New build - hardware issues with KDE4.1

[quarkslot]

My current computer is getting a bit long in the tooth, a dual-boot KDE3/XP machine, so I decided to build a new one tol run KDE4, for details of the h/w spec see the end of this post.

The build went OK and I installed Kubuntu 64-bit and KDE4.1 and the PC boots straight into KDE4. I have not yet tried to install any additional software so compared with KDE3 it looks a little sparse, but I was expecting that.

On the good side all devices indicate that they are working:
- the computer plays sounds on startup/shutdown
- both disk drives ('/' and '/home') are recognised though I expected more than 877GB free space on the 1TB '/home' drive with nothing on it, but my maths could be wrong...
- USB devices are recognised when connected

However there are a couple of problems:
- no Internet. I've got cable broadband; with Kubuntu and KDE3 I just had to install, connect to the cable modem and it worked. Perhaps there's some configuration needed in KDE4 but if so it's not obvious.
- screen resolution. My monitor can display 1680 x 1050 yet KDE4 only allows a maximum of 1280 x 1024.

I suspect these problems are because there aren't Linux drivers for my motherboard so if anyone can confirm this or has any suggestions how I can resolve these issues I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks

Nick

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS4
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500
GPU: ATI 4850 (Powercolor)
HDDs: Both SATA, 320GB for root and swap, 1TG for /home

[dibl]

Re: New build - hardware issues with KDE4.1

You installed 8.04, or 8.10 Beta?

If 8.10, run

lspci

and let's have a look at your ethernet controller. If it's an Intel Gigabyte controller, you've got a blacklisted e1000e driver module, and you're done until the 2.6.27 kernel is patched.

ATI GPU -- I'm not the expert, but you need to research which driver and how to configure it.

[quarkslot]

Re: New build - hardware issues with KDE4.1

Thanks for the feedback.

I installed 8.04, and having checked it's KDE 4.0.3 not 4.1 but I doubt that matters.....

I checked the motherboard website and it says of the LAN interfaces:

2 x Realtek 8111C chips (10/100/1000 Mbit)

Anway here's the output from lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Eaglelake DRAM Controller (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Eaglelake PCI Express Root Port (rev 02)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation ICH10 USB UHCI Controller #4
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation ICH10 USB UHCI Controller #5
00:1a.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation ICH10 USB UHCI Controller #6
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation ICH10 USB2 EHCI Controller #2
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation ICH10 HD Audio Controller
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation ICH10 PCI Express Port 1
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation ICH10 PCI Express Port 5
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation ICH10 PCI Express Port 6
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation ICH10 USB UHCI Controller #1
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation ICH10 USB UHCI Controller #2
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation ICH10 USB UHCI Controller #3
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation ICH10 USB2 EHCI Controller #1
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 90)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH10 LPC Interface Controller
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation ICH10 6 port SATA AHCI Controller
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation ICH10 SMBus Controller
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 9442
01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device aa30
05:06.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB23 IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
05:07.0 IDE interface: Integrated Technology Express, Inc. Unknown device 8213

As you said, it doesn't recognise the ATI devices, I'll do some research on this.

Nick

[dibl]

Re: New build - hardware issues with KDE4.1

Hmmm. Linux doesn't see the ethernet controller at all -- that's not a good thing. :P You might want to check in BIOS and make sure it's enabled.

It sees the ATI graphics card, so probably the correct driver will get that working for you.

[quarkslot]

Re: New build - hardware issues with KDE4.1

Yes, it's a bit worrying and I will double-check the BIOS however I found this Ubuntu bug report which looks relevant:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ux/+bug/205374

I will try the latest drivers but this seems to suggest that the problem might go away in 8.10 so I'm thinking of installing Intrepid and see what happens then. I don't think I'll bother about the other things until I get the ethernet ports working properly.

[dibl]

Re: New build - hardware issues with KDE4.1

Yep, that looks like the problem. As an experiment, you could make a Live CD of Kubuntu 8.10 Beta, boot it and see if it will run your ethernet connection.

[quarkslot]

Re: New build - hardware issues with KDE4.1

I like the idea, will give it a go.

[CVPunk]

Re: New build - hardware issues with KDE4.1

are you plugged straight into your cable modem?
sometimes the cable modem will lock onto the mac address. so if the modem was previously hooked up to another pc then you might have to just reset your modem.

[quarkslot]

Re: New build - hardware issues with KDE4.1

are you plugged straight into your cable modem?
sometimes the cable modem will lock onto the mac address. so if the modem was previously hooked up to another pc then you might have to just reset your modem.

Yes, it seem you are right, the cable modem has to be reset in order to get a working connection, in fact I'm finding I also need to reboot the computer before it will work with the modem, pity as I am now sharing the modem between 2 PCs but it won't be long before I get a router.

However the real fix to my original problems was upgrading to 8.10, this sorted out both the screen resolution and Internet access. Got to say that KDE 4.1 is a big improvement on 4.0.

Anyway thanks for the help and advice, it turns out I've got sound but not for media playback so if I can't get it sorted out I'll take this up on the new forum for 8.10.