendor id should be 8086. Look for the device id). Mine was 24c6.
Change the PCI_DEVICE_ID_I845 value to it. Build the driver again and retry. Go to step 2 if fails.
- Do a lspci -vv. Note the IRQ number, and addresses of the I/O ports (e.g.
mine was IRQ 11, I/O ports at c400, c080). Open /etc/modules.conf (or
conf.modules, whichever
is used). There should be a line regarding options for the ptserial module (starting with
options ptserial country_code...). Add (or replace with proper values)
irq="your IRQ number" iobase=0x"address of first I/O port" iobase1=0x"address of 2nd I/O port"
Do rmmod pctel; rmmod ptserial; modprobe pctel; - it should work now.
In case linux complains about compiler versions - just do insmod -f
and put the same in the modules.conf file.
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| I got a Sandisk Cruzer Mini (256 MB) USB memory
key. But does not work in Mandrake 9.2. |
First check if the USB key is being recognized as a
USB component, and then make sure that hotplug is starting
the usb-storage script and trying to start the scsi module
(take a look at dmesg output or do a tail -f
/var/log/syslog and then insert the key). If everything is fine
till now, try to unload usb-uhci (modprobe -r usb-uhci)
module and load the other UHCI module - named just uhci (modprobe
uhci). Then try again. In my case, it worked with the uhci module
and mounted it as a scsi drive (/dev/sd1). In case the
solution works, change the /etc/modules.conf file to load
uhci instead of usb-uhci.
(For linux-2.6.0, usb-uhci works perfectly fine.) |
| I heard that Mozilla Firefox (or Firebird as it was previously called) is quite a fast browswer. I got it - but it had no installer. So I manually extracted them and made links to the executables in /usr/bin. But I cant run firefox using the links. I have to always give the actual path to the firefix executable. |
| Umm... you nearly got it dude! I think you also made symlink to run-mozialla.sh - remove it. Just make the symlink to firefox - that will take care of everything. |
| I got a full screen text console by appending vga=711 as boot parameter but I still get a smaller screen when I try to start Xserver. |
Damien gives an excellent description of the solution. If you want a fast solution, here are the steps (I include some sanity checking steps - if they dont match yours dont proceed further):
- Open the XFree86 log file (usually at /var/log/XFree86.0.log). Look for the line VideoRAM. Try to find out what is the pre-allocated value, what is the value claimed by the XF86Config file and what is the "Maximum space available for video modes". The list of modes which follows then shows the possible modes available to you. The allowed modes are start with an asterix(e.g. *Mode) and give details about the XResolution, YResolution, BitsPerPixel (maximum memory > X-res*Y-res*BPP). As reported by many others and also in my case, Dell BIOS only pre-allocates 892 KB (which forces the smaller screen). If that is the case with you, go to the next step.
- Get the patch. Extract, build and then copy the 845patch executable to some place; edit the startup files to make sure 845patch 32768 is executed before Xserver starts (if you dont know the details of each step, follow the link to Damien's site given above). Here 32768 refers to amount of videomemory that you think your laptop can handle. The specs of my Inspiron 1100 said that with 128 MB of RAM, upto 32 MB of video memory can be assigned and with 256 MB or more, upto 64 MB can be assigned).
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| Help help help. No sound. Trying to use alsa. I ran alsaconf - made sur the PCM and master volume were set in alsamixer; but when I try to play sound, I cannot hear any sound (no error is given either). |
| Well, this might be a tricky problem. But, two common mistakes I have noticed are as follows: first, the volumes levels in PCM and master might be high, but you missed the MM written over these mixers i.e. they are muted. Unmute them. Another mistake is that the last tab (you might need to move right in the alsamixer) EXTERNAL might be unmuted - it seems it needs to be mute for sound to be emitted. Check once more, then try to play some wav file with aplay. If some sound is emitted, then you might need to go and check your specific application. Also, in case your mixer changes are not saved after reboots, make sure you have the file /etc/asound.state. If in doubt, use alsactl to create this file after changing your mixer settings.
UPDATEAfter alsa 1.04 (e.g. using kernel 2.6.7 over Mandrake 10.0 official), the meaning of External
Amplifier changed (details at http://lists.debian.org/debian-kernel/2004/04/msg00020.html). As a result, to get external sound, have the last button (named as External Amplifier) muted for the vanilla MDK10 kernel and have it unmuted for the 2.6.7 kernel. I had to add a few lines in my alsa startup script for my dual kernel system.
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| I got the laptop just yesterday. It has Win XP Pro pre-insgtalled.
I might sometime use windows - so I dont want to remove it totally. How do I create partitions
and install linux. |
| Damien
has all the details. What I did in was, in short, did not install anything or change any
setting in XP (so that the file distribution in the disk is least hampered), defragged the
hard disk. Then I booted with an old Mandrake CD (well, I didn't have the recent Mandrake 9.2
isos that time) - I used Mandrake 9.0 CD. Then I resized the partitions and created all I wanted
using the nice diskdruid. There was small (about 40 MB) partition in the front of the hard-disk.
Since I knew I was going to use /boot partition extensively and play with multiple OSes,
I reformatted the initial partition as /boot. |
| How do I play wma files with XMMS? |
| I guess you have already googled enough. There seems to be
the mplayer plugin - xmmplayer which enables one to play wma/wmv and a host
of other files (using mplayer as the backend). So first of all, you should have
mplayer installed and properly running (and, as I read somewhere, make sure that
its plugins are available in /usr/lib/win32). Next, get the xmms-input-plugins
rpm from xmmx-plugin pack.
