Ubuntu 9.10 on HP Pavilion dv6-2004sl

I bought this laptop computer in January 2010 with the hardware below.

Component	Description	State
CPU	AMD Turion II Dual-Core Mobile M500 (2.2GHz) 1MB Chache L2.	OK
Chipset	AMD M880G (I'm not sure this is correct)	OK
RAM	4GB DDR2 2 Dimm	OK
HDD	WDC WD5000BEVT-60ZAT1 465GB 7200 rpm SATA drive	OK
CD/DVD-R(W)	hp CDDVDW TS-L633M ATA drive with double Layer Support	Partly tested
Display	15.6" HD LED Brightview Widescreen Display (1366x768)	OK
Graphics	ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650 (upto 2302 MB total memory with 512 MB DDR3 diponible)	OK
HDMI out		Not tested
VGA out		OK
Sound (internal)	HDA ATI SB (Codec: IDT 92HD75B3X5)	Partly OK
Sound HDMI	HDA ATI HDMI (Codec: ATI R6xx HDMI)	Not tested
USB	4 USB 2.0 ports one with eSATA(not tested)	OK
Firewire	Tested with a camcorder from Canon.	OK
LAN	Realtek Pcle GBE Family Controller 10/100/1000	OK
WLAN	Atheros AR9285 802.11b/g WiFi Adapter	OK
Toch-Pad		OK
ACPI		Not tested
PCMCIA		Not tested
Flash Media Reader	Functioned after disabling the "Card Reader / 1394 Power Saving" in the BIOS "System Configuration" menu.	OK
WebCam		Ok
IrDAs		Not tested

Windows and Ubuntu installation

The computer comes with Windows 7 pre-installed. A creation of the installation disks plus a backup of the boot sector (sudo dd if=/dev/hda1 bs=512 of=win-boot.bin count=1 from the Ubuntu live CD) was the first thing I did.
Then I downloaded the Ubuntu version 9.10 (karmic) desktop 64-bit CD image and made a CD. The installation of Ubuntu went smoothly and I had Ubuntu up and running in a very short time, I did have some problems with the sound setting, see below, but it is impressive that almost everything functioned out of the box.

Sound

Ubuntu 9.10 has some problems with the internal sound device on the HP. The sound chipset is from ATI and implement the Intel HDA (High Definition Audio) Specification. I had to install the linux-backports-modules-alsa-karmic-generic package manually to get some sound. Then change the /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf file. To find the right value:

 $ /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
 Codec: IDT 92HD75B3X5

A look in the /usr/share/doc/alsa-base/driver/HD-Audio-Models.txt file gave me the hp-dv5 as the best value under the STAC92HD71B* codec section, so I added the following line in the button of the file:

 options snd-hda-intel model=hp-dv5 enable_msi=1

followed by the commands:

 $ killall pulseaudio
 $ sudo alsa force-reload

Still the microphone, and auto detect of the front jack did not function. To test that the ALSA module function for sound out use the following command:

 $ speaker-test -c2 -Dplughw:0 -twav

To control the internal speaker when I plugged a headphones in the front jack I downloaded the hda-verb:

 $ wget ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/people/tiwai/misc/hda-verb-0.3.tar.gz
 $ tar -xvmf hda-verb-0.3.tar.gz
 $ cd hda-verb-0.3
 $ make
 $ sudo cp hda-verb /usr/local/bin

and used the following commands:

 #mute the speaker
 sudo ./hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC0D0 0x0d SET_PIN_WIDGET_CONTROL 0
 #unmute the speaker
 sudo ./hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC0D0 0x0d SET_PIN_WIDGET_CONTROL 0x40

 #mute the headphones
 sudo ./hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC0D0 0x0f SET_PIN_WIDGET_CONTROL 0
 #unmute the headphones
 sudo ./hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC0D0 0x0f SET_PIN_WIDGET_CONTROL 0x40

With the latest update of the linux-backports-modules-alsa-generic (2.6.31.19) it seems that the ALSA function!
Now starts the problems with PulseAudio! To get the sound to function; select the Hardware tap in the Sound Preferences, select Internal Audio and set the profile to Analog Stereo Duplex
Also install the paman (PulseAudio Manager) package to get better control over PulseAudio. You get two new useful instruments: PulseAudio Volume Control and PulseAudio Device Chooser in the Application - Sound & Video menu.
The sound has still problems and PulseAudio must be re-started sometime with

 $ killall pulseaudio

I also get lot of the following messages in the message log

kernel: [ 1862.933879] ALSA hda_intel.c:1187: Too big adjustment 32

Some useful commands and there output:

 $ aplay -l
 
 **** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
 card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 0: STAC92xx Analog [STAC92xx Analog]
   Subdevices: 1/1
   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
 card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 1: STAC92xx Digital [STAC92xx Digital]
   Subdevices: 1/1
   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
 card 1: HDMI [HDA ATI HDMI], device 3: ATI HDMI [ATI HDMI]
   Subdevices: 1/1
   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 

 $ lspci -v | less
  .
  .
 01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc R700 Audio Device [Radeon HD4000 Series]
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 3637
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 19
	Memory at f2310000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: 
	Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
	Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

Skype

Skype has made package ready to install for the most poplar Linux distributions. But my personal experience is to use either the Static or the Dynamic versions. If you use the Dynamic version remember to install the following packages:

libqt4-gui
libqt4-core
ia32-libs
ia32-libs
lib32asound2
lib32gcc1
lib32stdc++6
lib32z1
libqt3-mt

I had some problems with Skype related with the above sound problems. I still have a strange problem: When I turn-on the WebCam the microphone dies and I have to re-start PulseAudio (killall pulseaudio). The video function and I can still hear the other part.

DVD

To install libdvdcss see: Restricted Formats Playing DVDs. In short:

 $ sudo apt-get install libdvdread4
 $ sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

I can still not play some DVD that seem copy right protected.
I have not tested the reading and burning of a doubled layer CD/DVD.

Browser Flash plugin does not response to mouse click

Edit /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/i386/linux/npviewer add the line

export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1

before the last line.
This looks like to be a Adobe issue as I have heard that Acroread also can have problems without this variable set.
www.gtk.org tells us:

GDK has been rewritten to use 'client-side windows'. This means that GDK maintains its own window hierarchy and only uses X windows where it is necessary or explicitly requested. Some of the benefits of this change are:

Reduced flicker
The ability to do transformed and animated rendering of widgets
Easier embedding of GTK+ widgets, e.g. into Clutter scene graphs

Launching an application with GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1 application turns off this feature. This is needed if the application manipulates the windows it creates using direct X API calls or a mixture of X API and GDK instead of just going through GDK. When using "client-side windows" all window manipulation by an application must go through GDK. Adobe needs to update Acroread to be compatible with this feature.

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Henrik Baastrup (c) Jan-2010 (last changed 11/2-2010)
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