Installing Debian on Dell M1210
| Component | Status | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Intel Core Duo Processor | OK | Requires SMP kernel |
| Row heading A | Cell B | Cell C |
Base installation
Booting debian netinst from USB drive
Debian Installer Etch beta 3 release
if you burn it on a CD and boot from it, you get the message "No common CD-ROM drive was detected" which makes it impossible to go further. The workaround I used is to boot from a USB stick (don't worry you will get your CDROM working later). Debian installer CD has some issues with the SATA and CD drivers that prevent installation to access to CD drive, I found some tips to solve that problem but they did't work for me. I installed it from my 256 MB USB drive. Setting up a USB drive installer
wget http://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/testing/\ main/installer-i386/current/images/hd-media/boot.img.gz gzip -dc boot.img.gz >/dev/sdX
Enable USB drive boot from BIOS setup, and then Install Debian base system as usual.
Installing from CD
(Check) You can append libata.atapi_enabled=1 to the install or expert command lines at the boot prompt to get your cdrom detected and then be able to install from it. However, as Ryan Langseth pointed out to me, this only works for the daily builds of the installer;
Configuration
Repositories
Installing Core Duo kernel
apt-get install linux-image-2.6.16-2-686-smp reboot
Suspend to RAM
Components
NVIDIA drivers
Wireless interface
1. Downloads
driver from http://ipw3945.sourceforge.net/ for example
wget http://ufpr.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/ipw3945/ipw3945-1.1.0.tgz
ieee80211 subsystem from http://ieee80211.sourceforge.net/ for example
wget http://ufpr.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/ieee80211/ieee80211-1.2.15.tgz
firmware from http://bughost.org/ipw3945/ for example
wget http://bughost.org/ipw3945/ucode/ipw3945-ucode-1.13.tgz
regulatory daemon from http://bughost.org/ipw3945/ for example
wget http://bughost.org/ipw3945/daemon/ipw3945d-1.7.22.tgz
2. Install some requisites for modules compilation
apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.16-2-686-smp apt-get install gcc-4.0
3. Complile and install modules
tar -zxvf ieee80211-1.2.15.tgz cd ieee80211-1.2.15 make make install cd .. tar -zxvf ipw3945-1.1.0.tgz cd ipw3945-1.1.0 make mkdir /usr/local/lib/firmware/ tar zxvf ipw3945-ucode-1.13.tgz cp ipw3945-ucode-1.13/ipw3945.ucode /usr/local/lib/firmware/ tar zxvf ipw3945d-1.7.22.tgz cp ipw3945d-1.7.22/x86/ipw3945d /usr/local/sbin/ cd ipw3945-1.1.0 ./load -ipw3945d=/usr/local/sbin/
4. /etc/network/interfaces (Change with your owns values)
iface eth2 inet dhcp
wireless_essid accesspointname
wireless_key off
wireless_rate auto
wireless_mode managed
wireless_channel 6
5. Start interface
ifup eth2
References
- http://eomer.mine.nu/?q=node/18
- http://alidhaey.blogspot.com/2006/08/instalar-debian-etch-en-un-dell.html
- http://math.umh.ac.be/an/D820/#Wireless
Touchpad
Debian identified it as a regular mouse. However installing the xserver-xorg-input-synaptics package and using the "synaptics" driver in X.org works fine.
