Installing Linux on a Compaq Presario 2100 Laptop


Copyright © 2003 Todd Lisonbee

Authors homepage: http://lisonbee.freeshell.org/

This document was created 2-15-2003 and last modified 8-4-2004.

I purchased this laptop directly from HP.  It was one of the customizable models.  I installed RedHat 8.0 and everything seems to work okay (except for power management features).  (Update: I have upgraded to RedHat 9, no problems with the exception of a little work to get the X configuration right). 

Easiest Linux Distributions to run on this Laptop

From the sounds of things there are two distributions that are really easy to get running on this laptop (Dec 2003):
See the comments on these distributions below.  This document also discusses RedHat 8 and 9.  (Any detailed reports on Mandrake, Slackware or Debian would be welcome).

Dual-Booting with Windows

This laptop came with Windows XP Home edition and originally I planned to set up a dual-boot configuration.  The recovery cd's were rather disappointing.  They only have one option "erase entire disk and install Windows XP".  The entire disk gets formatted with one NTFS partition.  Currently there aren't any free tools that I know of for resizing NTFS partitions (Update: I recently read about a open source project called ntfsresize).  Additionally, trying to do a system recovery on this laptop only worked once out of about 40 tries.  I kept getting read errors at different points during the recovery, so I began to suspect my dvd drive of being defective.  I called Compaq/HP customer support where I experienced the absolute worst customer service ever.  I was on the phone for over an hour and a half and was transferred 11 times.  Each time I was transfered they would take my information, name, address, etc. and then transfer me again.  Finally I was told they would send me a box so that I could return my brand new laptop so they could replace the drive.  Needless to say I never recieved the box.  

I was able to install RedHat linux with little difficulty.  Legacy USB support must be disabled in the BIOS otherwise the system will freeze when booting.  Once or twice during the install I got read errors but using a paperclip to eject the disk and then reinsert it got me past those points without additional problems.  I still wanted to dual-boot so next I decided to try installing Windows 2000 on this laptop.  Windows 2000 installed okay but unfortunately I was unable to get drivers for the video card, ethernet, wireless, and modem.  Compaq/HP's website does not have these drivers and I didn't have any luck with drivers from the manufacturers websites for each of these components.  To make a long story short I gave up on dual booting and decided to only use Linux on this laptop.  Since then life has been easy.

Eventually all problems with DVD read errors went away (I'm still confused about the whole thing?).

Laptop Specs (customizable but this is what I have)

Video Configuration

Section "Device"
        # no known options
        #BusID
        Identifier  "VESA driver (generic)"
        Driver      "vesa"
        VendorName  "VESA driver (generic)"
        BoardName   "ATI Radeon Mobility 9000"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Videocard0"
        Driver      "radeon"
        VendorName  "Videocard vendor"
        #BoardName   "ATI Radeon Mobility U1"
        VideoRam    65536
        ChipID      0x4242       #these are ChipID's of similar cards, must be used with "noaccel" to prevent the system from hanging
        #ChipID     0x4c59      #these are ChipID's of similar cards, must be used with "noaccel" to prevent the system from hanging
        #ChipID     0x4336      #ChipID of the ATI Radeon Mobility U1
        BusID       "PCI:1:5:0"
        Option      "noaccel"      #you must have this or the system will hang
        Option      "AGPMode" "4"
EndSection

Audio

Wireless

Ethernet

Modem

Power Management

Firewire

USB

Output of 'lspci' on RedHat 8.0

00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device cab0 (rev 13)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 700f (rev 01)
00:02.0 USB Controller: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03)
00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M5451 PCI AC-Link Controller Audio Device (rev 02)
00:07.0 ISA bridge: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M1533 PCI to ISA Bridge [Aladdin IV]
00:08.0 Modem: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M5457 AC-Link Modem Interface Controller
00:09.0 Network controller: Harris Semiconductor Prism 2.5 Wavelan chipset (rev 01)
00:0a.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6912 Cardbus Controller
00:0c.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB21 IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
00:10.0 IDE interface: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M5229 IDE (rev c4)
00:11.0 Bridge: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M7101 PMU
00:12.0 Ethernet controller: National Semiconductor Corporation DP83815 (MacPhyter) Ethernet Controller
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 4336

