Fedora Core 5/Linux on the Dell Latitude D620

Created on: August 26, 2006
Last modified on: March 04, 2007

This details how to install Fedora (Core 5) GNU/Linux on a Dell Latitude D620
If you would like to share advices or pinpoint mistakes, send an email.

Upgraded to Fedora Core 6, see below.
Just upgraded to Fedora Core 8, see below.

What's in the box?

[super ~]# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 01)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller IDE (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 01)
03:01.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ601/6912/711E0 CardBus/SmartCardBus Controller (rev 40)
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5752 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)
0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)

Configuration

Hardware components	Status under linux	Notes
Intel Core Duo T2500 (2.0Ghz 667Mhz FSB)	Works	SMP kernel is correctly selected
14.1'' WXGA+ (1440 x 900) LCD Screen Intel i945 chipset	Works	X works out of the box with the vesa driver need 915resolution to set right resolution.
80GB IDE (7,200rpm) SATA Hard Drive	Works	No tweaking nescessary
8× TSST (Toshiba Samsung Storage Technology) DVD+/-RW Drive TS-L632D	Works	No tweaking nescessary
ACPI	Works	Investigation is needed for memory and disk suspend.
Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5752 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)	Works	No tweaking nescessary
Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 802.11a/b/g Mini Card (54Mbps)	Works	Install ipw3945 driver by hand
Internal V.92 Modem	Untested	Requires proprietary Linuxant driver
Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller	Works	Requires an yum update after initial install
D620 SmartCard reader	Fail	O2 Micro Oz776
D620 Bluetooth Card	Works	Tested with a Nokia phone
USB	Works

Basic installation

Probably Windows is installed on the complete harddisk, so you have to resize the NTFS partition first to make some room for Linux. I resized the Windows partition back to 20 GB's. There is als a small partition in front of Windows which i left untouched.

Use a Fedora Core 5 DVD for greatest conveniance, you can download those from the mirror sites. Be aware however that the webserver not always supports the large (> 2GB) file, sometimes it helps to switch from:
http:// to ftp://
If you are using old versions of for instance wget to download the DVD iso file you might get in trouble after the download reaches 2GB. I had to use ncftpget once to overcome this problem.

You can use graphical install, this gives a distorted image at first, but after 10 seconds or so you get a stable image.

For partitioning i selected "Use free space" and apart from the /boot which is around 100MB i created a LVM partition of 30GB on which i made a:
2 GB swap
1 GB tmp
rest = /

For my installation i selected "Office and Productivity" as wel as "Software Development"

Everything installs well, but sound is not working directly. The SMP kernel is installed by default on the d620 Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp #1 SMP Tue Mar 14 16:05:46 EST 2006 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

Have a look at system-config-services what needs to be running on your system. In my case i disabled things like ISDN, rpc, portmapper and nfs stuff.

Install the yum.conf from fedorafaq:
rpm -Uvh http://www.fedorafaq.org/yum http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-5.rpm
and adapt the configuration to use local mirror sites (especially for the updates).
For the Netherlands you can use Surfnet for most things:

http://ftp.surfnet.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/distr/fedora/$releasever/$basearch/os/
http://ftp.surfnet.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/distr/fedora/$releasever/$basearch/debug/
http://ftp.surfnet.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/distr/fedora/$releasever/source/SRPMS/
http://ftp.surfnet.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/distr/fedora/extras/$releasever/$basearch/
http://ftp.surfnet.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/distr/fedora/extras/$releasever/$basearch/debug/
http://ftp.surfnet.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/distr/fedora/extras/$releasever/SRPMS/
http://ftp.surfnet.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/distr/fedora/updates/$releasever/$basearch/
http://ftp.surfnet.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/distr/fedora/updates/$releasever/$basearch/debug/
http://ftp.surfnet.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/distr/fedora/updates/$releasever/SRPMS/

Fire up a terminal and become root update your system with yum update In my case this gave my about 600MB of downloads (long live ADSL).

Transaction Summary
=============================================================================
Install      4 Package(s)
Update     304 Package(s)
Remove       0 Package(s)
Total download size: 613 M
Is this ok [y/N]:

After a reboot and with:
kernel 2.6.17-1.2174_FC5smp
now the soundsystem works.