Try to install it - in case you are unable to resolve the dependencies (and dont
want to compile all the sources to meet dependency) then just read on (note! in that
case not all the functionalities of xmms-input-plugin will be available. xmmplayer will
be available, though). Extract the contents of the rpm file by
rpm2cpio xmms-input-plugins-3.2-2.i386.rpm | cpio -d -i and copy the Input plugins
in respective xmms input plugin directory. Emjoy the music! |
| Got the install_flash_player_X_linux.tar.gz -
installed
it but still Mozilla does not show the flash animations. |
| Oh you are nearly half-way done. Check with Mozilla®Help
menu®About plugins and see if the plugin for
flash is being loaded correctly. It might be that when flash-installer
asked for the Mozilla directory, you pressed enter for the default
location (/usr/lib/mozilla) which is not true in Mandrake9.2. It should
be something like /usr/lib/mozilla-1.4 (standard installation of
mozilla). If the plugin is itself not loaded then it might be that you
need to have libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3 which is actually an older version of the
stdc library. Install the libstdc++2.10 rpm for Mandrake (so
effectively you will have two versions of libstdc on your machine - but
thats the way it should be). Just for a change, you might want to try to
use urpmi - check
this place
for a good source (which also houses the mdk rpm for flash). |
| I copied the System.map file in the boot directory,
but after booting I find "Cannot
find map file." in the syslog file. When I go and
check the boot directory, I dont find the System.map-2.6.0 file. Why
would Mandrake delete the file! |
| Well, Mandrake actually did delete it. Its done by
the kheader script in init.d directory. Change the script or just make
sure that the 2.6.0 image is named as vmlinuz-2.6.0 and the map file
System.map-2.6.0 and initrd image (in case you decide to use modules
during bootup) named as initrd.img-2.6.0; Mandrake likes the names this
way :). |
| Blank Screen :(. Like many others,
I compiled the new kernel, made all the necessary changes in lilo, copied
files as needed and booted; I can smell that the new kernel did boot (I start in
runlevel 3 and so X does not start) but I cannot see anything. Help! |
| A number of problems. First, as discussed in the Yahoo groups,
James Simmons says that this is due to a minor bug and has a patch ready for 2.6.0 kernel.
Get the patch. Apply it
and try. Best of luck! If still, you see blank screen, double check the CONFIG_ values
(CONFIG_VT, CONFIG_VT_CONSOLE, CONFIG_HW_CONSOLE, CONFIG_VGA_CONSOLE). Also if you are using any
of the vesa framebuffer modes (using vga=711 etc or giving mode=303 etc. during bootup) check
CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE. In case you are having some problems with loading modules at startup (see
"Cannot find map file") fix that or make sure you have the relevant CONFIG options as "y"
and not as "m" (module). |
| Why the hell the I get a small rectangular screen
during booting! |
| You might need to add vga=711 or
vga=713 (basically the framebuffer graphic modes) to the boot
options. Check the kernel-source/Documentation/fb/vesafb.txt
file for further help. You might get a blank booting screen after you
use that. Check this question. |
| There might be some problem with the modules. I feel they are
are not properly loaded. |
| Did you get the latest module-init-tools? The recent kernel
uses a different style of loading modules and you need the new modprobe etc. Also
read the FAQ in the package - there are several pitfalls and solutions given there. |
| Nops. There might be still some problem with the ethernet driver. MDK9.2 used to use the module bcm4400 for my Broadcom BCM4401 internal PCI card. I cant get the ethernet to work in 2.6.0 over 9.2. |
| First of all, the module for BCM4401 is called as b44 and not bcm4400. Try to manually load this module (modprobe b44). If it fails check that you have the proper modprobe.conf; kernel 2.6 uses a different style of loading modules and it expects module related information in the file called modprobe.conf and not modules.conf. If you have the old modules.conf and want to generate the equivalent modprobe.conf use the tool generate_modprobe. It will generate /etc/modprobe.conf; then go into the file and change the alias of eth0 (or eth1 - whichever you were using) to b44 from bcm4400. Now try to manually load b44 by modprobe b44 and also check using lsmod. |
| I have heard that for laptops, there is a small
nice power-management utility that sits in the tray. How to get it? I
dont see that in the KDE-Control-Center. Also, does all the sleep states
S1, S3, S4 work? |
To enable power-management/view battery etc. details
make sure your linux boot line (in lilo.conf or grub/menu.lst) DOES
NOT contain "acpi=ht". Remove that (and rerun lilo if you
changed lilo.conf). Then make sure that you have the specific kde-rpm
installed. IIRC it is something like kdebase-common (do some google).
This should give you the power-management menu in the control-center.
You can use that to control CPU-throttle, suspend to disk, standby etc.
Sleep spates S1 and S4 work out of the box (I dont use them
much and hence dont know if there is any specific issues related to the
resume of any specific device). S3 dont work; I mean the resume from S3
dont work - and this seems to be a common problem for a whole lot of
people. Upon some investigation, it seems to me that primarily two
things are happening - there is some problem with some modules -
usb/network or something else - removing all the unnecessary modules
before going to sleep allows a resume. But still the video does not come
back - both the X or console. I suspect this might be due to improper
video-device re-initialization. I will do some more experiment and
report any new findings/hack if found. |
