Howto: Feisty Fawn On A Compaq Presario V6000

[soapytheclown]

Note: the basis of this guide has been written on my Compaq Presario V6133EU with the following specs:

AMD 64X2 Turion Processor
Nvidia Geforce 6150
Broadcom 4311 Wireless Chipset (known as a Broadcom Corporation Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN Mini-PCI Card (rev 01) )
15.4" Widescreen at 1280x800 resolution

Using the i386 version and The AMD64 ed. of Fesity. As I understand the Intel versions of the V6000 has been fine so this is written for us with the problematic AMD processors! I have tried to write this as simple as possible for anyone who has little ex perience out there.

So far i have gotten the following out of my laptop:

1. Install and boot correctly
2. Normal wireless speeds
3. Nvida Driver installed and working correctly
4. Beryl Installed and functioning properly

Okay lets get going!

1. Installing and booting

A quick forum search will tell you that in order to boot the live cd for installation requires the "noapic" or "nolapic" flag to be used. This works but like me im sure alot of people had no idea what this option does however i found that it it stops usb hotplugging to work, which means unless the device (ie usb stick or mouse) is plugged in at startup it wont work, however this can be fixed using another flag with the noapic which is: "irqpoll noirqdebug"

so.. turn you computer on make sure it boots form the cd when the option to start the live disc comes on press the F6 key and type in:
"noapic irqpoll noirqdebug" [without the quotes]
followed by return, it should boot up and install as normal!

Note:- If you've already installed using the noapic flag dont worry you can edit a file and it will have the same effect:

open a terminal type:-

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

then go to the bottom of the document and look for the grub boot options and look for something like this:

"title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.20-16-generic
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-16-generic root=UUID=16badbe3-91d7-4ba1-9446-e874976aea45 ro splash noapic
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-16-generic
quiet
savedefault"

then add the string "irqpoll noirqdebug" into the kernel option so you end up with the new line that looks like:-

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-16-generic root=UUID=16badbe3-91d7-4ba1-9446-e874976aea45 ro splash noapic irqpoll noirqdebug

then look or search for a line that is something like:-

# defoptions=quiet splash noapic

and add the new flags to it so it looks like:-

# defoptions=quiet splash noapic irqpoll noirqdebug

so the flags get carried through each time the kernel is upgraded.

2. Broadcom Wireless
I spent ages following guides to get a wireless speed that 1/2 worked 1/2 didnt depending on the weather outside.

I've found that the latest bcm43xx-fwcutter in the repos works a treat. When i had wireless set to roaming it would take ages to connect to wireless sites but when not in roaming its works fine!

so in terminal copy and paste:-

sudo apt-get install bcm43xx-fwcutter

the wireless light should come on and we're most of the way there! just go into "System---> Administration---> Network" and turn roaming mode off and setup your network settings as normal. I restarted at this point but i doubt you'd need to and your wireless should be working!!

Hurray! for those who aren't interested n the nvidia drivers or beryl / compiz then this is your laptop is setup!

3. Nvidia Drivers

The drivers in the repos or automatix or the envy script or using the restricted drivers management tool didnt work at all for me.

manually installing the drivers from the nvidia website worked fine though!!

http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html

so download and install using the instructions!

--edit:- since this isnt as easy as it sounds for some new users heres it explained--

you may want to take note of these commands as the involve shutting down the graphical part of ubuntu and going to the complete commandline:-

1. Download the latest drivers from the link above (not the legacy ones) save them to your home folder
2. Press together:- Control, Alt and the "f1" keys.
3. On the new screen login with your username and password
4. Type the following command to stop the graphical display:

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop

5. type "ls" at the prompt and look at the nvidia driver filename to complere to the following to run the nvidia install script :

sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-i386-etc-etc-etc.run

6. Follow the on screen instructions and install the driver then exit
7. Back at the terminal type the following to restart the graphical display with the new drivers loaded

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

wow almost done!!

--EDIT--

The latest NVIDIA driver seems to default to 16 bit depth but beryl requires 24 bit so to change this do the following

sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

find the "screen" section and change the value of the default depth from 16 to 24 so it now looks like this:
[size="3"]
Section "Screen"
Defaultdepth 24

4. Beryl

I installed beryl from the repos as normal which worked fine, in terminal:-

sudo apt-get install beryl-manager beryl emerald-themes

i then started using trevinos beryl repo at

http://3v1n0.tuxfamily.org/

The only issues i had with beryl is that after having a few windows open i would occasionally get a white screen pop up, this was fixed and has been fine (so far!!) by changing 2 settings in the beryl manager.

