Issues Installing Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty) on a Dell Dimension 4700

This page includes the following topics:

• Ubuntu Installer Cannot Detect the Video Card
• Hotplug Errors on Boot after Installation
• hwclock Hanging on Startup and Shutdown

- About Ubuntu Linux
- DELL Dimension 4700 Details

Ubuntu Installer Cannot Detect the Video Card

When the Ubuntu installer attempts to detect the video card you will be greeted with a dialogue box that has selected by default the "VESA" option. These machines have an i915 video card that is not supported by any of the drivers available in the "Warty" release of Ubuntu (Note: This video driver is apparantly fully supported in the "Hoary" release of Ubuntu, due in April 2005).

The "VESA" driver works quite well but 3D support is not available, at least until "Hoary" is released anyway.

Hotplug Errors on Boot after Installation

When you reboot after a successfull install you will notice the following five lines:

modprobe: FATAL: Error inserting pciehp (/lib/modules/2.6.8.1-4-686/kernel/drive
rs/hotplug/pciehp.ko) Operation not permitted
modprobe: FATAL: Error inserting shpchp (/lib/modules/2.6.8.1-4-686/kernel/drive
rs/hotplug/shpchp.ko) Operation not permitted
modprobe: FATAL: Error inserting pciehp (/lib/modules/2.6.8.1-4-686/kernel/drive
rs/hotplug/pciehp.ko) Operation not permitted
modprobe: FATAL: Error inserting shpchp (/lib/modules/2.6.8.1-4-686/kernel/drive
rs/hotplug/shpchp.ko) Operation not permitted
modprobe: FATAL: Error inserting hw_random (/lib/modules/2.6.8.1-4-686/kernel/dr
ivers/char/hw_random.ko) No such device

Fear not! There is nothing fatal about this at all. To stop hotplug trying to load drivers it has no business trying to load (on this system, anyway) add the following three lines to the bottom of /etc/hotplug/blacklist

# Not loading on boot. Removed from sight :)
pciehp
shpchp
hw_random

Next time you boot you'll notice those annoying messages are now gone. I'd rather know why they won't load but haven't had time to work that out yet so removing them from sight will do for now.

hwclock Hanging on Startup and Shutdown

The DELL 4700's are hanging on startup (worked around with good 'ol [ctl]+[c]) and locking up completely on shutdown. The hanging and lockups occur with on the following messages: On Startup: -

* Setting the System Clock using the Hardware Clock as reference…

On Shutdown: -

* Saving the System Clock time to the Hardware Clock…

To resolve this problem, the argument of --directisa will need to be added to every occurence of hwclock in the following files:

/etc/init.d/hwclock.sh
/etc/init.d/hwclockfirst.sh
/usr/sbin/tzsetup

Now when you reboot your shiny new DELL 4700 you will not get any lockups from hwclock any more.