The last thing I want to do is point and laugh at anyone else’s problems – God knows we’ve all been in the trenches – but this is just too funny a pun and deserves a link:
Month: February 2008
Linux on a Dell Vostro 200
Following a recent post to ILUG asking about setting Linux up on a Dell Vostro 200, I followed up with my notes from the time I had to do it a few months back.
This is just a copy of my notes rather than a how-to but any competent Linux user should have no problem. Apologies in advance for the brevity; with luck you’ll be using a later version of Linux which will already have solved the network issue…
The two main issues and fixes were:
- The SATA CD-ROM was not recognised initially and the fix was set the following parameter in the BIOS:
BIOS -> Integrated Peripherals -> SATA Mode -> RAID - The network card is not recognised during a Linux install. Allow install to complete without network and then download Intel’s e1000 driver from http://downloadcenter.intel.com/ or specifically by clicking here. The one I used then was e1000-7.6.9.tar.gz but the current version appears to be e1000-7.6.15.tar.gz (where the above link heads to – check for later versions).
My only notes of the install just say “essentially follow instructions in README” so I assume they were good enough! Obviously you’ll need Linux kernel headers at least as well as gcc and related tools.
Once built and installed, a:
modprobe e1000should have you working. Use
dmesgto confirm.