1. Open beryl manager
2. Go to advance beryl options
3. Change Composite Overlay Window From automatic to "use cow"
4. Change Rendering platform from automatic to "Force AIGLX"

then voila everything should be working fine!!

--EDIT--

if the above doesnt work try using:-

sudo nvidia-xconfig --add-argb-glx-visuals

if you have any more info or things that you think need changing let me know and ill amend this howto!

good luck guys (and gals) let me know how your experiences went with this!

[joaoeb]

Tanks, worked like a charm. But wold be a good idea to alter the menu.lst to the ones sugested by MobiuzNZ in this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=457864

[luscinius]

Thanks! I also had problems with Compaq V6000 and GeForce Go 6150 (64bit Ubuntu); tried to install nvidia-glx, and it had no effect. Same with restricted drivers manager. Finally installed driver directly from nvidia, and it seems to work.

[Tagallo]

Hi, i have everything working fine here, im booting without "noapic irqpoll noirqdebug" flags and it works ok, can anyone please explain to me exactly what those options means? Should i use then?

Thanks
Thiago

[soapytheclown]

Originally Posted by joaoeb Tanks, worked like a charm. But wold be a good idea to alter the menu.lst to the ones sugested by MobiuzNZ in this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=457864

ahh yeah i will do i wrote this a couple of weeks ago before he'd suggested that and the thread only just got approved so ill ammend it now

[rosshkhk]

Hi,

Thanks for these instructions: they got me off to a good start. However, I am stuck at the nvidia section. I have tried using restricted drivers manager, automatix, envy and the nvidia installer, but i keep getting the same result, which is broken x. It dumps me out when I should see the login screen, and the dialogue says it can't find the specified device (nVidia Geforce Go 6150, which is on a PCIe bus).

I will include the relevant xorg contents for working config:

----
Section "Device"
Identifier "nVidia Corporation C51 [Geforce 6150 Go]"
Driver "nv"
BusID "PCI:0:5:0"
EndSection

----

and not working config:

----
Section "Device"
Identifier "nVidia Corporation C51 [Geforce 6150 Go]"
Driver "nvidia"
EndSection
----

I have tried entering the BusID, but to no avail. The odd things is that it appears that whether or not I specify the BusID the X crash output shows that it is looking for the device on a different BusID.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Ross

[soapytheclown]

Hi ross,

like it says in the tutorial for some reason installing t he nvidia drivers the "normal" way so you have to go to the nvidia website more specifically this page: http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html then install the driver using their instructions. The only problem ive had using this method so far is that every time you install a new kernel you need to reinstall the nvidia driver, if anyone has a fix for this please let me know.

hope that helps you though

if you need a bit more help on how to exactly get the driver installed let me know.

[rosshkhk]

soapy,

I messed around and eventually realised that I had initiall used nolapic because noapic did not seem to work. I was tipped off by the xorg message I started to get (but not initially for some reason) talking about edge-triggered interrupts. So I follow around some forums and then went back to noapic. This seems to have worked, and can no boot up and get into an x session and nvidia settings is showing loads of options.

The inbuilt compiz stuff is not working, but I think this might be to do with the color depth. I will try and reset this, and then reboot and see what happens. Will also give beryl ago tomorrow, as prefer it over compiz.

Time for bed soon, otherwise work tomorrow will be a nightmare!

Thanks for the awesome tutorial, and quick follow up. You are a credit to the open source community.

Ross

[rosshkhk]

soapy,

OK compiz and beryl both have the same problem, which is that I don't get the window border/frame, and the top bar with the minimise, restore and quit buttons. Also, terminal appears as a white box.

The other aspects of beryl, such as the cube desktop, wobble etc seem to be working fine.

This is no biggy, as priority was nvidia driver so I could use a second monitor, but would be cool to have to show non-linux people how great linux is!

Thanks again.

Ross

[soapytheclown]

using 64bit i presume,
read the bottom of the tutorial