General Remarks

Critical compatibility issues, recommended or needed manual fixes regarding Ubuntu and the HP Qompaq 6715b are:

1. the WiFi drivers (Broadcom)

2. the graphics driver (ATI)

3. as well as the typical notebook functions (sleep / suspend / hibernate)(since 8.10 an AMD64 related bug (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/271070) has surfaced, see below in installation issues)

Other hardware related problems may be the fan noise and activity (though that seems to be resolved. The HP 6715b is not the most silent notebook, but since Intrepid (8.10) the noise and activity of the fan does not seem critical any longer.

Since Intrepid 8.10 the installation seems trouble free and should boot into a workable desktop.

MoritzSchroeder 2008-12-15 : Found a bug report, which indicates a potential source for the issues regarding the sleep/hibernate/suspend problem

MoritzSchroeder 2008-12-06 : Added the Intrepid install guidelines below. Sleep / Suspend / Hibernate still a problem. Edited the General Remarks area above and moved old remarks ie Broadcom "load command" in Archive. I haven't found any other reports of that problem / glitch.

RomanBrodylo 2008-28-05 : Finally got wireless (BCM4312 Rev. 02) working on Hardy/8.04 - description below. If you didn't have problems with wireless you certainly have a different wireless chip - I really can't follow you, Thomas. Desktop effects work with the fglrx driver. If someone knows how to raise battery life - please post it here! I'm reorganizing this page a little - older stuff to the bottom.

ThomasZehetbauer: 2008-05-05 - I did a review of this Laptop with Ubuntu Hardy. The ATI graphics card is the major problem because the current fglrx driver does not compile with the 2.6.25 kernel and the card does not even support 2D acceleration (video playback) without it. Random lockups went away after using a SMP kernel and disabling AIGLX. WLAN works fine with b43 module. Full results at http://www.hostmaster.org/6715b.html

Gerald Senarclens de Grancy: 2008-04-21 - added a third column to the Hardware Information Table to include Hardy. Will add my results step by step as soon as I have tested them thoroughly.

MartinWimmer: 2008-04-16 - Started working with it since the Hardy Beta. Installation with Alternate CD amd64 worked without problems (Live CD seemed to work too). Compiz works out of the box. Problems: - Message on Bootup: MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC. I guess that's connected to a wrong entry in the DSDT. Didn't have time to mess with the DSDT yet - Wireless: Appeared in restricted driver manager, so I tried to install it. Didn't work, and now doesn't appear in restricted driver manager any more. Tried to uninstall b43-fwcutter, and reinstall it, didn't help. Will try to get Wireless to work as soon as Hardy is final. - Noisy system fans: The system fans already start up very noisy at 40°C, which happens after 5 seconds or so, even if I do nothing on the PC. This gets very annoying after some time, and I guess it's also bad for the battery time. - After reboot, when plugged in, the backlight is always at 100%. What I didn't try: Standby, Hibernate, External Monitor, pcmcia, Cardreader, fingerprint If somebody from the Ubuntu Laptop developers is interested to optimize Ubuntu for this Notebook, I'll happily help with some Testing. My System configuration: AMD Turion X2 TL-60, 2GB RAM, WSXGA+

ThomHurks: I tried loading the live cd with the cdimage from February 9, 2008. Ubuntu did not get past the "Executing local boot scripts" part of loading. I also tried all the extra options mentioned here. It seems that, despite the new kernel, Hardy is still broken for the 6715b. Update - 2008-03-10: The laptop works fine now. Without any extra options it boots right into the Live CD and it installs flawlessly. CompizFusion works out-of-the-box with fglrx enabled. Now the wireless. The whole b43-fwcutter story is way too complicated, for each user it works there are 100 it doesn't work for. I recommend good old ndiswrapper. [Tested with 64-bit Live-CD Hardy from March 08]

Update - 2008-01-06: Wasn't content with "almost everything working except compiz" and tried hardy alpha2 - didn't work. You've been warned. I also made an attempt with ENVY - again no success. No more experiments for me.

