InstallingUbuntuOnADellLatitudeX1

Differences between revisions 8 and 9
Revision 8 as of 2005-07-27 21:35:46
Size: 18988
Editor: p54BEF435
Comment: added http://ubuntuguide.org/#configuresoundproperly
Revision 9 as of 2005-07-27 21:37:52
Size: 18989
Editor: p54BEF435
Comment:
Deletions are marked like this. Additions are marked like this.
Line 257: Line 257:
== 8.Powernowd == == 8. Powernowd ==

Installation report for a Dell Latitude X1 (aka Samsung Q30)

Ubuntu Hoary 5.04

I'm using gedit in this report, but nano is nice, too. Smile :-)

This laptop works great with Ubuntu: WLAN, display 1280×768, graphics driver, LAN, processor settings, standby/hibernate, Compact-Flash slot, modem, USB, Firewire, touchpad, sound, Bluetooth etc. work "out of the Hoary box" or can be configured as described in the following report.

The following hotkeys work right away: Standby (Fn+Esc), WLAN on/off (Fn+F2), Num (Fn+F4), CRT/LCD (Fn+F8 needs an external monitor to be connected), Print (Fn+F11, saves a screen snapshot, Pause Fn+F12 does the same), Display brightness (Fn+arrow-up or arrow-down). Mute, as well as louder/quieter can be configured via Gnome System Settings.

The SD Slot doesn't work - nobody seems to be able to get this done.

My X1 was made in early July 2005 with BIOS A02, has a 60GB harddisc and 768MB RAM.

I completely removed Windows from my harddisc and made a 6GB primary partition for the Ubuntu system. A (primary) swap-partition with 2,2 GB (as suggested by the installer) is used and the rest of the harddisc was left unpartitioned for using it later when setting up the encrypted partition. When using Ubuntu and Windows in a dual-boot setup, bear in mind that you can only have 4 primary partitions on the harddisc (and no logical volumes after that) or you just use 3 primary ones and then several logical volumes.

1. Display and graphics controller

Standard installation of Ubuntu 5.04 was made with suggesting 1280x768 for the X-server.

Problem: Display stays black after startup. It is said that BIOS A01 (before June 2005) works OK with the standard setup (according to remarks on Martin's Linux on a Dell Latitude X1 page – see Thanks section of this report), but mine is an A02.

First thing to do is change the user driver from i810 to vesa in the xorg.conf:

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

which makes it look like this:

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Intel Corporation Intel Default Card"
        Driver          "vesa"
# i810 was substituted by vesa

Restart X11 (or reboot) and the display is working in 1024x768 resolution.

To get the correct WXGA 1280x768 resolution, a change has to be made during bootup using the 915resolution Patch.

Download http://www.freshnet.org/debian/hoary/915resolution_0.4-1_i386.deb and install with

sudo dpkg -i paketname.deb

After that, add the following line to

/etc/init.d/bootmisc.sh

(at the end, before "exit"):

/usr/sbin/915resolution 45 1280 768

Here http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Dell_Latitude_X1#Graphics_controller you find information on the different color depths supported by this patch and their corresponding numbers: 38, 45 and 54. Restart your system.

glxgears now runs with up to 310 fps.

Still, movies and 3D applications run slow, as the CPU and not the GPU computes this stuff.

Solution: Download i810_drv.o from here http://www.fairlite.demon.co.uk/intel.html and overwrite the old one by opening a terminal (assuming i810_drv.o is in your home directory) and doing

sudo mv -f /home/username/i810_drv.o /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/

After that you can change the xorg.conf again, back to using the i810 driver. Restart X using Ctrl+Alt+Backspace or restart the system.

glxgears now should run at about 930 fps

2. ubuntusetup.sh

If you want to, you can install Java and other useful stuff automagically with this script http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=22646 It saves you a lot of work that otherwise would have to be done manually. The script installs (among others):

build-essential - Compilers needed to build programs
beep-media-player - XMMS gtk2 clone. Compatible with XMMS plugins/skins
gstreamer0.8-mad - Add MP3 support for Rhythmbox
w32codecs - Windows codecs for playing various files
streamtuner - Online music streamer from shoutcast and a few others
xine-ui - The xine video player, user interface for playing dvd's and such
totem-xine - Have totem use xine so you can actually use it to play videos etc.
msttcorefonts - Windows True Type Fonts
gnomebaker - The best gnome/gtk2 cd/dvd/cdrw burning software
gftp - Ftp Client
flashplayer-mozilla - Flash plugin for firefox
Java JRE 1.5 - Latest version of Java
Custom Firefox Forms - Make you firefox form widgets look decent
/etc/apt/sources.list - Add in universe, multiverse and misc repositories
Misc Windows Fonts - Misc fonts that are missing in the msttcorefonts package

