• Contact: cihtog Kahrn

• Brand: Dell
• Make : Latitude
• Model: LS
• Website:
• S/N: Only needed if you have a Canonical supplied laptop

Issues with Gutsy

• See notes below.

Issues with Edgy

Do all of the wireless setup from the command line, the tool kit does not work. Download all of the libs and g++ from the Synaptic Package manager, then download the newest version of ndiswrapper from sourcefourge. Follow the instructions in the install file, very simple to follow. The ACX driver must be blacklisted or removed with the rm command before you can load the windows driver. I had to edit the resolv.conf file on my systems - (2) of them to be exact, this laptop and a desktop. The IP of my router had to be removed and any missing DNS servers added to this file before DNS resolution would work correctly. I noticed that when I changed my connection type from PCMCIA to my EDGE card then back, my resolv.conf would be automatically changed back to the wrong settings, showing the router gateway and first DNS server instead of DNS 1 and DNS 2. As long as my PCMCIA card is in the slot at boot, my connection setting remain correct. I need to figure out how to get it to look at the right numbers when configuring the system automatically. Todays entries in this wiki were made from my fully functional wireless laptop. woohoo!

System Information

LS500

BIOS: A05
CPU: PIII-M 500MHz
RAM: 128MB
HDD: 30GB IBM Travelstar 4200RPM (7GB Windows 2000, 23GB Xubuntu)
PCMCIA Cards: None
Kernel: 2.6.22-14-generic

LS400

bios-version: A09(J3K13)
cpu: PIII 400MHz
RAM: 256 MB
HDD: 30 Gigabyte, W2K and ubuntu dual boot w/swap (stable so far)
PCMCIA cards: TRENDnet TEW-421PC 54Mbps 802.11g
              Sony-Ericsson GC-83 EDGE card (Cingular)

Hardware details

Notes

1. Sony-Ericsson GC-83 EDGE Card - Connection works, but needs tweaking, only able to browse Internet for a few minutes before booting me, then hard to re-establish, might be signal strength related, need to make it a little more patient.

2. I have alot of PCMCIA gadgets I plan on testing; Adaptec SCSI interface, Cardbus DVD Drive, I have found that even though hot swapping these devices does work, the machine is happier if they are present before power up. The same goes for the IDE interface on the back of the laptop for drive swapping, they will be detected, but the machine is happier if you let it do the detection in boot up instead of hot. Sometimes, hot swapped devices are detected, but not accessible, and a re-boot is needed to use them.
3. For some reason sending to standby using the GUI (in Xubuntu at least) does not work. To standby, you must issue the command 'apm -s'. Make sure you configured APM correctly too.

4. Belkin 7051 USB Wi-Fi - Works perfectly using 2k/XP drivers with ndiswrapper. Make sure you have the usual tools installed (ndiswrapper, wpasupplicant, gnome-network-manager). Check out http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=304181 for configuration help.

5. Upon resuming from standby or hibernation, USB Wi-Fi will not work. You will have to remove the device, reboot, and then insert once logged in again.

How to configure APM

By default, ubuntu has APM disabled by default. To enable APM you need to do the following (gnome-power-manager is optional):

Install all required packages: sudo apt-get install apmd gnome-power-manager

Configure grub: Edit your grub configuration file and add the following parameters to the 'kernel' line: acpi=off apm=power_off nolapic noapic

The final line should look something like this: kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=ba61f804-7306-40c7-a1f2-274897361ef0 ro quiet acpi=off apm=power_off nolapic noapic

Reboot. Now the system should reboot, shutdown and hibernate correctly. Suspend should also work but only if you issue the command "apm -s".. for some reason selecting suspend using the gui will fail. You should also be able to view battery status, and configure other power management settings by running 'gnome-power-preferences' from the command line (/usr/bin/gnome-power-preferences).

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CategoryLaptop