RomanBrodylo - 2008-01-02 - My experience with this notebook has been a different one - I cannot support the impression given below. There are quirks and rough edges but not nearly as devastating as depicted below. I'll just pass on what works (and what doesn't), and how it worked for me.

nilgiri - 2007-12-17 - I have had so much trouble with this machine, trying both Feisty and Gutsy, that I have contacted HP to trade it in for one that has a better reputation on the wiki and forums. I went ahead with this purchase based on this wiki page only to find that the machine suffers from random lockups of the USB and Bluetooth when using them, particularly when USB 2.0 devices were in use and even more so when a USB 2.0 hub was in use. These bus locks often lead to the entire machine freezing with a black screen, an event that may have occurred a few times without out being related to USB or Bluetooth. I have not even bothered to try and get the Broadcom 802.11a/g/n card to work. I also has some bizarre issues displaying the mouse cursor on a second monitor. My only hope is that HP will allow me to exchange this. Save yourself the headache and stay away from this machine unless some one updates this page with better news from later Ubuntu versions.

System Info

HP Compaq 6715b

• Processor / RAM: AMD Turion TL60 2GHz, 2GB & AMD Turion TL62 2,1GHz, 4GB

• Screen / Graphics: 15,4 WSXGA+ , VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RS690M [Radeon X1200 Series]
• Wireless: BCM4312 802.11a/b/g (rev 02)

• Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5787M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)

Current Issues

1. (open) Sleep / Suspend / Hibernate problem: when woken up, laptop is frozen.

2. Sleep / Suspend / Hibernate freezes maybe related to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/271070 (Aperture beyond 4GB) see below

3. (fixed see workarounds for "old" versions, with Intrepid no critical issue anylonger. Other reports?) Wireless broken. Workaround available with "compat-wireless" and NDISwrapper.

4. (new updates?) Battery life. Maybe someone can help with power management - The machine just reports ~2 (old: 2,5) hours of battery power; It was sold claiming 4,5! I am using a Bluetooth mouse. But can that use so much power? Any ideas?

Intrepid (8.10) Install

The normal desktop edition http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download for 64bit works fine. Installation was fast and went without any hickups. Wireless broadcom was recognised and automatically installed using the free component (NDIS wrapper). Screen worked in the high resolution.

Fixes & improvements

Screen display quality

Display quality was much improved by using the ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver. Select the menu <System - Administration - Hardware Drivers>, select the driver and activate the ATI driver.

WiFi robustness and re-connect

Occasional hangups of the WiFi device and trouble re-connecting to the hotspot disappeared as well using the proprietary Broadcom STA wireless driver. Select the menu <System - Administration - Hardware Drivers>, select the driver and activate the Broadcom STA driver.

The AMD64 related bug in 8.10 - "Aperture beyond 4GB" / IOMMU message when booting ubuntu

[0.004000]Aperture beyond 4GB. Ignoring
[0.004000]Your BIOS doesn't leave a aperture memory hole.
[0.004000]Please enable the IOMMU option in the BIOS setup.
[0.004000]This costs you 64MB of RAM

The issue is related to the memory management in the 64bit version and AMD processors. The messages when booting indicate a potential BIOS configuration improvement. The installed BIOS on the HP6715b does not (yet?) have a IOMMU setting option. AMD64 installations seem to be widely affected, though the HP Compaq 6715b problem with that issue seems only to appear when more than 3GB RAM are installed.

Tthis bug may cause the reported freezes with 8.10 on the HP6715b after waking up from suspend/hibernate.

If your installation seems not to suffer from any problems, and you also get this message, it might be best to simply ignore it.

Remedies until the kernel related bug is fixed are workarounds: remove the additional memory (seems to work

Untested: some suggest editing the boot (with F6 when booting) script with statements such as mem=4gb or pci=nomsi. Untested, do at your own risk.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/271070 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=974175&page=2 http://lists.debian.org/debian-laptop/2008/10/msg00001.html http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.swsusp.general/7777

Video flickering or flashing

Regardless of the video format (including encrypted movie DVDs) and the software (Movie Player, VLC...) , running a video caused the video display window to flicker or flash constantly. The solution was found here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=754712 (thanks to jameskeagie). It involves adding three lines in the device section of the xorg.conf file.

