Dell Inspiron 1501 SATA support in kernel.

martijntje · n00b Joined: 29 Nov 2005 Posts: 39

I just received my new Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop. Surprisingly, most of the hardware seems to be supported in the install liveCD. However, when i compile my own kernel, i just can't seem to get the SATA support to function.

What i need is support for the devide 'IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 Non-Raid-5 SATA', according to lspci.

I've tried every option that has something to do with SATA, however, it just keeps giving me kernel panics about not being able to mount root at /dev/sda2 (my / partition).

As a last resort, i post the output of the lspci & lsmod command in the hope someone will know what specific option needs to be enabled in the kernel.

mistik1 · n00b Joined: 03 Dec 2006 Posts: 6

I have just purchased the same machine and managed to at least get my kernel to boot by adding the "irqpoll" option on the kernel command line.

Be prepared for a million errors though, I get so many the syslog and dmesg is useless for anything else, but at least it allowed me to complete my instalation and keep testing new versions of the libata drivers.

I hope this help somewhat.

lusich · n00b Joined: 06 Dec 2006 Posts: 8

I have the same problem on my inspiron 1501 amd 64.

I found this thread, http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=299929 they seem to get around it, and I was actually able to start make partitions and start the install process, however, the computer froze on me. This seems to be the problem with every distribution on this laptop. I managed to get madrvia working with the "irqpoll" in the bootloader, but it throws a whole list of errors back at me...it starts though, so it's ok.

However, we should really look in fixing this.

Any ideas?

thanks

Leon_UK · Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 10:14 am Post subject:

Hi, I have the same lappy "dell inspiron 1501 amd64" I just got it yesterday and have been trying to get gentoo running but to no avail, I tried booting with "gentoo irqpoll" but i still cant find my hard drive

am i missing a step out?

lusich · n00b Joined: 06 Dec 2006 Posts: 8

I was able to get it to recognize my hard drive by typing gentoo acpi=force irqpoll but it crashes on me later on in the process.

Leon_UK · Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 2:34 pm Post subject:

ok maybe my problem is this

lusich · n00b Joined: 06 Dec 2006 Posts: 8

i used the latest version of gentoo, and also tried other distros....same problem

Leon_UK · Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 8:09 pm Post subject: Finaly

ok so i went to the shop brought a 25 pack of blank cdr's (just to be safe) burnt a fresh gentoo distro booted with the param's above (apci=force irqpoll) now i have detected my hard drive and trying to figure out how to use this livecd install (to use to the command line) anyway will post back soon thanks for all the info

lusich · n00b Joined: 06 Dec 2006 Posts: 8

I managed to get mandriva to work on it, but during boot it gives a lot of errors...same with shutdown and then it loops and freezes

here is the error:
unexpected IRQ trap at vector b8

i then have to shut it down by force

Leon_UK · Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2006 12:23 am Post subject:

ok it works for me i had to download and run the minimal cd could not work the live install but i have the system up and running, just compiling X as I type this
i get all the irq errors at boot but that was expected it shutsdown cleanly but like i said im only just installing X so that might change

EDIT: "apci=force" is not needed just the "irqpoll" option

update: Everything runs great just does start up messages that was mentioned before, the only problem i have now is the sound card I cant get that running but everything else is good another happy gentoo install running smoothly in my house

lusich · n00b Joined: 06 Dec 2006 Posts: 8

Any news on the installation development?

I am looking for a solution, trying to get someone to work on this, but I was rejected by the Gentoo Bugzilla people in a rather unhelpful and unfriendly manner.

How does the start up/shutdown look?

Leon_UK · Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 2:13 am Post subject:

I would also like this to be fixed maybe talking to the freebsd community(not sure how there installer runs compared to Linux) could help since their installer found my hard drive with no params just the default boot from the install cd I only went as far as fdisk because i did not want to disturb my gentoo install but i was using the latest amd64 version of freebsd.
ok so now my gentoo install for me the only problem I have is the unexpected trap messages at boot, maybe it adds a few seconds on to my boot time but thats it after that i have no problems what so ever well sound, wifi and installing ati but i have not tried those yet (but i have seen alsa is only supporting up over sb450 yet I also read somewhere the ati-drivers are only for cards up to X700)
oh and shutdown is very clean nothing wrong there either

lusich · n00b Joined: 06 Dec 2006 Posts: 8

Does "irqpoll" option cause damage to a laptop? Since the system keeps giving errors of "unexpected IRQ trap at vector b8 " during startup/shutdown?

silon · n00b Joined: 28 Jan 2006 Posts: 41

Try looking at this guys config. He used Gentoo 2006.1. It's not a howto, but reveals what could be some key info for you.
http://chamine.ru/sha/linux/aspire5112_gentoo.html
In there I see some kernel settings you may want to try.

truk77 · n00b Joined: 04 Mar 2003 Posts: 6 Location: Texas

Okay, well, I'm posting this on my 1501 running Linux, so know that install is possible. I'll try to be as helpful as I can..