Output of 'lspci' on RedHat 9

00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device cab0 (rev 13)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc U1/A3 AGP Bridge [IGP 320M] (rev 01)
00:02.0 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03)
00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: ALi Corporation M5451 PCI AC-Link Controller Audio Device (rev 02)
00:07.0 ISA bridge: ALi Corporation M1533 PCI to ISA Bridge [Aladdin IV]
00:08.0 Modem: ALi Corporation Intel 537 [M5457 AC-Link Modem]
00:09.0 Network controller: Harris Semiconductor Prism 2.5 Wavelan chipset (rev 01)
00:0a.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6912 Cardbus Controller
00:0c.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB21 IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
00:10.0 IDE interface: ALi Corporation M5229 IDE (rev c4)
00:11.0 Bridge: ALi Corporation M7101 PMU
00:12.0 Ethernet controller: National Semiconductor Corporation DP83815 (MacPhyter) Ethernet Controller
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility U1


Additional Comments from Jaime Torres (added 7-7-2003)

Jaime Torres, from Lima, Perú, found some of the information in this document useful and was nice enough to email me some more things to add.  Thanks Jaime! For now I will just throw it in here and hopefully later I can integrate everything nicely into one cohesive document.

About Dual-Booting with Windows

As you mention, it came with a preinstalled Windows XP Home Edition. Compaq won't answer any question not related with that preinstalled OS. Not even if you're willing to reinstall your machine using the Windows XP cd or any other method other than the QuickRestore cds. I tried the ntfsresize utility included in the ntfsprogs package from Linux-NTFS project at SourceForge [http://linux-ntfs.sf.net/]. Since this laptop doesn't have a internal floppy drive (and I wasn't willing to buy an external one) I used the Knoppix live linux cd [http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/] to boot the computer and I ran the ntfsprogs included. It seems like the disk image that is used by the Compaq restore process makes the NTFS partition not resizable. I'm sure about that because I used the same procedure to resize another NTFS partition with a non Compaq Windows XP installed and it worked really smooth.

Not being able to resize it and since the QuickRestore process doesn't count with a two disk partitions restore schema, there was only one option: get rid of the existing partition and start from the scratch. I decided to create two partitions using the RedHat's installer fdisk. In the first one I installed the XP (NTFS) and on the other RedHat 9.0 (ext3). LILO was my choice referring to a boot loader because I'm not familiar with GRUB. The dual-booting system was ready BUT the suspend/hibernate features were not active in XP. I went to Compaq to ask for support in this matter but once again they don't have any 'test data' on that subject. I tried several methods to activate the ACPI power management but couldn't get it working. As a last resource I recurred to the MS experts help & support newsgroups but I didn't find any useful reply from them. As a matter of fact I received the most funny answer from them [http://tinyurl.com/g1n3]:


Subject: Suspend/Hibernation not available (ACPI supported BIOS)
From: "Mark" <MrkTuc7nospam@aol.com> Sent: 7/4/2003 5:20:34 AM

Hi, I had a similar problem when reinstalling XP, in power options it wouldn't show the drop down menu on the advanced tab to hibernate, I cured it in the most strange way; I pressed the power key on the KEYBOARD, whereupon PC closed down, upon starting the PC again, the options were there on the advanced tab in power options! Hope yours can be corrected the same way!


So I guess that maybe if you place your laptop on top of your TV, turn on the air conditioner and pray while pressing ESC it might work <insert appropriate smiley here>.

Ok, sick and tired of the lack of proper support and still needing windows for some video edition tools I decided to make a fresh install of RedHat deleting the NTFS partitions and to use VMWare Workstation 4.0 to run windows inside my running linux. I also have Mandrake 9.1 installed as a virtual machine.