If you like to use KDE instead of gnome do a yum groupinstall "KDE Software Development" (this is 32 packages and another 188MB)
yum install switchdesk
switchdesk kde

Personally i don't like to boot in graphics mode so in /etc/inittab switch the default runlevel to 3 instead of 5:

id:3:initdefault:

Authorisation
move yourself into group wheel:
vim /etc/group
and create sudo access to root for wheel:

visudo
 # Uncomment to allow people in group wheel to run all commands
 %wheel  ALL=(ALL)       ALL

add hostname etc.
vim /etc/sysconfig/network
and add:
NOZEROCONF=YES
to get rid of APIPA networking:

ip route list | grep 196.254
169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0  scope link

Harddisk

[super ~]# cat /proc/scsi/scsi
Attached devices:
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
  Vendor: ATA      Model: ST980825AS       Rev: 8.02
  Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI SCSI revision: 05

[super ~]# fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1          10       80293+  de  Dell Utility
/dev/sda2   *          11        2560    20482875    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3            2561        2573      104422+  83  Linux
/dev/sda4            2574        9729    57480570    5  Extended
/dev/sda5            2574        6397    30716248+  8e  Linux LVM

DVD+/-RW

[~]# cat /proc/ide/hdc/model
TSSTcorp DVD+/-RW TS-L632D

Cdrecord-Clone 2.01.01a03-dvd (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2005 Jörg Schilling
NOTE: This version contains the OSS DVD extensions for cdrtools and thus may
      have bugs related to DVD issues that are not present in the original
      cdrtools. Please send bug reports or support requests to
      http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla The original cdrtools author should
      not be bothered with problems in this version.
scsidev: 'ATA'
devname: 'ATA'
scsibus: -2 target: -2 lun: -2
Linux sg driver version: 3.5.27
Using libscg version 'schily-0.8'.
cdrecord: Warning: using inofficial libscg transport code version (schily - Red Hat-scsi-linux-sg.c-1.85-RH '@(#)scsi-linux-sg.c      1.85 05/05/16 Copyright 1997 J. Schilling').
scsibus1:
        1,0,0   100) 'TSSTcorp' 'DVD+-RW TS-L632D' 'DE03' Removable CD-ROM

Keyboard & audio buttons

In KDE you need KMilo which handles special keys and kmix top set the volume. These two are available from the packages:

kdeutils
kdemultimedia

Create a file hotkeys:

[ ~]$ cat etc/hotkeys
keycode 174=XF86AudioLowerVolume
keycode 176=XF86AudioRaiseVolume
keycode 160=XF86AudioMute

And have these installed on KDE startup:

[ ~]$ cat .kde/Autostart/setkeys.sh
#!/bin/bash
xmodmap /home/beekman/etc/hotkeys

Video

You need the tool 915resolution to set the video bios to the right resolution:

yum install 915resolution
and: /usr/bin/915resolution 5c 1440 900 24
  Intel 800/900 Series VBIOS Hack : version 0.5.2

  Chipset: 945GM
  BIOS: TYPE 1
  Mode Table Offset: $C0000 + $269
  Mode Table Entries: 36

Patch mode 5c to resolution 1440x900 complete

I put the line

915resolution 5c 1440 900

/etc/rc.d/rc.local

so it gets executed automatically.
Of course you need to enable the 1440x900 resolution in xorg.conf
(if you download xorg.conf you will need to rename it from xorg.konf to xorg.conf to use it.

Fedora uses the VESA driver by default, while other distro's use the i810 driver. I read that the latter driver would allow you to suspend to RAM/HD and return with a working video, but i have not been able to do so myself yet. If you want to use the i810 driver, you also need:

Modeline "1440x900" 108.84 1440 1472 1880 1912 900 918 927 946

in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

Wireless

A driver for the Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 is available. Follow the instructions on that page, starting with compiling a recent ieee80211 subsystem (you might want to try to use the one delivered with the kernel, but i decided to get the latest and greatest from: http://ieee80211.sourceforge.net/).

