LINUX  on DELL INSPIRON 8200

I have a DELL Inspiron 8200 . The process of installation of Red Hat LINUX on it was a bit not trivial and I found a number of resources on the web as help.

I enlist below some of the procedures and various resources that I found on the WEB for the installation procedure.

CONFIGURATION /SUMMARY

DESCRIPTION of INSTALLATION

Note : I have a primary 20 GB hard drive which has windows XP Professional on it and a secondary modular 20 GB HDD on which I wanted to install LINUX.

The Process outlines below is for loading linux on the modular HDD and using the XP bootloader instaed on the linux bootloader ( LILO/ GRUB).

The advantage being that even of you unplug the modular hard drive XP can still boot . If the bootloader is on the modular HDD ( ex LILO) then if the modular HDD

is unplugged the boot loader does not start up and neither XP or LINUX can be used.

I got a lot of help from a web page : http://jaeger.morpheus.net/linux/ntldr.php. The complete desription for the procedure outlined below is on that page. It outlines

The detailed process of using DUAL boot using the NT /XP bootloader. ( NTLDR)

Enlisted below are the steps that I took. They may be different for you. Please check the web site above for proper directions.

On my modular HDD ,I  made a 10 GB linux native partition and then made a 10 GB FAT partition so that i could swap stuff between XP ( NTFS) and linux.

After that I installed linux and instructed LILO to be installed on the MBR ( which is my primary HDD)  you need to do this so that you can get into linux and copy the

files needed to use the XP boot loader.

I then restarted the system , booted into Linux and did the following things :

DUAL BOOT

1.  The first step in the process is to remove the current installation of LILO from the Master Boot Record (MBR), if you're already using it. If not, ignore this part. To accomplish this, type 'lilo -u <boot device>'. On my machine, this was /dev/hda, which corresponds to the MBR of the first detected hard drive. If all goes well, LILO will be uninstalled. DO NOT REBOOT at this point, your system will be inaccessible without a boot disk or CD.

2.The next step is to edit your LILO configuration file. It's usually /etc/lilo.conf. If lilo was installed in the MBR, the lilo.conf will reflect this. There are a couple changes to be made. Here is an example lilo.conf file:

	boot=/dev/hda
	map=/boot/map
	install=/boot/boot.b
	prompt
	timeout=50
	image=/vmlinuz.2.0.33
		label=linux
		root=/dev/hdb1
	other=/dev/hda1
		label=windowsnt
		

This lilo.conf file is configured so that the boot device is /dev/hda. Tha's the MBR on the first detected hard drive. So we want to change that to be the linux root partition, which NTLDR will load up for us, instead of LILO loading the NTLDR. In my case, this is /dev/hdb1, the first partition of the second hard drive. Next, since NTLDR will be handling the booting, LILO doesn't need to know anything about the WindowsNT or DOS installs, nor how to boot them, so take out or comment out the prompt, timeout and other sections. It should now look like this:

	boot=/dev/hdb1
	map=/boot/map
	install=/boot/boot.b
	#prompt
	#timeout=50
	image=/vmlinuz.2.0.33
		label=linux
		root=/dev/hdb1
		read-only
	#other=/dev/hda1
	#	label=windowsnt
		

By commenting out prompt, we tell LILO not to ask which selection to boot, it just picks the first one it sees, which is our linux kernel. The timeout option is only needed in conjunction with prompt, so that goes, too. The other section is what LILO normally would use to pass us off to the NTLDR, and now it won't bother.

My LILO.CONF looks like

3. The next thing to do is install LILO. This time, we want it on our linux root partition, instead of in the MBR. Since we've edited lilo.conf to specify the correct location already, all that's necessary is to run lilo. It may complain that lilo isn't being installed on the first drive, but since there will be a boot loader there (NTLDR), that's ok, and we can safely ignore the warning. Once this is done, keep reading, linux isn't quite bootable yet.

4. LILO is now installed on our linux root partition, but there's still nothing pointing it to linux. To get around this, we create a boot sector image file or sorts for the NTLDR to look at to boot linux. The way we do this is to use the dd program (copy/convert utility). The syntax we're looking for is: 'dd if=<root partition> of=<boot pointer file> bs=512 count=1'. This is a little more complicated than the bootdisk dd usage. <root partition> is of course your linux root partition, /dev/hdc1 in my case. <boot pointer file> is a file that will contain the boot sector image that NTLDR uses to boot linux. It's a physical copy of the first 512 bytes of the linux root partition, where LILO is now installed. Making sense now? :) bs=512 sets the block size to 512 bytes, and count=1 ensures that we only get one block in the image.

I used: 'dd if=/dev/hdc1 of=bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1'. You should now have a file called bootsect.lnx (which, if you're using WindowsNT and DOS, needs to be in DOS 8.3 filename format, which bootsect.lnx fits in.

5. The bootsect.lnx file is basically your linux boot sector. I needed to copy this file to my primary XP partition and edit boot.ini to use this file to get into linux.

My edited boot.ini looks like :

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
C:\bootsect.lnx = " RedHat Linux 8.0 "

SAVE THE FILE : and after that when I rebooted the XP bootloader loaded and gave me an option to go to Red Hat Linux 8.0 if needed. ( YOU ARE DONE !!)

NOTE : In case of any problems, LILO not set up or anything else  and you cannot get into Windows XP you can do this. This can be dangerous

 ( as denoted by the warnings given by the system - but nothing has happened to me ) .

Boot from windows XP setup CD. Boot to it and get into recovery console ,follow the instructions and one on command prompt type

FIXMBR

FIXBOOT

that should restore the MBR and Boot sector.

VIDEO DRIVER

Nvidia usually keeps an updated driver database . Go to their web site www.nvidia.com  and download the latest GLX and the driver file for the distribution you want.

I used the sources and built the sources as i had some minor problems with their precompiled binaries. I think my problem must have been specific and the

precompiled binaries should also work. Building the Drivers from the sources is also quite trivial and is mentioned in their README files .

I followed their directions and edited my XF86Config file too. You can follow the procedure and edit the file.

You can find my XF86Config file here ( 1400 X 1050 resolution ).

MODEM

My  Inspiron 8200 uses the modem:

Actiontec MD560RD V92 MDC Modem (Conexant HFS chipset)

Download the drivers from :  http://www.mbsi.ca/cnxtlindrv/

I used the HSF driver for redhat 8.0 distribution ( kernel version 2.4.18-14) from   :   http://www.mbsi.ca/cnxtlindrv/hsf/downloads.html

The driver I used is  here

To see your kernel version do a :

uname -r

MORE   RESOURCES

There are some Other Sites that list other resources for Linux Installation . Some of them are.

1. http://jaeger.morpheus.net/linux/ntldr.php    -   For DUAL BOOT setup and using XP boot loader instead of LILO

2. www.geocities.com/thebithead/I8200FAQ/html -   very good FAQ section for multiple OS'es , etc and detailed Description

3. http://www.mbsi.ca/cnxtlindrv/                      -  Modem Drivers for Conexant Chipsets

4. www.nvidia.com                                         - Nvidia display card drivers

Yuvraj Agarwal                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Updated : 01/10/2003 15:00:04 -0800