DellLatitudeD600

Revision 61 as of 2007-01-22 16:56:14

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Current Issues

CPU scaling works OK for most people with released version of Dapper, but some people have problems. There are however other kernel problems with Irda and some strange hald-addon-storage lock-ups preventing correct suspend/resume for some people. See below. These problems may be dependent on the BIOS version. (Updated - 2006-Jun-15)

Using first Kernel release of Dapper Flight5, I encountered some unexpected CPU soft lock-up. This was regularly happening after a long period (1 hour) of not using the laptop, or when the network goes up.

Also, the ATI driver support is not good. I cannot for the moment activate the composite extension of the X server. The screen is then unreadable with lots of strikes on it. Video performance are not fantastic Sad :(

Hardware details

Ubuntu 5.04

Ubuntu 5.10

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS

Ubuntu 6.10

Code named

Hoary Hedgehog

Breezy Badger

Dapper Drake

Edgy Eft

Under development?

No, stable

No, stable

No, current stable

No, current stable

Installation works?

Yes

Yes

Yes

Hardware Information

Screen & Monitors

Device

Works?

Bug #

Ubuntu 5.04

Ubuntu 5.10

Ubuntu 6.06

Ubuntu 6.10

Screen

Untested

Yes

Yes

Yes

Correct resolution?

Untested

Yes

Yes

Yes

That's 'No' [https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+bug/80940 #80940]. See Note 3

Correct refresh rate?

Untested

Yes

Yes

Yes

3D Acceleration

Untested

No*

Yes (open source drivers)

Untested

External monitor works?

Untested

Yes

Yes (mirrored automatically)

Untested

Note 4

External monitor - mirrors

Untested

Yes

Yes

Untested

External monitor - extend desktop

Untested

Untested

Yes but not straight forward, see [#head-4f171ba10eb3228b1a74d61d0ff3b5373f34d5a1 Note 1] at the end of the page

Untested

Power Management

Battery detected?

Untested

Yes

Yes

Yes

Hibernates?

Untested

Yes

Yes, does work now!

Yes

Sleep

Untested

Yes

Yes, but there are problems with HAL for some people, see below

Yes

Dim monitor on battery

Untested

Yes

Yes

Yes

Blank monitor on inactivity

Untested

Yes

Yes

Yes

Lid Close

Untested

Yes

Yes

Yes

Cpu frequency scaling

Untested

Yes

Yes

Yes

Sound

Sound works?

Untested

Yes

Yes

Yes

Correct volume?

Untested

Yes

Yes

Yes

Hardware volume switch

Untested

Yes

Yes

Yes

Headphone jack

Untested

Yes

Yes

Untested

Mic jack

Untested

Yes

Yes but volume difficult

Untested

Networking

Wired NIC

Untested

Yes

Yes

Yes

Wireless NIC

Untested

No*

Yes, with bcm43xx firmware -- with latest updates (as from 2006-04-14) this is working out-of-the-box with the NetworkManager Applet. It detects properly my network, and after specifying the WEP password, I was connected. Note that this laptop has a few different options for this.

Yes, no problem with WPA network

[http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=12788 #12788]

PCMCIA NIC

Untested

Untested

Yes

Untested

Bluetooth

Untested

Yes

Seems to work, but could not synchronise my Palm (gnome-pilot problem)

Untested

Modem

Untested

No

Untested

Untested

Infrared

Untested

No

Does not work, kernel module oops after installing irda-utils

Untested

Touchpad & Mice

Touchpad

Untested

Yes

Yes

Yes

Touchpad - Doubletap = double click

Untested

Yes

Yes

Yes

Touchpad - Scroll down side

Untested

No

Yes

Yes

Touchpad - turned off while typing

Untested

Untested

Untested

Untested

External mouse - USB

Untested

Yes

Yes

Untested

External mouse - Serial

Untested

Untested

Untested

Untested

Docking Station/Port Replicator

AC through replicator

Untested

Yes

Yes

Untested

USB

Untested

Yes

Yes

Untested

Serial

Untested

Untested

Untested

Untested

Parallel

Untested

Untested

Untested

Untested

External Monitor - VGA

Untested

Yes

Untested

Untested

External Monitor - DVI

Untested

Untested

Untested

Untested

Modem

Untested

Untested

Untested

Untested

NIC

Untested

Yes

Yes

Untested

PS/2

Untested

Untested

Untested

Untested

Additional Hardware

Fingerprint reader

Untested

Untested

Untested

Untested

CD/DVD drive

Untested

Yes

Yes (read CD&DVD, write CD)

