Fedora Core 6 on Dell Latitude D820

Fedora Core 6 on Dell Latitude D820

Fred Welland (f.welland at verizon dot net )
Last update on: Monday, February 26 2007 (This page was started on Tuesday, January 03 2007)

Introduction
Disc Prep
Hardware Matrix
The Install
Some Relevant Command (etc. lspci, fdisk) Output
Wireless
Lots Of Links To Good Stuff
Some Annoyances (e.g. System Beep!!!)
About my Dell
Fedora Core 5 on this same D820
Some (mostly obvious) Hints and Tips
Misc

NOTE: I have installed Fedora 7 on this laptop -- See here for details

Hardware Matrix

Video	Quadro NVS 110M 128MB dedicated	Works out of the box with x.org 'nv' driver. Graphical installer works well too. (compiz/'Desktop Affects' required tweaks)
CPU	Intel CPU T2500 @ 2.00GHz	Works
LCD	15.4" WUXGA 1920 x 1200	Works out of the box at 1920x1200 resolution
Hard Drive	Hitachi HTS721010G9SA00 100 GB 7200RPM 8MB SATA/150	um...works!
Sound	Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller SigmaTel STAC9200	Works out of the box
Wireless	Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG	works (required tweaks)
Ethernet	Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5752 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express	Works out of the box
DVD RW	NEC DVD +/- RW ND-6650A	CD seems OK -- DVD & Write tests still pending
IRDA		Do not know (not sure I care)
Modem		Do not Know (not sure I care)
Touchpad	AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint	Works out of the box
Keyboard		Works out of the box

Introduction

Why did I do this? I had a perfectly good FC5 laptop, that I had spent plenty of time working on! Well, FC 6 is/was:

There
It has a few new features I was interested in (especially compiz/'Desktop Effects')
I had real painless install experiences with FC6 installs on a desktop and my home brew backup/NAS thing
A guy who followed my FC5/D820 page encouraged me to give it a try.

So I did. And from a 'stick in the disk and let it rip' perspective, FC6 + a D820 works quite well. For a bit of background on my experiences with LINUX/FC and laptops, look at the introduction on my FC5-D820 page.

Disk Prep

Since I already sliced up this disk for the FC5 install, at least from a WinXP vs FC perspective, I didn't need to do much here. The only steps I took was to back up my FC stuff to my home-grown NAS thing. Perhaps I will add some info about my NAS/Backup thing in the future. I didn't back up anything in my WinXP partition -- there really wasn't anything of value to loose there.

The Install

Basically, I stuck the first FC6, CD in and rebooted into the installer and let it rip. I had used BT to grab the CD images and burned to CDRs on a desktop FC6 box -- I didn't use DVD images like I did last time. I didn't have problems releated to reading the install media this go-around. I attribute this to to new/replacement DVDRW I have -- see more about this in "About my Dell" section.

To 'install' I just booted from DVD/CD drive with the CD media. I followed the on screen instructions. That pretty much will get you to a working FC6 system - if you choose to accept defaults and such.
I did a custom install so I can pick only the packages I want and set up partitions like I want. In this install, like most of the FC installs I have done, I wanted fresh partitions - so I didn't re-use any of the FC5 paratitions. Besides, I found that my /home was a bit small for me under the FC5 install.
GRUB found my XP install and added it to the boot menu just fine.
I used the graphical installer -- it didn't have any display problems like I had during the FC5 install.
I turned off SELinux during installation. (FYI: I have no reason to do this other than I don't know if SELinux brings me anything. My assumption is no. Please enlighten me otherwise).
I do not recall the kernel version that was layed out be the installer. Basically, after I went through the 'firstboot' stuff, I let PUP do a full update. It updated me to some kernel, which I forget. Within first couple of days, pup informed me of some kernel updates. After putting it off a few times, on January 4 (FYI: I did the initial install on January 1, 2007), I let pup install the new kernel. I now have kernel: 2.6.18-1.2869.fc6 #1 SMP.
After the install, I didn't seem to have any of the 'wrong kernel' source problems discussed here
Here is what my partitions turned out to be:

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda3 9.5G 3.3G 5.7G 37% / tmpfs 1013M 0 1013M 0% /dev/shm /dev/sda5 19G 4.4G 14G 25% /home /dev/sda8 26G 338M 25G 2% /opt /dev/sda6 9.5G 212M 8.8G 3% /usr/local

Relevant Command Output

fdisk 'p' output for /dev/sda:

Disk /dev/sda: 100.0 GB, 100030242816 bytes











255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 12161 cylinders











Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes























   Device Boot     
Start        
End      Blocks   Id  System











/dev/sda1              
1          
7       56196   de  Dell
Utility











/dev/sda2  
*          
8        3322   
26627737+   7  HPFS/NTFS











/dev/sda3           
3323        4597   
10241437+  83  Linux











/dev/sda4           
4598       12161   
60757830    5  Extended











/dev/sda5           
4598        7147   
20482843+  83  Linux











/dev/sda6           
7148        8422   
10241406   83  Linux











/dev/sda7           
8423       
8677     2048256   82  Linux swap /
Solaris











/dev/sda8           
8678       12161   
27985198+  83  Linux

lspci:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS/940GML and 945GT Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 03) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 01) 00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 01) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 01) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 01) 00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 01) 00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 01) 00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 01) 00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e1) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01) 00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller IDE (rev 01) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 01) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Quadro NVS 110M / GeForce Go 7300 (rev a1) 03:01.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. Cardbus bridge (rev 21) 03:01.4 FireWire (IEEE 1394): O2 Micro, Inc. Firewire (IEEE 1394) (rev 02) 09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5752 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02) 0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)

