Installing Ubuntu Breezy on a Dell Inspiron 6400

Hardware

• Intel Centrino Duo T2400 (Pentium M dual core) 1.83 GHz
• 15.4 inch WXGA LCD (display resolution: 1280x800 @ 60Hz)
• 256 MB ATI Radeon Mobility X1400 HyperMemory
• 1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz, 2 DIMM
• 8x internal DVD+/-RW drive
• 80 GB SATA hard drive
• Broadcom 440x 10/100 ethernet card
• Intel Pro/Wireless 3945ABG (802.11a/b/g wireless card)
• Ricoh Secure Digital/MMC card reader
• Firewire port (IEEE 1394)
• 1 PCMCIA slot (supported by yenta_socket)
• Conexant HDA D110 MDC V.92 modem (winmodem)
• Synaptics PS/2 touchpad

Works

• Running with both CPUs detected (not out-of-the-box; after kernel recompile)
• 2D and 3D acceleration and 1280x800 resolution (using ATI 8.25.18 display drivers)
• Wireless (not out-of-the-box)
• Ricoh SD card reader (not out-of-the-box; after kernel recompile with vanilla 2.6.17-rc1)
• Sound
• USB
• Synaptics touchpad

Not Tested

• DVD/CD burning (probably fine after installing cdrdao)
• PCMCIA
• Firewire
• Conexant winmodem
• Suspend-to-disk (hibernate) / Suspend-to-RAM (sleep)
  

Base Installation

• Remembering to select "manually edit partition table" at that point in the install; fortunately, Ubuntu doesn't commit partition table changes right away
• A few times during package installation, Ubuntu would throw stack traces onto my screen:
• APM BIOS was not found (it shouldn't be; like most modern laptops, this is now ACPI), but the packages continued installing even when I couldn't see the installation progress bar
• NTFS-fs error; packages continued to install and after installation I was able to mount NTFS read-only without problems
• Configuring xserver-xorg. Ubuntu automatically detects the ATI card and selects "ati" as the driver; then it attempts to start the X server but the X server won't start.
  The solution is to edit the relevant section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section "Device"
	Identifier "ATI Technologies, Inc. ATI Default Card"
	#Driver "ati"
	Driver "vesa"
	BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Getting the dual core CPUs recognized, the wireless card, and the Ricoh SD card reader working

References:

For compiling kernels --

For Ricoh SD card reader --

For Intel(R) Pro/Wireless 3945ABG wireless card --

Getting the wireless card firmware recognized --

Stage I: Compile and install latest kernel with patches

sudo mv linux-2.6.16.tar.bz2 /usr/src
sudo mv patch-2.6.17-rc1.bz2 /usr/src
cd /usr/src
sudo bunzip2 patch-2.6.17-rc1.bz2
sudo tar -xvjf linux-2.6.16.tar.bz2
sudo ln -s linux-2.6.16 linux

sudo cp patch-2.6.17-rc1 linux/
cd linux/
sudo patch -p1 < patch-2.6.17-rc1

cd /usr/src/linux
sudo cp /boot/config-2.6.12-10-386 .config

sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev

sudo make menuconfig

• I set ext3 file system support to compiled-in:

  File systems ->
     <*> Ext3 journalling file system support
     [*] Ext3 extended attributes
     [*]   Ext3 POSIX Access Control Lists
     [*]   Ext3 Security Labels

• Optimize kernel for Pentium M CPU:

  Processor type and features ->
     Processor family ->
        Pentium M

• Enable multiple processors (CPUs):

  Processor type and features ->
     [*] Symmetric multi-processing support
     (8)   Maximum number of CPUs (2-255) (NEW)
     [ ]   SMT (Hyperthreading) scheduler support (NEW)
     [*]   Multi-core scheduler support (NEW)

• Both MMC support and Secure Digital Host Controller interface support as compiled-in. This needs to be compiled-in, I tried it with just modules and it detects the drive but doesn't create a block device!
  