Untested

PCMCIA cards

Untested

Yes

Yes

Untested

Parallel Ports

Untested

Untested

Untested

Untested

Card reader(s)

Untested

Untested

Untested

Untested

Sony SEMC DSS SyncStation with a Sony Ericsson P910i Symbian OS Mobile Phone

Untested

Yes - Detected Only

Untested

Untested

Palm Tungsten T5

Untested

Untested

No, /dev/pilot does not exist, and after creation (symlink) does not work either!

Untested

Canon Powershot A70

Untested

Untested

Yes, works perfectly Smile :)

Untested

Nikon D80

Untested

Untested

Yes, works perfectly Smile :)

Untested

HP Scanjet 4470C

Untested

Untested

No, not supported by Sane (but not a Dell issue)

Untested

Function and other keys

Fn key

Operation

Keycode

Works?

Bug #

Ubuntu 5.04

Ubuntu 5.10

Ubuntu 6.06

Ubuntu 6.10

+ Esc

Suspend

Untested

Yes

Yes

Yes

+ F2

Wireless toggle

e008

Untested

Yes

Yes

Yes

+ F3

Battery Monitor

e007

Untested

No

Yes

Yes

[http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=13970 #13970]

+ F8

CRT/LCD

Untested

Untested

Yes when connected to external monitor

Untested

+ F10

CD Eject

e009

Untested

Untested

Yes

Yes

+ Page Up

Volume +

Untested

Untested

Yes

Yes

+ Page Down

Volume -

Untested

Untested

Yes

Yes

+ End

Mute

Untested

Untested

Yes

Yes

+ UpArrow

Brightness +

e006

Untested

Yes

Yes

Yes

+ DownArrow

Brightness -

e005

Untested

Yes

Yes

Yes

Other special keys

Key

Operation

Keycode

Works?

Bug #

Ubuntu 5.04

Ubuntu 5.10

Ubuntu 6.06

Ubuntu 6.10

Volume +

Volume +

Untested

Yes

Yes / No (see [#head-4f171ba10eb3228b1a74d61d0ff3b5373f34d5a1 Note 2])

Yes

Volume -

Volume -

Untested

Yes

Yes / No (see [#head-4f171ba10eb3228b1a74d61d0ff3b5373f34d5a1 Note 2])

Yes

Mute

Mute

Untested

Yes

Yes / No (see [#head-4f171ba10eb3228b1a74d61d0ff3b5373f34d5a1 Note 2])

Yes

  • The bugzilla URL for the battery key is out of date, please update if this is still an issue -PaulSladen

  • Battery Key information is working on the Dapper LTS - BrunoAbinader

Additional Comments

As of 2006-Jun-15

  • Sleep works only couple of times before hald-addon-storage process locks up on I/O (and so becomes zombie process, impossible to kill). After this it is not possible to suspend a computer - the suspend script is executed, but kernel is not able to stop all processes and enter S3 state. There are reports that sticking a CD in the CD drive sometimes helps in such situations but not always. As a workaround: "sudo killall hald-addon-storage" before entering first suspend (after boot up) - but this probably disables CD insert/eject notification capabilities. Another work around is to remove your CD/DVD module. Then you can sleep as many times as you like without remembering to kill anything.

