Hp-pavilion-dv9000-fedora-core-9

From DevRandom

HP Pavilion DV 9000 Series (DV 9700) and Fedora Core 9

Hardware

AMD Turion(tm) 64 X2 Mobile Technology, 4GB memory Broadcom Corporation BCM4328 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless card rev 03 nVidia Corporation GeForce 7150M Video Card nVidia Corporation MCP67 Memory Controller (rev a2) nVidia Corporation MCP67 High Definition Audio (rev a1) nVidia Corporation MCP67 Ethernet (rev a2) controller Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE FireWire (IEEE 1394) Controller (rev 05) Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro 33333Host Adapter (rev 22) Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev ff)

Output of lshw

Fedora 9 Install

Install went without any problems

Boot Process

I get this warning at boot time.

Your BIOS doesn't leave a aperature memory hole
Please enable the IOMMU option in the BIOS setup
This costs you 64 MB of RAM

My bios has no such option. You can add //iommu=noagp// to the kernel option to make it go away.

Ethernet, Sound

This works off the install with no additional changes.

Video

wget http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/173.14.12/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-173.14.12-pkg2.run

Get the kernel devel package (kernel-devel.x86_64 2.6.25-14.fc9)

yum  install kernel-devel.x86_64

Switch to runlevel 3 & run the installer. You will need internet connectivity and the installer will attempt to download & compile a Nvidia module for your kernel. Follow instructions on the screen. The default choices worked for me

 
init 3
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-173.14.12-pkg2.run
init 5

I made some changes to the xorg.conf to make my resolution work. Here's my xorg.conf Hp-pavilion-dv9000-fedora-core-9-xorg-conf

Also when you install the Nvidia drivers your virtual terminals (1-6) stop working. the fix to this is to add vga=791 to the kernel boot option

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.25-14.fc9.x86_64 ro rhgb vga=791

//Compiz effects//

Once the Nvidia drivers are installed Compix(Desktop effects) works fine with all the features. Note, if you upgrade kernels you need to rerun the nvidia installer

Dual Display

Works Fine. Here's xorg.conf Hp-pavilion-dv9000-fedora-core-9-xorg-conf

Wireless

The broadcom 4328 is a problem. There are 3 choices (bcm, native or ndiswrapper) & each one has issues.

__bcm43xx driver__

This is ruled out as the bc43 driver page(http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43), as of 09/2008, categorically states that 4328 is not supported. "BCM 4321 (Has PCI-IDs 0x4328 and 0x4329) - These devices have N Phys. There is no support for any Draft 802.11n features. We are working on it."

__ Native Broadcom drivers__

Success finally !!

Download the native drivers ( the 64 bit version ) from http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php

Note: The 32 and 64 bit versions are not compatible.

Patched the code and was able to compile the module Here's the patch hybrid_wl-5.10.27.6_patch-2.6.27-ARCH

Download the patch and cd to the wl source directory

#cd wl
#patch -p1 < hybrid_wl-5.10.27.6_patch-2.6.27-ARCH

If prompted for a file provide ./src/wl/sys/wl_iw.c

Then run make

# make -C /usr/src/kernels/`uname -r` M=`pwd`

If this finishes without errors you will have a module named wl.ko

copy this to the kernel modules directory

# cp wl.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/

Then load the module

# dempmod -a
# rmmod ssb
# modprobe wl
# modprobe ssb

If all all works fine you will see something similar in the //dmesg// output

eth1: Broadcom BCM4328 802.11 Wireless Controller 5.10.27.6

//iwconfig// should now show the card in its list

eth1      IEEE 802.11abgn  ESSID:""  Nickname:""
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.422 GHz  Access Point: 00:12:6C:D9:1A:68   
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:32 dBm   
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Managementmode:All packets received
          Link Quality=5/5  Signal level=-43 dBm  Noise level=-92 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:1  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

This works fine with WPA2. I haven't tried the 802.11n network yet

Ran into some glitches connecting to other servers via SSH. This happens to servers outside of your subnet. Force vlan_mode to off on initialization of device fixes this.