yum install kernel-smp-devel
(so we have ieee80211.h)

get ipw3945 from:
http://ipw3945.sourceforge.net/#downloads
gtar zxvf ipw3945-1.1.0.tgz
cd ipw3945-1.1.0/
make

get the microcode:
wget http://bughost.org/ipw3945/ucode/ipw3945-ucode-1.13.tgz
and the regulatory daemon
wget http://bughost.org/ipw3945/daemon/ipw3945d-1.7.22.tgz

gtar zxvf ipw3945-ucode-1.13.tgz
As root copy:
cp ipw3945-ucode-1.13/ipw3945.ucode /lib/firmware/

gtar zxvf ipw3945d-1.7.22.tgz
As root copy:
cp ipw3945d-1.7.22/x86/ipw3945d /sbin

cd ipw3945-1.1.0
# ./load
Unloaded: ieee80211 ieee80211_crypt
Loaded: ieee80211 ipw3945
Loading ipw3945d.ipw3945d - regulatory daemon
Copyright (C) 2005-2006 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved.
version: 1.7.22
Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection found at:
 /sys/bus/pci/drivers/ipw3945/0000:0c:00.0
Daemon launched as pid 28766.  Exiting.
..done.

Instead of using the "load" script from the subdirectory, it's more
conveniant to copy
ipw3945.ko to /lib/modules/2.6.17-1.2174_FC5smp/
and do a depmod -a
so the next time you can load the module with modprobe ipw3945

# iwconfig eth1
Warning: Driver for device eth1 has been compiled with version 20
of Wireless Extension, while this program supports up to version 19.
Some things may be broken...

eth1      unassociated  ESSID:off/any
          Mode:Managed  Frequency=nan kHz  Access Point: Not-Associated
          Bit Rate:0 kb/s   Tx-Power:16 dBm
          Retry limit:15   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:316   Missed beacon:0

# ifconfig eth1
eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:13:02:AA:D4:8C
          BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:1735 errors:0 dropped:398 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Interrupt:177 Base address:0xa000 Memory:dfdff000-dfdfffff

I use these two small scripts to activate wireless:

[super ~]# cat start_wireless.sh
modprobe ipw3945
/sbin/ipw3945d --quiet

And connect to my home network:

[super@zorax ~]# cat connect_mywl.sh
iwconfig eth1 essid Hello key  628AAD8F32E1268913CC9860AD mode managed
dhclient -q eth1 &

Modem

The modem is a Conexant HDA D110MDC. You need the HSF driver from linuxant;
In our case we download the i686 version for our current version of the kernel 2.6.17_1.2174_FC5smp and install:

[super ~]# rpm -ivh ~beekman/hsfmodem-7.47.00.02full_k2.6.17_1.2174_FC5smp-1fdr.i686.rpm
warning: /home/beekman/hsfmodem-7.47.00.02full_k2.6.17_1.2174_FC5smp-1fdr.i686.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 5dfbf7dc
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:hsfmodem               ########################################### [100%]
Conexant HSF softmodem driver, version 7.47.00.02full

If you need license keys, assistance or more information, please go to:
        http://www.linuxant.com/

When reporting a problem for the first time, please send
us the file generated by "hsfconfig --dumpdiag".

Pre-built driver modules that seem compatible with your system were found under
/usr/lib/hsfmodem/modules/binaries/linux-2.6.17-1.2174-FC5smp.

Warning: hsf driver not active - HDA modems may require reboot

[super ~]# ls -la /dev/modem
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Aug 27 20:14 /dev/modem -> /dev/ttySHSF0

But this messed up my soundsystem :-( And since i don't need a modem anyway at the moment i decided to get rid of it for now:

[super ~]# rpm -e hsfmodem
Removing hsf driver from /lib/modules/2.6.17-1.2174_FC5smp/

ACPI

ACPI seems to be working fine:

[super@zorax ~]# acpitool
  Battery #1     : discharging, 28.48%, 00:44:12
  AC adapter     : off-line
  Thermal zone 1 : ok, 34 C

Install these rpm's from the yum repository:

yum install cpufreq-utils sysfsutils sysfsutils-devel dbus-qt

The great folks from Novell/Suse have made Fedora Core 5 rpm's for their kpowersafe package.
go to: http://sourceforge.net/projects/powersave/ And get the latest fc5 kpowersafe rpm's and install:

rpm -ivh kpowersave-0.6.2-1.FC5.i386.rpm powersave-0.12.20-1.FC5.i386.rpm powersave-libs-0.12.20-1.FC5.i386.rpm