Footnotes:

At the beginning, trying to install RedHat 8.0 or 9.0 versions I had to disable the| Legacy USB support in the BIOS setup (as you mention), otherwise the keyboard would freeze when the installation process launches. If you try with the any of the RedHat earlier versions there's no problem at all.

I haven't had any problems with my dvd drive. I guess it is in fact a hardware problem what you're having. Well, my drive is fully functional but I do have a configuration problem.  Using the 2.4.20-8 kernel from the original RedHat 9.0 installation I was able to mount and use my dvd/cd-rom drive but using my new kernel I'm not able to do so. I'm having this error reported on the console: mount: /dev/cdrom: can't read superblock

My Laptop Specs:

Compaq Presario 2100US
About Video Configuration - I'm using the VESA driver as well. No problem.

About Ethernet - You're right, no problems.

About USB - I have not tried it yet.

About Power Management

I have been 'playing' with the ACPI kernel support for for a week now. At the moment I'm able to check the AC-adapter and battery status and the thermal conditions. I compiled a 2.4.21 kernel patched with the acpi-20030619-2.4.21 diff file [] and installed the acpid-1.0.2-1 and acpi-0.0.6-1 rpm packages. It works fine, even in combination with Klaptop but I have no suspend/hibernate features available for now. For that I will have to add swsusp support to the kernel. Soon, I hope, I'll have some new info in this subject.

Output of my 'lspci' on RedHat 9.0

00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device cab2 (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 7010
00:02.0 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03)
00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: ALi Corporation M5451 PCI AC-Link
Controller Audio Device (rev 02)
00:07.0 ISA bridge: ALi Corporation M1533 PCI to ISA Bridge [Aladdin IV]
00:08.0 Modem: ALi Corporation Intel 537 [M5457 AC-Link Modem]
00:0a.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6912 Cardbus Controller
00:10.0 IDE interface: ALi Corporation M5229 IDE (rev c4)
00:11.0 Bridge: ALi Corporation M7101 PMU
00:12.0 Ethernet controller: National Semiconductor Corporation DP83815
(MacPhyter) Ethernet Controller
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon IGP 340M


PCMCIA Help from David Cougle

David Cougle sent me a copy his /etc/pcmcia/config.opts file which he had to modify to be able to use PCMCIA on this laptop:
#
# Local PCMCIA Configuration File
#
#----------------------------------------------------------------------

# System resources available for PCMCIA devices

#include port 0x100-0x4ff, port 0x800-0x8ff, port 0xc00-0xcff
#include memory 0xc0000-0xfffff
include memory 0x80000000-0x80000fff, memory 0xffeff000-0xffefffff, memory 0xfbeff000-0xffefefff, memory 0x000d7000-0x000d7fff
include port 0xfd00-0xfdff, port 0xfc00-0xfcff, port 0xff40-0xff7f
#include memory 0xa0000000-0xa0ffffff, memory 0x60000000-0x60ffffff

# High port numbers do not always work...
# include port 0x1000-0x17ff

# Extra port range for IBM Token Ring
#include port 0xa00-0xaff

# Resources we should not use, even if they appear to be available

# First built-in serial port
exclude irq 1
exclude irq 2
exclude irq 3
exclude irq 4
exclude irq 6
exclude irq 8
exclude irq 9
exclude irq 10
exclude irq 11
exclude irq 12
exclude irq 13
exclude irq 14
exclude irq 15
#exclude irq 4
# Second built-in serial port
#exclude irq 3
# First built-in parallel port
#exclude irq 7

