I was FedUp with Fedora Core 17/18 after a day, so I decided to return to my old love: Debian GNU/Linux. It’s been a couple of years, but I’m happy to be back! Just run the netinst installer which will take care of the most.
Configure NVIDIA Quadro K2000M and iwlwifi on Debian GNU/Linux 7.0 Wheezy. After installing your base system, you need to take a few extra steps to configure your NVIDIA Quadro K2000M video card and Intel wifi adapter
Configure NVIDIA Quadro K2000M and iwlwifi on Debian GNU/Linux 7.0 Wheezy
After installing your Debian GNU/Linux 7.0 (aka Wheezy) base system, you need to take a few extra steps to configure your video card and wifi. Depending on your hardware of course. My HP EliteBook 8570w laptop is equipped with an NVIDIA Quadro K2000M video card and an Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205 wifi adapter. These drivers need to be set up after installation.
I also needed/wanted to tweak some other settings, like the console resolution and speaker beeping. All information found here is also easily found on Internet using a search engine and some logical search terms.
NVIDIA Quadro K2000M: drivers installation and Xorg configuration
You can follow the wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers page.
First, its wise to identify your card:
lspci -nn | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GK107 [Quadro K2000M] [10de:0ffb] (rev all)
Code language: Bash (bash)
and locate your driver.
To install the driver for your card, add “contrib” and “non-free” to /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free
Code language: Bash (bash)
Update the available packages and install the appropriate linux-headers and kernel module packages. You can either use aptitude
or apt-get
:
aptitude update
aptitude -r install linux-headers-$(uname -r|sed 's,[^-]*-[^-]*-,,') nvidia-kernel-dkms
Code language: Bash (bash)
Now you have to create an Xorg server configuration:
# mkdir /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
echo -e 'Section "Device"\n\tIdentifier "My GPU"\n\tDriver "nvidia"\nEndSection' > /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf
Code language: Bash (bash)
Restart your system to enable the nouveau blacklist.
Installing iwlwifi drivers in Debian
Installing the drivers for your WiFi adapter is pretty straightforward, as was the NVIDIA Quadro K2000M. You can follow the wiki.debian.org/iwlwifi page.
If not already added, add a non-free component to /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free
Code language: Bash (bash)
Update the list of available packages and install the firmware-iwlwifi package:
apt-get update && apt-get install firmware-iwlwifi
Code language: Bash (bash)
As the iwlwifi module is automatically loaded for supported devices, reinsert this module to access installed firmware:
modprobe -r iwlwifi ; modprobe iwlwifi
Code language: Bash (bash)
and configure your wireless interface as appropriate.
High resolution console
I like to have a higher resolution on my console. This can easily be configured in grub.
- Add or change the following in
/etc/default/grub
:GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x1024
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=1280x1024
orGRUB_GFXMODE=1920x1080x32
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=1920x1080x32
Choose a supported display mode, check with
vbeinfo
as grub command first - Run
update-grub
and reboot
Configure the mouse for text based console
for select, copy and paste operations
You can simply install gdm for console copy-and-paste operations using the mouse.
apt-get install gdm
Code language: Bash (bash)
Disable speaker
Thank you Steven Rosenberg.
To disable the speaker, for tab completion on the console, Uncomment the following line in /etc/inputrc
set bell-style none
Code language: Bash (bash)
You still might hear a beep every now and then. The sound card (snd_hda_intel
) has an option “beep_mode”. Just disable that and blacklist the pcspkr
module (how-to).
modinfo snd_hda_intel | grep beep
parm: beep_mode:Select HDA Beep registration mode (0=off, 1=on, 2=mute switch on/off) (default=1). (array of int)
Code language: Bash (bash)
Set beep_mode
to off (0) and blacklist pcspkr
module:
echo "options snd_hda_intel beep_mode=0" >> /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
echo "blacklist pcspkr" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
Code language: Bash (bash)
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Thanks for your answer! I have some more questions. It would be great if you can answer them too!
Does also the video acceleration work? (Can you play full-hd with only little CPU usage?)
How long does the battery last? (Typically usage with debian wheezy)
Does suspend to disk and suspend to ram works flawless?
How long does the bootup take? (To give me some idea how fast the SSD is)
Thank you,
best regards
Markus
Hi Markus and Nico,
Thanks for your comments! Yes, I can hear the fan, but I don’t find it annoying. It’s not very loud. The laptop is most times in its docking station, as I use it as a workstation.
3d acceleration works, but you have to disable ‘Sync to VBlank’ through nvidia-settings.
Haven’t tried a dual monitor set up unfortunately.
Hi! Thanks for the tutorial!
I consider buying this laptop. Is this laptop recommendable together with wheezy?
Does the fan make noise as Nico describes?
Does video and 3d acceleration work? Does xrandr with a dual monitor work nicely?
best regards and thank you,
Markus
Hi,
I have the same EliteBook 8570w. I have installed many distro/kernel but the fan is unfortunately very noisy …
Is your cpu fan always running ? Which kernel do you use ? Did you add modules ?
Thank you,