Dell Inspiron 6000

[VinzC]

Let's go on talking about troubles that suck... What pisses me off is that I sometimes switch from X to a text console and find myself in front of a black screen. I can switch back to X, screen is still black. I can also restart X (typing blind commands, of course), still black.

Note the computer is not hung. It is just displaying nothing. Backlight is on but every single pixel on the screen is black. I must reboot for a "cure". I presume running vbetool post would as well though I never tried.

I'm starting to suspect cpufreqd as I just re-enabled it a couple of days ago and I (think I) never experienced a black screen meanwhile. What also sucks is that it can happen after switching once... or twice... or five time... or even longer...

Anyone witnesses this?

[VinzC]

it appears that i spoke to soon, suspend to disk appears very unstable (sometimes works, sometimes doesn't). it always successfully suspends, but resuming isn't consistent.

Don't know if I already mentionned it but just in case you used LZH, it MUST be enabled directly in your kernel, not as a module. If you enable it as a module your computer will suspend but not resume as the module is not loaded yet when the disk is accessed.

[seppelrockt]

Let's go on talking about troubles that suck... What pisses me off is that I sometimes switch from X to a text console and find myself in front of a black screen. I can switch back to X, screen is still black. I can also restart X (typing blind commands, of course), still black.

I never had this problem here. There are some nesty problems now that are very hard to solve I believe because we have been working so much on our configs for so long time that it is nearly impossible to troubleshoot things togehter. What works here might crash your box vis versa. Let's try it anyway

I'm starting to suspect cpufreqd as I just re-enabled it a couple of days ago and I (think I) never experienced a black screen meanwhile. What also sucks is that it can happen after switching once... or twice... or five time... or even longer... Anyone witnesses this?

Maybe you can live without the cpufreqd? I only run the conservative deamon form the kernel and set it to ondemand via the cpufrequtils config in /etc/conf.d/ - everythings fine here.

I agree in summing up the problems that remain unsolved till now. And maybe one day we will write a clean new HowTo for Gentoo on I6000 with a good structure and bring things together as tehy belong Just my dream ...

But FUC* I'm still without a full backup of my system - all the work done would be lost! I always say I will do it when all the hardware runs fine, but that's realy bad argumentation I think.

Left for me are Suspend-to-RAM, Buttons, WLAN-LED, external screen, modem, cardreader.

Today I set up an extra partition with reiser4 for /usr/portage for testing purpose and it realy speeds up portage quite nice.

[juniper]

hmm, i am using the vanilla sources-2.6.12.2, not the gentoo suspend sources. i manually patched the kernel with the suspend 2 patches from

www.suspend2.net

Which is exactly what suspend2 sources are. They are plain vanilla based plus patches for suspend, inotify and framebuffer consoles.

however, when i was using the suspend2 sources, suspend did work. the problem was the random lockups.

I got rid of random freezes when I applied libata_error_handling patch. The script your friend wrote does tasks hibernate.conf file supports too. It must be then possible to configure the options in that file to do the same.

according to emerge

Code: Select all

*  sys-kernel/suspend2-sources
      Latest version available: 2.6.12-r6
      Latest version installed: 2.6.12
      Size of downloaded files: 37,034 kB
      Homepage:    http://dev.gentoo.org/~dsd/genpatches http://www.suspend2.net      Description: Software Suspend 2 + Gentoo patchset sources
      License:     GPL-2

it appears that the suspend2-sources are the sources + suspend + gentoo patchset. i think the gentoo patchset was causing trouble.

j

[juniper]

it appears that i spoke to soon, suspend to disk appears very unstable (sometimes works, sometimes doesn't). it always successfully suspends, but resuming isn't consistent.

Don't know if I already mentionned it but just in case you used LZH, it MUST be enabled directly in your kernel, not as a module. If you enable it as a module your computer will suspend but not resume as the module is not loaded yet when the disk is accessed.

can one use LZH with suspend1? i don't think so but i could be wrong. anyways, i have it compiled into the kernel directly.

i don't really know what to do about having BOTH suspend to disk and suspend to ram. i can get both working, but not reliably. if i use the libata_suspend patch, both suspend to ram and suspend to disk work, but only suspend to ram works reliably. i tried (but can try again) to patch a kernel with BOTH libata_suspend and the suspend2 sources and see if that works. i have also tried just the suspend2 patches and i got suspend to disk working, somewhat reliably, but not as reliable as with libata_suspend and suspend to ram.

i figure if the suspend1 doesn't work out of the box, it is hopeless since it is no longer supported.