/sbin/iwpriv eth2 set_vlanmode 0

Before the above patch make was producing the following errors

Errors from Make

This is likely due to kernel incompatibility. Broadcom claims this will work with any 2.6 kernel but Fedora may have changed something. I did search online and haven't found a real solution. Ubuntu users have reported a similar issue thought I can't confirm it.

The same error happens on the following kernel versions :-

//2.6.25-14.fc9.x86_64 //

//2.6.26.3-29.fc9.x86_64//

//2.6.26.5-45.fc9.x86_64//

Webcam

Webcam works fine. I installed //ekiga//. I first tried //camstream// but that detects the camera but does not display the picture and errors out with -19 "cannot open device". Also //amsn// detects it fine.

To get flash to show the webcam video follow instructions on this page http://www.swift-tools.net/Flashcam/

Removable cards

sd card works fine. Have not tested MMC and MS card

Power Management

The power button works. But suspend to disk does not.

Added acpi_sleep=s3_bios to the grub boot options but that did not help.

If try to suspend or hibernate the system reboots

///usr/share/doc/kernel-doc-2.6.26/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt// has some useful tips but most have not worked for me yet.

Remote Controller

Works fine as a basic mouse. I can scroll web pages, mute/unmute etc. Need to find a way to program the keys to do specific operations.

Synaptics Touchpad

Installed //xorg-x11-drv-synaptics-0.15.0-3.fc9.x86_64// & //gsynaptics-0.9.14-2.fc9.x86_64// & it works fine gsynaptics is able to configure it fine using //synclient//.

Here's the xorg.conf for the input device

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "TouchPad"
    Driver      "synaptics"
    Option      "Protocol"    "auto-dev"
    Option      "SHMConfig" "True"

    Option "VertScrollDelta" "20"
    Option "VertEdgeScroll" "true"
    Option "MinSpeed" "0.70"
    Option "MaxSpeed" "1.50"
    Option "AccelFactor" "0.730"
    Option "EdgeMotionMinSpeed" "200"
    Option "EdgeMotionMaxSpeed" "200"
    Option "UpDownScrolling" "1"
    Option "Emulate3Buttons" "on
EndSection

Bluetooth

Laptop does not have bluetooth hardware

linksys wireless card

I am still fighting the Broadcom issue with the new chipset and drivers In the meantime, I use a usb Linksys wireless card. This works without any issues & supports WPA and WPA2 also.

= Software

=

Other Repositories

Install livna

rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-9.rpm

Then set the repo to enabled=0 so that it is not invoked by default You can use the following to install/update packages

yum --enablerepo=livna <yum option> <package name>

Firefox

The problem with firefox is that 64 bit support for flash is not available. This is really bad considering that almost the entire Linux application suite works on 64bit systems. Adobe ..Are you listening ?? The only way to resolve is install a 32bit version Remove Yum

yum remove firefox

Download the latest firefox from mozilla.com Untar it to /opt Put a shortcut to it on you panel Then download Adobe flash plugin from adobe.com

# pwd
/opt/firefox/plugins

# ls -l
total 148
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     39 2008-09-21 21:37 libflashplayer.so -> /usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  15792 2008-07-02 09:09 libnullplugin.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 127260 2008-09-21 21:37 nppdf.so

Now the above works for most part. But I used some custom plugins which use XML RPC

I got these errors if I turn on the error console

Error: Components.classes['@mozilla.org/xml-rpc/client;1'] is undefined

I tried providing firefox with nsXMLRPCclient.js but that lead to some other errors

Finally deleted the firefox folder (this was bz downloaded from Mozilla.org) and installed the fedors x86 rpm

That did the trick. Now I have flash and everything else working under the same firefox version.

