Dell Inspiron 5000 Linux

• P3-700MHz
• 18GB Hard Disk
• 256MB Ram
• SXGA+ (1400x1050) screen
• Toshiba DVD-ROM
• Internal WinModem
• Adaptec PCMCIA AHA1460 SCSI
• 3Com 3c374 PCMCIA NIC

Each of the steps I will go though worked on this machine without any issues, so if you have the same spec machine all should go well. One word on the screen, the XF86Config file I use ONLY supports the 1400x1050 screen, be warned if you have the lower resolution one. If you use a different Linux distribution you may need to skip the Operating System Installation section as this is very very Redhat specific, also other areas could need changes. I would be interested in hearing feedback, so tell me what you think, make a constructive public comment

UPDATE: I received a email report that this also works with Mandrake 7.1 with one change in the lilo.conf file section, this is to skip the vga=791, replacing it with vga=6 or nothing at all. Its been added to the lilo section. Thanks Risto Korhonen

Step 1. Operating System Installation

First step could not be easier, just Boot the CD and when the boot: prompt is displayed just type text which will start the character mode installer. No real choice in this one as the graphical installer will not work, if you just press enter and try the graphical installer all you get is a blank screen.

Next you need to Select your language and select your keyboard, from the many available options, then move onto the installation type selection.

When prompted for the installation type select Install Custom System. This is important as it allows you to install only the components that you really need, also I have had reports of problems with the preset configurations. Once you have made this selection you move onto the Disk Setup Menu

From this menu, select Disk druid, this choice is not really important, its just that this tools is easier to use than the fdisk alternative. Using this tool we will configure your partitions. In my case the disk is 18GB and I will use the following partitions

Once you are happy with your partitions hit OK to continue to format the disk, and move onto the Choose partitions screen.

From this screen make sure that all the listed partitions are selected and also check the check for bad blocks during format to make sure that the format will successfully test the integrity of the disk, again this is optional, but I strongly recommend you do this, as to try and avoid any nasty surprises later. Click OK to continue onto the LILO Configuration screen.

Now from this screen Use Linear mode is checked by default ( for my example it is), just hit as at this point we do not need to pass and parameters to the Kernel, all that comes later. Now from the second LILO Configuration screen, there are two options for the installation location of the boot loader, select /dev/hda to install the boot loader on the Master Boot Record (MBR). Hit Ok to continue onto yet another LILO configuration screen.

Just hit on this screen, as we are not going to dual boot anything. NB. Remember I do not support/recommend or have any experience of dual booting, so you are on your own if you want to do this thing.

That's the end of the LILO configuration, so now onto the next screen.

Now enter your host name (the name of the machine), for example "Dell" and hit OK to move onto the mouse selection.

Now from the Mouse Selection screen select Generic - 2 Button Mouse (PS/2) and check the Emulate 3 Buttons check box. Then hit OK to move onto the time zone configuration.

From the Time Zone Selection screen select your time zone and hit OK to continue to the password setup screen.

From this screen enter the password for the root user, and confirm it. Note that nothing is echoed to the screen, not even the usual ****, and the password needs to be at least 6 characters long or it will be rejected. OK now hit OK and move onto the Add user screen.

From the Add User screen you need to add a normal user. This is the user that you will normally log into the system using (remember using the root user all the time is not a good idea). Then hit OK to continue to the User Account Setup screen.

From the User Account Setup screen you can add more users if need, or just hit OK to continue onto the Authentication Configuration screen.

From the Authentication Screen you setup the security options. By default Use Shadow Passwords and Enable MD5 Passwords are both checked, and Enable NIS is not. This is , now hit OK to continue to the Package Group Selection screen.

From the Package Group Selection screen select the packages you want to install. By default I normally use the following

I urge you to include the packages that are marked in the above list as very important, the others are optional. Now hit OK to continue to the X configuration

The first part of the X configuration is the X Probe results this is the card that the installer thinks you have, at this point just hit OK regardless of what it says, this will move onto the Installation to begin confirmation screen, just hit OK which will start by formatting the partitions that you selected earlier (no this has not already been done, you only selected the partitions that you want to format). This will take a while, anything up to an hour or so, be patient. Once the formatting has finished the packages selected earlier will be installed, again this will take time, half hour or so. When this installation finished you will automatically continue to the Boot Disk confirmation screen.

From the Boot Disk screen you have the option to create a boot disk to allow you to boot your Linux machine from a floppy and help in repair of any problems. The answer to this one is up to you. I normally do this, being totally paranoid :-) proceeding on from here moves onto the Monitor Setup screen.

From this Monitor Setup Screen select the first monitor after the custom option, of the monitor types from the list. Its not important which one as we will be totally reconfiguring X later on. After selecting a monitor type you will continue onto the Probing to Begin confirmation screen.

