Dell Inspiron 1300 and Linux (Fedora Core 6)

Click here for Fedora Core 5 page

lester at an email address with an hep and a phy and a cam and an ac and an uk all separated by dots

touch ~/.dontrunbeagle

Fresh Fedora Core 6 install, asking for everything except for: reduced number of servers, and no virtualisation. This time, xen kernel not installed (good) and i686 kernel correctly chosen instead of i586 one, as evidenced by:

[lester@localhost ~]$ yum -d0 list kernel
Installed Packages
kernel.i686                              2.6.18-1.2798.fc6      installed       
Available Packages
kernel.i586                              2.6.18-1.2798.fc6      core

So no need to pay attention to this: Need to replace the i586 kernel that gets installed by anaconda (incorrectly) with the i686 one using
yumdownloader kernel-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6.i686 rpm -Uvh --replacefiles --replacepkgs kernel-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6.i686.rpm
using the instructions on http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bugs/FC6Common.

I had problems with the ZEROCONF route (169.254.0.0) at Peterhouse. To get rid of it add the line

NOZEROCONF=yes

to /etc/sysconfig/network (or if you only want to disable it on a specific interface, then to /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-BLAH).

I chose to replace the supplied dell wireless card with an Intel Pro Wireless 2200 BG mini PCI card (about 25 pounds). With this card installed (IPW2200 for short) Knoppix 4.0.2 was able to detect and use the wireless without input from me.

With FC6 you have to supply the IPW2200 firmware which FC6 does not come with by default. Firmware was installed following the good instructions on http://www.ces.clemson.edu/linux/fc2-ipw2200.shtml cached locally here which amount in short to:

su
rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-6.rpm
yum install ipw2200-firmware

Then after ...

/sbin/rmmod ipw2200
/sbin/modprobe ipw2200
/etc/rc.d/init.d/network restart

... I could use the wireless from linux with the FC6 ipw2200 module driving the card. Or you can play with system-config-network to set up /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-BLAH.

Sound card was detected by fc6 fine, and sound works without problem.

Ignoring the graphics issues discussed later, altogether the following was done:


    1  yum -d0 list kernel
    2  rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-6.rpm
    3  echo Enable rpm caching in yum:
    4  vi /etc/yum.conf 
    5  yum install ipw2200-firmware
    6  /sbin/rmmod ipw2200
    7  /sbin/modprobe ipw2200
    8  /etc/rc.d/init.d/network restart
    9  yum install nautilus-open-terminal
   10  echo "System->Preferences->Destop Effects->Enable"
XXXXX Then the following were all variously aborted before completion XXXXXX
   11  pup
   12  yum -y update
   13  yum -y update
   14  kill %1
   15  jobs
   16  kill -9 %1
   17  ls /var/run/yum.pid 
   18  cat /var/run/yum.pid 
   19  kill 4421
XXXXX Until this point where we had made up our mind properly
   20  echo Disable livna for the moment
   21  vi /etc/yum.repos.d/livna.repo 
   22  yum -y update
   23  history > moo

Second the screen appeared fuzzy as the graphics card was writing to the screen at the wrong resolution (1024x760) for the 1280x800 TFT display. (NB there were no black bands or clipping, simply the wrong resolution was being stretched to fill the screen).

The solution was that written in http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/materiel/portable/inspiron_1300 which amounts to using the "915resolution" package. Overall you do something like:

wget http://www.geocities.com/stomljen/915resolution-0.5.2.tar.gz
tar -xzvf 915resolution-0.5.2.tar.gz
cd 915resolution-0.5.2
make
su
make install
/usr/sbin/915resolution -l

I also have 915resolution-0.5.2.tar.gz cached locally. Then you identify a mode you don't want (look in the output of the last command) and overwriting it with one referring to the ACTUAL screen resolution -- i.e, 1280 800 16 ... and finally you put a script to do the "setting" at boot time prior to the start of the X server. For FC5 I chose to create a file "resolution" which I saved in /etc/rc.d/init.d/resolution and which I ask

system-config-services

to run in run-level-5. Here's a summary taken from http://www.geocities.com/stomljen/readme.html :