PARTIAL SOLUTION FOUND: I noted there were two hald-addon-storage processes going, and there is even a Ubuntu bug on this (#58935). See: https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/hal/+bug/58935 I edited out the following lines:

<match key="storage.media_check_enabled" bool="true">

  • <append key="info.addons" type="strlist">hald-addon-storage</append>

</match>

in /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/20-storage-methods.fdi

and restarted. Then there is only one hald-addon-storage process and it doesn't seem to get into the uninterruptable sleep mode as often, so you can often suspend a number of times before it happens. (You can check using ps aux | grep hald.) Then you must reboot if you want to suspend again.

This also helps a problem I was having with the Dell D600 freezing if I removed the CDRW/DVD drive (hotswapping it) with hald-addon-storage in the uninterruptable sleep mode. I hope they put this in the Dapper release. Even though bug 58935 was listed as fixed. My machine did not have that problem fixed as of 9/23/2006, and it is totally updated. Perhaps this was only fixed in Edgy.

MORE FULL SOLUTION FOUND: Suspend will work by having the kernel module "cdrom" removed from the kernel before suspending and after waking, having it reinserted. To do this: Edit /etc/default/acpi-support. Find the MODULES section and make it look like this:

# Add modules to this list to have them removed before suspend and reloaded # on resume. An example would be MODULES="em8300 yenta_socket" # # Note that network cards and USB controllers will automatically be unloaded # unless they're listed in MODULES_WHITELIST #MODULES="" MODULES="cdrom"

  • IRDA does not work at all, after installing irda-utils you can see error messages in dmesg and strange things start happening with networking etc.
  • I observed some glitches with external display at highest resolution - but these could have been related to my projector
  • A week ago I had several lock-ups obviously related to 3D acceleration (using radeon driver), it *seems* that these have been fixed probably, but caution is recommended (esp. regarding 3D screensavers).

Strange, I have no problem with sleep or 3D acceleration lock-ups. What BIOS version do you have? On the other hand, I have the CPU frequency problem, which seems to be caused by a problem with the information given to the ACPI processor module, and so might be dependent on the BIOS version. -- ConstantineEvans

To discuss about this, I have created a forum thread (http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1144903) See you there! -- ["Huygens"]

Testing run on 2005-08-28:

  • tests are being run on Colony 3 LiveCD, this is just to make sure that everything works out of box too.
  • DRI used to work in the past, now it doesn't work anymore.
  • Wireless works with ndiswrapper and the proper ndis drivers.

Testing run on 2005-12-21:

  • tests are being run on Dapper Flight2 by ["Victor39"]
  • Hello,SamiHaahtinen.I have done a testing for flight2 on dell latitude d600.Would you please add a column on the table? so I can fill my result in it.If you are ready,mail to me please.Thank you! jianggw@bsw.net.cn

Testing run since 2006-03-15:

  • tests are being run on Dapper Flight5 by ["Huygens"], this was a clean install (apart /home) over a Kubuntu Breezy Badger. Since then, this version has been updated almost daily on internet.
  • My Dell Latitude D600: Centrino 1.6GHz, 1GB RAM, CD/DVD Combo, 40GB HD, ATI Radeon Mobility 9000
  • Extra hardware: Palm Tungsten T5, Logitech Wheel Mouse USB, Canon PowerShot A70, HP Scanjet 4470C (unsupported by Sane)

  • Partition schema: /boot ext3 -- swap -- LVM2: system (/) XFS & home (/home) JFS

  • (updates from 20060401) test with an external monitor on-going, however, if someone knows how to extend the desktop to 2 screens, I am willing to know how to do this! --> See Note1 below.

  • (updates from 20060414) the system starts to be pretty stable now. Almost no crash to report. I have got my wireless connection working straight out of the box. The only configuration required was setting up the password Wink ;) Then, I have been able to plug, review, download and manage my pictures taken from my Canon Powershot A70, without any configuration change Smile :) really great. For the scanner, no luck, it is not supported by Sane Sad :(

Testing run on 2006/09/09:

  • tests run on Ubuntu 6.06 LTS + all updates as of today by ["Huygens"].
  • Updated partition schema: /boot ext3 -- swap -- LVM2: system (/) ext3 & home (/home) JFS