From the Probing to Begin screen just hit OK which will cause the screen to flash a few times while the installer tests the hardware for your video card. When this process finishes you will continue to the Probing Finished screen.

From the Probing finished screen, you have the option to use the displayed resolution and color depth or choose another. Just hit Use Default as we will be reconfiguring later. This will continue onto the Starting X confirmation screen.

From the Starting X confirmation screen hit skip as we do not want to test this, as it will not work and could hang your installation to the point where you need to start again, yes that bad!. Hit skip to continue onto the Complete screen. Yes that's it for the installation, just hit to reboot and eject (it does this for you) the CD ROM.

Once the machine has rebooted, login as root using the password you entered earlier. Now we will move onto the next step which is, X configuration.

Step 2. X Configuration

This section includes the use of a modified X server that can be found at the following URL

• http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~steveh/inspiron/XMa64-3.3.6-steveh.tar.gz

The author put a disclaimer on his page, which I am repeating here for the same reasons he put it there. You may want to look at his pages, there are lots of useful things there. The URL is http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~steveh/inspiron/

OK that out of the way, time to proceed on. First, we need to add a Kernel parameter to allow for the full use of the screen by switching to frame buffer mode, this needs to be added to the LILO configuration file that's stored in /etc, the default /etc/lilo.conf file on my system looks like this :-

boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/mapinstall=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout=50
linear
default=linux

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.14-5.0
       label=linux
       read-only
       root=/dev/hda1

to this file you need to add the following line for Redhat 6.2

vga=791

TIP: Now if you are running Mandrake its been reported that this does not work, and you need to use vga=6 or skip this completely.

this is added after the root=/dev/hda1 once this is added you need to rerun lilo by just typing lilo to cause these changes to be activated, if you do not do this your updated lilo.conf file will be ignored. Once this is done type reboot to force a system reboot. As the machine starts up after this reboot you should see a penguin bitmap in the top left hand corner of the screen and the text font will be smaller.

At this point you need to create a new XF86Config file that will allow you to run X at 1400x1050 in wonderful 32bit color.

First thing, delete the /etc/X11/XF86Config file that was created by the installer, as we are going to rewrite it fully.

Here is the file that I use for my machine, this only supports the 1400x1050x32bit resolution on the Inspiron 5000.

Section "Files"
    RgbPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
    FontPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
    FontPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
    FontPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
    FontPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
    FontPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/"
    FontPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
    FontPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"
EndSection

Section "Keyboard"
    Protocol    "Standard"
    AutoRepeat  500 5
    LeftAlt Meta
    RightAlt    Meta
    ScrollLock  Compose
    RightCtl    Control
    XkbKeyCodes "xfree86"
    XkbTypes    "default"
    XkbCompat   "default"
    XkbSymbols  "us(pc101)"
    XkbGeometry "pc"
    XkbRules    "xfree86"
    XkbModel    "pc101"
    XkbLayout   "us"
EndSection

Section "Pointer"
    Protocol    "PS/2"
    Device  "/dev/mouse"
    Emulate3Buttons
    Emulate3Timeout 50
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier  "Inspiron 5000 1400x1040 LCD"
    VendorName  "Dell"
    ModelName   "Inspiron5000(1400x1050)"
    HorizSync   31.5-88.0
    VertRefresh 50-100
    Modeline    "1400x1050" 107 1400 1464 1784 1912 1050 1052 1064 1090
EndSection


Section "Device"
    Identifier  "ATII3D Rage P/M Mobility AGP 2x"
    VendorName  "Dell"
    BoardName   "Dell"
    VideoRam    8192
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Driver  "accel"
    Device  "ATII3D Rage P/M Mobility AGP 2x"
    Monitor "Inspiron 5000 1400x1040 LCD"
        Subsection      "Display"
            Depth       32
            Modes       "1400x1050"
            ViewPort    0 0
        EndSubSection
EndSection

Now you have the correct configuration file you need to first uncompress the new X server, from the file your downloaded earlier. Do this like this.

tar xvfz Xma64-3.3.6-steveh.tar.gz

TIP: For help with handling compressed files under Linux/Unix/OSX see my HOWTO, which covers most of the common formats in detail.

This out of the way, now copy the updated X Server XF86_Mach64 that you have just uncompressed to your /usr/X11R6/bin directory.

After this new server is copied your X should start without issue from startx. Now if you want to start X automatically at boot time you need to edit the /etc/inittab file and change the following line :

id:3:initdefault

to

id:5:initdefault

That's all it takes, now when you boot you will log directly into X.

