Gentoo Linux on new HP dv8000z

November 27, 2005 at 7:16 pm | In Linux |

My employer was kind enough to buy me a new laptop last week. It's a brand new HP dv8000z. I struggled over the Thanksgiving holiday to install Linux on it. This laptop is VERY new. It wasn't even on HP's website a couple of days prior to when it was ordered. Now, if you've ever installed Linux on brand new hardware (and a laptop at that), you'll know that it can be quite challenging. So, as I wasn't able to find anyone else that detailed how to install Linux on this new laptop, I thought I would chronicle my successes (and failures) thus far.

My first attempt to install anything on it was Kubuntu 5.10 'Breezy.' It got all the way through the installation and it came up to a KDM login screen at the full monitor resolution. You can't beat that! However as soon as I entered my username and password the system was locked hard. I rebooted into console mode and did a 'startx' .. resulting in a very similar lockup. I messed around with the Xorg.conf file for a while but I finally gave up.

Ubuntu is one of my favorite distros. Everytime I have installed it, it Just Works. This is the first time I've seen it malfunction so horribly. On my desktop machine I run Gentoo (athlon XP). I promised myself that I would only run Gentoo on one machine (hey my time is money and Gentoo requires a lot of it compared to Ubuntu). However I started to think 'Okay.. this laptop is brand new.. bleeding edge… what else is bleeding edge? Well that's Gentoo..' So I started with a stage 3 tarball for amd64 (2005.1-r1) and got a minimal console-only installation before I left for my parents house for Thanksgiving.

Kernel

I am running gentoo-sources-2.6.14-r3. Many people have emailed me who are having problems with 2.6.15 versioned kernels. I have not done any testing of it myself. However, judging by the number of emails I've been receiving on this topic, there does seem to be an issue. I would suggest using gentoo-sources-2.6.14-r5 (as r3 isn't in portage any longer). One user has reported success with hardened-sources-2.6.14-r3 as well. My .config file for 2.6.14-r3 is below in the Miscellenious section.

Graphics

After installing Xorg 6.8.2-r4 I tried running 'xorg -configure' … this was pretty bad: it configured everything but it only detected the graphics as a VGA card at 640×480 and 8bit color. I had compiled my kernel (2.6.12) with all the radeon support I could find, so I thought I would try to force the 'radeon' module. X just exited saying 'no device found.' So it seemed to me that the Xorg driver knows nothing about my Radeon 200M. I found that I hadn't installed the latest Xorg (6.8.2-r6).. so I upgraded. Same deal. I also found I hadn't installed the latest kernel (2.6.14). So I did that. I installed the official (closed source) ati drivers fglrx and played around with that for a while. This seemed to do something. The screen went black but didn't do anything after that. The hard drive LED was blinking though so it seemed as if X was actually starting up GNOME. Disabling direct rendering fixed that problem. So, now I have Xorg running with full 2d acceleration at 1680×1050 resolution but no 3d acceleration (glx is still enabled, but it runs with Mesa. glxgears runs at about 400fps). So it's probably an issue that will get resolved as ATI releases new drivers, or Xorg or the kernel gets upgraded. I'm moderately pleased for the time being.

Here is my Xorg.conf (No 3D, Look below for one with 3d acceleration)

UPDATE 01/11/05: I just got DRI working! In the BIOS set "UMA+Sideport" and 128M of shared video memory in the video preferences, and then uncomment the "Load 'dri'" in xorg.conf (line 74 in mine) (Thanks Levent!). glxgears now runs at 1264.600 FPS, which is a good improvement!

Here is my Xorg.conf with 3d acceleration

Graphics part2: External VGA

This laptop has an external VGA port on it. This allows you to do several things utilizing two displays. I don't really have a use for Xinerama as I normally use two computers connected with Synergy instead, although this laptop will do Xinerama just fine.

What I did want to be able do though was to take my laptop into my living room and hook it up to my television (which has VGA input) and watch some movies that are on the laptop's hard drive. The problem is this: In order to display movies at decent frame rates, video players use a feature of the video card called an overlay. On the ATI Radeon Xpress 200M, they do not support overlay on the secondary display. So although I was able to get the laptop to display on my TV fairly easily, if you try to play a video, all you'll see is a big blue screen. If you turn off the overlay feature completely, then video plays, but is very choppy.