we could try and patch a REALLY new kernel (say 2.6.13.-rc7) with the new stable suspend2 patches and see if that gives both suspend to disk and suspend to ram.

i have. however, tried to patch the 2.6.13 kernel with the libata_error_handling patch and it didn't take (needed to keep system stable while running). is it possible that that patch has been put into the kernel? can i somehow find this out?

j

[juniper]

well, i am pretty sure that the libata_suspend patch and suspend 2 are incompatible.

j

[AlexCPU]

Hi, Just got my I6000 with the radeon x300, almost everything seems to be working fine after having read this great thread, just one problem though:

The Synaptics touchpad, I can use it to move the pointer, but I can't get tap to click working, I have to use the big buttons below the pad, which works fine. If someone could post the revelant section of their working Xorg.conf, or suggestions as to why it isn't working that would be great.

Alex

p.s. I've tried a number of the "working" xorg.conf's in this thread with no luck

[edit] does anyone have the modeline for the 1920x1200 screen??? [/edit]
[edit2] i've just tried and the scrolling down the side of the pad works perfectly, still can't get tap to click though [/edit2]

[edit3] I've fixed it, I hadn't set the tap speed (Duh!) and the modeline is:
Modeline "1920x1600_60.00" 260.72 1920 2064 2272 2624 1600 1601 1604 1656
[/edit3]

[RBJ1128]

For one of my classes I have to be running Windows. I have tried to just continue running XP from the Virtual Machine, but it is not working the way I need it to. I have a 60GB HDD and I was going to try to adjust the partition tables and give about 10-15GB to a new NTFS partition. Currently, I have 64MB for "/boot", 1GB for "swap", and the rest for "/". What can I do so that I can create a NTFS partition and adjust my "/" partition, but so that I do not have to re-install Gentoo?

[VinzC]

For one of my classes I have to be running Windows. I have tried to just continue running XP from the Virtual Machine, but it is not working the way I need it to. I have a 60GB HDD and I was going to try to adjust the partition tables and give about 10-15GB to a new NTFS partition. Currently, I have 64MB for "/boot", 1GB for "swap", and the rest for "/". What can I do so that I can create a NTFS partition and adjust my "/" partition, but so that I do not have to re-install Gentoo?

Your best bet is to backup using tar, I think though I'm not an expert with backup solutions. Given my little experience I'm trying with known means. I've already had to move a whole filesystem to another partition using tar and it worked without a problem.

It is best to do the backup (and the restore) from a livecd so that all pid files are cleaned, for instance. Also you might want to set RC_DEVICE_TARBALL="no" before backing up.

Otherwise I once used partimage to save and restore my Linux/Windows partitions on my laptop. But these were unchanged as partimage doesn't support restoring onto smaller partitions.

[seppelrockt]

For one of my classes I have to be running Windows. I have tried to just continue running XP from the Virtual Machine, but it is not working the way I need it to. I have a 60GB HDD and I was going to try to adjust the partition tables and give about 10-15GB to a new NTFS partition. Currently, I have 64MB for "/boot", 1GB for "swap", and the rest for "/". What can I do so that I can create a NTFS partition and adjust my "/" partition, but so that I do not have to re-install Gentoo?

Your best bet is to backup using tar, I think though I'm not an expert with backup solutions. Given my little experience I'm trying with known means. I've already had to move a whole filesystem to another partition using tar and it worked without a problem.

It is best to do the backup (and the restore) from a livecd so that all pid files are cleaned, for instance. Also you might want to set RC_DEVICE_TARBALL="no" before backing up.

Otherwise I once used partimage to save and restore my Linux/Windows partitions on my laptop. But these were unchanged as partimage doesn't support restoring onto smaller partitions.

I second this - did it myself with tar some days ago to increase the size of my WinXP part to 12 GB (5 GB before) - now I can play HL2 on this lappy even with the intel onboard graphics in 1280x800! For me it was a little complicated cause I had to do the whole thing with ssh and the tars have to becreated on another box cause of space limitations here. But it worked. Next time I will use the stage4 approach though - search the forum for it!

[RBJ1128]

Your best bet is to backup using tar, I think though I'm not an expert with backup solutions. Given my little experience I'm trying with known means. I've already had to move a whole filesystem to another partition using tar and it worked without a problem.

It is best to do the backup (and the restore) from a livecd so that all pid files are cleaned, for instance. Also you might want to set RC_DEVICE_TARBALL="no" before backing up.

Otherwise I once used partimage to save and restore my Linux/Windows partitions on my laptop. But these were unchanged as partimage doesn't support restoring onto smaller partitions.

Thanks. What does RC_DEVICE_TARBALL="no" do?

