Partial Success with HP Compaq NX9500

[fdruseikis]

Greetings,

This is a very new laptop from hp, so I expected some difficulties. It's not small -- 17" (rect.) LCD display, 3.2GHz P4, 1GB Main memory.

Knoppix 3.4 using the Linux 2.6 kernel will boot and run successfully except for the following five items:

(1) USB Mouse is not functional (I tried both the Logitech USB Optical Wheelmouse and the Microsoft Blue). The laptop *does not have* a PS/2 mouse plug. instead it has 4 USB ports so a USB mouse is mandatory. Any advice or success others have here would be appreciated. I fear that the USB subsystem on this box is an special -- HP says that the box will not run the retail version of Windows XP !

(2) The synaptics touchpad mostly functions - however, the "scrollbar" feature does not work under 2.6, but does under 2.4 (see below).

(3) X Windows does not start automatically; but does using startx at the root prompt (just hit the enter key when it looks like it's hung.)

(4) dmesg reports an "Oops" during kernel boot, which appears to be recovered. A register dump is included in the dmesg. Don't know what to do about this, except to wait for kernel 2.6.7

(5) The default user under 2.6 is root, not Knoppix.

The Linux 2.4 kernel has a more serious problem. Knoppix will appear to boot, but the TCP/IP subsystem is not functional -- to the extent that an ifconfig will not return; and kill -9 will not clear it nor a "pump -i eth0" setting up DHCP. When kill -9 does not kill a process it indicates serious badness. On the brighter side the synaptics touchpad appears to be fully functional under 2.4, (but no USB mouse.)

The laptop has an integral WiFi and 10BaseT etherenet. I have not been able to test the WiFi. The fact that wired lan does not work kind of makes 2.4 a non-starter (for me). I believe the 2.4 problems are related to the WiFi lan.

My install includes a dual boot with (the HP) Windows XP Pro using the Knoppix iso install. Early on I tried an Knoppix hdinstall, but I was not happy with the result. So, I tried Debian Sarge beta4 net install, and several recent nightly builds of net install and businesscard (which I've used successfully on some older boxes) The Debian installations will complete but the 2.6 kernels from Debian fail to boot ! -- a subject for a different forum, but a tribute to Knoppix project, I think !

Regards,
Fred

[mzilikazi]

(3) X Windows does not start automatically; but does using startx at the root prompt (just hit the enter key when it looks like it's hung.)

Guess I'm unclear on what kind of Knoppix install you have. If it's a 'knoppix-type' or booting the .iso directly from hdd as a workaround you could do su knoppix then startx. At least you won't be running as root.

Otherwise just log in as user and startx.

My install includes a dual boot with (the HP) Windows XP Pro using the Knoppix iso install. Early on I tried an Knoppix hdinstall, but I was not happy with the result. So, I tried Debian Sarge beta4 net install, and several recent nightly builds of net install and businesscard (which I've used successfully on some older boxes) The Debian installations will complete but the 2.6 kernels from Debian fail to boot ! -- a subject for a different forum, but a tribute to Knoppix project, I think !

Regards,
Fred

May I suggest trying Kanotix. Pure Debian sid install w/out the hassle. Also Kano has a 2.6.7 kernel that runs quite nicely. Of course I cannot guarantee anything but I feel it's worth a shot.

I *think* the synaptics issue can be resolved w/ an edit to /etc/X11/XF86Config-4. It's also worthy to note that I do not have a synaptics touch pad.