Setting
-------

    1.  Switch to root
       # su

    2. Display the available resolutions :

        # 915resolution -l
        Intel 915GM VBIOS Hack : version 0.2

        Chipset: 915GM

        Mode 30 : 640x480, 8 bits/pixel
        Mode 32 : 800x600, 8 bits/pixel
        Mode 34 : 1024x768, 8 bits/pixel
        Mode 38 : 1280x1024, 8 bits/pixel
        Mode 3a : 1600x1200, 8 bits/pixel
        Mode 3c : 1920x1440, 8 bits/pixel
        Mode 41 : 640x480, 16 bits/pixel
        Mode 43 : 800x600, 16 bits/pixel
        Mode 45 : 1024x768, 16 bits/pixel
        Mode 49 : 1280x1024, 16 bits/pixel
        Mode 4b : 1600x1200, 16 bits/pixel
        Mode 4d : 1920x1440, 16 bits/pixel
        Mode 50 : 640x480, 32 bits/pixel
        Mode 52 : 800x600, 32 bits/pixel
        Mode 54 : 1024x768, 32 bits/pixel
        Mode 58 : 1280x1024, 32 bits/pixel
        Mode 5a : 1600x1200, 32 bits/pixel
        Mode 5c : 1920x1440, 32 bits/pixel
        Mode 60 : 1280x770, 8 bits/pixel
        Mode 61 : 1280x770, 16 bits/pixel
        Mode 62 : 1280x770, 32 bits/pixel
        Mode 63 : 512x771, 8 bits/pixel
        Mode 64 : 512x771, 16 bits/pixel
        Mode 65 : 512x771, 32 bits/pixel

    3. I personnaly decided to overwrite the 1280x1024 resolution
       because I don't use it :

       > 915resolution 38 1280 800

    4. Now the bios reports a 1280x800 resolution :

        # 915resolution -l
        Intel 915GM VBIOS Hack : version 0.1

        Chipset: 915GM

        Mode 30 : 640x480, 8 bits/pixel
        Mode 32 : 800x600, 8 bits/pixel
        Mode 34 : 1024x768, 8 bits/pixel
        Mode 38 : 1280x800, 8 bits/pixel
        Mode 3a : 1600x1200, 8 bits/pixel
        Mode 3c : 1920x1440, 8 bits/pixel
        Mode 41 : 640x480, 16 bits/pixel
        Mode 43 : 800x600, 16 bits/pixel
        Mode 45 : 1024x768, 16 bits/pixel
        Mode 49 : 1280x800, 16 bits/pixel
        Mode 4b : 1600x1200, 16 bits/pixel
        Mode 4d : 1920x1440, 16 bits/pixel
        Mode 50 : 640x480, 32 bits/pixel
        Mode 52 : 800x600, 32 bits/pixel
        Mode 54 : 1024x768, 32 bits/pixel
        Mode 58 : 1280x800, 32 bits/pixel
        Mode 5a : 1600x1200, 32 bits/pixel
        Mode 5c : 1920x1440, 32 bits/pixel
        Mode 60 : 1280x770, 8 bits/pixel
        Mode 61 : 1280x770, 16 bits/pixel
        Mode 62 : 1280x770, 32 bits/pixel
        Mode 63 : 512x771, 8 bits/pixel
        Mode 64 : 512x771, 16 bits/pixel
        Mode 65 : 512x771, 32 bits/pixel

    5.  On some machines 24 bits per pixel is the desired resolution.  
        An alternate invocation to achieve this would be:

       # 915resolution 38 1280 800 24

    6. My xorg.conf has the following screen definition :

       Section "Screen"
         Identifier  "Screen 1"
         Device      "device"
         Monitor     "LCD"
         DefaultDepth 16

         Subsection "Display"
           Depth       16
           Modes       "1280x800"
         EndSubsection
       EndSection

    7. 915resolution must run before the X server is started.  So I don't need to
         do this every time I put it in my startup scripts.  I'm running SUSE 9.2,
         so I put the definition in /etc/init.d/boot.local:

       #! /bin/sh
       #
       # Copyright (c) 2002 SuSE Linux AG Nuernberg, Germany.  All rights reserved.
       #
       # Author: Werner Fink , 1996
       #         Burchard Steinbild, 1996
       #
       # /etc/init.d/boot.local
       #
       # script with local commands to be executed from init on system startup
       #
       # Here you should add things, that should happen directly after booting
       # before we're going to the first run level.
       #

       /usr/bin/915resolution 38 1280 800        
       
     8.  Start up the X server
       $ startx

You need to do a similar thing if you want to recover from hibernates, for example create a file like /etc/pm/hooks/15resolution. Note -- the link on the left used to point (pre 24th April 2006) to a file called "25resolution" placing this hook AFTER 20video. After help from Matthew Garrett, this file was moved to 15resolution (before 20video) and recovery from suspend has become (so it is beginning to appear) almost as reliable as recovery from hibernate.

Oh and one other thing relating to this which I had to pay attention to under FC5 but which seems not to have been a problem under FC6 though I leave the note here for reference: Under many situations, the screen may blank after an acpid event like a lid-close. That's fine. But after such events (at least in FC5), the screen fails to come on again. The problem can be solved by following the suggestion in /etc/acpi/events/video.conf:

# Configuration to turn on DPMS again on video activity, needed for some
# laptops. Disabled by default, uncomment if your laptop display stays blank
# after you close and open the lid.

event=video.*
action=/usr/sbin/vbetool dpms on

which again uses the excellent vbetool.