  • Almost all issues have been solved by a clean install and using ext3 instead of XFS for my system partition. I have no more CPU lockups or crash (by the way, this was due to some hardware problems on my motherboard which are fixed now). The hard disk constant access has been solved now, I am not sure whether this was due to XFS... Xgl/compiz is working using the open source drivers. And I do not have issue anymore with the network (probably the same hardware problem that I had on the mother board).
  • My only issues left, the proprietary ATI driver is worth nothing with my Radeon Mobility (most 3D applications will not work, and impossible to have Xgl/compiz) and I will have to dig further to make my Palm synchronise with Evolution Sad :(

  • tried out the Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) Knot 2 (still in alpha): cannot launch it using either the normal mode (the one by default) or the safe graphics mode. I get a blank screen after a short while during the boot process. There is no activity on the CD, and the only key combination working is Ctrl+Alt+Del Sad :(

Testing run on 2007/01/21 ([Huygens]):

  • tests run after upgrading an up-to-date version of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS
  • upgrade was near perfect, the first boot did not work, but pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del did work, and after that the boot was ok
  • no other problem. The new system - Ubuntu 6.10 - is pretty neat and functionnal. All my settings are still there without a glitch.

A few comments

  • Running the latest Dapper, the DRI works for me, as does the suspend to RAM, and have not been broken in the recent past. Should I add this to the Flight 2 column? This is with a clean install except for the /home partition. Also, I have an Intel 2200 mini-pci instead of the standard Dell card, and this works as well. The wireless toggle shortcut works with this card. - ConstantineEvans

  • I did a clean flight4 install a few weeks ago, and have updated the tests. - ConstantineEvans

  • Sleep works on my D600 in Flight 5 - JohanrammEricson

  • Needs updated information for latest Dapper release - BrunoAbinader

Notes

  • Note 1: Support for big desktop (2 screen with an extended desktop) works at least in the following case: having ATI binary driver (fglrx) installed and configure, and executing the aticonfig command line (make a back-up of /etc/X11/xorg.conf before using this tool). However, I did not manage to have the laptop LCD set to 1024x768 (my max resolution) with the external screen set to a different resolution.

    • If you have your 2nd screen on the left of your laptop, execute: sudo aticonfig --dtop=horizontal,reverse
    • If you have your 2nd screen on the right of your laptop, execute: sudo aticonfig --dtop=horizontal
  • Note 2: Support of Kubuntu 6.06 for the multimedia keys seems buggy or not implemented.

    • I just installed Kubuntu 6.06 on a D600 and the special volume keys where not working, causing the Yes / No above (in the Other special keys section). Same goes for the mute key. -Freddy Martinez
  • Note 3: Autodetection of DisplaySize Failing The right number of pixels is found, but the resolution was never correct with radeon driver (Horay to current Feisty Herd2). It was always necessary to set DisplaySize in the Monitor section of xorg.conf. After setting Display size, xdpyinfo shows the correct settings:

    $ xdpyinfo | egrep 'dimens|resolu'
      dimensions:    1400x1050 pixels (287x215 millimeters)
      resolution:    124x124 dots per inch
    $ grep DisplaySi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
            DisplaySize     286 214

    On my wiki page you find some more infos why correct resolution (in dpi) is important. --- AchimBohnet

  • In reply to Note 3: it seems that you have a more recent Latitude D600 than I have. My LCD is not able to display more than 1024x768 for the screen resolution. And therefore the test was correct in my case. Perhaps we should split the answer, depending on the screen definition. In addition and just in case, could you confirm that you have a Latitude D600?

  • Note 4: Tip External Beamers Most beamer can't handle the 1400x1050 pixels in mirror mode. Turning of autoexpand in the bios has the effect when one changes the root window size with via xrandr extention (e.g. via krandrtray), that the external monitor no longer always received a 1400x1050 signal, but the one given by xrandr. --- AchimBohnet

CPU frequency issues

It appears that CPU scaling does not work with Dapper. The frequency sticks at the lowest value. See bug [https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.15/+bug/36014 #36014], but note that this now happens with the 386 kernel as well. - ConstantineEvans


CategoryLaptop