But beware! Save your /etc/apt/sources.list before running the script, just in case you might want to continue using Ubuntu without backport repositories. Wink ;-)

3.Synaptics Touchpad

The touchpad does weird things when using the finger to tap. It's especially strange when tapping the dynamic bookmark "Latest Headlines" in Firefox. A tap opens all news as extra tabs...

Paste the following lines into your xorg.conf and the touchpad works fine. Finger taps will be OK, vertical scrolling then works fine and accidental taps when writing (and touching the tochpad with your hand) will be prevented.

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Synaptics Touchpad"
        Driver          "synaptics"
        Option          "SendCoreEvents"        "true"
        Option          "Device"                "/dev/psaux"
        Option          "Protocol"              "auto-dev"
        Option          "HorizScrollDelta"      "0"
 Option        "LeftEdge"      "1700"
 Option        "RightEdge"     "5300"
 Option        "TopEdge"       "1700"
 Option        "BottomEdge"    "4200"
 Option        "FingerLow"     "25"
 Option        "FingerHigh"    "40"
 Option        "MaxTapTime"    "180"
 Option        "MaxTapMove"    "220"
 Option        "VertScrollDelta" "100"
 Option        "MinSpeed"      "0.06"
 Option        "MaxSpeed"      "0.15"
 Option        "AccelFactor"   "0.0015"
# SHMConfig is required if you want to disable the mousepad while typing:
# more info on http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Synaptics_Touchpad
 Option        "SHMConfig"     "on"
 Option        "TapButton1"     "1"
 Option        "TapButton2"     "1"
 Option        "TapButton3"     "1"
# leave all the TapButton values at 1 or the Touchpad goes haywire again.
 Option        "LTCornerButton" "2"
EndSection

4. CF Slot

The Compact Flash slot is installed correctly but it doesn't automount. Use a terminal and type:

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

add the following line:

/dev/hdc1  /media/cf  vfat  user,auto,rw  0     0

and save.

After rebooting the system, your CF slot is now of the automounting persuasion. This is a "quick and dirty hack": you can see a short error notice during startup if you don't have a CF card inserted. Wink ;-)

5. WLAN

The standard driver works, but some people recommend to exchange it. It is said that the standard driver loses the connection after about an hour (can't confirm this yet, after hours of working) and it doesn't support WPA encryption.

If you don't care for these two problems, you can keep the standard driver.

Keep in mind that the following stuff has to be installed before you start to install the new driver:

build-essential, gcc, linux-headers-yourKernelVersion

Follow this installation guide http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=26623

Only the ieee80211 has to be removed manuall as the script remove-old didn't work. The command:

rm -R /lib/modules/2.6.10-5-386/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/ieee80211

does the trick

To create valid Ubuntu packets use the module-assistant. To view a manual for this application, type

man module-assistant

To uninstall the new driver (if needed) type

make uninstall ipw2200.

6. Hibernate/Standby

Set it up according to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HoaryPM

Standby works, but during wakeup, the LCD backlight stays dark. Fn+arrow-down helps (and so does setting a BIOS password).

Beware! When installing the Linuxant modem driver, Standby support is broken. On how to fix that read the modem install section of this report.

Hibernate doesn't work as expected, but it can be fixed.

The problem was, that the computer seemed to stop waking up at one point – but actually the display could not be brought back to life. After trying to enter my login password (blind) the screen came back to life in a firework of bright/dark changes and nothing worked anymore... Even falling back to the vesa driver didn't help with that problem.

The solution:

Add the 915resolution Patch to the resume script.

sudo gedit /etc/acpi/resume.sh

add

/usr/sbin/915resolution 45 1280 768

somewhere at the beginning of this script. After saving, the 915resolution patch is applied again during resume and everything works fine.

