Installing Debian Sarge with 2.6.12 Kernel on Dell Optiplex GX620 with Intel
i945/955
chipset (Intel HD Audio AC97) and ATI Radeon X600 SE Video Card
Step1. Boot
into linux
I use Debian netinstall
CD image (180MB) to boot into Debian Linux. To do that, first
I need to switch BIOS setting of SATA Drive to support lagacy devices such as (P)ATA.
BIOS menu
-> Disk Drives ->SATA -> select "Combination" instead of "Normal". Save and
boot from CD-ROM.
After prompt of Debian, type "linux26" which automatically boots using Linux 2.6.8.2-386
kernel (regular
2.4 kernel fail to boot).
This kernel is fine except the audio support. We will compile a custom
kernel later.
Step2. Installing Debian
A standard Debian installation follows. The
network card is recognized but video and audio
need tweaking.
Step3. Compiling Linux 2.6.12
Kernel
The motivation of compiling a linux 2.6.12 kernel is to simplify the snd-hda-intel ALSA
kernel module process. Linux 2.6.12 kernel has the snd-hda-intel kernel built in so
no extra ALSA
configuration is necessary.
General instruction is at
http://newbiedoc.sourceforge.net/system/kernel-pkg.html
or
http://www.vmlinux.org/jocke/linux/debian-kernel-2.6.shtml
Don't know why they didn't mention the
mkinitrd part, maybe they compile the kernel using initrd
switches (which I didn't use) so that is ok.
A. download 2.6.12 kernel source from kernel.org
wget http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.12.tar.bz2
B. unzip them to /usr/src/linux2.6.12
C. following Debian kernel installation steps
apt-get install kernel-packages gcc
D. make menuconfig
select Device Drivers: -> IDE SATA support (deprecated), build them into
kernel (*)
disable Device Drivers: -> SCSI support (new), all SCSI support are disabled
select
Sound -> Advanced Sound Architecture -> Intel HD Audio (NEW), build them into kernel (*)
you can disable
OSS, which is optional
you can select the Processor Architecture to P4 (optional)
if the
config does not disable SATA support, the boot sequence will show
"VFS: Kernel Panic, cannot find device
/dev/hda0"
or "dev/console, no such file"
E. make-dpkg clean
F: make-dpkg --add-verions=p4-sata-old kernel-image
this takes a while, in my machine 37 minutes.
G: cd ..; dpkg -i kernel-image-p4-sata-old.deb
H: cd /boot;
mkinitrd -o /boot/linux2.6.12.img linux-2.6.12-p4-sata-old
I: add a line to /etc/grub/menu.lst
after the linux 2.6.12 lable, same as the linux 2.6.8
initrd: /boot/linux2.6.12.img
K: reboot
if all goes well, you will get a sound-capable linux 2.6.12 kernel
Step 4: Build fglrx module from ATI to the kernel
A. follow the instruction from
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/flavio.stanchina/debian/fglrx-installer.html
B. Since we don't have a
ready-made debian package available, we must compile the kernel module ourselves.
I use the patch proviced
by some people using Fedora Core 4
fglrx_6_8_0-8.14.13-fc4.patch
patch -p1 < fglrx_6_8_0-8.14.13-fc4.patch
if you don't patch it, you will get error
messages
such as "slot_number" is not a member
of the struct, another tweak is to replace "slot_num"to "pci_num".
Then compile the kernel module per instruction in the /usr/src/linux2.6.12
C.
If all is well, you should see the fglrx.ko file in the output of the compilation
D. copy them to
/lib/modules/2.6.12p4-sata-old/kernel/drivers/video
depmod -ae;
modprobe fglrx
E: install XFree86
F: Change the /etc/X11/XF86config-4
use driver "fglrx"
default depth 24
H: startx, use
fglrxinfo; fgl_glxgears ;
Some of the files I mentioned in the installation
process
/etc/grub/menu.lst
/etc/X11/XF86config-4
fglrx_6_8_0-8.14.13-fc4.patch
kernel module (fglrx.ko) for ATI Radeon, only for linux2.6.12 kernel
linux2.6.12
kernel with Intel-HD Audio (sound-hda-intel) sound support, in Debian format (don't know
if you can use
it, no ATI fglrx kernel module built in, no scsi).
Use modprobe snd-pcm-oss to enable sound to be played by firefox macromedia player plugins.
Unkown issues
If it is possible to boot
into the linux kernel 2.6.12 with SATA support enabled in BIOS. At least
2.6.8 kernel is not able to do that.
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