#----------------------------------------------------------------------

# Examples of options for loadable modules

# To fix sluggish network with IBM ethernet adapter...
#module "pcnet_cs" opts "mem_speed=600"

# Options for IBM Token Ring adapters
#module "ibmtr_cs" opts "mmiobase=0xd0000 srambase=0xd4000"

# Options for Raylink/WebGear driver: uncomment only one line...
# Generic ad-hoc network
#module "ray_cs" opts "essid=ADHOC_ESSID hop_dwell=128 beacon_period=256 translate=1"
# Infrastructure network for older cards
#module "ray_cs" opts "net_type=1 essid=ESSID1"
# Infrastructure network for WebGear
#module "ray_cs" opts "net_type=1 essid=ESSID1 translate=1 hop_dwell=128 beacon_period=256"

# Options for WaveLAN/IEEE driver (AccessPoint mode)...
#module "wvlan_cs" opts "station_name=MY_PC"
# Options for WaveLAN/IEEE driver (ad-hoc mode)...
#module "wvlan_cs" opts "port_type=3 channel=1 station_name=MY_PC"

# Options for Xircom Netwave driver...
#module "netwave_cs" opts "domain=0x100 scramble_key=0x0"


Windows 2000 Drivers Help from John Tusciuk (added 8-26-2003)

I have a Presario 2140US and originially had the same problem finding Windows 2000 drivers since they only seem to support Windows XP for the
2100 series. It turns out that several other HP/Compaq laptops have the same hardware but are supported with Windows 2000. I found the drivers
(pretty much accidentally) by going to HP's support page: http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/eng/support.html

and doing a search for each component. For example, searching for "Radeon Mobility U1" turns up driver pages for both Windows 2000 and
Windows XP. Here's the link for the Windows 2000 page: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?locBasepartNum=hb-12762-1〈=English+%28US%29

I think the only thing I didn't get working was the battery meter on the desktop, but that may have simply been lack of interest on my part. Anyway, I'm currently dual-booting Slackware 9 and Windows 2000.

SuSE Linux Comment from Jason Kurtz (added 12-7-2003)

I just switched to suse 9 pro and found that it supports the winmodem, ACPI, power switch, xserver and my wireless lan card out of the box. It also has the powernow M support built into the kernel and the daemon already setup so my laptop gets 3 hours of battery life now instead of 1:45 by throttling the kernel when its on battery power.


Fedora Linux on the Presario 2100 (added 12-7-2003)

Fedora Linux, the community Linux project sponsored by Redhat, works
nicely on this laptop. I can finally have that little battery status
applet running under Gnome with no real work on my part. Just make sure
the parameter acpi=on is passed to the kernel at boot time.  Add the
option like so in /boot/grub/grub.conf

default=0
timeout=9
splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Fedora Core (2.4.22-1.2115.nptl)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb acpi=on
        initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl.img

Make sure the ACPI daemon is configured to run

chkconfig --list acpid
acpid           0:off   1:off   2:off   3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off


If it isn't then enable the ACPI daemon for run levels 3, 4, and 5 like so:

chkconfig --level 345 acpid on


Finally reboot or start the daemon with the command:

/etc/init.d/acpid start


One thing I did not like about Fedora was the Graphical boot-up sequence.
You can turn off the graphical boot option under /etc/sysconfig/init by
setting it to "no".

# Turn on graphical boot
GRAPHICAL=no

Fedora is very similar to Redhat 9 or Redhat Enterprise Linux 3.0.  I
recommend it to anyone who wants to use Linux as a desktop:

Of course some people will hate it for all of these reasons ;-)


Resizing NTFS Partitions using BootIt from Simon Watt (added 12-7-2003)

I had problems using ntfsresize, as it said that there was a cluster accounting problem. 
Eventually got it to work with BootIt (http://terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html)

Free download.  Free to use.  Whether or how they sell it I don't know.  It works - all I was interested in.
I tried ntfsresize and even Partition Magic 5.0 without any luck.