If you are using SELinux in enforcing/targeted mode, you have to create an extra SELinux module to allow apmd and hald to communicate via dbus.
Create a file dbus.te with the following contents:

module dbus 1.0;

require {
        class dbus send_msg;
        class dir write;
        type apmd_t;
        type hald_t;
        type initrc_t;
        type unconfined_t;
        type cpuspeed_t;
        type sysfs_t;
        role system_r;
};

allow apmd_t hald_t:dbus send_msg;
allow apmd_t initrc_t:dbus send_msg;
allow hald_t apmd_t:dbus send_msg;
allow unconfined_t apmd_t:dbus send_msg;
allow apmd_t unconfined_t:dbus send_msg;
allow cpuspeed_t sysfs_t:dir write;

If you think the above contents look like gobbledygook, it is not solely the product of my unbridled knowledge, but more the result of "audit2allow". In short, when you want to keep SELinux functioning, install the audit rpm and have auditd running. All SELinux violations are logged in /var/log/audit and audit2allow will generate the nescessary SELinux rules from the violations.

Now compile and insert the module:

[super@zorax ~]# checkmodule -M -m -o dbus_all.mod dbus.te
checkmodule:  loading policy configuration from dbus.te
checkmodule:  policy configuration loaded
checkmodule:  writing binary representation (version 5) to dbus_all.mod
[super@zorax ~]# semodule_package -o dbus_all.pp -m dbus_all.mod
[super@zorax ~]# semodule -i dbus_all.pp
[super@zorax ~]# service messagebus restart
Stopping system message bus:                               [  OK  ]
Starting system message bus:                               [  OK  ]

Smartcard reader

Install pcsc rpm's and start pcscd

[super ~]# yum install pcsc-tools pcsc-lite pcsc-lite-libs
[super ~]# service pcscd start
Starting PC/SC smart card daemon (pcscd):                  [  OK  ]

Now pcsc_scan should be able to find the reader, but it doesn't:

[super@zorax ~]# pcsc_scan
PC/SC device scanner
V 1.4.5 (c) 2001-2006, Ludovic Rousseau 
Compiled with PC/SC lite version: 1.3.1
Scanning present readers
Waiting for the first reader...

Logging in /var/log/messages indicates that the reader is found but complains about the firmware:

Aug 27 19:58:33 zorax pcscd: ccid_usb.c:395:OpenUSBByName() Found Vendor/Product: 0B97/7762 (O2 Micro Oz776)
Aug 27 19:58:33 zorax pcscd: ccid_usb.c:397:OpenUSBByName() Using USB bus/device: 002/005
Aug 27 19:58:33 zorax pcscd: ccid_usb.c:712:ccid_check_firmware() Firmware (1.10) is bogus! Upgrade the reader firmware or get a new reader.

Bluetooth

[super ~]# service bluetooth start
Starting Bluetooth services:                               [  OK  ]
[super ~]# hcitool dev
Devices:
        hci0    00:16:41:9F:2A:16
[super ~]# hcitool scan
Scanning ...
        00:13:FD:82:C9:35       Nokia6230i
[super@zorax ~]# l2ping 00:13:FD:82:C9:35
Ping: 00:13:FD:82:C9:35 from 00:16:41:9F:2A:16 (data size 44) ...
0 bytes from 00:13:FD:82:C9:35 id 0 time 44.53ms
0 bytes from 00:13:FD:82:C9:35 id 1 time 24.64ms

USB

[super@zorax ~]# lsusb
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 004 Device 002: ID 0000:0000
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 005: ID 0b97:7762 O2 Micro, Inc. Oz776 SmartCard Reader
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 413c:8103 Dell Computer Corp. Wireless 350 Bluetooth
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0b97:7761 O2 Micro, Inc.
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 413c:a005 Dell Computer Corp.
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

Useful Software

Java
Install Java from:

http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp
install the jre rpm
and make it usable for firefox:
[super ~]# cd /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/
[super plugins]# ln -s /usr/java/jre1.5.0_08/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so .