When using hiberbate to change battery, keep in mind that the hibernate process takes about 2 minutes to complete. Thus, be sure to start hibernate when your Gnome battery applet shows at least 3 minutes to go. Once the little battery icon left of the touchpad starts to appear solid orange (without the flashing) it's too late for a hibernate – use standby and find an AC outlet. Smile :-) This description applies to the small 2400mAh batteries, I don't have a big one. And one more thing: After hibernate, the Gnome battery applet seems to be frozen and has to be restarted (however that might be done). I just remove it from the panel and then put it back into the panel and it works again.

Edit /etc/acpi/lid.sh, and comment out the chvt lines to power off the screen when closing the lid.

7. Modem

For me only the HSFModem from Linuxant.com is working. The free version is limited to 14K, when buying a licence for 14,99 US$ (12,5 €) the whole 56K are available.

Before installing the modem I recommend to apply this little change: http://ubuntuguide.org/#configuresoundproperly

An Ubuntu installation file is available from http://www.linuxant.com/drivers/hcf/full/downloads.php Install *.deb packages with

sudo dpkg -i packagename.deb

Unfortunately this didn't work for me.

So I downloaded the driver as a source (hsfmodem-7.18.00.05full.tar.gz). I unpacked it, ran

sudo make install

in the directory it was unpacked to, then did

sudo /usr/sbin/hsfconfig

and after that I could configure the modem via

System -> Administration -> Networking

I used auto-detect, added a number to dial and it worked!

For actually dialing out you can use the Gnome applet that monitors the modem – don't know the English name, as I run a German localization of Ubuntu.

Linuxant also has a manual on how to install the source available on their website. And keep in mind: When installing from the source there's always a possibility that some required packages are not installed yet. After the error message use apt-get or Synaptic to install the missing packages and restart.

Unfortunately, the modem installation breaks the Standby support... Thus, I put all the hsfmodem stuff (have a look with cat /proc/modules) in the /etc/default/acpi-support file, making it look like this:

# Add modules to this list to have them removed before suspend and reloaded
# on resume. It should look something like MODULES="e1000 ipw2100"
MODULES="hsfusbcd2 hsfpcibasic2 hsfserial hsfengine hsfosspec hsfsoar hsfmc97sis hsfmc97ati hsfmc97ali hsfmc97via hsfmc97ich"

Maybe only one of those HSF modules prevented the standby, but I didn't want to spend a lot of time to find out which one is responsible for the problem. After saving the file, these modules get unloaded before standby/hibernate and are loaded again during resume.

There's a rumor that the sl-modem drivers work on the X1. It didn't work for me, but it is possible that Dell uses different kinds of modem hardware even in the same model, so others might be successful.

For those darig to try, take a look at those two Ubuntu wiki pages:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SmartLinkModemDriverHowTo/FromSource

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DialupModemHowto

8. Powernowd

It's installed and working – but it's configured to "rise CPU frequency quickly and drop slowly" (the aggressive setting) whereas I want the opposite, being the passive setting.

Let's have a look at powernowd's manpage:

man powernowd

gives us the following options:

- sine = 0
- aggressive = 1
- passive = 2
- leap = 3

To try how the different values work, first do

sudo /etc/init.d/powernowd stop

so you don't end up with two instances of powernowd running and interfering.

Now you can try the options given in the manpage.

I ended up with

sudo powernowd -m 2 -l 50 -u 90 -s 50000 -v

as my desired value, giving the following output:

  powernowd: Settings:
  powernowd:   verbosity:        1
  powernowd:   mode:             2     (PASSIVE)
  powernowd:   step:            50 MHz (50000 kHz)
  powernowd:   lowwater:        50 %
  powernowd:   highwater:       90 %
  powernowd:   poll interval: 1000 ms
  powernowd: Found 1 cpu:
  powernowd:   cpu0: 600Mhz - 1600Mhz

In order to load these values at startup, a powernowd configuration file has to be made with

sudo gedit /etc/default/powernowd

The options to enter in this file:

OPTIONS="-q -m 2 -l 50 -u 90 -s 50000"

Save the file, and restart the system.

9. Encryption

In my opinion every laptop computer should have an encrypted partition for one's private data files. Thus no one might gain access to your data in case of theft, or losing the laptop - it's just the hardware that will be gone. Of course, the SWAP and tmp files might reveal some personal files - but for the ordinary thief or finder this is safe enough.

