Tuesday 17 August 2010

Installing OpenSuse 11.3 (64 bit) on a Dell XPS M1530 laptop

I just did a fresh install of OpenSuse 11.3 on my Dell XPS 1530. This machine used to run OpenSuse 10.3 (see this post: http://dorienherremans.blogspot.com/2010/08/opensuse-110-installation-guide-on-dell.html).

I kept the /home partition, so a lot of the settings and the desktop where already custom. I love it. Even my internet favorites are kept!

Anyway, first evaluation:

- Touchpad fix: no need for it this time. Works great.
- Ethernet: works great
- Wireless: will need some drivers for the BCM card etc
- Sound: seems to work ok
- 3D: will need NVIDIA drivers

Let's fix the wireless first.

Just a note. i am using the bcm wireless card. If you have an intel card, it will probably work out of the box. Fire up a console as su and type:

cd /lib/firmware
install_bcm43xx_firmware

to install the correct firmware. You need to be connected to the internet for this to work.



Add some additional repositories to Yast. Especially Packman (http://en.opensuse.org/Additional_package_repositories), so that you can install the following packages:

- ndiswrapper

Mmmm... last time I used kndiswrapper as a UI for ndiswrapper, that worked great. Seems that there is no release available yet for 11.3. Mmmm... ok, we'll have to do it manually...

Download the (64 bit!) .exe driver from Dell, you can find it here: http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R151517.EXE

Go to the directory where you want to keep the driver and:
unzip -a R151517.EXE

Install the driver:

cd DRIVER
ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
ndiwrapper -l
modprobe ndiswrapper

For the first time now. I see my WIFI light burning! I first had to flick the switch on and off.

iwlist scanning
It is scanning! That's a good sign!

Now we can right-click on the KNetworkManager icon to connect over wireless. Yoehoe!



Now for 3D effects

Install the NVIDIA drivers. You can do this via Yast:

X11-Video-NVIDIAG02


Voila, after a X11 reboot, 3D should be enabled and you should be able to turn on 3D desktop effects.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

I must say, this all went a lot smoother than with the 10.3 release.

Thanks OpenSuse community, still my fav distro!

Wednesday 4 August 2010

How to install OpenSuse 11.3 on an HP TC1100 tablet

I was very exited to finally get my very own tc1100 in the mail yesterday. My first thoughts, of course, where: how can I get rid of this W7 and get a nice OpenSuse on there. Well, here we go:

1. Create an install USB

I downloaded the Network install iso at opensuse.org. To make this iso bootable from a USB key, you need to install SysLinux first (either via Yast), or:


zypper in syslinux


Unfortunalty, whatever I tried, syslinux was not recognized. Turns out, you need the very latest version of syslinux (which was not available on my 11.0), so I booted up a 11.2 computer, did the same there and all went well.

Next we will unpack the iso onto a USB key:

Check which device is your usb key:

# ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/*usb*

his will print out something like the following, with sdX being the actual device (for example, sdb in my case).

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2010-03-05 18:22 /dev/disk/by-id/usb-SanDisk_Cruzer_Colors+_4527710EBF819BC0-0:0 -> ../../sdX
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2010-03-05 18:22 /dev/disk/by-id/usb-SanDisk_Cruzer_Colors+_4527710EBF819BC0-0:0-part1 -> ../../sdX1

Once you know your device name, eject it:

# umount /dev/sdX1

And write the uncompressed iso to it:

# dd if=/path/to/iso/openSUSE-11.3-NetworkInstall-i586.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M;sync



2. Boot the TC1100 from USB

Put the USB in the TC1100 USB port and power on the tablet. On the bootup screen, press the scroll button on the top of the computer to enter the boot menu. Once there, you can change the boot order under the menu tools. Make sure to look under Hard Drive, that was where my USB was hiding.


3. Install OpenSuse 11.3

Once you boot from the USB key, you see the installation program start up. Just follow the steps like any regular Linux install. Make sure to select the tablet options under software.

Oh yeah, since we are using the network install... be sure to connect to either an ethernet network or a wireless network. I did my install wireless, I was impressed that my wifi card was recognised out of the box.

Voila... around 3 hours later, I had a full OpenSuse install.

4. What works out-of the box

As mentioned before, wifi works out of the box. The tablet seems to be functionning for the most part so far. The stylus pointer also works (exept for the right button).


