Linux on the Dell Inspiron 17R (N7010)

Last updated: 20120429 @ 2109 EST5EDT.

Friday 27 April 2012 at 08:31.
Tags: 17r, dell, howto, inspiron, linux, n7010, notes, tips

As I mentioned a couple of days ago I had to buy a new laptop because Windbringer's old hardware became unstable due to cumulative heat damage. I drive my machines pretty hard (doubly so when programming because I test in several virtual machines) so after five years of steady use it was time to upgrade. So, I upgraded with software design in mind... I purchased a Dell Inspiron 17R (under the hood it's called the N7010) and customized it online.

To save everyone's eyes I'll put the nitty-gritty behind the cut, starting with a component inventory.

Distribution: Arch Linux, 64-bit install disk dated 2011.08.19.

Currently running kernel: v3.3.1-1-ARCH (distribution-provided, no customization).

Hardware

CPU: Intel i7-2670QM 2.20GHz x8
RAM: 8GB
Chipset: Intel Xeon E3-1200 second generation (rev 09)
Video: Optimus
- Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
- NVIDIA Corporation GeForce GT 540M (rev ff). I'm using the closed-source nVidia drivers, installed from the Arch Linux repository.
SATA: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family 6 (rev 05)
Ethernet: Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E
Wireless: Intel Wireless-N 1030 (rev 34) (using the native iwlagn driver in the kernel)
USB: NEC Corporation uPD720200
Sound: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family 6 (rev 05)
Webcam: Sunplus Innovation Technology, Inc (Device 004: ID 1bcf:2b80) (using native
uvcvideo drivers in kernel)
SD card reader: 20120429: Worked without configuration. SD card was automatically mounted by desktop environment.
Bluetooth: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family 6 (rev 05) (Device 003: ID 8086:0189)

Gotchas:
Optimus. Optimus. Optimus!

Whoever thought it was a good idea to shotgun a lower-performance laptop video card (the Intel) and a higher-performance nVidia graphics card is either drinking too much coffee or on crack. But that's all we can get these days, so we either shop somewhere else or roll with the flow control. I did the latter, and surprisingly it wasn't as big a problem as I'd feared (my grousing to the contrary). I followed the instructions for installing Bumblebee in the Arch Linux wiki and had it up and running inside of five minutes. It took longer to find an Ethernet cable to plug my new laptop into the house LAN because I hadn't installed NetworkManager yet. So far, I've not run into any problems with it. I haven't tried external video support yet but I'll have to in the very near future.

The only real annoyance has been the touchpad. It's detected as a generic mouse and not a touchpad, which means that I have to be careful when typing. I tried the psmouse-elantech AUR package and it didn't do what I needed; I'm going to try the psmouse-alps package next to see if it makes the touchpad more configurable. 20120454 @ 1454: The driver in the psmouse-alps AUR package seems to have made the touchpad much less sensitive (and thus less prone to acting up) but it's still showing the touchpad as a generic PS/2 mouse.

Those few things aside, everything Just Worked(tm) when I installed Arch Linux. The webcam worked immediately; I've used it a few times for video chatting and it's been all aces. The wireless chipset is far more stable than my last one so I can fully recommend going with the Wireless-N 1030 if you have a choice. I disabled the Bluetooth interface because I don't use it (and find Bluetooth to be a security risk, at any rate) so I can't speak to it. I haven't tried the SD card reader yet. I've been working my way through the laptop configuration page in the Arch Linux wiki to get the most out of Windbringer's power cell and when I've got solid results I'll post them. I enabled the [multilib] repository to get 32-bit compatibility libraries for the few closed-source packages I need (well, okay, so I can play Uplink and run Skype). 32-bit compatibility mode has worked well also. VirtualBox has been rock solid as well, and all of my development and testing VMs have been chugging along nicely. 20120427 @ 1452: I'm loading the dell_wmi, dell_laptop, and acpi-cpufreq drivers for device control and power management.

For the anti-Linux trolls who commented on my last Linux-on-... post (whose comments I left in place, mind you), I'd like to mention that on my last two laptops the image of Windows that came with the laptop never booted successfully. They made it as far as the "Starting Windows..." screen before bluescreening with an error message and the suggestion to reinstall from the original Windows distribution media. Which Dell doesn't give you anymore. Trying to boot the system utility partition to restore the image didn't work, either. So much for Windows "just working."