 

XFree86 and RedHat Updates from Sean Bryan (added 12-7-2003)

The reason I write is that in the latest version of XFree86 (and possibly earlier ones, I only tested this with the latest one Red Hat Network updates is putting out), setting the display driver to "ATI Radeon Mobility U1" and enabling hardware acceleration works perfectly.  Since it uses hardware acceleration, in my (somewhat limited as of yet) testing, video performance is far faster.  I think this is a better setting for the newer version of XFree86 than the "Vesa" setting your site recommended.  If you get the time to check this out yourself, I think it would help a lot of people if you put a note on this new development on your website.  Thanks again for all the help on your page.  Let me know how this works for you if you get around to it. Thanks. 


Linux 2.6, ACPI and PCMCIA from David Cougle (added 1-28-2004)

I found out with 2.6 you can successfully use acpi and pcmcia without lockups if you add the following to boot options:

nolapic pci=noacpi

The Slackware and Gentoo comments from Tyler (added 1-28-2004)

I've got slackware 9.1 installed on my Presario. I found that the recent 2.6.0 release works great! I was not able to get 3d accel enabled until this kernel.

surfing your site i followed the link to 'Gentoo Linux on Presario 2100' and followed the instructions for 3d... i was unable to get it working with the 2.6.0-test3 kernel, but the 2.6.0 stable kernel worked fine with the patched XFree 4.3.99.9. (http://www.cliff.biffle.org/cpq2100.php)

have not attempted to get pcmcia/modem/wireless working quite yet... everything else seems to be working great.

Redhat 8 Comments from Sathya (added 1-28-2004)

PCMCIA: My install went fine without having to disable legacy USB support However I had a problem with pcmcia and the system hung when it started. I read somewhere that Redhat 8 shipped with broken pcmcia support and so went into single mode and disabled it.

Legacy USB support in Bios: System booted fine but keyboard went dead and occasionally worked if I had my finger on one of the keys, weird! After reading your web page one thing i really found useful was the disabling of legacy usb support in BIOS. This got rid of the dead keyboard problem on startup.

Dual boot: I installed partition magic 8.0 , converted ntfs to fat, shrank it and created an ext3 partion to install linux. Later I installed vmware 4 with windows xp on a virtual disk using NAT to share the net connection and got rid of the primary xp install!

Now it works great!


Resizing Partitions using Knoppix from David Carroll (added 1-28-2004).
The image from compaq has a problem, or at least the one they sent on the CD's did, but it isn't recognized by the graphical tools.  Open a cmd prompt, and run chkdsk.  It will say you have to run it on system restart.  On the restart check it will find it has a problem with the partition, and will fix it.  Then you can use qtparted from a knoppix bootup, and it works just great!


Installing RedHat Enterprise AS 3 (added 8-4-2004).
Install in text mode and select the framebuffer driver. Sound card did not work out of the box, I'm not sure why. To configure the wireless network card after installation run redhat-network-config. On the Devices tab select "new" -> "Wireless Connection" -> "Prism 2.5 wavelan chipset (eth1)" -> Select your network settings (DHCP, IP Address, etc) -> Finally Activate the card. (The Ethernet card (eth0) is detected and configured during installation). No ACPI support. Without ACPI support the fan just stays on full blast all of the time which sucks.

Additional Resources



Please feel free to email me any comments, toddj@ecst.csuchico.edu.

Let me appologize if I do not respond to your email or do not add your comments to this page. 
When I get busy sometimes messages get lost in my inbox or it takes me a long time to respond.

(It may seem silly to add a copyright and license to such a small and informal document such as this.  I think it encourages people and make it easy for them to create derivative works.  For instance, this page is rather cluttered with random tid bits added slowly over time.  Someone could create a cleaner document, focus on whatever they are into and grab stuff right off this page without even asking (they only need to put their document under the same license).  For example, I think a nice document would be a step by step, no brainer, on how to install an easy distribution of Linux on this Laptop for the complete beginner, even with screen shots of the install maybe (and with no other information to confuse or intimidate.  Or someone could give a nice and complete explanation of XFree86 on this laptop as the info on this page is getting pretty confused).


Copyright © 2003 Todd Lisonbee
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.  A copy of this license is available at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html