Again, I’ve tried and install a Debian distro on one of my collegues’ laptop, which is a Dell Latitude D610.
The process is similar to the one for a D510 I’ve described earlier.
Ony that this time, the 2.6.12 is available in testing, which removes the need to get things from unstable.
It seems that the SATA drives will be recognised by default without having to hange the /etc/modules or /etc/mkinitrd/modules config files : just apply the following steps :
- Install kernel 2.6.12 from testing
- Boot with the root=/dev/sdX option instead of root=/dev/hdX
- edit /etc/fstab, /boot/grub/menu.lst, etc.
Still, there are problems once it’s all installed : :
- the suspend to ram doesn’t seem to be working as I expect it : although I configured some acpid event handler, after an “echo 3 > /proc/acpi/sleep” in the lid close handler, it will not resume OK : the disk seems to be working on and on, and the machine is frozen.
This seems to be a common issue for other persons using this model. I’ve read that the problem relates to libata missing a suspend possibility (at least in kernel 2.6.12 – Cf. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux-dell-laptops/message/27234).
- The CD drive is not recognized allright. To change that, the initrd should be rebuilt by appliying the following steps :
- Modify the /etc/modules files in order to ask for the following modules in that order :
scsi_mod
sd_mod
libata
sata_sil
piix
ide-generic
ata_piix
- Modify the /etc/mkinitrd/modules file as well to provide the same list of modules
- regenerate the initrd files using something like
mkinitrd -o /boot/initrd.img-2.6.12-1-686 2.6.12-1-686.
- Modify the /etc/modules files in order to ask for the following modules in that order :
Suspending
The suspend2disk is supposed to work, but I think it’s a bit too difficult to setup for the time being.
In the meantime, I think something can be done with the battery saving in case of lid closed with radeontool which can switch off the lid. See the acpid script here http://da.gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Dell_Latitude_D610#ACPI (paths should be adapted for Debian).
Still experimenting on that machine, so don’t take all these informations for exact.
http://fdd.com/software/radeon/ pour radeontool, j’ai trouvé cet page quand j’ai effectué ma recherche sur rpmfind.net. Sur ma fedora core 4, bien que le paquet pm-utils soit installé, radeontool refuse de s’installer car il s’appuie sur apmd, qui lui a besoin de pm-utils, mais mon gestionnaire de paquet (yum/l’installeur de paquet rpm) ne le trouve pas, ou du moins pas la version voulu. si quelqu’un a une piste je suis preneur (par mail svp)
interesting post, however:
can you post the /boot/grub/device.map /boot/grub/menu.lst and fstab file that you did for this install?
Also have D610 laptop with 80GB disk, have dual boot winXP and Debian sarge on 2.4 kernel (Grub on MBR). Want to upgrade to 2.6.15 and am little stuck with exact modifs I need to make to above 3 files for the IDE-SATA driver migration in 2.6kernel.
Also I have to be able to still boot WinXP (work OS) so unsure how I need to modify menu.lst in the WinXP case, currently it is:
title Microsoft Windows XP Professional
root (hd0,1)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1
this boots fine currently, so do I need to modify it?
How would you recover from a bad grub modif (i.e nothing booting anymore): use a Debian LiveCD ? (no floppy on this laptop of course)
thanks
Well, I don’t have the machine at hand anymore, but I suspect that if you replace /dev/hda by /dev/sda in root= statements in grub/menu.lst and in fstab, it should work…
The advantage of grub is that you still get a prompt to change the parameters (and completion with TAB) if you made a mistake…
If fstab is wrong, the boot will stop and you’re in single user… so no big deal and a chance to correct it…
As far win is concerned, no changes, I suppose.
All in all, it should be fairly easy, unless you have strange settings like LVM in root, which I suppose you don’t have.
A recent Knoppix may still make you feel more comfortable in any case 😉
Good luck !
Hi,
I could get suspend-to-ram working by porting a patch to my 2.6.15 kernel.
see http://wiki.teuwen.org/LaptopDellD610 if you are interested.
Phil
Note that the SATA drives issue has a workaround… more details in the post about the D510…