[VinzC]

Thanks. What does RC_DEVICE_TARBALL="no" do?

It tells UDEV to store the /dev tree into a tar file on shutdown, in case you have created some nodes yourself, that can't easily be created using UDEV rules, as an example.

I always do that when I clone a machine for instance. I boot with the live CD, partition the disk, create file systems and the root directory entries that are used in the fstab, mount the filesystems and restore the tarball. The tarball has previously been created without tmp directories, /sys and /dev plus other ones such as /mnt/*.

[RBJ1128]

It tells UDEV to store the /dev tree into a tar file on shutdown, in case you have created some nodes yourself, that can't easily be created using UDEV rules, as an example.

I always do that when I clone a machine for instance. I boot with the live CD, partition the disk, create file systems and the root directory entries that are used in the fstab, mount the filesystems and restore the tarball. The tarball has previously been created without tmp directories, /sys and /dev plus other ones such as /mnt/*.

Ok, so the procedure that I should do is:

Code: Select all

1. Boot to a LiveCD
2. Mount the drive, and my external drive
3. Run RC_DEVICE_TARBALL="no" tar -cjf /mnt/external/bak.tar.bz2 /mnt/gentoo/
4. Go learn how to speak Spanish while waiting for it to finish
5. Blow away the internal drive and install Win
6. Use Partition Magic to adjust the partition tables and create empty space for Gentoo
7. Boot back with the LiveCD, create the partitions, and restore from the backup file with tar -xjf /mnt/external/bak.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/gentoo/

Is that right?

[VinzC]

can one use LZH with suspend1?

I don't think so either. To me that functionnality belongs to swsusp2.

i don't really know what to do about having BOTH suspend to disk and suspend to ram. i can get both working, but not reliably. if i use the libata_suspend patch, both suspend to ram and suspend to disk work, but only suspend to ram works reliably. i tried (but can try again) to patch a kernel with BOTH libata_suspend and the suspend2 sources and see if that works. i have also tried just the suspend2 patches and i got suspend to disk working, somewhat reliably, but not as reliable as with libata_suspend and suspend to ram.

i figure if the suspend1 doesn't work out of the box, it is hopeless since it is no longer supported.

Well at least it would have spared you hair loss if you hadn't tried swsusp1, . I must confess I didn't since - as you said - it is not supported anymore. I think it is best to forget about swsusp1 and focus on the second version. Half of the problems will go.

is it possible that that patch has been put into the kernel? can i somehow find this out?

It can easily be checked: from brand new source tree, just open the desired file and check whether the added line is present. If so it will tell you why the patch could not be applied. You can gather the file patch from the patch; the "leading garbage" are 2-3 lines in the beginning of the file. They should give you the relative path inside which the tarball is extracted, i.e. /usr/src/linux-2.6.13-rc7.

[VinzC]

[...]Ok, so the procedure that I should do is:

Code: Select all

1. Boot to a LiveCD
2. Mount the drive, and my external drive
3. Run RC_DEVICE_TARBALL="no" tar -cjf /mnt/external/bak.tar.bz2 /mnt/gentoo/
4. Go learn how to speak Spanish while waiting for it to finish
5. Blow away the internal drive and install Win
6. Use Partition Magic to adjust the partition tables and create empty space for Gentoo
7. Boot back with the LiveCD, create the partitions, and restore from the backup file with tar -xjf /mnt/external/bak.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/gentoo/

Is that right?

Not exactly:
1. Edit /etc/conf.d/rc and change RC_DEVICE_TARBALL to "no"
2. Reboot with the live CD
3. Mount all filesystems (including /boot to be sure) in /mnt/gentoo/etc/fstab at their location under /mnt/gentoo
4. aso.

You can just use fdisk - if you want to - for if you already partitionned your disk with it it should be as easy to start all over again. As a last advice: you can create a separate partition for /var as it will protect the root file system from being filled up. There are people who also do that with /usr but I don't. Using a separate partition for /usr also implies copying some system files to /boot for splashutils to work properly on boot.

You could also --exclude your /usr/portage/distfiles to spare a lot of space. Even --exclude /tmp, /var/tmp, /sys and /dev but be sure to re-create them afterwards (with correct mode). Mind the paths I've just given for they relate to /mnt/gentoo when you're backing up your system. See man pages of tar for more information on excluding files/dirs.

[gnufied]

hello,
i am having Acer 4150NLCi laptop with 915GM chipset. i dont have DMA enabled for either hard disk or DVD combo.
i guess , i am having a PATA hard disk. and an IDE DVD combo.
i tried above solutions , with no luck.
Any suggestions guys..

