Dell Precision M2400 + Ubuntu Hardy

Welcome, Googlers. You are here because you have put Ubuntu Hardy (or perhaps Intrepid) on your shiny new M2400 (or other Precision laptop). And you've run into issues with your wireless; to wit, it don't work.

I've got the nVidia Quadro 370M, and Intel wireless 5100 cards. A fresh install of Hardy on a Dell Precision M2400 supports the nVidia (howto). But the 5100 wireless card support is non-existent.

To get both of these devices working, you're going to have to build a new kernel, and also compile a beta nVidia driver interface. It's actually an automated and fairly bulletproof process, so don't lose your nerve.

I think there are some other approaches that could work. I tried the compat-wireless strategy -- it's a technique using the recompiled Intel 4965 driver plus new firmware (oh yeah... you're going to need that 5000 series firmware from the Intel site anyway, so go get it). That strategy actually worked... as long as I ran "make load" on every boot... and occasionally my keyboard would freeze, requiring a reboot. I never could get that approach to feel stable, and my googling left with the impression that nobody had taken it much further than I had.

But to focus on the strategy I got working:

The problem is that the new Intel iwlagn drivers are part of the very latest kernel. I do not believe they are in even the Ububtu Intrepid kernel, so I did not attempt to promote to that alpha version of the distro. You can google to find lots of people dist-upgrading to Intrepid only to find they still don't have support for the 5100.

But there is support in the 2.6.27-rc6 kernel, the latest stable development pre-patch.

Build the 2.6.27-rc6-ultimate kernel

If you have X + nVidia set up the way you like, now would be a good time to save a copy of /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

You want to build this kernel the Ubuntu way. I suggest you follow the command line instructions on that page, and avoid the KernelCheck GUI program. I tried KernelCheck first and it is a really handy way to build a kernel. But it seems not to have left artifacts you will need later, when you build the nVidia driver interface. I admit there could have been pilot error in my case -- but I know the command line method works correctly.

When you get to the "make xconfig" step, choose Find from the Edit menu and search for "iwl". Turn on all those options.

Don't forget to select 64 bit options.

I emulated KernelCheck's naming pattern and identified my kernel with the name "ultimate", so my make-kpkg command was

make-kpkg --initrd --append-to-version=-ultimate kernel_image kernel_headers modules_image

So my uname -r is "2.6.27-rc6-ultimate".

Follow the instructions all the way and install your kernel. Don't worry, your old kernel is still there and in case of trouble, you can always choose it in the boot menu.

Remember that firmware you downloaded above? Put it at /lib/firmware/2.6.27-rc6-ultimate/iwlwifi-5000-1.ucode. Then reboot, and you'll have wireless... but no nVidia.

Build the nVidia driver

When you reboot into your new kernel, the system will drop you into a default 800 x 600 X session. Don't attempt to configure X yet if it prompts you.

There's no pre-built nVidia driver for this kernel. I also found that only the latest beta nVidia driver interface compiled against this kernel.

In order to build and install the driver, you need to kill X and make it stay killed. Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get a console, then "killall gdm". Then, following the instructions on the nVidia site, run the install script you downloaded. It should even edit the xorg.conf file to install itself, but in my case I still had to go back and set the resolutions -- I just replaced xorg.conf with the one I had saved at the beginning.

Our only departure from the Ubuntu way was using the nVidia install script -- it puts nvidia kernel module in a place of its choosing, and it won't be managed by apt for us. But we're not going to be getting new kernels from apt anyway -- we built our own, and we're now going to take responsibility for upgrading kernels (as needed) and nVidia at the same time.

Tidying up

You want to be able to suspend and hibernate, and it just takes a couple of edits. To hibernate, you'll need as much swap space as you have RAM. With this computer, unlike my last one, I've done that, and hibernate now works after the edits.

The NetworkManager annoyingly asks you to enter your keyring password whenever you log in. Googling around, I found some solutions. One of them worked for me. I'm not sure I used the best solution, so I'm punting and letting you find your own answers.

Hey -- this backlit keyboard is pretty nice!

Update Sept 17: Using the Hardy config file as your initial config (config-2.6.24-19-generic), simply enabling iwl* as above leaves you missing two modules that Ubuntu installs only as part of the linux-ubuntu-modules package. Your sound card and webcam require extra modules. In make xconfig, be sure also to select "USB Video class" (if you have the webcam) and "Intel HD Audio".