5. Graphics card driver

The GeForce 420 needs the legacy NVIDIA driver. Unfortunately, OpenSuse 11.3 no longer offers the precompiled legacy drivers. It does however offer an opensource 'nouveau' driver, that supports the card. I decided to use the original NVIDIA installer that is offered by NVIDIA here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux-display-ia32-96.43.18-driver.html For me, the driver did not work. So I just did nothing and used the nouveau driver.

So far, compositing does not work, but I can use xrandr to rotate my screen.

PS: I compiled the driver from NVIDIA manually, but it did not function properly and caused my xrandr to stop working, so I'll stick to nouveau for the time being.

6. Enabling 3D effects and compositing
not yet


7. Create a screen rotation script

screen rotation should work with:

xrandr -o left

and

xrandr - o normal

Let's create a file (set permissions to executable) with the following contents. I call the file rotate:

rotation="$(xrandr -q --verbose | grep 'connected' | egrep -o '\) (normal|left|inverted|right) \(' | egrep -o '(normal|left|inverted| right)')"
case "$rotation" in
normal)
# -rotate to the left
xrandr -o left
xsetwacom set "Serial Wacom Tablet" rotate cck
;;
left)
# -rotate to inverted
xrandr -o normal
xsetwacom set "Serial Wacom Tablet" rotate none
;;
inverted)
# -rotate to the right
xrandr -o normal
xsetwacom set "Serial Wacom Tablet" rotate none
;;
right)
# -rotate to normal
xrandr -o normal
xsetwacom set "Serial Wacom Tablet" rotate none
;;
esac



The xsetwacom command makes sure that the tablet's stylus functions properly.

In order to make this executable, right click on it and set permissions to executable.

cp /pathtofile/rotate /usr/bin/rotate

will make it a real command. You can type rotate in a terminal and see what happens...


8. Fix the tablet hotkeys and get right click

Download xbindkeys. This utility needs compiling, so make sure you have gcc etc installed.

Next:

./configure --disable-guile
make
make install

create a file:

/home/yourname/.xbindkeysrc

with the following contents:

"rotate"
c:157
"cellwriter"
c:23
"Menu"
c:156

This will assign some useful commands to the top buttons. You can use the command xbindkey -k to find out the code of a button (or use xev)


To autostart:

ln -s /usr/bin/xbindkeys /home/dorien/.kde4/Autostart/xbindkeys



9. Some useful aps

cellwriter, xournal,...


10. What's left..

Jacksense in not enabled, so if you plugin headphones, you can still hear sound through the speakers: just click o
Publish Post
n the mixer icon and configure channels, add line jack sense and uncheck the box. That fixes that.

Tuesday 3 August 2010

OpenSuse 11.0 Installation guide, on Dell XPS 1530 notebook

1. Installing OpenSuse 11.0

Yesterday morning started of great: with a phonecall from UPS asking if I was home so they could deliver my brand new Dell XPS M1530 laptop. Great! Well, it took some time and effort (around 6 phone calls) to explain to the courrier (in french) how he could find my house in the mountains... But how nice to see the UPS truck in the narrow road, with the driver smiling (did I detect a sigh of relief there...). He handed me a small box... whaaw, could there be a computer in that box...
I had to wait until the evening to start the OpenSuse 11.0 install. Everything went smooth (as usual with the OpenSuse intaller) until the point where it gave me "Unable to resize partition. Corrupted fs, check in windows"... Oh my... Check in Windows, that's not exactly my speciality. I spend the whole night trying to fix the filesystem in Vista. Well, no luck there. I ran checkdisk (twice, cause my battery died at 95% and it had to start again *grmbl*), deleted the rollback files, the virtual memory, ran all kinds of checks and Windows just always said everything was ok. Well, Linux has higher requirements...
Not to worry... I was finally able to shrink the partition to half (vista wasn't content with less than 160 Gs). I took it. I went back to the Linux installer, but no luck. The unallocated 130 Gs seemed to small and the filesystem of the other three partitions (dells media and recovery) stayed corrupted.

The next morning... was dominated by a "honey do you really need windows for your games" and "if I get a tv card, we can buy a playstation". No seriously, the most dominant argument was the need for a good video editor... Well we'll try wine or vmware (XP please, no more Vista).
You now, me girlfriend is amazing... She let me delete the entire windows partition, which left me with a sweet 280 GB home partition. How great is that. A computer with only Linux, that's my first.

