Dell Vostro 3500 openSUSE 11.2 liveCD KDE

Hi,

I have an issue running the openSUSE 11.2 liveCD KDE on a Dell Vostro 3500. It boots fine to command line. It seems to boot fine to KDE (I assume it doesn’t hang cause the power button turns the laptop off without holding it). However the only thing I can see is a black screen.

I’ve checked the CD with the tool included to the CD. The hardware of the laptop seems to be fine as well :slight_smile:

Thanks for help in advance.

Best regards

Probably graphics related
Try pressing F3 at the boot screen and select Vesa
What graphics is on that machine?

And you are using 11.2 over 11.3? Why?

Thanks for the quick reply.

I’ll try this in 30 minutes time because I’ve started some laptop builtin hardware diagnostics

Don’t know exactly yet but I’ll check and let You know.

Because I have it at home. Didn’t bother to download the new version :slight_smile:

No luck using VESA.

The graphics card information is :


ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ lspci -kv
***** some output omited *****
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 0046 (rev 18)
    Subsystem: Dell Device 0441
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 11
    Memory at fac00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4]
    Memory at c0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256]
    I/O ports at f080 [size=8]
    Capabilities: <access denied>
***** some output omited *****

[/size][/size][/size]

Looking on the dell site all but one (top spec model) have Intel Graphics, one had nvidia Geforce 310M

Couldn’t see the Intel version, but both mine work out of the box

But in either case intel/nvidia, vesa mode should work.

[edit] our posts crossed

Please use

lspci -nnk

Well it doesn’t.
I’ve tried the same live CD on an ASUS with intel graphics and it works there out of the box.

Here’s the output:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ lspci -nnk
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:0044] (rev 18)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:0046] (rev 18)

Is this a live Ub
or installed?
Because that output is like next to useless

What does windows say the device is?

The output is from ubuntu live CD 8.10

Windows says the graphics is Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator HD
http://sunum.kt.agh.edu.pl/~glistwa/IntelGraphics.png

Actually, that is very helpful.

Searching on the 8086:0046 brought me to this link: PCI Devices which notes this is an Arrandale Integrated Graphics Controller (ie that is the ‘brand’ or ‘model’ of the Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator HD).

When I then do a search on the ‘think wiki’ site for the Arrandale, I am lead here: Intel Core i3 - ThinkWiki which in turn leads me here: Intel HD Graphics - ThinkWiki which I note is a write up on the 8086:0046 graphics.

It has this to say (and I quote):

The Intel HD Graphics (sometimes also called GMA HD) is the Graphics Memory Accelerator (GMA) integrated in the Intel Core i3, Intel Core i5 and select Intel Core i7 processors.

Features

  • Chipset: Arrandale (GMCH Ironlake)
  • PCI ID: 8086:0046
  • PCI-E

NOTE!
While almost all new ThinkPads have integrated Intel HD Graphics, on those ThinkPads with a Descrete NVIDIA GPU, the Intel GPU is disabled and cannot be enabled. There is no support for Switchable Graphics.

Linux support

A very recent Linux distribution with kernel **2.6.33 **and Intel Xorg driver 2.11 or newer is recommended.

Note that XVideo (Xv) playback at certain frame sizes does not work properly unless you have at least version 2.12 of the Intel Xorg driver.

So there is your problem.

  • openSUSE-11.2 has the 2.6.31 kernel. You need at least the 2.6.33.
  • openSUSE-11.2 has the Intel Xorg driver 2.9. You need at least the 2.11 or even better the 2.12.

It goes back to what caf4926 asked you . Why use openSUSE-11.2 ? This appears to be very new hardware, and for very new hardware you will need the latest of drivers. For that in openSUSE you will need version 11.3.

Note openSUSE-11.3 comes with the 2.6.34 kernel and the Intel Xorg driver 2.12.

I recommend you follow the inferred recommendation (in the forum of a question) of caf4926 and download openSUSE-11.3, burn and assuming a successful liveCD test, install from openSUSE-11.3 liveCD or from the DVD.