It is highly recommended to follow the instructions to first make a backup of the file and to write down / print the instructions to recover the original file in case of failure!

Here are the copied instructions from the forum entry:

First make a copy of the xorg.conf - I like using the days date (YYMMDD) where shown

Code:

sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup<date>

Next we open the xorg.conf for editing.

Code:

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

After which I added the following to the Device section under the driver

Code:

Section "Device"
        ........
        Option      "VideoOverlay" "off"
        Option      "OpenGLOverlay" "on"
        Option      "TexturedVideo" "off"
        .........
EndSection

Save the file and Reboot (sudo reboot) and hope it works!

If this change breaks your X - boot into the recover command line from Grub (Esc then second choice while booting) and do the following

Code:

sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup<date> /etc/X11/xorg.conf

If you can't remember the backup name, or want to switch to a different xorg.conf do a directory listing which will list all the files.

Code:

cd /etc/X11/
dir

Then reboot and it will be back to your old configuration.

Suspend / hibernate problems

Waking up the screen is fine until the system is in suspend or hibernate mode. The system will wake up but is frozen up. So far only restarting using the hardware button worked.

<br>

Hardy (8.04) Install

The normal desktop live CD for AMD64 works fine. My wireless solution is based on a clean install and installation of all updates.

BCM4312 rev. 02 Wireless Fix

Seems the people at http://linuxwireless.org have a "stack" of modules for wireless that can be used without recompiling whatever kernel you are using (which I hadn't managed either). So it's kind of simple for us few who are not uber-geeks.

Get "compat-wireless".

sudo wget http://linuxwireless.org/download/compat-wireless-2.6/compat-wireless-2.6.tar.bz2

Unpack it somewhere sensible.

cd /usr/src/
sudo cp /home/your-id/your-download-folder/compat-wireless-2.6.tar.bz2 .
sudo tar jxvf compat-wireless-2.6.tar.bz2
cd compat-wireless-2008-05-07/ 

Build it.

sudo make
sudo make install
sudo make load

Install

sudo modprobe -r ssb
sudo modprobe b43

Now wireless is recognized. Go to System/Administration/Hardware Drivers and activate the "Broadcom B43 wireless driver".

It seems the change disappears after reboot - you have to redo the modprobe commands. Or install them this way:

sudo gedit /etc/rc.local
-> und darinnen einbauen:
     modprobe -r ssb
     modprobe b43

Problems after update

After the last update I lost wireless. All I had to do was repeat make install, make load, the modprobes and reactivate the B43 Driver.

Upgrading from Gutsy to Hardy

Update for Hardy Herron

Gerald Senarclens de Grancy: I've experienced problems with wireless after upgrading to Hardy. However, following Step 1 of the descriptions at http://www.ubuntu1501.com/2008/04/ndiswrapper-in-hardy-heron.html resolved the problem. However, I just used the

modprobe -r ssb
modprobe -r ndiswrapper
modprobe ndiswrapper

lines of the manual in my file.

Hardware details

Old stuff / Archive

General Remarks ie broadcom under Gutsy

JensJanssen 2008-07-27 (changed 2008-08-05): Using the command

sudo make load

makes problems on my machine. This also results in loading (in my case needless) b43legacy module. There is also a problem when loading the ssb module which is needed by the b43 module. These problems needs closer investigation.

Instead using

sudo modprobe b43

leads to a correct start of the compat-wireless driver. No change of the rc.local needed. b43 module loads automatically during startup. Using the instructions above dmesg isn't showing errors due to b43 module anymore.

Compat-wireless-2.6 also needs the 4.150.10.5 firmware which can be easily downloaded here including installation instructions: http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#devicefirmware

RomanBrodylo 2008-06-17 : The last update (kernel + modules?) messed wireless up again - but it's easy to recover, if you have a wired connection: Download the newest compat-wireless, make, make install, make load, and reactivate the hardware driver.

