HP zd8230us running FC4

Fedora Core 4 on an HP Pavilion zd8230us (zd8000)

Processor: Intel Pentium® 4 processor 650 with SpeedStep® and HT Technology (3.40GHz)
System memory: 1024MB DDR2 SDRAM (2 x 512MB) at 533MHz [maximum memory 2048MB DDR SDRAM (2 x 1024MB)]
Hard disk: 100GB 4200 Toshiba MK1031GAS
Monitor: 17.0" WXGA+ High-Definition Brightview Widescreen WVA (1400 x 900) display
Graphic card: ATI® MOBILITY™ RADEON™ X600 with 128MB DDR (dedicated)
Sound card: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
Internal Altec Lansing® speakers
Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
54g™ Integrated 802.11b/g wireless LAN with 125HSM/SpeedBooster and BroadRange support and Bluetooth®
Modem: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 03)
LightScribe DVD±RW and CD-RW combo drive with Double Layer Support TSSTcorpCD/DVDW TS-L532M
4 Universal Serial Bus (USB) 2.0, 1 expansion port 2 connector, 1 IEEE 1394 (FireWire), 1 Consumer IR (Remote Receiver)
Keyboard: US with integrated numeric 10key
Mouse: SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad
Pre-installed OS: Windows XP Media Center

Install
I payed $$ for PartitionMagic8 in my past life (I know, I know), so I used it on the XP OS that shipped from HP**. More specifically, when I got the computer, I opened it up, booted XP, let it do it's initialization thing and immediately installed PM and squeezed that huge 95G ntfs partition down to a tidy 30G (I want to keep the XP media OS as the machine came with a nifty TV tuner for digitally recording video. The are other win toys I like too). With 70G of free space, I was ready to put a real OS on the machine.

** A hat's off to the folks at HP. I ordered my machine on line on a Tuesday at 4PM pacific time and had it at 11AM the next morning and it shipped from TN!

I Downloaded and burned the four Fedora Core 4 CDs from iso images image from the nearest mirror site. (I got FC4-i386-disc1.iso, FC4-i386-disc2.iso, FC4-i386-disc3.iso, FC4-i386-disc4.iso). The install process went through with no problems (allowing automatic partition), and I decided to install 'everything' as I have lots of room and I have come to prefer to put everything on and prune later. All of my hardware was detected and configured by the installer, and all configurations were OK except for X and my sound card (the installer actually became unresponsive when trying to play a test sound. See Issues below for a resolution for the problems).

I ran yum after the first boot to get all updates (BTW, the downside of installing 'everything': the first yum run was a 1.3G download! I have a very fast connection available with consistent download speeds around 5Mb, so this was no problem for me. Watch out if you use a dial up!) Here's the output from lspci for goody comparison purposes:

# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 915G/P/GV/GL/PL/910GL Processor to I/O Controller (rev 04)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 915G/P/GV/GL/PL/910GL PCI Express Root Port (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev d3)
00:1e.2 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1e.3 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FR (ICH6/ICH6R) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc M24 1P [Radeon Mobility X600]
0b:00.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments Texas Instruments PCIxx21/x515 Cardbus Controller
0b:00.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
0b:00.3 Unknown mass storage controller: Texas Instruments Texas Instruments PCIxx21 Integrated FlashMedia Controller
0b:00.4 Class 0805: Texas Instruments Texas Instruments PCI6411, PCI6421, PCI6611, PCI6621, PCI7411, PCI7421, PCI7611, PCI7621 Secure Digital (SD)
0b:02.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
0b:03.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation: Unknown device 4318 (rev 02)

And the disk geometry

# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 100.0 GB, 100030242816 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 12161 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id System
/dev/hda1   *           1        3825    30724281    7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2            3826        3838      104422+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda3            3839       12161    66854497+ 8e Linux LVM

Post Install Issues
For general post install convenience tweaking (eg. java, acroreader, flashplayer, realplayer, ...), I highly recommend Stanton Finley's Fedora Core 4 Linux Installation Notes. This page is a wealth of easy to follow information about getting FC4 running. Thanks Stanton!

