I ordered and just received today a new Dell Inspiron 640m laptop (it also goes by the name E1405).
Anyone tried installing CentOS on this laptop? It's the wireless drivers I'm most concerned about; it's got the Dell 1390 internal wireless card (not the Intel wireless).
Anyone have some feedback, on the wireless or any other issues, on running CentOS on this laptop?
Thanks
Paul
On 11/1/06, techlists@comcast.net techlists@comcast.net wrote:
I ordered and just received today a new Dell Inspiron 640m laptop (it also goes by the name E1405).
Anyone tried installing CentOS on this laptop? It's the wireless drivers I'm most concerned about; it's got the Dell 1390 internal wireless card (not the Intel wireless).
Sorry, I can't help with CentOS, or the Dell wireless, but I have openSUSE running really well on this laptop, so there should be a solution to most problems. I couldn't get the resolution, sound, or wireless working under Fedora, but openSUSE picked them up without any dramas (just had to install the ipw3945 package).
The Kernel planned for openSUSE 10.2 will support the card reader, (I think you need at least 2.6.17), so if you want this feature, then bear in mind you'll need a linux with a fairly frequent release cycle.
The modem will require a pay for linuxant driver to get full speed.
I haven't got s2ram working. I think it has something to do with the SATA hard drive...
Anyone have some feedback, on the wireless or any other issues, on running CentOS on this laptop?
Sorry that isn't more CentOS specific.
My results were:
Kubuntu 6.06 LTS: hung during setup, couldn't even start the live DVD Fedora Core 5: no wireless, resolution not supported, no audio, wouldn't come back to life if I closed the screen and opened it again. openSUSE 10.1: almost everything working.
Ben
Ben wrote:
I haven't got s2ram working. I think it has something to do with the SATA hard drive...
Hmmm... I'm having suspend-to-ram problems with Linux in general (2.4.x and 2.6.x kernels) for a long time on my old laptop. In my case it sound like the (IDE) hard drive does not spin up after return from suspend (actually, it sounds like the drive spins up, and than immediately spins down). Of course without hard drive working, the things get frozen quite fast (as soon as a page or two needs to be fetched from the drive). Does your problem sounds something like that too?
Under Windows, all worked fine. Interesting thing is that under Windows I can hear the drive spin up, than spin down, and than spin up again. I'm just speculating, but it might be that first spin up/down is controlled by BIOS, and that Windows spins up the drive again. While the Linux (wrongly) expects that the BIOS spun up the drive.
One thing that I attempted was to rebuild centosplus kernel with BIOS-independent suspend support enabled (or at least I hope that was what the option was). But it failed to compile.
Hi,
Just pitching in a "me too" and possible work around.
On Tue, 2006-10-31 at 22:43 -0600, Aleksandar Milivojevic wrote:
Ben wrote:
I haven't got s2ram working. I think it has something to do with the SATA hard drive...
Yup, got that too.
Hmmm... I'm having suspend-to-ram problems with Linux in general (2.4.x and 2.6.x kernels) for a long time on my old laptop. In my case it sound like the (IDE) hard drive does not spin up after return from suspend (actually, it sounds like the drive spins up, and than immediately spins down). Of course without hard drive working, the things get frozen quite fast (as soon as a page or two needs to be fetched from the drive). Does your problem sounds something like that too?
Yes, suspend to ram works fine. Always has iirc. But resume never worked out of the box. On resume the drive led flickers a bit and that's the end of it. Black screen too. This is an Acer laptop by the way.
Under Windows, all worked fine. Interesting thing is that under Windows I can hear the drive spin up, than spin down, and than spin up again. I'm just speculating, but it might be that first spin up/down is controlled by BIOS, and that Windows spins up the drive again. While the Linux (wrongly) expects that the BIOS spun up the drive.
In my limited understanding of this issue I think that Windows just pokes the BIOS to poke/awake the drive such that the normal part of resume that expects the drive to be there actually finds a drive that's alive and responsive.
The workaround on my laptop is to boot with "noapic irqpoll". Resume works if I specify that. Last time I tried it I got a message in /var/log/messages that this is going to kill performance and the little battery disappeared from my Gnome taskbar. Not a perfect solution but maybe it works for you.
One thing that I attempted was to rebuild centosplus kernel with BIOS-independent suspend support enabled (or at least I hope that was what the option was). But it failed to compile.
I tried suspend2 kernels on FC a few months ago and that did not work either.
Regards, Patrick
Quoting Patrick centos-list@puzzled.xs4all.nl:
The workaround on my laptop is to boot with "noapic irqpoll". Resume works if I specify that. Last time I tried it I got a message in /var/log/messages that this is going to kill performance and the little battery disappeared from my Gnome taskbar. Not a perfect solution but maybe it works for you.
Well, my laptop is too old for apic, so there's no apic to disable. It has apm though. I'll try irqpoll option. I've already tried noapm, which didn't help, but who knows maybe in combination with irqpoll. What does irqpoll do exactly?
On Wed, 2006-11-01 at 08:40 -0600, Aleksandar Milivojevic wrote:
Quoting Patrick centos-list@puzzled.xs4all.nl:
The workaround on my laptop is to boot with "noapic irqpoll". Resume works if I specify that. Last time I tried it I got a message in /var/log/messages that this is going to kill performance and the little battery disappeared from my Gnome taskbar. Not a perfect solution but maybe it works for you.
