Debian GNU/Linux on a Dell latitude D510 laptop

I’ve managed to install a Debian sarge on the Dell latitude D510 laptop of one of my collegues. Fedora Core 4 shoud work flawly but I didn’t want to use that distro… but it may be helpful as a comparison for some of the steps needed.

Installing Sarge on such a machine is a kind of a pain at the present time since there is a problem for the SATA disks support in the 2.6.8 kernel of the sarge release (and even in testing).

One way is to start with the 2.4 kernel of the installer and later switch to testing with a 2.6.11 kernel, or directly from a 2.6.12 from unstable.
See the updates at the bottom of this post for a workaround.

I try to provide a few hints on how to install from various elements found on the web or after many attempts.

Reminder : I’m not sure if it’s necessary, but check that the BIOS is latest version… on this machine it came with the A01 version, but a A02 one was available. We installed it and it works although I couldn’t see any change.

First you have to boot from the install CDs with the right version of the kernel (2.4). The Debian sarge installer won’t install if using linux26 boot prompt… but it works with the 2.4 Linux kernel (just press enter, or type linux).

After installing with the 2.4 kernel, I dist-upgraded it to testing (I won’t detail the process here, sorry), and then I installed the 2.6.11 kernel for the 686 architecture (appropriate for a Centrino proc).

When upgrading from 2.4 to 2.6 on such a machine, you have to adapt the hard-disk setup since the SATA drives are handled differently. They were recognized as IDE drives by the 2.4 kernel, but will now be recognized by the 2.6 kernel as SCSI through the appropriate SATA drivers.

The following steps seem to be necessary for the CDROM drive to be recognized as well as the SATA disk :

  • Modify the /etc/modules files in order to ask for the following modules in that order :
    scsi_mod
    sd_mod
    libata
    sata_sil
    piix
    ide-generic
    ata_piix
  • Modify the /etc/mkinitrd/modules file as well to provide the same list of modules
  • install the 2.6.11 kernel packages or regenerate the initrd files using something like mkinitrd -o /boot/initrd.img-2.6.11-1-686 2.6.11-1-686.
  • Modify the /boot/grub/menu.lst file to replace root=/dev/hdax by root=/dev/sdax, where x is the number of your root partition. Be careful to change only the template looking like # kopt=root=/dev/hdax ro, and then regenerate the file with update-grub. You may also need to modify the /boot/grub/device.map file too…
  • change the fstab entries as well to replace /dev/hda by /dev/sda

That should be enough to get a working 2.6.11 system… and you can then safely remove the 2.4 kernels since they won’t work if you tried to boot again, since you modified the fstab (unless you use labels for your partitions instead of hda/sda device names… but that would need a lot of setup which I didn’t try).

That should be it for the HD setup.

The XFree86 config should be easy to get… at the present time it looks like only vesa works… and get-edit | parse-edid (read-edid package) should give you the right modelines.

I grabbed many usefull informations at http://skaya.enix.org/wiki/DellLatitudeD610 because the D610 seem to contain similar hardware. Also, the machines hardware seems pretty close to the one found on a D810 (at least for the SATA and such), so the installation process should be quite similar to the one of a D810, and you may find then more details of installing a Debian on it at http://tkrat.org/d810/.

Hope this helps.

I welcome any additions in the comments.

Update : the process is easier now the 2.6.12 is in testing… and the mkinitrd step is necessary… I had a doubt, but I tried again on a D610 and that’s helpfull.

Update 2006/08/28 : I’ve tested installation with the Debian Etch RC3 installer CD, and discovered in the errata, that there’s a trick to allow the CD to be discovered by libata. More details are provided here : http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/SataAtapiHowto. Now the install runs smoothly.

23 thoughts on “Debian GNU/Linux on a Dell latitude D510 laptop”

  1. I have a Dell D510 with intel 915GM integrated graphics chip. I have a problem when acpi is enabled. If a close the lid, it turns off, normaly. But if I open it later, it doesn’t turns on. I have tried kernels from 2.6.9 to 2.6.13. Always, the same problem. When acpi is disabled, the lid works fine. It turns off and on if I close and open it. Did you have this problem? Thanks in advance.

  2. Thanks. I couldnt make acpi reinitialisate the graphics display. Now I use vbetool to turn the lid on and off when acpi lid events occurs. It works fine.

  3. I installed RH 9.0 on a Latitude D510, but the intigrated NIC won’t work. Any idea’s?
    Thanks,
    Eric

  4. I’m just curious to how this would function with gentoo, The Dell Latitude D510 I mean, would it cause any problems?

  5. When you install the sarge did you use the debian installer ? In this case is there any problem with the module of the network card ? Personnaly I use the debian installer (for sarge) and the network can’t work.

  6. i installed ubuntu 5.10 on latitude D510. i’m facing a strange sound behaviour, which is hard to describe, more than incredibly annoying stridulous sound. anyone else ?
    if so, please contact me !

  7. Emmanuel wrote :

    > When you install the sarge did you use the debian installer ? In this case is there any problem with the module of the network card ?
    > Personnaly I use the debian installer (for sarge) and the network cant work.

    I don’t remember exactly if the network worked… but I think so, since I managed to upgrade from stable to testing…

    Maybe the network works only if selecting the 2.4 kernel, and not the 2.6 ? Anyway, from previous comments, it looks ike RH9 installer has problems also with the network… or maybe, there are different type of NICs shipped by Dell although branded as the same model ?

    Sorry, I don’t remember exactly anyway 🙁

  8. hehehe…
    kernel line got garbled..
    should say:
    kernel /(your-kernel) root=(where-it-is) idle=halt

  9. Pablo : You’re talking about solving the noise problem, I suppose, concerning the idle=halt option.

  10. to #8 : the NIC driver seems to be a b44 for broadcom adapter.

  11. The broadcom driver (b44) in the etch RC installer CD doesn’t seem to work with install24… Dunno what’s wrong.

    Also, the installgui new graphical installer (and probably also the CLI installer with 2.6) fails to detect the CD (IDE deactivated due to SATA drives…). But hopefully, there’s a trick to workaround this : see the “Update 2006/08/28” above, in the post.

  12. My d510 experience so far:

    Fedora Core 5 – Broadcom NIC worked, but you had to add ipw2200 firmware (never got working)
    Fedora Core 6 – Broadcom NIC does not work, neither does ipw2200
    Debian Etch 31r4 – Broadcom NIC does not work, neither does ipw2200

    Was there a kernel change across the board that munged the Broadcom Cards?

  13. Please help me with a lan driver and a wireless drivers because my system crashed my system is latitude/D510
    so help me out please

  14. Help! Pssssseee! I have a dell latitude d510 but the CD rom won’t open! What can I do? Thanks a lot!!

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