Thanks a lot for help guys. 11.3 KDE live CD works out of the box :slight_smile:

Further to that if one simply searches on the site for Dell Reviews: http://reviews.dell.com you will find it has this to say on the Dell Vostro 3500 (scroll down the page):

Title: Vostro 3500 has excellent Linux compatibility
Reviewed by: HiddenCreek
Product Uses: software developer, academic
Review: I’m running Debian GNU/Linux on my brand new Vostro 3500.
Audio didn’t work until I upgraded from the standard 2.6.32 kernel to a very new 2.6.34 kernel. (Maybe 2.6.33 would work… I didn’t try.) Network only works with the proprietary ‘wl’ driver downloaded directly from Broadcom. I had to compile the ‘wl’ driver myself, but I suspect things are easier on Ubuntu compared to Debian.

I recommend the following for your /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf:

blacklist b43
blacklist ssb

I can’t believe a brand new laptop is so linux compatible!!! With my old HP laptop (DV2422CA) I had to wait about a year before I could run the network without ndiswrapper, and audio was always flaky.

Cons: I haven’t figured out to get a microphone to work (built-in or line-in). Maybe current linux kernel can only handle speakers/line-out/headphones, and microphone support will come later?

… note this user started with the 2.6.32 kernel and not the 2.6.31 (that is openSUSE-11.2).

Try openSUSE-11.3 with this laptop. You may have some networking problems … but one does have to take the reports of Ubuntu users with a grain of salt.

Great news !

How does the networking work ?
How does the microphone work (in-line or integated mic) ?

Wifi doesn’t work OOTB. I’m trying to compile drivers from here Broadcom.com - 802.11 Linux STA driver

Don’t know how to check the mic :slight_smile:

Note Packman have pre-compiled drivers which may or may not be suitable: PackMan :: Informationen zum Paket broadcom-wl

For an external mic, plug in the mic and test !

For testing a mic, I recommend you use a terminal with this command:

  arecord -vv -fdat foo.wav

“foo.wav” is an arbitrary name I made up. Instead you could call it whatapain.wav or whichwaythewindblows.wav or anything …

Note when testing the integrated mic, that often the integrated (internal) mic is a digital mic. You may need to know this when tuning the mixer’s settings.

Great news about the driver. I’ll try it out asap :slight_smile:

About the internal mic it works OOTB.
Now that I think about it it will be impossible to test the wifi driver using the live CD only because I have to reboot the system in order to activate the new kernel or am I missing something ?

Wifi works on the live CD, after installing the precompiled drivers.
Just had to do

modprobe wl

after the package installed. No reboots required.

The full information from lspci is now :

linux:~ # lspci -nnk
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Core Processor DRAM Controller [8086:0044] (rev 18)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0441]
        Kernel driver in use: agpgart-intel
**00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:0046] (rev 18)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0441]
        Kernel driver in use: i915**
00:16.0 Communication controller [0780]: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset HECI Controller [8086:3b64] (rev 06)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0441]
00:1a.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller [8086:3b3c] (rev 06)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0441]
        Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio [8086:3b56] (rev 06)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0441]
        Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 [8086:3b42] (rev 06)
        Kernel driver in use: pcieport
00:1c.1 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 [8086:3b44] (rev 06)
        Kernel driver in use: pcieport
00:1c.2 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 3 [8086:3b46] (rev 06)
        Kernel driver in use: pcieport
00:1c.4 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 5 [8086:3b4a] (rev 06)
        Kernel driver in use: pcieport
00:1d.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller [8086:3b34] (rev 06)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0441]
        Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd
00:1e.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge [8086:2448] (rev a6)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller [8086:3b0b] (rev 06)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0441]
00:1f.2 SATA controller [0106]: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 6 port SATA AHCI Controller [8086:3b2f] (rev 06)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0441]
        Kernel driver in use: ahci
00:1f.3 SMBus [0c05]: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset SMBus Controller [8086:3b30] (rev 06)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0441]
00:1f.6 Signal processing controller [1180]: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Thermal Subsystem [8086:3b32] (rev 06)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0441]
**12:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g LP-PHY [14e4:4727] (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0010]
        Kernel driver in use: wl**
13:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller [10ec:8168] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0441]
        Kernel driver in use: r8169

Looks like your OK now then. Well done!

Thanks. I’ve used many other distros before openSUSE and I must say IMHO it rocks.
And the best part is the forum. You guys really kick ass.