The solution is to make the external VGA port the primary display instead of the secondary one. This can be accomplished by editing your xorg.conf file. This is the relevant change:

Change from this:

Option "DesktopSetup" "(null)"

To:

Option "DesktopSetup" "0x00000001"

What that will do is when you start X it will turn off the laptop's LCD and initialize the external monitor as the primary display, this time with the overlay feature enabled.

I connect my laptop to a Viewsonic N3250w HDTV. It has a native resolution of 1360×768 which the Radeon 200M will happily display.

Here is my Xorg.conf optimized for the N3250w

I then have two files in /etc/X11. 1) my xorg.conf which is my normal setup just using the laptop's LCD. 2) my xorg.TV.conf which I use to display on my television.

I don't use a display manager so I normally use 'startx' to start X-windows. To display on the TV, I instead type 'startx -- -config xorg.TV.conf'

Wireless

The wireless card in this laptop is the Broadcom BCM4318. This works with ndiswrapper. You need to download the 64 bit windows driver for this to work. I lost the link where I downloaded this, but here is a local copy

Just do the following:

tar xfvj Broadcom-BCM4318-64bit-windows-driver.tar.bz2
cd Broadcom-BCM4318-64bit-windows-driver
emerge ndiswrapper
ndiswrapper -i BCMWL5.INF
modprobe ndiswrapper

Synaptics Touchpad

Although, the touchpad kinda works, it really freaks out occasionally. The movement is always fine, but clicking on things sometimes takes multiple times to get right or quits working completely. I'm using an external mouse now exclusively which works fine. I really should attempt to get this working properly as it's a pain when I don't have a mouse handy.

This appears to be working just fine. However it's configured right now as a generic PS2 mouse. This means that the scroll area of the mouse is still not working, which might be nice to have work. There is a Synaptics driver that I should look into at some point. I'm not terribly motivated to do so because I almost always plug in an external mouse anyway.

Sound

This Just Worked. The laptop has an ATI IXP AC'97 sound card. I enabled the ATI IXP chipset in the ALSA section of the kernel configuration. That was about all there was to it.

Conclusion

It took a while but this laptop is starting to really shape up. Here are some of the best things about this laptop:

  • 17" screen (1680×1050 resolution). I can bring up 4 non-overlapping terminals on the screen and still have room left over. Bliss!
  • Room for TWO 120 GB hard drives. I have 80GB in there right now with a 100GB on the way.
  • a full keyboard including a number pad!
  • AMD Turion64 2.2Ghz processor. This was pretty powerful.. In hindsight I could have easily done a stage1 tarball on this thing in not too much more time.

If anyone out there is configuring Linux on this laptop and is either having problems or has found a solution to one of my problems, go ahead and make a comment on this article (or email me if you prefer). I'll do the best I can to assist (or be gracious)!

Miscellaneous

My 2.6.14 Kernel configuation
The output of lspci and my /proc/cpuinfo
My make.conf

Here's some screenshots (click the image for the gallery):
dv8000z GNOME 1
dv8000z GNOME 2


21 Comments »

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  1. I've been thinking of buying the DV8000z and stumbled upon your blog. I wanted to ask someone who actually has the laptop what they thought about it. A couple quick questions

    1) How is the range of the wireless card?

    2) What is your average battery life for general use of the laptop?

    3) How is the sharpness of the display?

    4) If you have done any gaming how did the laptop perform?

    5) Would your recommend it to someone who will use it for multimedia, general use, and occasional gaming?

    Mike

    Comment by Mike — December 12, 2005 #

  2. Hi Mike, thanks for dropping by!

    Range: As good as any other internal wireless card I've used. I just have a wireless AP in my bedroom which I use in my living room. I can also access AP on campus as well.

    Battery: I haven't really tested this one at all. I almost always plug it in.

    Display: The display is awesome. The best screen I've ever used.

    Gaming: I have not gotten DRI working in linux 3D gaming works very slow in Linux right now. I haven't booted anything other than Linux so I can't say for other operating systems.