Some Annoyances

The System Beep really annoys me. For whatever reason, FC6 seems to have lots of beeps enabled by default. On FC5 & FC6 there are beeps when GDM finally finishes during startup and the system is ready to login. On FC6, all console windows have them.

Here is how to kill them:

To get rid of most, if not all beebs, that occur while you are in a GNOME session:

run System->Preferences->Sound applet
select the 'System Beep' tab
uncheck 'Enable System Beep'

To get rid of beeps in a console (<ctl><alt>F1 and other consoles), edit /etc/inputrc and make sure 'set bell-style' is set to 'none'. This won't get rid of the startup beeps and such. It only disables most (all, perhaps) beeps that happen from a console. Recently a reader pointed out that you can un-comment this line (removing the '#' at the beginning of the line). I don't remember what the default was after a clean install of FC6 - so either uncomment, add the line, or change the value to 'none'.
Blacklist the pcspkr kernel module. See this: http://www.arsgeek.com/?p=484 I have not tried this.
Recompile kernel w/o PC speaker support. I haven't tried this, just read about it on some forum post somewhere.
System bios, perhaps? I looked and didn't find anything related to this. PLMK if there is such a thing in D820 bios. BTW: There is a lot of juicy stuff in bios setup.

Video

As mentioned earlier, video/graphics seemed to work really well during the install process and afterwards. The XServer will (probably) be detected as NVIDIA and use the Xorg 'nv' driver. Honestly, I didn't check too much on what the installer detected and setup; I pretty had my mind made up that I was going to use the NVIDIA proprietary driver (under the assumption that this is a prerequesite for the compiz).

Here is what I did:

Go to NVIDIA and grab the Quadra NVS driver for Linux x86. The version/file I got was NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9746-pkg1.run. It is important to get a version that is greater than 9625 (I think that is when GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap was introduced -- which is a needed ingridient for compiz).
Logged out of GNOME session.
Switched to VC1 (<ctl><alt>f1) and logged in as root.
The nVidia installer won't work if X is running. So I put my D820 into runlevel 3 (multi-user w/o X). Lots of ways to turn X off temporarily -- switching to 3 just seemed like a good way. I switched to runlevel 3 via command: telinit 3.
Ran the nVidia script via: sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9746-pkg1.run.
I pretty much let the installer do its thing. There were a couple of non-fatal warning (e.g. new pre-compiled driver, guess where X11 is), but nothing that prevented it from working.
I let it create a xorg.conf file for me.
After it completed, I switched back to runlevel 5 via: telinit 5.
At that point I was tossed back to VC7 and X/GDM fired up with the nVidia splash screen. I logged in to a GNOME session and everything seems fine.

But 'Desktop Effects' (here after called compiz) doesn't work! I will spare all the details. After a modest amount of tinkering, I got it to work. Here are some details:

The default xorg.conf didn't have all the needed modules specified in the 'Module' section. Here is my current & working xorg.conf. Also the Extensions/Composite stuff wasn't there.
After getting compiz to finally work, my gnome-terminal windows would come up as just a white rectangle. It seemed to work, but I couldn't see anything, except white! Not exactly sure what resolved this, but one leading suspect was the 3 options listed in the "Screen" section of xorg.conf, starting with: Option "RenderAccel" "True". These options seem to be an important ingridient.
Once I got compiz going, I didn't have any window borders! After much research and trying stuff to no avail, I found a post that suggested that I need to reset all the compiz settings and start from scratch. I issued: gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/compiz as suggested by some random forum posting. Well this had no apparent affect, Furthermore, inspecting that section with 'Configure Editor' (gconf-editor) seemed to suggest that nothing really happened. I gave up for a bit....
Usually, I don't reboot to see the affects of X changes. I just log out of GNOME, back to GDM - which restarts X. Sometimes at the GDM log on screen, I issues a <ctl><alt>backspace to restart X. Those things didn't seem to help. But, since I had shifted gears (w/o borders working) and did other things, I had shutdown at some point. Well, on a whim, I flipped into compiz and borders worked!

Here is a list of links that could be helpful while troubleshooting compiz:

http://www.phoronix.net/forums/archive/index.php/t-480.html
http://forum.go-compiz.org/viewtopic.php?t=239
http://www.compiz.biz/viewtopic.php?t=90 (link could be dead)
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=121119 (pretty lengthy and comprehensive)
http://computerbits.wordpress.com/2006/11/02/compiz-key-combinations-list/ (good list of shortcut keys for compiz and some configuration related info)
And don't forget www.google.com
Recently (1/22/2007) another D820 user contacted my with his successes with compiz, on, I presume a D820 or nVidia based system. He pointed out this link, http://fedoranews.org/cms/node/2387, which is short and concise 'now to' on doing compiz on FC6 with nVidia graphics hardware.