On http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Download download this link

http://wireless.kernel.org/download/compat-wireless-2.6/compat-wireless-2.6.tar.bz2

copy it to /usr/src, go there, untar, and do the makes

cd /usr/src
sudo cp /home/yourname/Desktop/compat-wireless-2.6.tar.bz2 .
sudo tar jxvf compat-wireless-2.6.tar.bz
sudo make
sudo make install
sudo make load

Go to System/Administration/Hardware Drivers and activate the "Broadcom B43 wireless driver".

Succesfull Installation of 7.10 (Gutsy) despite existing Problems

Booting with the Installation CD

The normal desktop live CD will not work. You can install with the "Alternate" CD. A lot of people suggest adding options (with the F6 key) before booting I added (after 2 backspaces to remove the two dashes at the end of the command):

noapic nolapic  

I dont know what they do; seems they at least didn't harm.

Maybe someone can explain those parms together with all the other suggestions:  irqpoll pci=noacpi noapic nolapic acpi=off  Here is a listof all boot options: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootOptions

I then followed the first part of a relatively short and easy guide from "debian hk". Thank you folks.

• http://www.debian.org.hk/blog-entry/ubuntu-7-04-installation-hp-compaq-6515b-notebook-installation-amd-turion-tm-64-mk-38

Then another well written and easy to follow guide to get the wireless driver working - with the windows driver in ndiswrapper. Here again, thank you a lot.

• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx/Feisty_No-Fluff

Getting over the hanging install

Install a working graphics driver

Switch to a free console (Ctrl+Alt+F1) and enter the following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx
sudo depmod -a
sudo aticonfig --initial

Reboot (Ctrl+Alt+Del). Don't forget to remove the CD.

The graphical user interface should be working - Welcome to Ubuntu 7.10!

Get wireless working

Open a terminal for the following commands (Applications/Accessories/Terminal).

Install NDISWrapper and Blacklist Native Driver

echo 'blacklist bcm43xx' | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils-1.9
mkdir ~/bcm43xx; cd ~/bcm43xx

Download and Extract Drivers

sudo apt-get install cabextract
wget ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp34001-34500/sp34152.exe
cabextract sp34152.exe

Configure NDISWrapper (and WPA Supplicant)

sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
ndiswrapper -l
sudo depmod -a
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
sudo cp /etc/network/interfaces /etc/network/interfaces.orig
echo -e 'auto lo\niface lo inet loopback\n' | sudo tee /etc/network/interfaces
sudo ndiswrapper -m
echo 'ndiswrapper' | sudo tee -a /etc/modules
echo 'ENABLED=0' | sudo tee -a /etc/default/wpasupplicant

Now, REBOOT. Don't forget to remove the CD. You can now have wireless connections.

Older Remarks

Current Issues

Issues with ubuntu feisty:

• xorg-driver-ati does not support graphics chipset (X1250)
• WLAN: bcm43xx module doesn't work (some IRQ_XFER error), ndiswrapper works but no WPA

Issues with ubuntu gutsy

• xorg-driver-ati does not support graphics chipset (X1250)
• WLAN: bcm43xx module doesn't work (some IRQ_XFER error), ndiswrapper works (ndiswrapper-utils)
• Sleep doesn't work (black screen).
• Frequent undebugged lock-up (2-4 times a day)

Graphics Chipset Problem Resolution

• information source: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=488332

When you boot the CD and the xserver fails and display the message you select no. then in the console you type in this order:

• sudo -s
• killall gdm
• apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx
• depmod -a
• aticonfig --initial
• gdm start

After that the xserver loads and you can install ubuntu.

• When you install Ubuntu doesn´t load the restricted drivers so the same problems show up, but you can do the same and it works.
• If you want this device to work wully, then install the proprietary driver that ubuntu notifies you of on startup.

CategoryLaptop