    Would I reccommend: For Multimedia? Yes! The screen is awesome, I have two hard drives in the computer so I can store all of my music and a ton of movies. For General use? Yes! the display can easily handle 4 terminals open at the same time as the above picture shows, or a web browser and a word processor at the same time. Gaming: 2d games work well.. 3d I have yet to see..

    Comment by ryan — December 12, 2005 #

  3. Ryan,

    Thanks for the quick reply. I found it quite interesting there was only one review for this laptop which was used by multiple sites; kind of scary.

    Your section on emergency powers reminds me of the story in the pre-qual Star Wars movies.

    Mike

    Comment by Mike — December 13, 2005 #

  4. Thanks for the update on the 3d. If you want extra coolness points, do you have an xorg.conf with everything good in it? Also, have you had any issues with the trackpad occasionally having issues, missing clicks or randomly moving?

    Comment by Improv — January 11, 2006 #

  5. Improv,

    Sure thing. I've updated my xorg.conf on the page.

    Yes, the touchpad is freaky as hell. It works for about 10 mins flawlessly, but then starts to have issues… I'm not certain, but I think it has to do with the right click button.

    If you find out anything, please let me know.

    Comment by ryan — January 11, 2006 #

  6. I made the switchover — I get 3d accel now, but nowhere near the performance you're getting. GLXGears gives me about 350fps. I'm not sure if I'm using an older driver, an older X, or an older proprietary driver. *shrug*.

    WRT the touchpad, I believe at some point about a year ago, a change was introduced to the ACPI code that caused interference with proper operation of some busmice. I have seen a little bit of mention of this on bulletin boards. Unfortunately, I have found no solution, but disabling the scrollbar has made the system much more usable, as has disabling battery meters. Configuring them to poll the ACPI devices more frequently reliably produces the occasional havoc you notice.

    Comment by Improv — January 11, 2006 #

  7. Improv,

    That's interesting on th FPS you're getting… if you read back on my original analysis of the graphics card, I was getting around 400 fps before I even got DRI working. Glxgears is not always the best indication of 3d performance though (it's so.. 1999). I set ppracer (planet penguin racer, the open source derivitive of TuxRacer) to my full resolution of 1680×1050 (all other settings default) and I am now getting 27-30 fps.

    Comment by ryan — January 12, 2006 #

  8. I found and fixed the problems after figuring out a bit more about what was going on — it turns out that to work, the libstdc++-compat libraries (dealing with an older C++ ABI) were needed. After doing that and tweaking permissions for the ATI in /dev/shm (which I hope will stick), I get performance like you describe. Amusingly, all this is mainly so xscreensaver is pretty — I don't really do anything that uses 3d. Oh well :) Now all there is to do is figure out a way to make the touchpad more sane.

    Comment by Improv — January 14, 2006 #

  9. Hi,
    At what resolution did you take those screenshots….And secondly is yours a Brightview or an Ultra Brightview display. Could you enlighten me on the difference..

    Dj

    Comment by dinakarj — February 3, 2006 #

  10. Hi Dj,

    I took the screenshots at the full resolution of the screen 1680×1050 (you have to click on the image to go to my gallery where you can get to the full one)

    The screen is the BrightView one (non-ultra) I'm not sure what the difference is other than the fact that the BrightView one has a higher resolution than the Ulta BrightView one (1680×1050 vs 1440×900). I think this screen is plenty bright (although I don't use it outside)

    Thanks for dropping by!

    -Ryan

    Comment by ryan — February 3, 2006 #

  11. have you managed to get the media keys working?? I'd love to be able to control the volume in KDE with the volume buttons… :(

    Mark

    Comment by mcangeli — February 9, 2006 #

  12. Hi Mark,

    The volume and mute keys are working fine for me. I didn't do anything to make them work they just work that way in Gnome. The calculator and DVD button don't do anything however.

    I thought that it would be cool for the calculator button to bring up a python terminal (which is where I do most of my calculating). Xmodmap is probably the way to go but I haven't really played around with it yet.

    Comment by ryan — February 10, 2006 #

  13. Did you manage to get the touchpad working? I have got everyting to work nicely except the touchpad which moves randomly and behaves really weird especially if the cpu is working hard.