[RBJ1128]

Not exactly:
1. Edit /etc/conf.d/rc and change RC_DEVICE_TARBALL to "no"
2. Reboot with the live CD
3. Mount all filesystems (including /boot to be sure) in /mnt/gentoo/etc/fstab at their location under /mnt/gentoo
4. aso.
...

First off, "aso"??? I have not yet tried it, but I found a HOWTO in the Gentoo-Wiki that uses convertfs and ext2resize. Has anyone used these? Here is the link that I found: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Install_Wi ... ter_Gentoo

[juniper]

can one use LZH with suspend1?

I don't think so either. To me that functionnality belongs to swsusp2.

i don't really know what to do about having BOTH suspend to disk and suspend to ram. i can get both working, but not reliably. if i use the libata_suspend patch, both suspend to ram and suspend to disk work, but only suspend to ram works reliably. i tried (but can try again) to patch a kernel with BOTH libata_suspend and the suspend2 sources and see if that works. i have also tried just the suspend2 patches and i got suspend to disk working, somewhat reliably, but not as reliable as with libata_suspend and suspend to ram.

i figure if the suspend1 doesn't work out of the box, it is hopeless since it is no longer supported.

Well at least it would have spared you hair loss if you hadn't tried swsusp1, . I must confess I didn't since - as you said - it is not supported anymore. I think it is best to forget about swsusp1 and focus on the second version. Half of the problems will go.

is it possible that that patch has been put into the kernel? can i somehow find this out?

It can easily be checked: from brand new source tree, just open the desired file and check whether the added line is present. If so it will tell you why the patch could not be applied. You can gather the file patch from the patch; the "leading garbage" are 2-3 lines in the beginning of the file. They should give you the relative path inside which the tarball is extracted, i.e. /usr/src/linux-2.6.13-rc7.

hello again VinzC,

yeah, i shouldn't have tried the suspend 1.

well, right now i have suspend to ram working flawlessly (it has woken up properly about the last 50 times) by applying that guy's patch to the 2.6.11.11 kernel. however suspend to disk is a mess.

anyways, suspend to ram is nice, fast etc. except it takes battery power (at full charge i estimate it will use the battery in about four days while sleeping).

anyways, i guess i can't complain. in fact, i think that suspend to ram works better than it does in windows (i still have my windows partition, although i haven't used it in months, thought i would keep it "just in case..." my rule is that if i don't boot into the windows for 6 months i will wipe it). in windows, it is quite a bit slower than in linux (one time i pushed the sleep button, thought it wasn't working, started surfing the web again and in about 10 seconds it went to sleep). like i said, i shouldn't complain.

j

[PolarXL]

I'm having a little bit of trouble with my audio... I'm not sure if it's DI6000 related, but I figured since we all have the same laptop, we all might have run into the same issues.

The issue is this- Some applications, for whatever reason, can't access /dev/dsp unless they're run as root. A couple examples:

ut2004-demo: Runs silent when I run it as a user, but there's sound if I run it as root.

totem: The movie player doesn't start at all- It says "Could not access device /dev/dsp, check it's permissions".
Interestingly, when I run totem as root, I get "OSS device "dev/dsp" is already in use by another program" although I have nothing playing sound. I believe the issue is related.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the XMMS mp3 player and other games, like Armagetronad, run with sound without any sort of problem.

I'm running with the ALSA sound system and followed the gentoo guide (with kernel modules, not alsa-drivers).

I'm hesitant to simply chmod /dev/sound/dsp (which /dev/dsp points to) since I think this is a symptom of something not configured right on the system, and I want to fix the cause, not the symptom.


Also - It doesn't seem that any of my apps will play an audio CD. It's strange, I click play, but I don't think the CD even spins up. Something else I'm missing? I don't think this is related, but who knows... might be.

If any of the rest of you guys have run into this, help would be much appreciated.

-Alex

[VinzC]

First off, "aso"???

And So On (And So Forth). "Etc" if you want.

As for the rest, I never tried shrinking or expanding partitions with partition magic - I never did that at all. I'm paranoïd about partitions and I sometimes have time to waste hence prefer to setup the disk from the start if needed with fdisk. As I only reordered my partitions last time, I used partimage. It is fast for backup/restore. So I'm afraid I can't answer your question. But I'm sure there are other people who will.

[seppelrockt]

There is a cool solution for preventing the touchpad cursor jumps while you do some word processing - and I'm sure you already got it ... Learn how to Pimp Your Touchpad http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-27 ... ml#2731012 and help us fixing the init script.

