Installing Debian on Dell M1210
Introduction
Summary
| Component | Status | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Camera | Works with some work | Download driver: linux-uvc |
| Card reader | Need more research | |
| CD/DVD | Works with some work | |
| Dual Core CPU | Works | Install smp kernel |
| Ethernet | Works | out of the box |
| Firewire | Not tested | |
| Media Butoms | Works | out of the box |
| Modem | Works, but limited | Propietary driver limit modem to 14.4Kb |
| SATA Disk | Works | out of the box |
| Sound | Works | out of the box |
| Suspend to RAM | Need more research | |
| Suspen to disk | Need more research | |
| S-Video output | Need more research | |
| Touchpad | Works | out of the box |
| USB | Works | out of the box |
| VGA Port | Need more research | |
| Video (NVIDIA) | Works | using nv free driver |
| Wireless | Works | Download driver: ipw3945 |
Base installation
Using Debian Installer Etch beta 3 release
Error message:
No common CD-ROM drive was detected.
SATA driver can block access to CD drive in installations from CD. On systems having a SATA IDE controller that also has the CD drive connected to it, you may see the installer hanging during hardware detection for the CD drive or failing to read the CD just afterwards. A possible reason is that the SATA driver (ata_piix and maybe others) is blocking access to the CD drive. You can try to work around this by booting the installer in expert mode and, in the "Detect and mount CD-ROM" step, selecting only the drivers needed for CD support. These are (ide-)generic, ide-cd and isofs. The drivers needed to access the disk will still be loaded, but at a later stage. By loading the CD drivers before the SATA driver in this way, you may be able to complete the installation. Note that CD-ROM access may still be an issue after rebooting into the installed system.
Booting debian netinst from USB drive
The workaround I used is to boot from a USB stick (don't worry you will get your CDROM working later).
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.
Using kernel boot parameters
(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.
Using Daily Build
Today, dailybuild CD has solved SATA & CD problem
Configuration
APT
/etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free deb http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ testing main deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ sid main
/etc/apt/apt.conf
[..] APT::Default-Release "testing";
Upgrade base system
apt-get update apt-get upgrade
Installing Core Duo kernel
apt-get install linux-image-2.6.16-2-686-smp reboot
Suspend to RAM
apt-get install gnome-power-manager
to validate
- After the installation of the NVIDIA driver, Suspend to RAM worked well after setting SUSPEND2RAM_FORCE="yes" in '/etc/powersave/sleep'.
research
Components
NVIDIA drivers
apt-get install nvidia-kernel-2.6.16-2-686-smp apt-get install nvidia-glx nvidia-settings
Update your /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Section "Modul