I had 4 issues to resolve with the hardware in my Pavilion after the install:

No 1400x900 mode in /etc/X11/xorg.conf so the display resolution didn't look right.
system-config-soundcard hung while send a test to the sound card.
The integrated wireless NIC needed to be configured.
An (annoying) message:

kernel: ATAPI device hdb:
kernel:   Error: Not ready -- (Sense key=0x02)
kernel:   Incompatible medium installed -- (asc=0x30, ascq=0x00)
kernel:   The failed "Read Cd/Dvd Capacity" packet command was:
kernel:   "25 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 "

was being written to /var/log/messages every 2 seconds and my disk never stops spinning!

Fixing the Display
This was the easiest problem to resolve. I added the correct mode to the appropriate Screen device section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf. It now looks like

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Screen0"
        Device     "Videocard0"
        Monitor    "Monitor0"
        DefaultDepth     2
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     24
                Modes    "1400x900" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        EndSubSection
EndSection

Restart X and the resolution is perfect (and wonderful, I love widescreens!).

Fixing the Sound
I was getting the error

kernel: snd_intel8x0: Unknown parameter `'

at boot so I looked and deleted some extra spaces at the end of lines in /etc/modprobe.conf . Still no sound. I then added the line

snd-intel8x0m

to /etc/hotplug/blacklist to bind this module to snd-intel8x0 instead of letting modprobe load it directly (I think. I am speaking a bit out of school here.)
In any event, that did the trick and the sound is fully functional.

Configuring the wireless device
I installed ndiswrapper-1.3rc1 following the instructions line by line here. I had to find a driver that would work with the chipset (from lspci -n)

0b:03.0 Class 0280: 14e4:4318 (rev 02)

I used 'the list' found the driver package 80211g.zip from ftp://ftp.support.acer-euro.com/notebook/aspire_3020_5020/driver/. The 'a' driver works for me and I installed with

ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5a.inf

I kept following instructions to configure the device and it worked like a champ! Very fast speed 80211.g protocol.

update: I had to go up to ndiswrapper-1.5 when I upgraded to the 2.6.14 kernel as the 1.3rc1 had compile errors!
update: ndiswrapper-1.9 is out, and when I went to kernel 2.6.15-1.1830_FC4smp, I updated (grated?) ndiswrapper as well.

Fixing the CD/DVD kernel error messages
This one has been a real stumper. Many-o-google search would turn up similar problems, never a solution. Plus, most of the related posts were 2.4 kernel and about 5 years old. Another problem is that most posts were related to burning and mounting errors, but I only get errors when the drive is empty, otherwise it s fully functional! My initial work around was to keep a cd mounted in the drive! Elegant, eh? The second work around was to add

hbd=ide-scsi

to the end of the kernel line in /etc/grub.conf. This stopped the errors, but the kernel would then see 7 devices when using the drive and mount all seven. (Does anyone know what this is all about?) Harmeless enough, but unsatisfying. Finally, after reading hundreds of posts, I got some hints that the problem was probably not kernel related, but rather it's likely that some naughty application is looking for media in the drive and causing a 5 line error message by the kernel every 2 seconds! (great design there) The posts said that magicdev or kscd were likely culprits, but neither are running on my system. After hunting and pecking, I found that killing the hald (haldaemon) stopped the errors altogether and my disk can finally get a break. This meant no more hot plugging though, as hald is the one listening for that and hal is responsible for responding accordingly.