    There was a question about battery time for this model (I use the dv8000 not the 8000z), and the battery time is about 2-2,5 hours with normal use.

    Comment by Philip — March 12, 2006 #

  14. Hi Philip,

    The touchpad still behaves strangely sometimes. I have never seen it "move randomly" but it does not want to click on things sometimes. I have narrowed the clicking problem down to this: Sometimes, when I Right-click on something I will no longer be able to click on anything until I right click the same exact thing again and then clicking works normally again.

    That is the only issue I have ever had with it. It is really annoying, but I always carry a mouse with me in my bag so it's never a real problem.

    So it sounds to me like you have a slightly different problem then me if yours is "randomly moving". Please post here if you find a solution though!

    -Ryan

    Comment by ryan — March 12, 2006 #

  15. I'm finaly going "byby" to M$ and installing Linux.

    Just wanted to tell that I've used the dv8000 for some time now. And the touchpad is acting up also in M$.

    Range of Wlan, is moderate, (normale) a friend bought the most expencive from Dell, and can get much better signal than me on the dv8000.

    Also I have some problem with the keyboard, sometimes it does not recognice me typing. (It leavs out some of the letters.) This could be me not pressing the key hard enough…

    But all toghter I'm happy witht the computer.

    Comment by comely — May 5, 2006 #

  16. The dv8000 keyboard is a lemon. Google dv8000 keyboard problems and you will see the problems people are having with this buggy keyboard. HP has the worst customer service I've ever experienced in my life. I'm on my second dv8000 replacement and right out of the box the keyboard was defective, worse than the first one. Caps lock inexplicably, keystrokes don't register, spacebar also does not register, touchpad goes berserk. Now I have the black screen incident!!! Screen goes black, computer is on, all lights are on, computer does not respond to anything, have to take the battery out and wait for it to run out of juice, put battery back in and restart. Hewlett Packard dv8000 is plagued with problems.

    Comment by marcello — July 1, 2006 #

  17. I dont know what the person above this post is talking about. I have a dv8310us and absolutly love it. I have Gentoo 2006.0 runing w/ KDE+Xgl+compiz+cgwd and its is just amazing. I havent had any trouble w/ the buttons on the tuchpad, but the pad it self seems to be realy sensitve (sometimes vibrations from my typing move the mouse around). As far as gaming on this thing goes, well it plays Half-life 2 w/ no problems as well as World of Warcraft. I havent tryed any Linux games yet. If your looking to get Xgl or even just have the ATI Drivers working w/the Xpress 200M card in Gentoo, check out my post to the fourms:
    http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-493489-highlight-atidrivers.html

    As far as the Wifi stuff goes, this thing has amazing range. My router sits in the far conner of my living room and i can still get a 24mbps signal at the curb sitting in my truck (about 200ft away). Great buy if you are in the market.

    Comment by nbazz — August 31, 2006 #

  18. The DV8000t and DV8000z are great laptops (I have one of each). I wouldn't recommend the 8000t for gaming though. The ATI video is pretty crappy for any games that require moderate power, but the NVIDIA in the 8000z is comparable to high end desktop PCIx cards.

    Comment by Dan — November 18, 2006 #

  19. The touchpad behaving strangely is a problem with all HP laptops I believe. It occurs in windows but i think the Synaptics driver in Windows compensates for the problem somehow, still, while on battery and under any kind of load, the touchpad is unusable in both Linux and Windows.
    If you execute "dmesg" in linux you get to see it's error messages:

    [40038.833419] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 lost sync at byte 1
    [40038.833422] psmouse.c: issuing reconnect request

    ….except there are a lot of them :)

    Comment by Sean Cline — April 21, 2007 #

  20. I have written another guide for the dv8000z which you can find at:
    http://www.linlap.com/wiki/HP+Pavilion+dv8000z

    Comment by Bill — October 11, 2007 #

  21. I have had a dv8000z for 2 and a half years now and have never had a problem with the touchpad in windows or linux. keyboard sometimes gets a key stuck, but never as bad as some desktop keyboards I have seen. great guide BTW.

    Comment by mark — June 22, 2008 #

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