I still have one nagging problem: when I login to a GNOME session from GDM (with compiz 'on'), borders are gone! That is the program, gnome-window-decorator, which is reponsible for the window borders, isn't running. I can get borders to reappear simply but using the enable 'Desktop Effects' applet to stop and start compiz. Any ideas on this?

Some Hints

If you use module/drivers that are kernel specific (i.e. you need to build one to match your kernel -- e.g. nVidia proprietary driver, ipw3945), you may want to keep the installer or source package. This is especially important if you do any kernel updates, as these drivers will generally break when you install a new kernel. Keeping the intaller or source package can save a little frustration.

Wireless

Not really sure if FC6 and its installer supports the Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG wireless card or not. For me, it didn't automatically configure or install anything. This really wasn't a big deal for me, since I am well verse in tinkering with IPW class drivers from previous laptops and FC installs. Here is what I do (and some tips and notes):

In my root user's home directory, I keep a directory called 'ipw3945Stuff'. In that directory I keep various versions of the IPW3945 driver, micro code and regulatory deamon. Currently this is my inventory: ieee80211-1.1.13, ipw3945-1.0.0, ipw3945-1.1.3, ipw3945-ucode-1.13, ieee80211-1.1.14, ipw3945-1.1.0, ipw3945d-1.7.18, ieee80211-1.2.15, ipw3945-1.1.2, ipw3945d-1.7.22. These directories will restored from my backups I took (from my FC5 install) just prior to the FC6 install.
I no longer need the ieee80211 stuff; whatever comes with FC6 seems to work fine. So far the compiliation problems I had under FC5 do not exist under FC6.
Generally, I follow the basic installation of driver, microcode, and regulatory deamon instructions that come with ipw3945. The only thing I do, a little differently is: I do not do a 'make install' in the core ipw3945-x.x.x directory. I just build ('make') the .o's and .ko's and leave them in the current directory.
Much like the nVidia driver, each time I upgrade a kernel, I must go rebuild the driver: I go to the current driver revision I am using and perform: make clean; make.
The driver version I am using is ipw3945-1.1.3. I am using the ipw3945d-1.7.22 regulatory deamon, and microcode ipw3945-ucode-1.13. It looks like the ieee80211 stuff the comes with FC6 is 1.1.13.
To start up and connect to an specific wireless network, I use scripts like (season to taste):

#!/bin/bash
IPW3945_HOME=/root/ipw3945Stuff/ipw3945-1.1.3
dhc_PID=`ps -C dhclient -o pid=`
if [ -n "$dhc_PID" ] ;
then
        echo " releasing old lease on IP address (if one exists)...."
        dhclient -r eth1
        sleep 5
        echo "killing old dhclient at PID = $dhc_PID (it should be dead already)"
        kill -9 $dhc_PID
fi
wpa_PID=`ps -C wpa_supplicant -o pid=`
if [ -n "$wpa_PID" ] ;
then
        echo "killing old wpa_supplicant at PID = $wpa_PID and cleaning up...."
        kill -9 $wpa_PID
        rm -rf /var/run/wpa_supplicant
fi
sleep 1
cd $IPW3945_HOME
./unload
sleep 2
./load
sleep 5
echo "bringing down eth1 just in case (it was started by ipw3945 driver load)....."
ifdown eth1
sleep 4
echo "reconfiguring eth1....."
iwconfig eth1 essid "blahblahblah" channel xx
sleep 3
echo "restarting wpa_supplicant....."

wpa_supplicant -B -ieth1  -c
/etc/wpa_supplicant/my_wpa_supplicant.conf -D wext 
2>/tmp/wpa_supplicant-err.log >/tmp/wpa_supplicant-out.log

sleep 8
echo "starting DHClient"
dhclient eth1

echo ".....should be DONE!!!!"

Yes, I do have scripts per network I use -- call me old fashion. For open WIFI, I have had good luck with WiFi Radar (under FC5). I haven't gotten around to using it under FC6 yet. WiFi Radar can be found here: http://wifi-radar.systemimager.org/ . In the past, I would just use the load/unload scripts that come with ipw3945 distribution to start/stop ipw3945, and then turn on WiFI Radar.
Much of my wireless stuff from my FC5 page still apply.
After the first few boots, the GNOME applet system-config-network did not have any sort of listing for ipw3945 when I tried to create a new eth1 device. I wasn't too concerned about this, because I remeber creating a dummy one under FC5 for something or other that I don't recall. On a whim, without an 'eth1' device defined, I fired off a script like the above (after the driver was built, of course). Despite complaining about missing eth1 device here and there, it eventually associated with a network and got an IP. Nifty!
At some point, I did eventually create a eth1. With the ipw3945 driver loaded system-config-network, 'saw' a ipw3945 card.

About My Dell

Lots 'O Links

Good general FC6 install page: http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc6.html
Gold mine of FC related goodness: http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/.