[VinzC]

I'm having a little bit of trouble with my audio... I'm not sure if it's DI6000 related, but I figured since we all have the same laptop, we all might have run into the same issues.

The issue is this- Some applications, for whatever reason, can't access /dev/dsp unless they're run as root. A couple examples:

ut2004-demo: Runs silent when I run it as a user, but there's sound if I run it as root.

totem: The movie player doesn't start at all- It says "Could not access device /dev/dsp, check it's permissions".
Interestingly, when I run totem as root, I get "OSS device "dev/dsp" is already in use by another program" although I have nothing playing sound. I believe the issue is related.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the XMMS mp3 player and other games, like Armagetronad, run with sound without any sort of problem.

I'm running with the ALSA sound system and followed the gentoo guide (with kernel modules, not alsa-drivers).

I'm hesitant to simply chmod /dev/sound/dsp (which /dev/dsp points to) since I think this is a symptom of something not configured right on the system, and I want to fix the cause, not the symptom.


Also - It doesn't seem that any of my apps will play an audio CD. It's strange, I click play, but I don't think the CD even spins up. Something else I'm missing? I don't think this is related, but who knows... might be.

If any of the rest of you guys have run into this, help would be much appreciated.

-Alex

This is all related to UDEV and how udev rules create nodes and assign rights. However I've not noticed anything special about /dev/dsp on my side. You should probably make sure your regular user account is part of groups audio and video. That way you will be able to hear sounds and play videos.

You could check whether rights are assigned correctly:

Code: Select all

 $ ls -l /dev/sound/*
crw-rw----  1 root audio 14, 12 sep  6 22:01 /dev/sound/adsp
crw-rw----  1 root audio 14,  4 sep  6 22:01 /dev/sound/audio
crw-rw----  1 root audio 14,  3 sep  6 22:01 /dev/sound/dsp
crw-rw----  1 root audio 14,  0 sep  6 22:01 /dev/sound/mixer
crw-rw----  1 root audio 14,  1 sep  6 22:01 /dev/sound/sequencer
crw-rw----  1 root audio 14,  8 sep  6 22:01 /dev/sound/sequencer2

Note this is an output on a non Dell machine. I'm not currently using Linux on my Laptop. I'll post the results a little bit later after I rebooted if you want.

HTH.

[seppelrockt]

Another audio problem - I can not play audio cd with console cd players like cdplay or cdcd. cdplay pretends to play the cd but there is no sound. kaffeine / xine works but I'd like to have a prog that doesn't use freedb over the cddb protocol but over http port 80 and xine/kaffeine seems to be unable to do this. For playing CDs a little console app is just right!

[Sejam]

Let's go on talking about troubles that suck... What pisses me off is that I sometimes switch from X to a text console and find myself in front of a black screen. I can switch back to X, screen is still black. I can also restart X (typing blind commands, of course), still black.

Note the computer is not hung. It is just displaying nothing. Backlight is on but every single pixel on the screen is black. I must reboot for a "cure". I presume running vbetool post would as well though I never tried.

I'm starting to suspect cpufreqd as I just re-enabled it a couple of days ago and I (think I) never experienced a black screen meanwhile. What also sucks is that it can happen after switching once... or twice... or five time... or even longer...

Anyone witnesses this?

Funny, that's the reason I'm checking this again is because after reinstalling because of too many problems after the bios update, I have everything working, but am experiencing the same issues with the blank screen. Even the tricks I used to use in the past don't work. One thing to note is that I am not using cpufreqd and it is still occurring for me.

[VinzC]

Let's go on talking about troubles that suck... What pisses me off is that I sometimes switch from X to a text console and find myself in front of a black screen. I can switch back to X, screen is still black. I can also restart X (typing blind commands, of course), still black.

Note the computer is not hung. It is just displaying nothing. Backlight is on but every single pixel on the screen is black. I must reboot for a "cure". I presume running vbetool post would as well though I never tried.

I'm starting to suspect cpufreqd as I just re-enabled it a couple of days ago and I (think I) never experienced a black screen meanwhile. What also sucks is that it can happen after switching once... or twice... or five time... or even longer...

Anyone witnesses this?

Funny, that's the reason I'm checking this again is because after reinstalling because of too many problems after the bios update, I have everything working, but am experiencing the same issues with the blank screen. Even the tricks I used to use in the past don't work. One thing to note is that I am not using cpufreqd and it is still occurring for me.

Reliefed (but not glad) the problem has been reproduced. I have BIOS A07, how about you, Sejam? Should we suspect Dell Video BIOS or the kernel or X's video driver? Does it also happen only when the PC is on batteries or did it also happen while on AC?