HOW TO: Feisty On Dell 6400 + Ati X1400

[lifeempowered.com]

***IMPORTANT NOTE: This Script is Not Necessarily Up To Date. I've Decided To Stop Updating This Thread and Focus All My Updates On My Blog. Please Find My Blog at http://www.mylittleubuntuguide.com Thanks.

ABOUT THIS HOW TO:
Following are two sections. The first is to be used to install a complete system onto your Dell Inspiron 6400 with ATI graphics. The second section lists individual scripts you can use to install parts, such as ATI, or just wifi, etc. At the end of this post is information about the script and what it installs.

Please note my system hardware:
Dell Inspiron 6400
ATI X1400 128 MB (not shared) - Works
BCM4311 (Dell 1390) WiFi - Works
BCM4401 LAN - Works
160 GB HD - Works
DVD Writer - Works
2 GB RAM - Works
15.4" LCD w/ 1280x800 Res. - Works
Firewire - Works
Intel 82801G High Def. Audio - Works
Synaptic Touchpad - Works
56K Modem - Not Tested
Ricoh MultiCard Reader - SD Card Works, Sony Memory Stick Doesn't


INSTALLING FEISTY ON 6400 WITH SCRIPT - FULL INSTALL


INITIAL INSTALL & PREP

1. Download the Ubuntu Desktop Live CD from Here: Download ISO Here. Burn the ISO to CD and boot.

2. After booting into the CD X won't start. Hit Enter to say OK to the error messages and get back to the black screen. You may need to switch to ALT-F4 to get an "ubuntu" user. Do the following, one at a time, to get X working:

wget http://www.mylittleubuntuguide.com/files/ati
chmod +x ati
./ati

You'll see X start and you are now running the Live CD in your native resolution!

3. Double click the Install icon and configure your install how you like it.

4. After your system finishes installing it will prompt you before rebooting, ensure you have a network cable connected, and when it boots into the new system you'll see an error about X. Use your arrows to select NO, hit ENTER and then OK to get to the black login screen. You'll see an error regarding BCM43xx appearing, ignore it and type as if it wasn't there. The command line can't "read" that error so don't try to backspace over it, etc. Login using your username and password.

5. Download the script:

wget http://www.mylittleubuntuguide.com/files/dellinstall

6. Make it executable and run it:

sudo chmod +x dellinstall
./dellinstall  # NOTICE Do NOT Run As Sudo

Sit back and relax for a moment until you hear your system BEEP at reboots.

7. After the system reboots X still won't start, login to the black login screen (X still errors out) and run the 2nd script:

sudo ./dellinstall2

During this second script, near the beginning, you'll be prompted to accept the license agreements of several applications. You'll also be prompted to enter a serial key for VMWare Server. Get one for free at www.vmware.com. After the prompt for VMWare, the install will complete without your input and will reboot the system.

Get a cup of coffee, relax, watch some TV...When it's finished the system will BEEP, reboot, and you can now use it!

Some additional notes:
1. Your system will reboot automatically and after it comes up you'll have X. To login to Beryl, before you login select the GNOME with XGL session from the Options>Sessions menu in the bottom left corner.
2. To see your system temp, right click the top panel and select "Add to Panel", choose the "Hardware Sensors Monitor" and click Add.


INDIVIDUAL SCRIPTS
INSTRUCTIONS: If You've Already Installed Using the Full Install Above, You Do NOT Need to Run ANY of the Following. The following scripts are setup in such a way that they can be run independantly from each other, however, certain scripts must be run before others...take note of the dependancies on each.

INITIAL INSTALL & PREP

1. Download the Ubuntu Desktop Live CD from Here: Download ISO Here. Burn the ISO to CD and boot.

2. After booting into the CD X won't start. Hit Enter to say OK to the error messages and get back to the black screen. You may need to switch to ALT-F4 to get an "ubuntu" user. Do the following, one at a time, to get X working:

wget http://www.mylittleubuntuguide.com/files/ati
chmod +x ati
./ati

You'll see X start and you are now running the Live CD in your native resolution!