First off, I had to use the 2006.1 Minimal CD. The LiveCD wasn't detecting my sata drive, for some odd reason.

I think the AHCI option in Libata is the magic component to get the drives reading. I'm running the Gentoo-Sources 2.6.18 rc 3 kernel. I think that ACHI is pretty new, so using a recent kernel is likely to your advantage.

Anyhow, from my kernel .config:

mistik1 · n00b Joined: 03 Dec 2006 Posts: 6

I now have sound working on my Inspiron 1501. It turned out that the SB600 is actually an Intel High Def chip and is powered by the snd-hda-intel driver.

Here are a list of the modules I have loaded :

Leon_UK · Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2006 9:24 am Post subject:

oh great thanks for the info i have wirless working will try sound now I know what modules to load,

Im also running in 1280x800 thanks to the fglrx driver i could not figure out why it was stuck in 1024x768 it was the vesa driver in xorg.conf had to change that to fglrx (since radeon driver could not be found). no dri but thats not a problem I wanted sound so much more

lucky for me when i installed wifi (before the last post)i got two lines in between the hundreds of irq messages saying the driver is not 64bit i was trying to figure that problem out for ages.. :oops:

thank you i know have sound
the mixer only has the master volume and no other controls not a problem thogh because i can hear

Update: ok had to get rid of fglrx driver was have some write problems i think, if you scrolled you would always leave one or to mouse cursors behind they some how get painted on to the window, and if you drag a window where ever the mouse curser is there would be a hole so you would see a piece of the desktop or the window under it.. so I noticed i forgot to use the dri use flag so i re-compiled xorg-server with the newuse and i got the radeon driver up and running now the problem has gone. Oh and I checked my mixer and I have 2 not one "master" and "pcm" so thats good.

lusich · n00b Joined: 06 Dec 2006 Posts: 8

guys, you need to check out this forum thread : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?s=2dca699be2be569e56aa2d2991cd5585&t=299929&page=5

there has been another solution proposed by using "pci=nomsi" instead of "irqpoll" as boot opotion. Apparently it works!!!! and doesn't give errors!

I'll try it out myself. but would love to get some more feedback from you as well.

mistik1 · n00b Joined: 03 Dec 2006 Posts: 6

lusich · n00b Joined: 06 Dec 2006 Posts: 8

yeah, it works...I am runing mandriva 2007 right now. No errors!

However, if there is someone that feels like playing with this problem further, they might be able to find an even better solution. So keep us posted...and thanks to everyone for helping out.

Leon_UK · Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 4:21 am Post subject:

price · Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 9:15 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the help that got me up and running with Gentoo on my Inspiron 1501.

I'm now having trouble with the network. It is slower than dialup, I swear (single digit kb/sec to my desktop box). Such a slow connection makes it extremely difficult to emerge. I was going to recompile the kernel, but I'm having trouble even doing "emerge --sync" --- it's so slow.

Various settings follow; any help would be appreciated.

(settings removed; they were long and not related to the problem)

price · Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 10:16 pm Post subject:

Apologies. It seemed that it was an issue unrelated to the Dell Inspiron 1501.

Turning off tcp window scaling to satisfy a bad router did the trick; see https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-530964.html
I am now getting 1 Mb/s, and am happily sync-ing.

Continuing on the original thread, though, I can remove the "irqpoll" boot option completely, leaving only "doscsi pci=nomsi". This is despite having a USB mouse plugged while booting. I am getting APIC errors showing in dmesg, but I'm sure I got some before as well.

radzior · n00b Joined: 19 May 2007 Posts: 12 Location: Katowice, PL

Hello, maybe that's a lame question, but what CFLAGS are you using in your make.conf file with this laptop?

My CPU is AMD Mobile SEMPRON 3500
Mostly I wonder what's the best -march flag for my CPU. Thanks in advance.

price · Posted: Mon May 21, 2007 8:36 pm Post subject:

Haven't got my laptop here today, but the CFLAGS are, I think, standard for amd64. I found a page somewhere listing good CFLAGS for various processors, and just used those. It probably includes "-march=k8".

BTW, a bug fix went into the kernel so that you can now boot *without* the "pci=nomsi" kernel option. The fix is in gentoo-sources-2.6.21-r1 (genpatches-2.6.21-2). See https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=161448 if you want some details.