Finally! I found the bug report! It is definitely hal, as Alan Cox said so! Well, life without hal is no good as I have cameras, USB drives, .... you know. I did some more reading / posting and was helped along to the hal bible. hal gathers an incredible amount of information about each piece of hardware in the system, and it is fairly easy to use these 'identifiers' to instruct hal to take (or not to take) certain actions. The short story is, I added the following lines to the optical drives section of the file /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-storage-policy.fdi

<match key="storage.bus" string="ide">
        <match key="storage.model" string="TSSTcorpCD/DVDW TS-L532M">
          <match key="block.device" string="/dev/hdb">
            <merge key="storage.media_check_enabled" type="bool">false</merge>
          </match>
        </match>
      </match>

I got the string="TSSTcorpCD/DVDW TS-L532M" by examining the contents of the output from (as root)

lshal | less

Now I get the annoying message 3 times at boot and never more! hal is functional and auto mounts everything except the cd/dvd. However, when mounted by hand, all of the desktop icon features ec are working properly, and this is all managed by hal. This will hold me until the bug fix!

UPDATE: FEBRUARY 5, 2006: I updated my kernel to 2.6.15-1.1830_FC4smp i686 today (with yum update kernel), and the hal problem is gone as is verified by commenting out the above code and restarting haldaemon with

/etc/init.d/haldaemon restart

Package Updates
I like the yum tool for package updates. I add the following line to /etc/yum.conf

exclude=kernel* xorg*

to prevent updating some packages from updating. You can watch http://fedoranews.org/mediawiki/index.php/Fedora_Core_4_Updates to see what is security related. I update to the latest kernel and xorg every so often 'by hand'.

I followed the guide at http://fedoranews.org/mediawiki/index.php/Upgrade_your_FC4_box_to_the_latest_Gnome_2.12_desktop to update to Gnome 2.12. It went well, except for a tiny problem with gdm crashing. Easily fixed by getting rid of the old config file and reconfiguring with Gnome's GUI tool in Desktop menu. Gnome 2.12 is faster than 2.10 and has a nice look and feel. Good deal!

Odds and Ends

xine compiled from source and install - there are rpms for xine, but I compiled it from source just for kicks. it was as easy as the usual configure, make, make install (the last as root). Playback is awesome and every codec I have ever needed works "out of the box". I cannot say the same for totem, which pales in comparison to xine (IMHO).

synaptics touch pad module rebuild, install and configure. First, get the package synaptics-0.14.3.tar from http://web.telia.com/~u89404340/touchpad/ (thank you!), untar and read and follow the INSTALL file. In my case, the file

/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/input/synaptics_drv.o

already existed, but it didn't work until after replacing it with the freshly compiled driver. Now, the /etc/X11/xorg.conf edits are: (the `...'s' mean omitted lines)

Section "ServerLayout"
...
        InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
        InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
        InputDevice    "Synaptics Mouse" "AlwaysCore"
EndSection
...
Section "Module"
...
        Load "synaptics"
        Load "dri"
EndSection
...
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier    "Synaptics Mouse"
Driver        "synaptics"
Option        "Device"        "/dev/psaux"
Option        "Protocol"      "auto-dev"
Option        "LeftEdge"      "1700"
Option        "RightEdge"     "5300"
Option        "TopEdge"       "1700"
Option        "BottomEdge"    "4200"
Option        "FingerLow"     "25"
Option        "FingerHigh"    "30"
Option        "MaxTapTime"    "180"
Option        "MaxTapMove"    "220"
Option        "VertScrollDelta" "100"
Option        "MinSpeed"      "0.09"
Option        "MaxSpeed"      "0.18"
Option        "AccelFactor"   "0.0015"
Option        "SHMConfig"     "on"
EndSection

The touchpad now works perfectly with complete functionality.

hp tv tuner progress - the machine came with a nifty dual tv tuner that I cannot seem to make work. I am following a thread at http://www.zd7000forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=5285&sid=d7a67e807c4e4423ba6a0eec68088cc0 but I am having firmware problems. I don't know if my tuner device is supported or not. I haven't put any time into this one really. i am waiting for someone to send me the answer. Is it you?

Please send comments, suggestions, questions and answers to my questions(!) to evans@humboldt.edu