Peer2Peer software
Install limewire from:

http://www.limewire.org/

MultiMedia

yum -y install xine xine-lib xine-skins
yum -y install mplayer mplayer-fonts mplayer-gui mplayer-skins mplayerplug-in

Adobe Acrobat Reader
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat

Links & Files

Ubuntu 6.06 on Dell Latitude D620

Slackware Linux 10.2 on DELL Latitude D620

OpenSuse 10.1 on Dell Latitude D620

kubuntu Dapper on Dell Latitude D620

Fedora Core 5 on a Dell Latitude D620

Debian GNU/Linux on the Dell Latitude D820

Linux on Dell Latitude D820

Unofficial Fedora FAQ

Fedora Core 6/Linux on the Dell Latitude D620

Upgrading from Fedora Core 5 to Fedora Core 6

The upgrade couldn't be more painless, start with:

yum clean all

Tip

Now is a good moment to consider if you want to make a backup in case anything goes wrong. If the answer is "yes", a nice utility to do so is Partimage.
With partimage you can store an image of your partition on an other disk, on an network disk or on a USB drive.
They even provide a recovery cdrom which you can boot from if things really go wrong ( or even better, burn SystemRescueCd which has partimage on there and a lot more usefull tools for if you are in real trouble.).

rpm -Uhv
 http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/6/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/fedora-release-6-4.noarch.rpm
 http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/6/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/fedora-release-notes-6-3.noarch.rpm

Now try:

yum -y upgrade

Most likely you will end up with dependency conflicts, the best way to deal with this is remove the packages that cause the conflict. You can allways later on reinstall them. Also be sure to have enough room in /var/yum/cache

So here are my conflicting packages being removed:

rpm -e yum-fedorafaq
rpm -e gtkhtml gnucash
rpm -e powersave powersave-libs kpowersave

After all conflicting packages have been removed, the upgrade will continue, the summary in my case was:

Transaction Summary
===========================
Install     87 Package(s)
Update    1139 Package(s)
Remove       0 Package(s)
Total download size: 1.3 G

So, the diskspace we need is at least 1.3 GB and take into account your download speed, this will determine how long the upgrade will take. If you are using a latop like me, be sure to plug in power, because an incomplete update might render your system into a corrupt state.

On my 10 Mbps ADSL line the whole upgrade took about 2 hours.

After the upgrade and a reboot, the old fedora core 5 kernel was still being used, (probably because i am using a SMP kernel which isn't there anymore in FC6), so:

yum -y install kernel

Will add the Zod i686 kernel "kernel-2.6.19-1.2911.6.4.fc6", which will automagically detect SMP systems and cater for them (use cat /proc/cpuinfo to verify this, or cpufreq-info).

Remove the old FC5 SMP kernel stuff with rpm -e, but keep one fallback kernel just in case:

[~]# rpm -qa | grep kernel
kernel-headers-2.6.19-1.2911.6.4.fc6
kernel-2.6.19-1.2911.6.4.fc6
kernel-smp-devel-2.6.18-1.2257.fc5
kernel-smp-2.6.19-1.2288.2.1.fc5
kernel-smp-2.6.18-1.2257.fc5
kernel-smp-devel-2.6.19-1.2288.2.1.fc5

[~]# rpm -e kernel-smp-2.6.18-1.2257.fc5 kmod-ntfs-smp-2.1.27-2.2.6.18_1.2257.fc5
[~]# rpm -e kernel-smp-devel-2.6.19-1.2288.2.1.fc5 kernel-smp-devel-2.6.18-1.2257.fc5

[~]# rpm -qa | grep kernel
kernel-headers-2.6.19-1.2911.6.4.fc6
kernel-2.6.19-1.2911.6.4.fc6
kernel-smp-2.6.19-1.2288.2.1.fc5

And now for the good stuff, The i810 driver in FC6 is much improved and will detect the 945GM chipset in de D620 without a problem, use system-config-display to select the i810 driver and restart your window manager.
After restarting, you might want to use the sexy Beryl OpenGL accelerated desktop.

Have yum install the nescessary packages:

yum -y install beryl\*

and type: beryl-manager An emerald icon will appear in your taskbar and after clicking on it with the right mouse button you can modify beryl settings and click on reload window manager to enable everything or type beryl in a console.