  Device drivers -> 
     MMD/SD Card support ->
        <*> MMC support
        [*] MMC debugging
        <*> MMC block device driver
        <*> Secure Digital Host Controller Interface support (EXPERIMENTAL)
        <*> Winbond W83L51xD SD/MMC Card Interface support

• All SATA drivers as modules:

  Device drivers -> 
     SCSI device support -> 
        SCSI low-level drivers ->
           <M> Serial ATA (SATA) support
           <M>   AHCI SATA support
           <M>   ServerWorks Frodo / Apple K2 SATA support
           <M>   Intel PIIX/ICH SATA support
  [etc.]

• Enable iptables modules (needed these to work with Shorewall firewall):

  Networking ->
     Networking options ->
        Network packet filtering (replaces ipchains) ->
           Core netfilter configuration ->
              <M> Netfilter netlink interface
              <M>   [and everything else in this section]
              <M> Netfilter Xtables support (required for ip_tables)
              <M>   [and everything else in this section]
           IP: Netfilter configuration ->
              <M> IP tables support (required for filtering/masq/NAT)
              <M>   [everything up to, but not including, ARP tables support]

• Ensure that Wireless LAN drivers (non-hamradio) and firmware hotplug capability are compiled-in:

  Device Drivers ->
     Network device support ->
        Wireless LAN (non-hamradio) ->
           [*] Wireless LAN drivers (non-hamradio)
     Generic Driver Options ->
        <*> Userspace firmware loading support

• Enable WEP and WPA support provided by the Linux kernel:

  Cryptographic options ->
     <M> AES cipher algorithms
     <M> AES cipher algorithms (i586)
     <M> ARC4 cipher algorithm
     <M> Michael MIC keyed digest algorithm
  Library routines ->
     <*> CRC32 functions

sudo apt-get install kernel-package

sudo apt-get install fakeroot

sudo apt-get install initrd-tools

sudo make-kpkg --append-to-version=.20060414 --revision=ricoh01 kernel_image

cd ..
sudo dpkg -i kernel-image-2.6.17-rc1.20060414_ricoh01_i386.deb

cd /boot/
sudo mkinitrd -o /boot/initrd.img-2.6.17-rc1.20060414 2.6.17-rc1.20060414

title       Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.17-rc1.20060414 
root        (hd0,1)
kernel      /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-rc1.20060414 root=/dev/sda2 ro quiet splash
initrd      /boot/initrd.img-2.6.17-rc1.20060414
savedefault
boot

title       Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.17-rc1.20060414 (recovery mode)
root        (hd0,1)
kernel      /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-rc1.20060414 root=/dev/sda2 ro single
initrd      /boot/initrd.img-2.6.17-rc1.20060414
boot

sudo shutdown -r now

Stage II: Checking whether both processors are recognized

sudo cat /proc/cpuinfo

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 14
model name      : Genuine Intel(R) CPU           T2400  @ 1.83GHz
[...]

processor       : 1
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 14
model name      : Genuine Intel(R) CPU           T2400  @ 1.83GHz
[...]

Stage III: Dealing with EVMS -- "device-mapper: error adding target to table" on bootup

sysfs_devices {
   include = [ * ]
   exclude = [ sda* ]  <== ADDED sda* to exclude list
}

Stage IV: Getting the Ricoh Card Reader to work

dmesg | grep sdhci

[17179782.012000] MMC: starting cmd 10 arg 00000200 flags 00000015
[17179782.012000] sdhci [sdhci_send_command()]: Sending cmd (10)
[17179782.012000] sdhci [sdhci_irq()]: *** sdhci:slot0 got interrupt: 0x00000001
[17179782.012000] sdhci [sdhci_finish_command()]: Ending cmd (10)
[17179782.012000] sdhci [sdhci_tasklet_finish()]: Ending request, cmd (10)
[17179782.012000] MMC: req done (10): 0: 00000900 00000000 00000000 00000000
[17179782.012000] mmcblk0: mmc0:104f S008B 6640KiB
[17179782.012000]  mmcblk0:<7>MMC: starting cmd 12 arg 00000000 flags 00000035

sudo mount -t vfat /dev/mmcblk0p1 temp/

sudo umount temp/

sudo mkdir /media/sdcard

/dev/mmcblk0p1  /media/sdcard   vfat    user,noauto        0       0

Stage V: Getting the Wireless Card to work

Installing the Driver, Regulatory Daemon, and Firmware

sudo tar -xvzf ipw3945-linux-1.0.0.tgz
cd intel-ipw3945-1.0.0/

sudo tar -xvzf ipw3945-1.0.0.tgz
cd ipw3945-1.0.0/
chmod 755 remove-old
sudo ./remove-old
make IEEE80211_INC=/lib/modules/2.6.17-rc1.20060414/build/include/
sudo make install

cd ..
sudo tar -xvzf ipw3945-ucode-1.13.tgz
cd ipw3945-ucode-1.13/
sudo cp ipw3945.ucode /lib/hotplug/firmware

ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="firmware", RUN+="/sbin/udev_run_hotplugd"

cd ..
sudo tar -xvzf ipw3945d-1.7.18.tgz
cd ipw3945d-1.7.18/
sudo cp x86/ipw3945d /sbin/

cd ../ipw3945-1.0.0/
sudo ./load debug=0

iwconfig eth1
iwlist eth1 scan

Update (May 6, 2006) -- Loading the Wireless Card at Boot Time:

install ipw3945 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install ipw3945 ; sleep 0.5 ; /sbin/ipw3945d --quiet
remove ipw3945 /sbin/ipw3945d --kill ; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove ipw3945

Enabling Native Resolution and 3D acceleration with the ATI Radeon Mobility X1400

sudo /usr/share/fglrx/fglrx-uninstall.sh

chmod a+x ati-driver-installer-8.25.18-x86.run
sudo ./ati-driver-installer-8.25.18-x86.run

sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup

/lib
/lib64
/usr/lib
/usr/lib64
/lib/tls
/usr/lib/i486
/usr/lib/i586
/usr/lib/i686
/lib/tls/i686
/usr/lib/i686/cmov
/lib/tls/i686/cmov
/usr/X11R6/lib
/usr/local/lib

sudo ldconfig -v

sudo aticonfig --initial --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf

Update: Re-enabling scrolling with the Synaptics Touchpad

sudo modprobe evdev

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Default Layout"
    Screen      0  "aticonfig Screen 0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Generic Keyboard"
    InputDevice    "Configured Mouse"
    InputDevice    "Synaptics Touchpad" "AlwaysCore"
EndSection

Notes on Suspend-to-Disk (hibernate) and 3D acceleration (with Intel 945GM graphics):

• Suspend-to-disk is working under SuSE 10.0 with kernel 2.6.17-rc3; /proc/acpi/sleep is required for this. The CONFIG_X86_PC option must not be set in the kernel, otherwise the CONFIG_ACPI_SLEEP_PROC_SLEEP doesn't appear. His .config file is here.
• 3D acceleration is working with the Intel 945GM graphic chip, with 1680x1050 resolution, using the following:
• RPMs for plain XFree 6.9.0
• Precompiled X11 intel video driver modules for the 945GM (i810_drv.so and libshadow.so from http://www.fairlite.demon.co.uk/intel.html)
• The `Mesa' and `drm' CVS repositories (from http://dri.freedesktop.org, ignoring the stuff for the linux kernel drm module)
• The 915resolution package (http://www.geocities.com/stomljen/)
• His xorg.conf file is here (configured without mousepad scrolling function).

• Getting the backlight to light up again when opening the lid
  The LCD backlight correctly switches off when the lid is closed. However, there seems to be a fault either in the Linux driver or the video card BIOS that prevent the backlight from being switched back on when the lid is opened again. The solution is to use ACPI to force the light back on.
  
  Two scripts:
  /etc/acpi/events/lidswitch
  /etc/acpi/lidswitch.sh
  
  This requires the vbetool package to be installed first.


• Suspend to disk
  I didn't really want to patch and compile my own kernel to get suspend2 support, so I tried the built in support in the kernel. The problem is the video BIOS patch applied by 915resolution is lost when the machine powers down, so when it powers back up again the video mode that the X server was in no longer exists. The solution is again an ACPI script:
  
  /etc/acpi/events/sleepbtn
  
  This requires that an "resume=/dev/sdaX" option was passed to the kernel at boot time.


• Other Kernel Parameters
  The frame buffer can be activated and set to a more appropriate size than the default by adding the following to the kernel command line:
  
  video=intelfb:mtrr,noaccel vga=0x834