Well, my laptop is too old for apic, so there's no apic to disable. It has apm though. I'll try irqpoll option. I've already tried noapm, which didn't help, but who knows maybe in combination with irqpoll. What does irqpoll do exactly?
The kernel docs say this: The "irqpoll" boot parameter reduces driver initialization failures
Regards, Patrick
On Tue, 31 Oct 2006 at 10:29pm, techlists@comcast.net wrote
I ordered and just received today a new Dell Inspiron 640m laptop (it also goes by the name E1405).
Anyone tried installing CentOS on this laptop? It's the wireless drivers I'm most concerned about; it's got the Dell 1390 internal wireless card (not the Intel wireless).
Anyone have some feedback, on the wireless or any other issues, on running CentOS on this laptop?
I've got a Thinkpad Z61t, which is somewhat similar to yours (although I do have the Intel wireless). To be honest, I didn't even try CentOS on it, figuring the hardware was too new. I initially installed FC5, which mostly worked, except for standby mode (it'd go to sleep, but not wake up) and some video issues (vesa worked, i810 required an out-of-band upgrade but even then GL still crashed). Over the weekend I upgraded to FC6, which is actually quite nice. The video works very well now, and standby and resume works (except that I can't quite get wireless working after a resume, but I'm not sure if that's due to lack of trying and/or the complication that I'm also using WPA2).
I'm fairly certain that you'll need xorg-7.1 to get video working natively (rather than via vesa), which means FC6 or wait for CentOS5. And to have a hope of standby working I'm pretty sure (bot not positive -- did the AHCI suspend patches go into 2.6.18?) you need the hard drive in "compatibility" mode rather than AHCI.
As for your wireless, a little bit of googling seems to indicate that bcm43xx has issues with it, and ndiswrapper is the way to go.
Good luck.
Quoting Joshua Baker-LePain jlb17@duke.edu:
well now, and standby and resume works (except that I can't quite get wireless working after a resume
You mean resume from standby (apm -S) or suspend (apm -s)?
Have you tried doing "ifdown eth1; ifup eth1" (or whatever your wireless interface is) after resume? I found it brings up wireless back on my laptop after resume from standby.
On Wed, 1 Nov 2006 at 8:36am, Aleksandar Milivojevic wrote
Quoting Joshua Baker-LePain jlb17@duke.edu:
well now, and standby and resume works (except that I can't quite get wireless working after a resume
You mean resume from standby (apm -S) or suspend (apm -s)?
'pm-suspend' (remember -- this is FC6).
Have you tried doing "ifdown eth1; ifup eth1" (or whatever your wireless interface is) after resume? I found it brings up wireless back on my laptop after resume from standby.
Actually, given it's ipw3945, I bring down the interface, stop the usespace daemon and wpa_supplicant, and remove the module. I probably just am not bringing everything up the right way when I resume -- I haven't really tried too hard yet.
Joshua,
How did you get the ipw3945 wireless card to work? i have tried and could not get it to work for me. I tried Dags and that gave me an error for dependency problem.
thanks
--- Joshua Baker-LePain jlb17@duke.edu wrote:
On Wed, 1 Nov 2006 at 8:36am, Aleksandar Milivojevic wrote
Quoting Joshua Baker-LePain jlb17@duke.edu:
well now, and standby and resume works (except
that I can't quite get
wireless working after a resume
You mean resume from standby (apm -S) or suspend
(apm -s)?
'pm-suspend' (remember -- this is FC6).
Have you tried doing "ifdown eth1; ifup eth1" (or
whatever your wireless
interface is) after resume? I found it brings up
wireless back on my laptop
after resume from standby.
Actually, given it's ipw3945, I bring down the interface, stop the usespace daemon and wpa_supplicant, and remove the module. I probably just am not bringing everything up the right way when I resume -- I haven't really tried too hard yet.
-- Joshua Baker-LePain Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Steven
"On the side of the software box, in the 'System Requirements' section, it said 'Requires Windows or better'. So I installed Linux."
Steven Vishoot wrote:
Joshua,
How did you get the ipw3945 wireless card to work? i have tried and could not get it to work for me. I tried Dags and that gave me an error for dependency problem.
thanks
--- Joshua Baker-LePain jlb17@duke.edu wrote:
On Wed, 1 Nov 2006 at 8:36am, Aleksandar Milivojevic wrote
Quoting Joshua Baker-LePain jlb17@duke.edu:
well now, and standby and resume works (except
that I can't quite get
wireless working after a resume
You mean resume from standby (apm -S) or suspend
(apm -s)?
'pm-suspend' (remember -- this is FC6).
Have you tried doing "ifdown eth1; ifup eth1" (or
whatever your wireless
interface is) after resume? I found it brings up
wireless back on my laptop
after resume from standby.
Actually, given it's ipw3945, I bring down the interface, stop the usespace daemon and wpa_supplicant, and remove the module. I probably just am not bringing everything up the right way when I resume -- I haven't really tried too hard yet.
-- Joshua Baker-LePain Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Steven
"On the side of the software box, in the 'System Requirements' section, it said 'Requires Windows or better'. So I installed Linux." _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Most messengers will try either http or https if the reserved port fails. Watching AIM run thru all the various ports it tries is quite the list.
Brian
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Aleksandar Milivojevic -
Ben -
Brian -
Joshua Baker-LePain -
Patrick -
Steven Vishoot -
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