This work by The Doctor [412/724/301/703] is published under a Creative Commons By Attribution / Noncommercial / Share Alike v3.0 License.

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four comments.

I also use Arch on my Thinkpad Edge E320 and almost everything worked out of the box. The only problem I encountered was when going through the laptop configuration: laptop mode would not picked up events and acpid (which fixes the issue) would prevent shutting down when unplugged!

I deal with the switchable graphics card ([AMD Radeon HD 6600M Series] (rev ff)) using a daemon that echos “OFF” (resp. some other string) to the appropriate file when starting (resp stopping): https://github.com/raphael-proust/rcs/blob/master/radeon_gc_off . Switching on and off is just a “rc.d stop|start” away.

As for uplink, there is a working 64 bits version!

bnwr - 27-04-’12 11:15

I’m still getting laptop mode debugged on my laptop, as well. Specifically, I’m seeing some ACPI events for the CPUs that aren’t being handled, though my research suggests that they’re benign because the kernel’s using the ‘ondemand’ governor and the cpupower package.

You’re using radeon_gc_off, I’m using bumblebeed. It sounds like they do the same thing.

I’ve just downloaded it from Introversion – I’ll try it later. :)

The Doctor (URL) - 27-04-’12 14:49

Getting laptop mode working: Install the packages acpid, laptop-mode, cpupower, and pm-utils.

Edit /etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf, set ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE_ON_BATTERY=1, ENABLE_AUTO_MODULES=1. Edit /etc/laptop-mode/conf.d/lcd-brightness.conf, set CONTROL_BRIGHTNESS=1, BATT_BRIGHTNESS_COMMAND=“echo 1000”, LM_AC_BRIGHTNESS_COMMAND=“echo 4880”, NOLM_AC_BRIGHTNESS_COMMAND=“echo 4880”, and BRIGHTNESS_OUTPUT=”/sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness”.

Edit /etc/acpi/handler.sh. in the ac_adapter) stanza add “/etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode start” to 00000000, and “/etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode stop” to 00000001.

Edit /etc/acpi/actions/lm_lid.sh. Add the line “/usr/sbin/pm-suspend” at the very end.

Unfortunately, about half of this stuff could be configured in either the laptop-mode or acpid packages right out of the box without breaking anything.

The Doctor (URL) - 30-05-’12 08:58

A few updates:

I had to do a rebuild with the 2012.07.15 netinstall disk after the /lib migration update (https://www.archlinux.org/news/the-lib-directory-becomes-a-symlink/) hosed Windbringer but good. To boot successfully, I had to pass the following options to the kernel through the bootloader: nomodeset edd=off acpi=off. Those options are NOT required after installation.

The nouveau nVidia drivers work just ducky with Optimus and bbswitch. I pass the following options to the bbswitch module for aggressive power saving: load_state=0 unload_state=0

Screw messing around with laptop-mode and /etc/acpi/hndler.sh. I installed XFCE4’s power manager (http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/xfce4-power-manager) and It Just Works™. You should, too.

Arch Linux now forces you to use GRUB2 (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB2), which is a dog’s breakfast. Leave it up to the GNU Project to take something simple, elegant, and functional (GRUB) and turn it into something that you need a masters’ degree in comp.sci to use. It goes out of its way to make it hard to use an encrypted root file system (which Arch’s installer used to make easy before they decided to go the way of Gentoo and make everything manual). Here’s how to set it up:

From the installation chroot, edit /etc/default/grub. Change the option GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX to read “cryptdevice=/dev/sda2:crypt”. Change the option GRUB_PRELOAD_MODULES to add “lvm” to the list of modules. Set the option GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID to “true”. Then run the command grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg. Then, configured mkinitcpio appropriately (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/LUKS#.2Fetc.2Fmkinitcpio.conf) (don’t worry, this is the easy bit) and rebuild the initramfses (mkinitcpio -p linux).

The Doctor (URL) - 01-08-’12 08:21