Linux Mandrake 9.2 (kernel 2.4.22-10mdk) on the laptop Dell Inspiron 500m: fighting with Centrino wireless (Intel ProWireless TM 2100 Mini-PCI Card (802.11b)) and video.

Last update - February 14, 2004

This info provided "as is". Use it at your own risk, I'm not responsible for any result caused by the use of this info.

Detailed info about hardware is here dmesg and here lspci

  1. On the pre-installed XP I performed defrag.

  2. Loaded Knoppix 3.3 CD and using qtparted I resized the NTFS to have 8GB of free space on hdd

  3. Installed Mandrake 9.2 from DVD using defaults as much as possible

  4. To solve the X resolution problem - I got the 855patch From the http://projects.nudieman.com/500m/ and added the call to /etc/rc.d/rc.local as it was recommended. Later I discovered that it is enough for terminal login, but does not work well for X login. Therefore I placed another call to the /etc/rc.d/init.d/dm just before prefdm starts.

  5. I also removed vga=788 line from lilo.conf and re-applied lilo from MDK control center. That solved annoying prompt to specify screen mode at booting.

  6. Using the instruction at http://www.luth.obspm.fr/~luthier/gourgoulhon/ThinkPad/ I installed ndiswrapper - ver 0.3 Note that last version available 0.4, but for some reason it did not work for MDK default kernel 2.4.22-10mdk. The ndiswrapper 0.4 worked with kernel 2.4.22-26mdk, but it needs to be installed from MDK update . The windows drivers were placed to /lib/windrivers. There is also a package with installer at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/martin_whitaker/ndiswrapper/home.html, but I did not try it myself. The advantage of the last one is the possibility to configure wireless via MDK gui.

  7. Here is my /etc/modules.conf This file loads the driver, for ndiswrapper ver. 0.4 you need to change the name of the loader, because it was renamed there to loadndisdriver.

  8. Obviously I also got "Wireless-tools" installed (included in mdk 9.2 DVD)

  9. Some fine tunning of the networking-scripts was also required /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1 for security settings and authentication. You will need to modify file with your key and essid. Another thing is that for my WLAN configuration I had to put security mode to open. If you have restricted (secured) mode you can put WIRELESS_ENC_KEY='your_Hex_key restricted'

  10. Output of iwconfig eth1 is here, ifconfig eth1 - here

  11. Sound was not working out of box, I had to select audio driver i810 from GUI of the MDK control center.

  12. To enable battery info in KDE (klaptop icon in systray), I had to load modules ac and battery ('modprobe ac' and 'modprobe battery'). But then I just installed packages from MDK DVD - acpi and acpid that did it for me automatically.

  13. Here is small script sleepy (thanks to http://www.skynet.ie/~maddenj/useful/inspn-500m.txt) which you can run before closing screen to force laptop to sleep (not hybernate). To wake up - press power button.

  14. The I8kutils: available at ftp://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/mirror/mandrake/9.2/contrib/i586/i8kutils-1.17-1mdk.i586.rpm. I'm going to test it in few days time. Theoretically it will allow to use FN keys of Dell.

  15. ToDo/Wish list: IrDA test, Modem test, TV-out test, hybernation, closing screen latch causing problem with X. WLAN works very slow for uploading (sending files out)



Thanks, Daniyar Satkhanov (dsatkhan at yahoo.com)