Wireless

You can still build the ipw3945 stuff yourself with every release of a new kernel, but it is also possible to get the package from ATRPMs. In my case the atrpm repo was not yet configured for yum, so this is what i did:

[~]# cat > /etc/yum.repos.d/atrpms.repo
[atrpms]
name=ATRPMS for Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - Base
name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - ATrpms
baseurl=http://dl.atrpms.net/fc$releasever-$basearch/atrpms/stable
gpgkey=http://ATrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY.atrpms
gpgcheck=1
^D

[~]# rpm --import http://ATrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY.atrpms

[~]# yum -y --enablerepo=atrpms install ipw3945

After resolving dependencies, this resulted in:

Total download size: 17 M
Downloading Packages:
(1/6): ipw3945-ucode-1.14 100% |=========================|  67 kB    00:00
(2/6): kernel-2.6.19-1.28 100% |=========================|  16 MB    00:13
(3/6): ipw3945-1.2.0-18.2 100% |=========================|  35 kB    00:00
(4/6): ipw3945-kmdl-2.6.1 100% |=========================|  89 kB    00:00
(5/6): ipw3945d-1.7.22-4. 100% |=========================|  35 kB    00:00
(6/6): ieee80211-kmdl-2.6 100% |=========================|  42 kB    00:00
Running Transaction Test
Finished Transaction Test

Transaction Check Error:   package kernel-2.6.19-1.2911.6.4.fc6 (which is newer than kernel-2.6.19-1.2895.fc6) is already installed

So my options are:

install the older 2.6.19-1.2895 kernel and work with that
wait till atrpms has a newer package for the current kernel
compile the software myself, like i allways did
try to build an ipw3945 rpm package from the atrpms src.rpm

Strangely enough, if you look on the atrpms website: http://dl.atrpms.net/fc6-i386/atrpms/stable/ all the right files for the current kernel (2.6.19-1.2911) seem to be present. So i gave it a try and downloaded them one by one:

ipw3945-kmdl-2.6.19-1.2911.6.4.fc6-1.2.0-18.2.fc6.at.i686.rpm
ipw3945-1.2.0-18.2.fc6.at.i386.rpm
ipw3945-ucode-1.14.2-4.at.noarch.rpm
ipw3945d-1.7.22-4.at.i386.rpm
ieee80211-kmdl-2.6.19-1.2911.6.4.fc6-1.2.16-17.fc6.at.i686.rpm
ieee80211-1.2.16-17.fc6.at.i386.rpm

and installed the bunch without any complaints:

[~]# rpm -Uvh ipw3945*.rpm ieee80211-kmdl-2.6.19-1.2911.6.4.fc6-1.2.16-17.fc6.at.i686.rpm
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:ieee80211-kmdl-2.6.19-1########################################### [ 20%]
   2:ipw3945-ucode          ########################################### [ 40%]
   3:ipw3945d               ########################################### [ 60%]
   4:ipw3945-kmdl-2.6.19-1.2########################################### [ 80%]
   5:ipw3945                ########################################### [100%]

Created a startup script:

[~]# vim /etc/init.d/ipw3945d
[~]# chmod 0755 /etc/init.d/ipw3945d
[~]# chkconfig --add ipw3945d

On my dell D620 in need to have to wireless/bluetooth switch on the side switched to "on" when i booted, otherwise the wireless card will not be seen. But after that, service ipw3945d start enabled wireless networking for me:

[~]# service ipw3945d start
[~]# iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

eth1      unassociated  ESSID:off/any
          Mode:Managed  Frequency=nan kHz  Access Point: Not-Associated
          Bit Rate:0 kb/s   Tx-Power:16 dBm
          Retry limit:15   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:1316   Missed beacon:0

and iwlist eth1 scan will show all the wireless stations which are in reception range. Of course you can use the GUI tools to connect to a specific network.

Warning

I would strongly recommend switching the ipw3945 daemon off by default (chkconfig ipw3945d off), this is wise as a security precaution and also startup might hang if wireless is not enabled and you try to start the daemon anyway.

Fedora Core 8/Linux on the Dell Latitude D620

Upgrading from Fedora Core 6 to Fedora Core 8

Basically i followed the guidelines from: Upgrading Fedora Using Yum So i started of with:

# yum clean all
# rpm -Uvh http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/fedora/linux/releases/8/Everything/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-8-3.noarch.rpm http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/fedora/linux/releases/8/Everything/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-notes-8.0.0-3.noarch.rpm

Next switch out of graphical mode and give it a first try:

yum update rpm\* yum\*

You are bound to get some dependency warnings on the end, for instance:

Error: Missing Dependency: xxx is needed for package gstreamer08-plugins

So the easiest thing to do is remove these packages. I you really need them you can re-install them after the upgrade. I had te remove a lot:

yum erase gstreamer08-plugins
yum erase beryl\*
yum erase compiz\*
yum erase gnome-doc-utils\* samba\* lirc\*

But then i worked allright and i got:

Transaction Summary
==================================
Install:  99 package(s)
Update:   839 Package(s)
Remove:   2 package(s)

Total Download size: 728 M

After that part of the installation i did a:

yum upgrade

That resulted in more than 900 packages being downloaded and installed.

