topic Laptop Install in Operating System - Linux

Laptop Install

ehutch — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 18:41:18 GMT

I recently purchased a compaq presario f572US laptop. I'm attempting to install linux on it, and stability is an immense issue. the system becomes usable as long as i turn off smp, and apic. i also need to pass irqpoll to the kernel at boot.

are there know bugs or workarounds for this machine?

this is with a 32bit 2.6.22.1 kernel. i can provide dmesg dumps and whatnot if it will help

Re: Laptop Install

Patrick Terlisten — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 02:40:06 GMT

Hello ehutch,

which distribution do you use? Plese check if the newsest BIOS is installed.

What happen if you enable SMP an APIC?

Best regards,
Patrick

Re: Laptop Install

Steven E. Protter — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 04:19:16 GMT

Shalom,

It is a miracle Linux runs at all on that laptop.

Yes, I am aware that lots of tricks are needed to run any distribution of Linux on that model system.

You can't run the smp kernel on that system and you need to find out who built the graphics card and get and install drivers for it. Then you should be able to run in a stable fashion.

SEP

Re: Laptop Install

TY 007 — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 21:51:22 GMT

Hi,

>> the system becomes usable as long as i turn off smp, and apic
>> this is with a 32bit 2.6.22.1 kernel

F572US - AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core?

apic is common issue for PC & Laptop, just turn if off.

32-bit SMP Kernel? Came across few similar issues before. Install 64-bit (x86_64) OS with 64-bit (x86_64) SMP Kernel.

Thanks

Re: Laptop Install

TY 007 — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 22:07:52 GMT

Hi,

Try these combination as well:
- turn off apic
- use 32-bit SMP Kernel
- "numa=off" kernel boot option

"numa=off":
- prevent premature swapping
- disable the creation separate memory zones at boot-time
- disable possibility exhausting one or more zones before others are exhausted

Thanks

Re: Laptop Install

ehutch — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 08:30:05 GMT

ill try a 64bit system this weekend and report back.

Re: Laptop Install

bpierce815 — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 11:17:17 GMT

I installed Fedora 7 on this machine. The following is what I discovered was needed.

Append "noapic irqpoll acpi=off" to the boot parameters on the kernel line for the install.

Install the x86_64 kernel. Once installed update all packages. Install the Nvidia proprietary driver by adding the livna repository: http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-7.rpm, then stop cpuspeed from starting at boot time and append the following to the kernel line in your grub.conf:
"noapic irqpoll"

Reboot and install the wireless using ndiswrapper. Use SP34152A service pack from HP to get the driver files to use with ndiswrapper(bcmwl5.inf, bcmwl5.sys, bcmwl564.sys).

Everything should now be working perfectly except for AMD's speed stepping technology, that just means that it will use battery quicker.

Re: Laptop Install

ehutch — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 17:14:28 GMT

indeed. i just did a gentoo install with the amd64 dvd. works fine now with noapic and irqpoll. smp and all seems to work fine. i also disables the speed stepping. i think that might be the main issue. its somewhere in the timing. on vista, vmware complains that the actual proc speed is not what windows reports, so thats a hint to start with.

Re: Laptop Install

jcrubin — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 08:25:04 GMT

has anyone here checked the /proc/acpi/CPU0/power on their laptop.

My DV6000 shows only 1 C-state. I took apart the DSDT and found that HP has no C-state info in the bios. This would explain why the processor runs so hot and the batteries dont last so long.

can anyone else with a turion 64 x2 confirm this. I spoke with AMD today and they said the feature is on the processor however HP doesnt seem to be using it.