Vmware

My kernel is 2.6.26.3-29.fc9.x86_64 & Vmware is VMware-server-console-1.0.6-91891.tar.gz. I had great deal of trouble getting Vmware to install

Initial error was related to certain libraries missing. That was fixed by installing the x86 version of libXtst

yum -y install libXtst.i386

Then had these weird errors while running vmware-config.pl

Using 2.6.x kernel build system.
make: Entering directory `/tmp/vmware-config3/vmmon-only'
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.26.3-29.fc9.x86_64/build/include/.. SUBDIRS=$PWD SRCROOT=$PWD/. modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.26.3-29.fc9.x86_64'
  CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config3/vmmon-only/linux/driver.o
/tmp/vmware-config3/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:146: error: unknown field ‘nopage’ specified in initializer
/tmp/vmware-config3/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:147: warning: initialization from incompatible pointer type
/tmp/vmware-config3/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:150: error: unknown field ‘nopage’ specified in initializer
/tmp/vmware-config3/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:151: warning: initialization from incompatible pointer type
make[2]: *** [/tmp/vmware-config3/vmmon-only/linux/driver.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/tmp/vmware-config3/vmmon-only] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.26.3-29.fc9.x86_64'
make: *** [vmmon.ko] Error 2

make: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmware-config3/vmmon-only'
Unable to build the vmmon module.

After some hacking/patching

Using 2.6.x kernel build system.
make: Entering directory `/tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only'
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.26.3-29.fc9.x86_64/build/include/.. SUBDIRS=$PWD SRCROOT=$PWD/. modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.26.3-29.fc9.x86_64'
  CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only/driver.o
  CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only/hub.o
  CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only/userif.o
  CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only/netif.o
  CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only/bridge.o
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only/bridge.c: In function ‘VNetBridgeUp’:
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only/bridge.c:856: error: implicit declaration of function ‘sock_valbool_flag’
make[2]: *** [/tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only/bridge.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.26.3-29.fc9.x86_64'
make: *** [vmnet.ko] Error 2
make: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmware-config0/vmnet-only'
Unable to build the vmnet module.

After hacking some of the code and failing miserably, & online search not finding any solutions for 64bit Fedora I finally got to work with this patch Template:Vmware-any-any-update117.tar.gz

Download that patch & do the following

# cd vmware-any-any-update117
# ./runme.pl

You will get a few warning and but the install finishes.

It also complains about port 902 not being open. This is wrong and likely due to the firewall. Enter 902 if it prompts for the port

VMware VmPerl Scripting API & the VMware Server Console installed without any problems. Just make sure you have GTK installed.

It also ran Linux, XP and Solaris 10 X86 VMs without any issues.

- Issues Over Time**

 * If Virtual networking is not configured properly, starting a VM crashes the whole host (disconcerting). This was true for a few VMs that I had used on other systems that had custom network devices (vmnetXX).

 * Abnormal crashes. I have had some times when starting any VM crashes the whole host. It is pretty random and rare but does happen one in 20 or so boots.

 * A Windows VM causes the CTRL, SHIFT , CAPS key to not work on the host. No fix for this but you can create a script called //fixvmkeys.sh// and run it from the command line.

#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/xmodmap - << BUFF
clear shift
add shift = Shift_L Shift_R
clear lock
add lock = Caps_Lock
clear control
add control = Control_L Control_R
clear mod1

add mod1 = Alt_L Alt_R
clear mod2
add mod2 = Num_Lock
clear mod3
clear mod4
add mod4 = Super_L Super_R
clear mod5
add mod5 = Scroll_Lock
BUFF

If cursor keys are misbehaving add this

echo 'xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = true' > ~/.vmware/config

CD/DVD Burner Software

Install GnomeBaker and both CD and DVD burner works

MP3 Support

Fedora does not release native support for MP3, so you need to manually install the codecs from rpm.livna.org. Install Livna’s release package for Fedora 9. This will provide Fedora 9 YUM repository, /etc/yum.repos.d/livna.repo.

rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-9.rpm

Now, for XMMS MP3 support, install xmms and xmms-mp3

yum install xmms xmms-mp3

Video Players

Install VLC and mplayer from livna

sudo yum --enablerepo=livna install mplayer mplayer-gui vlc

Unsupported formats can be played by installing codecs from mplayer project

wget http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/all-20071007.tar.bz2

mkdir -p /usr/lib/codecs

tar -jxvf all-20071007.tar.bz2 -C /usr/lib/codecs/