Problem solving

sendmail would not start properly:

# service sendmail start
Starting sendmail: 554 5.3.5 /etc/mail/sendmail.cf: line 265: service "smtp" unknown: No such file or directory
                                                           [FAILED]
Starting sm-client:                                        [  OK  ]

This turned out to be a SELinux issue:

# ls -lZ /etc/services*
-rw-r--r--  root root user_u:object_r:rpm_script_tmp_t /etc/services
-rw-r--r--  root root system_u:object_r:etc_t          /etc/services.rpmnew

The upgrade did not replace /etc/services and the old file had a wrong security context so SELinux forbids sendmail to access it:

type=AVC msg=audit(1197210208.700:201): avc:  denied  { read } for  pid=11673 comm="sendmail" name="services" dev=dm-0 ino=6488094 scontext=user_u:system_r:sendmail_t:s0 tcontext=user_u:object_r:rpm_script_tmp_t:s0 tclass=file
type=SYSCALL msg=audit(1197210208.700:201): arch=40000003 syscall=5 success=no exit=-13 a0=757512 a1=80000 a2=1b6 a3=b97802d0 items=0 ppid=11672 pid=11673 auid=500 uid=0 gid=0 euid=0 suid=0 fsuid=0 egid=51 sgid=51 fsgid=51 tty=pts2 comm="sendmail" exe="/usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail" subj=user_u:system_r:sendmail_t:s0 key=(null)

These error messages from auditd are not really human readable. But Fedora Core 8 has a great new tool to help you with SELinux errors: SETroubleShoot. Install with:

# yum -y install setroubleshoot\*

check /etc/setroubleshoot/setroubleshoot.cfg and start the daemon:

setroubleshoot start

Next retry your sendmail start command and check /var/log/messages:

setroubleshoot: #012    SELinux is preventing the /usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail from using potentially mislabeled files ().#012     For complete SELinux messages. run sealert -l 2f5a4a18-4b64-41ab-be89-1f0e5261264c

When you run

sealert -l 2f5a4a18-4b64-41ab-be89-1f0e5261264c

you get a detailed description of the problem. Alternatively you can run

/usr/bin/sealert

(if you are running X) and you will get popup's if anything gets blocked by SELinux.
When i put the services.rpmnew in place, i could start sendmail without error messages:

# mv services{,.old}
# mv services{rpmnew,}
# service sendmail start
Starting sendmail:                                         [  OK  ]

X not starting
This turned out to be the switchdesk program which i used in Fedora Core 6 so change my default Window Manager from Gnome to KDE and back again. The program had created two files:

.Xclients-default
.Xclients

which caused gnome to bail out. Just removing these files solved the problem.

Status

Fedora Core 8 is a very very mature distro for the Dell d620. Almost everything works out of the box without the need to compile or load special packages.

Wireless

Is now supported through the new Intel iwl3945 driver. This is a great improvement, because you don't need the userspace-daemon anymore:

# modprobe iwl3945
# lsmod | grep 3945
iwl3945               159541  0 
mac80211              112461  1 iwl3945

# iwconfig wlan0
wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:""  
          Mode:Managed  Channel:0  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Tx-Power=0 dBm   
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2352 B   
          Encryption key:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

# ifconfig wlan0 up
# ifconfig wlan0
wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:13:02:AA:D4:8C  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

# iwlist wlan0 scan
wlan0     Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: 00:14:7F:72:D8:39
etcetera....

If you want to use kismet with this card, specify:

source=ipw3945,wlan0,d620

in /etc/kismet/kismet.conf and do:

# kismet_server --daemon -q -s
# kismet_client

SmartCard reader

Also works, the only thing is that you need to modify:
/usr/lib/pcsc/drivers/ifd-ccid.bundle/Contents/Info.plist
<key>ifdDriverOptions</key> <string>0x0004</string> After that, run:
# pcscd -f -d and insert a PKI card.

Desktop Effects

Install compiz and compiz-fusion:

# yum -y install compiz compiz-fusion\* gnome-compiz-manager

and enable and tweak under: System -> Preferences -> Look and Feel

back to OiePoie!