3. Double click the Install icon and configure your install how you like it.

4. After your system finishes installing it will prompt you before rebooting, ensure you have a network cable connected, and when it boots into the new system you'll see an error about X. Use your arrows to select NO, hit ENTER and then OK to get to the black login screen. You'll see an error regarding BCM43xx appearing, ignore it and type as if it wasn't there. The command line can't "read" that error so don't try to backspace over it, etc. Login using your username and password.

SCRIPT 1 - UPDATE SYSTEM (No Dependancies)

Download and run the script. Open a terminal and do each of the following commands.

wget http://www.mylittleubuntuguide.com/files/update
sudo chmod +x update
sudo ./update

SCRIPT 2 - INSTALL BUILD TOOLS (OPTIONAL)(Install Script 1 Prior to This)
This script installs all the tools necessary to build stuff in the future. So if you wanted to build an application from it's source, you'd need these installed first.
Download and run the script. Open a terminal and do each of the following commands.

wget http://www.mylittleubuntuguide.com/files/build
sudo chmod +x build
sudo ./build

SCRIPT 3 - INSTALL VIDEO DRIVERS (Install Script 1 Prior to This)

Download and run the script. Open a terminal and do each of the following commands.

wget http://www.mylittleubuntuguide.com/files/video
sudo chmod +x video
sudo ./video

SCRIPT 4 - INSTALL BERYL + XGL (Install Scripts 1 & 3 Prior to This)

Download and run the script. Open a terminal and do each of the following commands.

wget http://www.mylittleubuntuguide.com/files/beryl
sudo chmod +x beryl
sudo ./beryl

SCRIPT 5 - INSTALL HARDWARE MONITORING (No Dependancies - However Make Sure Sources.list is Open or Run Script 1 Prior)

Download and run the script. Open a terminal and do each of the following commands.

wget http://www.mylittleubuntuguide.com/files/hwmonitor
sudo chmod +x hwmonitor
sudo ./hwmonitor

SCRIPT 6 - INSTALL AUTOMATIX2 (No Dependancies...Recommend Script 1 Prior)
This is a great utility which allows you to easily and effortlessly install all sorts of nice applications, drivers, codecs, and more using a gui.
Download and run the script. Open a terminal and do each of the following commands.

wget http://www.mylittleubuntuguide.com/files/automatix
sudo chmod +x automatix
sudo ./automatix

SCRIPT 7 - INSTALL WIRELESS (No Dependancies - However Make Sure Sources.list is Open or Run Script 1 Prior)

Download and run the script. Open a terminal and do each of the following commands.

wget http://www.mylittleubuntuguide.com/files/wifi
sudo chmod +x wifi
sudo ./wifi

SCRIPT 8 - Extras (No Dependancies - However Make Sure Sources.list is Open or Run Script 1 Prior)
In the Extras Script is DeVeDe (a DVD authoring app), scanbuttond (a necessity if you have a Canon scanner), gstm (a proxy tunneling app), and Kompozer (a nice HTML editor/web page developer)
Download and run the script. Open a terminal and do each of the following commands.

wget http://www.mylittleubuntuguide.com/files/extras
sudo chmod +x extras
sudo ./extras

Information About This Script

What This Script Does:
1. Configures a New System
2. Blacklists Necessary Modules
3. Installs Drivers
4. Installs Applications