Step 3. Power Management

Now a few words on the power management support. With Redhat 6.2 the suspend will work out of the box without issues. The only thing that's a good idea is to change the permissions on the apm control binary to allow for non-root users to start suspend, this you do with the following command.

chmod +s /usr/bin/apm

There have been reports that if you suspend the machine while in X you will not be able to unsuspend, while I have not seen this with my machine, the updated X server installed earlier is intended to remove this issue.

Step 4. Sound

Onto the sound. Again with Redhat 6.2 the sound on the Inspiron5000 is detected and installed automatically as part of the install process, nothing more needs to be done. This sound does work to the point of being able to play MP3 with XMMS, its not wonderful, and is prone to odd clicks during the boot up process, which is caused by a IRQ conflict with the internal modem. I am currently investigating this problem and will update this doco if there is a fix.

Step 5. PCMCIA

Now with the PCMCIA, again with Redhat 6.2 this is installed correctly during the install, nothing else needs to be done. You can verify that your cards are detected correctly by looking at the /var/run/stab file. Mine looks like this

Socket 0: 3Com 3c574TX Fast Ethernet
0   network 3c574_cs    0   eth0
Socket 1: Adaptec APA-1460 SlimSCSI

and indeed its correct these are the two cards installed.

• 3COM 3C574 Support
• Adaptec APA1460 Support
• Adaptec Linux Support Pages
• Linux PCMCIA home page

Step 6. Hard disk.

With the Dell supplied 12GB or 18GB drives, you can use DMA mode without any sign of problems, in my case this did not seem to make the disk access any faster, but did seem to make the system while in X with many apps open more responsive. You can turn this on with the following command while logged in as root.

/sbin/hdparm -d1 /dev/hda

or if you really want this as a system wide startup setting drop it into your /etc/rc.local file at the end, or rebuild the Kernel to enable this by default.

Step 7. DVD ROM Drive

Again with Redhat 6.2 this is detected and supported with no additional work needed. Now this is does not mean that you can just drop a movie in and play it. It only supports the reading of DVD ROM disks by default, to play movies you need to update the Kernel with CSS encryption code and install a software movie player. You can read the movie disks just not play them without extra work. Now its also possible to cure the region code madness on this Toshiba drive, with a HOWTO available here. Anyway I have tested this DVD drive with the following media without any sign of problems.

DVD single layer
DVD double layer
DVD double sided
Normal CD ROMS
Audio CDs
CDRW (laser and HP)
CDR (Gold, Green, Blue, Brown, Silver)

Step 8. Internal Modem

With my machine I made the mistake of ordering the internal modem, this thing is not a real modem (Dell sales droid told me it was a real modem), instead its a lucent WinModem which like most other WinModems is only supported by the Microsoft world. Now in this case there is a Linux driver available for this thing, which can be downloaded from the linmodems.org site. When this archive is untarred you will get the following files.

ltmodem.oreadme.txtltinstltuninst

now after reading the readme.txt file, you run

./ltinst

which responds with the following real helpful message.

insmod: ltmodem: no module by that name found

Just ignore this, I assume its something to do with the Kernel version that this binary only driver was compiled with not being 2.14. Now when you boot the machine you will get unresolved symbols error displayed when the modem driver loads, again ignore this, it still works. Now for the bad news, I tried kppp to setup this thing to dial into my ISP, which while yes it did sort of look like it was working, kppp responded right after the connection with

pppd demon died unexpectedly

And so far I have not been able to make this one go away. All is not lost, while this does not work (for me) if you add a network ppp adapter and dial using

/sbin/ifup ppp0

all works, well not exactly wonderfully, its very unstable and will not connect over 28K when it connects at all, and does seem to have an issue when the machine is stressed, along the lines of line drops when you hammer the machine. More on this one later. A friend has managed to get it working on another machine but its still 28K and does not like loading. Yet more bad news, I have not been able to get a PCMCIA modem to run at all in this machine with that WinModem in there, which BTW Dell tells me cannot be removed or disabled. Yet even more bad news, this WinModem (now called LinModem) driver is binary only and will not work with newer Kernels than 2.14. I tested it and declared failure and went back to 2.14.

Step 10. Keyboard

There have been also reports of the keyboard repeat rate on this machine being too slow, again no sign of this one. Maybe it was a issue with older versions of Linux, on my system its fine.

Step 11. Mouse

The trackpad is detected as a generic three button mouse by default, which it it's not. The updated XF86Config that was written for the X install covers this by correctly configuring it as a two button mouse and enabling the emulation of the 3ed button when you use the two buttons at the same time. That was the good news, from the first day I ran this machine I have been plagued with phantom mouse clicks, Dell replaced the touch pad which did not fix it, just made it less annoying. Now there is actually a driver for this Synapics touch pad which I will test and report on later.

Step 12. USB

I do not have any USB devices to test this with.

Step 13. IR

As with the USB I do not have anything to test this with.

Links and Related Pages

• Picturebook Linux
• Words of Linux