The Wahyudiharto's Blog

I’m running my curiosity to exploring the Fedora series on my laptop. Since there were lot of hardware detection failure on previous Fedora version, now I’m working it on Fedora Core 7. The installation comes with DVD setup CD I’ve got from internet & it finished to setup from scratch with much times needed (about 45 minutes) but nothing serious problems happened indeed. Some odd things going through such as:

1. Missing total size of installed packages during package selection. There will be no more information regarding to the total size package needed to be installed. This is important since we can prepared the amount of size of partition system.

2. Missing of mc (Midnight Commander) package. Why the developer loosing this powerful tool from the packages? Peoples are needed this tool so much. Even it can be installed later from yum or RPM portal (such as rpmfind.net or livna’s portal), but the lacks of it is such a great fools.

3. Also (another) lacks of k3b burning software. Is this 13MB size of packages are loaded enough or something so that they wouldn’t include it in DVD? Another reasonable possibly is they just don’t want to stamped as piracy maker(?)

4. As is as previous version, Fedora Core 7 not including with MP3 codec software or others common video codec, but why now home folder are filled with extra multimedia directory? For fools example, even there are Download folder exists, the default download directory of KGet is in Desktop below on home directories.



Anyway, The Acer TravelMate 6291 has small form factor & lightweight laptop. It is powered by the Intel Core 2 Duo processor. This is still “a work progress” since I have not yet finished the configuration of all devices. Come back soon for more detailed version.

Available General Hardware


Others Specifications
Dimensions (WxHxD): 299 x 214 x 27.4 mm
Weight: 1.89 kg
Memory: 512 MB DDR2
Slots: 3 USB 2.0, Headphone-out, Mic-in, VGA, RJ 11, RJ 45, IEEE1394 (4pin), PCMCIA Typ II, Cardreader

or if you like the hardcore way (lspci):

[root@tuxbook /]# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5787M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)
0a:01.0 CardBus bridge: ENE Technology Inc CB1410 Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
0a:02.0 FLASH memory: ENE Technology Inc Unknown device 0730
0a:02.1 Generic system peripheral [0805]: ENE Technology Inc Unknown device 0750
0a:02.2 FLASH memory: ENE Technology Inc Unknown device 0720
0a:02.3 FLASH memory: ENE Technology Inc Unknown device 0751
0a:09.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB23 IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)

Graphic Cards
Works pretty out of the box with the “intel” driver. You may no longer need 915resolution patch since the default resolution comes with 1280x800 as default.



The system well detected the interface such below:

[root@tuxbook /]# dmesg | grep agp
Linux agpgart interface v0.102 (c) Dave Jones
agpgart: Detected an Intel 945GM Chipset.
agpgart: Detected 7932K stolen memory.
agpgart: AGP aperture is 256M @ 0xc0000000

Below is xorg.conf configuration files:

# Xorg configuration created by pyxf86config

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Synaptics" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "intel"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Soundcard
The soundcard detected as 82801 (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller, but I still couldn’t figured out how to make it don’t to keep silent.



The XMMS multimedia player is running as well playing mp3 file but no sound comes out from the speaker. I also have compiled the latest ALSA driver patch Here is below the result I’ve done with alsaunmute:

[root@tuxbook /]# alsaunmute 0 -v
Card 0 Driver snd_hda_intel Volume 75%...
Unmuting ...
Play. Volume master(0) to 48
Play. Volume master(1) to 48
Play. Volume pcm(0) to 191
Play. Volume pcm(1) to 191
Unmuting snd_hda_intel...

Some milist talking about this problem suggested to add the acpi set to off in the end of kernel boot line:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6...blablabla... ro quiet splash acpi=off

or

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6...blablabla... ro quiet splash acpi=ht

And some others suggest to add the laptop-eapd or/and 3stack mode on the sound probing command in /etc/modprobe.conf:

options snd-hda-intel index=0 single_cmd=1 model=laptop-eapd

or

options snd-hda-intel index=0 single_cmd=1 model=3stack

Still, above combined or on by one step tricks & hacks didn’t give any changes. I’m so confused about this since there are no mute indicated after running alsamixer tool.



DVD read/write
I wonder why Fedora Core 7 not shipped with burning application k3b? since it is the best burner ever on Linux, I tried to installed it from the yum package updater & it’s worked correctly to burning the Fedora Core 7 image ISO (2.7GB) on a DVD blank. It finished in remaining time 20 minutes on automatic detection burning speed.

WiFi
The default iwl3945 driver works very well. Some said that ipw3945 driver would fine but it is not happened to me. iwlwifi driver is an alternative, but I still don’t have time to try it.



Try to running iwconfig, a similar result you may have is like this below:

[root@tuxbook /]# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

virbr0 no wireless extensions.

wmaster0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11a ESSID:""
Mode:Managed Frequency:5.18 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2346 B
Encryption key:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

sit0 no wireless extensions.

IrDA & Bluetooth
The IrDA stack is stable & working well. Either the bluetooth stack. The detection of it is going smooth. I tried to searched & paired from my PDA HP 6365 & it’s OK.



Modem
The system comes with Agere winmodem(?) stacks. As default, it has not detected. I though it would run with slmodem driver but I don’t have tested yet.

Ethernet
Works fine. As default, the system using the “tg3” kernel module.



PCMCIA
Also works fine. It has detected as well from kernel.

ACPI
Somehow - I guess that - the ACPI module is not stable yet. It seems that it may break the WiFi connection & have problem with sound detection. I suggested that you must turn off this option, but note that your battery remaining time information will be no longer detected correctly.

Builtin Web Camera
The system detected an Acer CrystalEye webcam running on USB bus. Anyway, I’m not tested yet how to make it working as well as from Windows.



Card Reader
Card reader also well detected. But it seems failed to working since it has conflict probably with the IRQ.

[root@tuxbook /]# dmesg | grep sdhci
sdhci: Secure Digital Host Controller Interface driver
sdhci: Copyright(c) Pierre Ossman
sdhci: SDHCI controller found at 0000:0a:02.1 [1524:0750] (rev 0)
[] sdhci_irq+0x0/0x4b8 [sdhci]
[] sdhci_probe+0x5b5/0x6a2 [sdhci]
sdhci: probe of 0000:0a:02.1 failed with error -16

Anyway, it hasn’t been able to get the driver to work perfectly with ENE controller. For more detailed information, take a tour to http://mmc.drzeus.cx/wiki/Linux/Drivers/sdhci

Miscellaneous Things
Fedora Core 7 also comes with stable version of ntfs-3g device drivers. It allowed you to read & write the NTFS partition from Linux. To enabled it, make sure to add correct line permission mode parameter on /etc/fstab:

LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
LABEL=SWAP-sda8 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/sda1 /mnt/win_c ntfs-3g defaults,rw,umask=000 0 0
/dev/sda5 /mnt/win_d vfat defaults 0 0
/dev/sda6 /mnt/win_e vfat defaults 0 0

Labels: My Share

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