What This Script Installs:
1. System/Kernel Update with Reboot
2. Build/Compilation Tools
3. FGLRX Driver for ATI
4. XGL for Use With Beryl
5. Beryl by Trevino (0.3) w/ Unsupported Plugins, Video Capture Plugin, Seom, and Avant Window Manager
6. i8k Utils, GKRellm, and Sensors Applet for Hardware Monitoring (gkrellm is optional…for controlling the temp thresholds and fans yourself)
7. Automatix2 (A Super App By www.GetAutomatix.com That Allows You To Easily Install and Remove Cool Applications and Drivers)
8. Kompozer Web Editing Software, formerly NVu
9. DeVeDe DVD Authoring Software
10. gSTM Proxy Tunneling Software
11. Scanbutton Deamon (for use with Canon scanners)
12. Wireless Driver Using ndiswrapper for Dell 1390 and/or Broadcom 43xx (Any Broadcom Wireless Driver Which Uses the bcmwl5.sys / bcmwl5.inf Driver File)
13. JAVA Plugins and Software
14. Skype Chat Software
15. VMWare Server (You’ll Need a Serial, Get One for Free at www.vmware.com)
16. Multimedia Codecs
17. Kino Video Editing Software
18. F-Spot Photo Organization Software (Similar to Picasa)
19. Extra Fonts
20. Compression Tools (For Creating Tarballs and Zip files)
21. Adobe Acrobat Reader + Firefox Plugin
22. Gnome Baker CD/DVD Burning Software
23. gFTP FTP Client Software
24. GNU Cash Money Management Software
25. Liferea RSS Reader
26. Firestarter Firewall
27. ClamAV Antivirus Software
28. Audacity Audio Editing Software
29. DVD Ripping Software
30. Mplayer + Firefox Plugin
31. Totem Xine Video Player
32. VLC Media Player
33. Beep Media Player
34. Realmedia Player
35. Opera Web Browser
36. Avidemux Video Editing Software
37. Bittornado Bittorent Software
38. Bluefish Web Editing Software
39. Scribus Graphics/Publication Software
40. Picasa by Google
41. Wine (For Running Windows Apps)
42. Nautilus Scripts (For Opening Nautilus as Root, etc.)
43. Openoffice.org Clipart
44. Backup & Restore
45. GAIM Chat
46. Flash Plugin for Firefox
47. Gmail Checker
48. Thunderbird 2.0
49. RecordmyDesktop (Record Video From Desktop)
50. Google Desktop (Indexing of All Your Files for Fast Searching)

[adzdavies]

I also have a dell 6400 with an ATI x1400 card.
It Worked! Cool!

I've done most of this before with edgy, but the beryl specific parts helped me out

Two points:
1) For my dell, wireless worked out of the box. It's an:
"Intel Pro/Wireless 3945".


2) Beryl!

I see that after re-enabling universe repositories, there's an upgrade of beryl:
"0.2.0~0beryl1 to 0.2.1-0ubuntu2"

Well, I had beryl working some time ago on edgy, then it mysteriously stopped working.... I'm guessing this is why you recommend NOT upgrading to the one in the ubuntu repository.

Can you shed any more light on why? I'd like to jump back on the ubuntu version at some point, but need to know what kills it.

One more question:
Is there a way to 'peg' it at 0.2 so it won't keep showing up as an update, or to somehow blacklist it from the repository?

Thanks in advance!!!!

[Soldierboy]

This is the first ATI/Beryl guide that I have ever followed that worked, first time and without a hitch. (It helps that it is specific to my computer, E1505) THANK YOU very much!

[tehmatticus]

adzdavies,

The beryl in the universe repos does not include beryl-xgl, so if you're using the proprietary ATI drivers, it wont work. Hopefully they'll fix this soon, as there's a pretty lengthy bug on the issue.

[allforcarrie]

my 9800 pro works now but beryl is still not starting.

[xbisont]

One more question: Is there a way to 'peg' it at 0.2 so it won't keep showing up as an update, or to somehow blacklist it from the repository? Thanks in advance!!!!

First as a little background, i have Beryl working with Feisty Fawn + XGL on a laptop with an ATI Radeon 200m, i did it just by following just this HOW TO and everything is just ok, thanks a lot

I just found out how avoid the beryl related updates when we reenbled universe repository, i got the idea from a "apt-build, HowTo" and the idea to use the version as the Pin is from another ubuntu forum. The idea is to set a Pin-Priority for each package installed by beryl

all you need to do is edit or create the file /etc/apt/preferences
use your favorite text editor, i used vi, but you can use nano, gedit, emacs,...