Ok, finally I could press the install button. And we're off. I was plastering the living room when the installer was running, so I didn't really pay attention. At a certain point I looked up and saw a screensaver all of a sudden. Well, at lease X Server is working!

2. Fixing the touchpad

As soon as I touch the mouse, weird things start to happen. It seems to click everywhere. Oh, that's right... I read about that issue before. So I:

- changed /boot/grub/menu.lst to include i8042.nomux=1 (I put it before splash) at the boot options. I should probably go back and add it for the failsafe install as well
=> ok, it works, but it clicks irregularly

- I changed /etc/X11/xorg.conf: Option "MaxTapTime""0", this disables the tab clicking

It works perfectly now... Sweet

3. Setting up 3G wireless internet

Luckily, I've written another article about this, and it still works... You can find it at: http://dorax.naturalp.org/?q=node/16

4. Setting up my Lamp webserver

Since I checked the webserver option at the install, all the necessary packages for lamp are already installed.

APACHE
1. Just enable Apache 2 at Yast -> System -> System Services
That's it. Since the php module is enabled, apache should normally handle php files correctly.

MYSQL
I just typed "MySql" in a terminal and got:
ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (2)

Well, well, that's right, I got that last time as well... Mmmmh, what was that again.
- The folder /var/lib/mysql/ is empty, so where is mysql.sock?
- ok, mysql.sock is created by mysql on startup. That means: mysql is not running!

Same procedure as above, enable the system service mysql in Yast. Great!

5. Getting sound

Hey, I don't have any sound. The mixer volume is open... and even the cool touchkeys for controlling and muting the volume work. Exept.... I don't hear anything...
I went to Yast-> Hardware -> Sound. Selected the soundcard and pressed Options -> set volume. Apparently, you need to open the front - surround -etc mixer channels and I get a lovely sound. Great!

6. Nvidia drivers and 3D Graphics

The standard mode is Vesa, so I want to install the proprietary Nvidia drivers and also configure the laptop screen. You can use one-click install for Yast at NVidia.

7. Hacking OpenSuse 11.0

I use this subtitle to refer to a crazily popular article about an earlier version of OpenSuse. Things have gotten a lot easier nowadays...
I understand and respect OPENSuse's policy about licensed software... and I must say, they really offer solutions to install it afterwards if you want to. On the site http://opensuse-community.org/Multimedia, there is a one click install for a few useful licensed software such as mp3, divx, java, flash etc.

8. Wireless LAN

Honestly, I didn't have a chance to test wireless right away. A few weeks after I got the laptop, I went away abroad and it turns out that, although the card is recognized, it can't detect the networks.

Here is the solution:
First, install the firmware firmware of BCM43xx, you can use the package of packman with yast installer. You just need to type:

install_bcm43xx_firmware

at /lib/firmware

Next, I installed kndiswrapper and ndiswrapper. This is a kernel module that allows a Windows driver to be loaded in the kernel. The better solution would be to recompile the kernel with the drivers broadcom offers on their website, but since I am on slow internet, I can't afford to download my big kernel sources at this time.

Download the .exe driver from Dell, you can find it here: http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R151517.EXE

Go to the directory where you want to keep the driver and:
unzip -a R151517.EXE

Now you can load the driver with kndiswrapper (graphical frontend to ndiswrapper). Right click on the driver and select properties to see if all is in order. In my case the ssb module was interfering with ndiswrapper, so kndiswrapper disabled it and blacklisted it for me. For the first time now. I see my WIFI light burning! You still need to configure you wlan0 to use DHCP and... on the configure button!

Next, configure your wireless network device via yast, and fill in "ndiswrapper" in the "kernel module" box. Let's check:

iwlist scanning
It is scanning! That's a good sign!

Now we can right-click on the KNetworkManager icon to connect over wireless. Yoehoe!

9. Ethernet

Works out of the box.
Conclusion

Well, I honestly was expecting a more out of the box functioning for the XPS 1530, and I am a bit disapointed. It has been a real challenge of putting stuff together. From Dell, who actually sells laptops with Ubuntu, I would have expected a bit more support. What about a cd with Linux drivers... whooow...

It's been great figuring everything out finally. I hope to have helped you.