Links

Find other reports here and also here.

PS

Fedora Core : Howto add "Open Terminal" to your right click menu Posted by Tim Lauridsen on 2006/3/30 11:40:46 (28 reads) In Fedora Core 5 the "Open Terminal" is no longer availible when right clicking on the desktop. But it can be solved, just install the nautilus-open-terminal package and restart gnome and you now has a "Open Terminal" in your desktop right click menu. You will also have a "Open in Terminal" when you right click on a folder. Installation (yum as root):

yum install nautilus-open-terminal

Speaker beeps very annoying in FC6

PC speaker is enabled by default. This is not a bug but if you dont like this. There are two ways to circumvent the noise:

Reduce its volume to a acceptable level or completely mute the PC speaker in alsamixer with the setting for "PC Speak".
As root user disable the PC speaker system wide by runing the following command in a console.
- ```
    modprobe -r pcspkr ; echo "install pcspkr :" >>/etc/modprobe.conf
    
```

Also annoying (actually this was for FC5 not FC6 - didn't bother to do this under FC6) is the need to do

cd /etc/cron.daily
mv beagle-crawl-system.cron ../cron.monthly/beagle-crawl-system-was-daily.cron
mv mlocate.cron ../cron.monthly/mlocate-was-daily.cron
mv prelink ../cron.monthly/prelink-was-daily
mv makewhatis.cron ../cron.monthly/makewhatis-was-daily.cron
mv tetex.cron ../cron.monthly/tetex-was-daily.cron
cd /etc/cron.weekly
mv makewhatis.cron ../cron.monthly/makewhatis-was-weekly.cron
cd /etc/yum.repos.d ; wget http://macromedia.rediris.es/macromedia-i386.repo ; yum install flash-plugin

Here is another useful feature from http://www.city-fan.org/tips/YumRepoFromImages:

Create a Yum Repository from ISO Images

This page describes how to create a local yum repository from ISO images stored on the local hard disk. This repository can then be used for the [base] repository in your yum configuration, making package installation quick and easy.

Fedora Core 3, Fedora Core 4, Fedora Core 6

Create a yum repository from your DVD

# mkdir -p /path/to/your/repo/dvd 

# chcon -t mnt_t /path/to/your/repo/dvd
# mount -r -o loop /path/to/FC-6-i386-DVD.iso /path/to/your/repo/dvd
# cd /path/to/your/repo
# rpm -Uvh dvd/Fedora/RPMS/createrepo*
# createrepo .

Ensure that the DVD ISO image is mounted at every reboot
- edit /etc/fstab and add new line:
```
/path/to/FC-6-i386-DVD.iso /path/to/your/repo/dvd iso9660 ro,loop 0 0 
```
Configure yum to use your new repository
- edit /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo or /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-core.repo, whichever one is present
- comment out any line starting with baseurl or mirrorlist
- add a new line:
```
baseurl=file:///path/to/your/repo 
```

You should then be able to use your local repository to install new packages etc.

Notes for windows

vi WINDOWS/system32/drivers/etc/hosts

Attaching to LaCie network SMB disk

As root

mount -t cifs //192.168.11.6/share /mnt/lacie/share -ouser=THEUSERSNAME

prompted for password and connected to the share called "share". Later I changed the share's name to "lester". While experimenting with lines like the following in /etc/fstab:

//192.168.11.6/lester   /mnt/lacie/lester       cifs    user,user=lester,rw    0 0

I was surprised that it is mandatory that the only user (other than root) who can then mount is the user who OWNS /mnt/lacie/lester. Being a user who has rwx permissions for /mnt/lacie/lester is insufficient and leads to a//192.168.11.6/lester /mnt/lacie/lester cifs user,user=lester,rw 0 0 leading message about an suid bit not being set - when it in fact is. The user-lester line is for the SMB share. the //192.168.11.6/MOO line is is the IP of the SMB server followed by the share name. The name of my share is now lester like my username.

Touchpad scroll issues It annoys me when horizontal scroll is treated as 'back' and 'forward'. One option is to disable horizontal scroll (by adding in xorg.conf input section: Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0"). Another options is to configure Firefox so that it doesn't misinterpret the horizontal scroll. In firefox type in the address about:config. Double-click the line mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action. Set it to 0 (2 is forward and back pages. 1 enables Horizontal scrolling). Set mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.sysnumlines to true.

Java swing windows are blank with Beryl/Compiz

Put "export AWT_TOOLKIT=MToolkit" in /etc/profile or ~/.bashrc as explained in this page or here.

NetBeans gui loses keyboard focus repeatedly without Beryl/Compiz

Do the reverse of the above?? !! Launch netbeans like this:

env AWT_TOOLKIT=XToolkit /usr/local/netbeans-6.1/bin/netbeans

Presumably both are related ... probably netbeans is a swing application.