LMDE on Dell XPS 15z

[thefish]

Hi everyone,

I am hoping someone can help me. I just purchased a new notebook. It’s a Dell XPS 15z. I am very happy with it. It looks very nice, has a “second generation” Core i7 sandybridge processor, 8 GB of RAM and a 750 GB hard drive.

I have installed Windows 7 Pro on it and am now putting LMDE on it. I installed LMDE using the latest ISO on the website 201109. It would only boot into setup if I used “acpi=off” when booting from the DVD. Was hoping that after updating to the latest kernel I wouldn’t need this anymore. I installed it and updated everything till no new packages were found. This installed a new kernel. I rebooted and now I get the following immediately after “waiting for /dev to be fully populated”

Code: Select all

nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Invalid ROM contents
[drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Pointer to BIT loadval table invalid
[drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: 0xD581 i2c wr fail: -6
[drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: PGRAPH: unsupported chipset, please report!
[drm:intel_dsm_platform_mux_info] *ERROR* MUX INFO call failed
[drm:intel_dsm_platform_mux_info] *ERROR* MUX INFO call failed

After which it just hangs and I have to press and hold the power button to turn the computer off.

Does anyone have any luck getting LMDE running on this machine? What steps can I take at this point? I am a little at a loss as what to try next.

Thanks,

The Fish

[thefish]

OK, well I have a partial answer to my own question. I am able to get Linux to boot by adding the "noapic" kernel parameter at boot time. I have, for the time being, added it to my GRUB so that I don't need to type it each time.

I am not 100% clear on what the implications of adding this parameter is. I understand it disables Advanced Reprogrammable Interrupt Controller. But in terms of how this actually affects my machine I am not sure yet.

I figured I should at least post what I did to get the system to boot in case someone experiences a smiler problem.

Regards,

The Fish

[ajjames]

I also just got a Dell XPS 15z and, of course, am seeing this same issue. Ultimately, I'm unable to boot into the graphic interface and want to to solve this ASAP. I have over half a dozen machines that I would like to get running with Mint 13 (Mate).

To at least boot to the command line, I also added the 'noapic' parameter as well as 'nouveau.modeset=0'.
For any others with this issue, to get this far, do the following:
- Install Mint 13 (Mate) 64bit from CD.
- Boot for the first time, hold SHIFT to get the GRUB menu
- select the first option and press 'e' to edit
- on the line that starts with 'linux', add the following right before 'quiet splash':
' nouveau.modeset=0 noapic '
- press F10 to boot with these temporary settings
- sometimes, I still get the Xserver failed error (I'm still not sure why because I'm such noob), but I can dismiss the ASCII dialogs and get back to the command line.
- also sometimes, I get a blank screen (no command line prompt), but if I press ALT+F1, the login prompt appears.

I've tried using apt-get to grab the bumblebee and bumblebee-nvidia drivers, but I'm uncertain how to get these working.
Any help or insight is appreciated.

[DrHu]

nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Invalid ROM contents

Noveau is the open source graphics driver that is being used as the default driver for later versions of Ubuntu/Mint
--if a binary driver is available, such as ATI or nvidia or even Intel, they (being propriety to the manufacturer) usually have better hardware support for that manufacturer's GPU (Graphics Processing Unit): their chipset/firmware)

• Try and replace the default noveau (open source) driver with the manufacturer's specific version for the Sandybridge processor set..

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n ... &px=ODU3Mw

Intel may have some help for the graphics driver that can be used (Intel) with Linux..
http://intellinuxgraphics.org/documentation.html
http://intellinuxgraphics.org/vaapi.html

[ajjames]

BTW, for what it's worth...

I ran 'inxi -F', and here are the results:

System: Host: Bender Kernel: 3.2.0-23-generic x86_64 (64 bit) Console: tty 1 Distro: Linux Mint 13 Maya
Machine: System: Dell (portable) product: Dell System XPS 15Z serial: XXXXXXXX
Mobo: Dell model: 00WW5M version: A00 serial: .XXXXXXX.XXXXXXXXXXXXXX. Bios: Dell version: A10 date: 02/20/2012
CPU: Dual core Intel Core i7-2640M CPU (-HT-MCP-) cache: 4096 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx)
Clock Speeds: 1: 800.00 MHz 2: 800.00 MHz 3: 800.00 MHz 4: 800.00 MHz
Graphics: Card-1: Intel 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller
Card-2: NVIDIA GF108 [GeForce GT 540M]
X.org: 1.11.3 driver: (unloaded: vesa) tty size: 240x67 Advanced Data: N/A for root out of X
Audio: Card: Intel 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel
Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture ver: 1.0.24
Network: Card-1: Atheros AR8151 v2.0 Gigabit Ethernet driver: atl1c
IF: eth0 state: down mac: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
Card-2: Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6230 driver: iwlwifi
IF: wlan0 state: down mac: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
Drives: HDD Total Size: 264.1GB (2.9% used) 1: /dev/sda SAMSUNG_SSD_PM83 256.1GB
2: USB /dev/sdb v165w 8.0GB
Partition: ID: / size: 231G used: 7.2G (4%) fs: ext4 ID: swap-1 size: 8.47GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 55.0C mobo: 55.0C
Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info: Processes: 103 Uptime: 34 min Memory: 173.8/7878.6MB Runlevel: 2 Client: Shell inxi: 1.7.33

[ajjames]

OK, I just realized that if I also add i915.modeset=0, then I can boot to the desktop:
' nouveau.modeset=0 i915.modeset=0 noapic '

Once in the desktop, I ran the nvidia updates. Now I can remove everything from GRUB except the 'noapic'.
The drivers still aren't 100%, but at least I now have a graphical interface.