Thanks to http://www.ubuntu-de.org/wiki/sicherheit:twofish the guide I used to setup my encrypted partition and from which I use parts in the following. Smile :-)

First, load the modules cryptoloop and twofish with

sudo  modprobe cryptoloop
sudo  modprobe twofish

Also add these to the /etc/modules with

sudo gedit /etc/modules

add cryptoloop and twofish.

All through this encrypted partition setup username will have to be exchanged with your actual username while installing this.

Now make a directory in which to mount the encrypted partition we are about to create (for instance /home/username/encrypted).

Now, partition the unused space on the harddisc (for instance with ext3) using gparted (get it via Synaptic, maybe Universe repositories have to be enabled)

After that, encrypt the partition with

sudo losetup -e twofish /dev/loop0 /dev/hda3

assuming /dev/hda3 is the partition you just made.

Assuming you already entered your sudo password earlier, you will be asked for another password - the one for the encrypted partition. This password cannot be changed later on, so remember it well! Make it at least 15 characters long.

The encrypted partition has to get a filesystem:

sudo mkfs -t ext3

or sudo mkfs.ext3

To make mounting the encrypted partition easier, we add an entry in the fstab:

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

and add the line

/dev/hda3       /home/username/encrypted ext3 user,noauto,noatime,loop,acl,user_xattr,rw,encryption=twofish

The noauto feature is added so you don't have to specify your passwort at bootup. Instead it is asked when actually mounting the partition.

That's it with the setup of an encrypted partition.

Usage:

To mount the encrypted partition, just do (no sudo needed this time)

mount /home/username/encrypted

and the partition will be mounted to the directory

/home/username/encrypted

Unfortunately, this directory is now owned by root... Even if you make it writable for yourself, the files are modified everytime you copy them to or from this directory. This leads to the modify times beig adjusted - very annoying when you sort your files by date before you actually rename them (like photos for instance). To fix this, we have to change the owner of the encrypted directories.

sudo chown -R username.username /home/username/encrypted

sets the owner and the group of the directory (and its subdirectories) to your username.

Now everything can be used as though it were a normal subdirectory of home - remeber to save all your personal data to the encrypted directory.

To unmount the encrypted partition, close the files you're working on from this partition and do

umount /home/username/encrypted

Sometimes you get an error that the device is still busy, then do

umount -l /home/username/encrypted

(l like "lazy").

Now you can go to standby and safely use the train's toilet or whatever you wnat to do at the public place you happen to be at that moment - your personal data is encrypted. Wink ;-)

10. SD Slot

It seems like nobody worldwide has been able yet to get this thing working under Linux...

11. Bluetooth

I totally forgot that I switched this off (as I don't need it). The hardware is reported to be working out of the "Linux-box", but I imagine setting up Bluetooth devices to work might be difficult. Wink ;-)

That's it, I'm done.

Hopefully everything works out alright with your X1, too - at least you don't have to make as much mistakes as I made during installation. Wink ;-)

Special thanks

to Marc of newthinking.de, who (as a paid job) resolved some problems with the setup and gave me the basic descriptions and Web sources for this guide. But at some point the standby feature suddenly didn't work anymore (remember, the Linuxant drivers) and I couldn't find out when that happened. So I decided to do a fresh install and write this guide while I'm at it.

Thanks to

all these fine people and webpages that laid the foundations of this installation report:

Matthias Saou’s Dell X1 page: http://freshrpms.net/docs/x1/

HARDWARE Dell Latitude X1: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Dell_Latitude_X1

Steffen's Debian on Dell Latitude X1 page: http://www.lsw.uni-heidelberg.de/users/sbrinkma/debian_on_dell.html

Martin's Linux on a Dell Latitude X1 page: http://www.stud.ntnu.no/~gronslet/blog/linux-on-a-dell-x1-aka-samsung-q30

Linux on a Dell Latitude X300: http://jrv.oddones.org/x300.html(Jim Van Zandt)

James Whitt’s blog about his Linux on Inspiron 6000: http://james.jamesandkristin.net/?p=19 (auch ein i915GM graphics controller)

Linux on laptops: http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/


CategoryLaptop CategoryHardware

InstallingUbuntuOnADellLatitudeX1 (last edited 2008-08-06 17:00:10 by localhost)