sudo vi /etc/apt/preferences

and add this lines

Package: beryl
Pin: version 0.2.0*
Pin-Priority: 990

Package: beryl-core
Pin: version 0.2.0*
Pin-Priority: 990

Package: beryl-manager
Pin: version 0.2.0*
Pin-Priority: 990

Package: beryl-plugins
Pin: version 0.2.0*
Pin-Priority: 990

Package: beryl-plugins-data
Pin: version 0.2.0*
Pin-Priority: 990

Package: beryl-settings
Pin: version 0.2.0*
Pin-Priority: 990

Package: beryl-settings-bindings
Pin: version 0.2.0*
Pin-Priority: 990

Package: libberyldecoration0
Pin: version 0.2.0*
Pin-Priority: 990

Package: libberylsettings0
Pin: version 0.2.0*
Pin-Priority: 990

Package: emerald
Pin: version 0.2.0*
Pin-Priority: 990

Package: emerald-themes
Pin: version 0.2.0*
Pin-Priority: 990

Package: libemeraldengine0
Pin: version 0.2.0*
Pin-Priority: 990

so when you have universe repository enabled and perform a apt-get update, there are no more Beryl updates

usuario@laptop:~$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Leyendo lista de paquetes... Hecho
Creando árbol de dependencias       
Leyendo información de estado... Hecho
Calculando la actualización... Listo
0 actualizados, 0 se instalarán, 0 para eliminar y 0 no actualizados.

i thing it would be nice to include the Pin-Priority idea as part of the HowTo so people don't need to scroll all the thread in order to find it, but it's just a suggestion

[Bjwebb]

Will the Beryl how to work for any computer with a Raedon graphics card. Specifically, will it work for a Dell Dimension 5150C with a Raedon X600 or a Packardbell with a Radeon 9550 (two computers that I want to get beryl running on).

Thanks in advance.
Ben Webb

[Gadren]

Thanks so much for this guide! This is precisely what I needed as my Dell notebook came in today...
Everything works great (except I haven't tried the wireless; haven't gotten a chance yet. We use DSL, and I had to rip out our DSL modem and connect it directly to my notebook...maybe I'll get a wireless router someday).

[njbetzen]

Alright, so I'm fairly certain that I followed the guide correctly, yet I still seem to be having a pretty strange problem. I should start out by saying that I did not do the wireless install, because my wireless card is already detected and works, and I also didn't do the VMWare player, because I don't imagine that has anything to do with Beryl.

Here's my problem. When I attempt to load Beryl and XGL on startup, I get a blue screen. If I click ctrl+alt+right, I get back into the regular gnome world.

After playing around with the blue screen, I realized that it actually is the cube. I can make it spin and be pretty and exciting. Unfortunately, I can't DO anything with it. It is just a blue cube without any application bars or anything.

Any thoughts?

Edit:
my specs are:
Ati x1400 mobility
dell e1505
1680x1050 screen

I've also noticed that when in XGL mode, videos that I watch turn blue. Weird.

[ibanezix]

I am posting this here, because it's the thread that Dell Inspiron 6400 owners are more likely to see.

The testing releases of Feisty Fawn worked with ATI Radeon Cards X1300, X1400 and X1600 up to Herd4. These cards are common in many laptops from many companies, not just Dell. From Herd5 and onwards, due to a reason that I have yet to discover, normal installation will not result to a propely working X system. This has been issued as a bug since the release of Herd5, and even though a few workarounds or fixes have been proposed, none made it to the final release of Feisty, thus rendering it unusable for a great lot of people who will be discouraged by such a problem.

I strongly believe that this is a major problem, and as soon as a proper fix is found, there should be a 7.04.1 release to include it immediately. There is no excuse to asking beginner users to install from a command line, unless they willingly choose to do so.

Some references:
1. The Launchpad entry for this problem
2. A guide in the beginner's section
3. Binary driver how-to for ATI in the wiki, not specific to this problem
4. The Dell Inspiron 6400 entry in the wiki, not yet updated with information on this problem

I will try to find some time in the weekend to update the wiki page, in the meantime please have your eyes open for related threads in the support forums, and direct them accordingly.

Thanks to the original poster for the guide.