Linux on Sager NP6165 / Clevo W150ER

I wanted to write this review as I work on installing Linux on this laptop and help whoever else may try this. Note that I am fixing the issues slowly and the critical issues below does not mean that they are unsolvable.

My configuration is Sager stock except the Matte screen and 7200 RPM disk that won't make any difference in terms of Linux.

The distribution I installed is Debian stable/testing, which is comparable to Ubuntu.

I tested two Debian kernels:

• 3.2.20-1
• 3.4.1-1~experimental.1

Lower kernel versions may have a hard lockup problem caused by the Intel display driver.

Code:

# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor DRAM Controller (rev 09)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor PCI Express Root Port (rev 09)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller (rev 09)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI Host Controller (rev 04)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 7 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 7 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev c4)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 7 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev c4)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 7 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev c4)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation HM76 Express Chipset LPC Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series Chipset Family 6-port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 7 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 04)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 0fd1 (rev a1)
03:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 8723
04:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 5289 (rev 01)
04:00.2 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 0a)

CRITICAL

• To avoid random hangs when moving the mouse pointer in X caused by the Intel display driver, use the i915_enable_rc6=0 option when loading the i915 kernel module. This can be achieved by the i915.i915_enable_rc6=0 boot parameter, or can be specified in modprobe options. Thanks to ALLurGroceries for this workaround. In Debian/Ubuntu, you can edit /etc/modprobe.d/i915-kms.conf for this. If you cannot install the latest Intel drivers or kernel module, you can also use the VESA driver as a workaround by blacklisting the module "i915" in modprobe.conf and then choosing "vesa" in xorg.conf. See below posts for details.

WORKING

• Intel HD 4000 works with xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.19.0-3 (version 2:2.18.0-2+b1 still caused hard lockups).
• WiFi card Realtek 8723AE requires downloading and compiling kernel module rtl8723e.
• Webcam (BisonCam, NB Pro)
• Audio (need to unmute the microphones to get output from the speakers??)
• USB (haven't tested USB 3.0)
• Gigabit ethernet with r8169 kernel module
• Bluetooth recognized through bt-usb kernel module (not tested yet)
• Touchpad (ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad) with synaptic module. Two and three finger presses are recognized, but I need to map them in X.
• lm-sensors 3.3.2-2 only finds coretemp as the CPU sensors. "acpi -V" also gives one motherboard temperature sensor.
• Suspend to RAM (sleep) and suspend to disk (hibernate) works fine with uswsusp 1.0+20110509-2
• The Realtek 5289 multimedia card reader (PCI dev 04:00.0) works by following the instructions on this page.
• Nvidia 650M through bumblebee. See the tutorial by defcronyke

NOT WORKING YET

• On-board microphone and front mic jack are not seen by the snd-hda-intel driver. Possibly needs a explicit model number set at load time.

OTHER ISSUES

• Custom touchpad settings are lost after wakeup from sleep or hibernation, so found out I can run some command line tools to fix it everytime:
  
  Code:

  synclient VertTwoFingerScroll=1
  powersave -k 0 # lowest backlight setting
  ...
  

Recommended software

• laptop-mode-tools 1.61-1: does a good job of optimizing power saving features based on ACPI events like lid closing.
• powertop 1.97-2.1: Shows current power usage and lets turn on and off power saving features.

I hope this helps and please let me know if you have anything to add/change or you want me to test.

 

About the hanging issue.. It keeps happening as I'm moving the pointer with the touchpad and not doing anything particular.

The temperatures and other signs seem to be normal just before a hang, and there is no clue in the logs that I streamed to another computer over ethernet:

Code:

 12:42:59 up 24 min, 20 users,  load average: 0.55, 0.55, 0.48
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +62.0°C  (crit = +149.8°C)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Physical id 0:  +63.0°C  (high = +87.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 0:         +61.0°C  (high = +87.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 1:         +59.0°C  (high = +87.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 2:         +61.0°C  (high = +87.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 3:         +58.0°C  (high = +87.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)

/dev/sda: ST9750420AS: 48°C
/dev/sdb: WDC WD3200BEVT-22ZCT0: 55°C
Battery 0: Full, 100%
Battery 0: design capacity 5600 mAh, last full capacity 5429 mAh = 96%
Adapter 0: on-line
Thermal 0: ok, 62.0 degrees C
Thermal 0: trip point 0 switches to mode critical at temperature 149.8 degrees C
Cooling 0: LCD 0 of 7
Cooling 1: Processor 0 of 3
Cooling 2: Processor 0 of 3
Cooling 3: Processor 0 of 3
Cooling 4: Processor 0 of 3
Cooling 5: Processor 0 of 3
Cooling 6: Processor 0 of 3
Cooling 7: Processor 0 of 3
Cooling 8: Processor 0 of 3

Powertop shows two audio devices being on all the time:

Code:

Summary: 468.2 wakeups/second,  0.0 GPU ops/second and 0.0 VFS ops/sec

                Usage       Events/s    Category       Description
             27.0 ms/s     204.6        Process        /usr/lib/xulrunner-8.0/plugin-contain
            100.0%                      Device         Audio codec hwC0D3: Intel
            100.0%                      Device         Audio codec hwC0D0: VIA
              0.9 ms/s      74.2        Timer          tick_sched_timer

I'll try disabling some devices...

 

This would so much easier if there was a hard switch to the HD4000/650M

Have you tried connecting a external mouse? Oh and try disabling the stock touchpad altogether, one of my friends Ubuntu system had several freezing/hanging issues due to some weird bug with his touchpad and arrow keys buttons.

 

From what I understand the dgpu is ignored outright when booting Linux. Could try taking a puppy out for a 20 minute walk to rule out your install.

 

Have you checked your syslog for clues? If it's a hard lockup it might not help, but it's worth a look.

Also, you might want to get onto a 3.4 kernel if you can without breaking your system dependencies. I'm not sure if by stable/testing you mean stable with testing cherry picks or backports, or if you are running wheezy (which will be frozen soon for stable release).

If you're running wheezy, you can try adding the sid and experimental repos to your sources.list and running:

Code:

apt-get update && apt-get install -t experimental linux-image-3.4-trunk-amd64 linux-headers-3.4-trunk-amd64 linux-headers-3.4-trunk-common

If that tries to pull in a ton of stuff, it might not be worth the headache, since you can't downgrade easily. Your call.

Debian -- Details of package linux-image-3.4-trunk-amd64 in experimental

 

Thanks a lot for the suggestions!

Good idea. I tried using an external mouse, but it didn't help. I installed xinput searching for a way to disable the touchpad, but it was crashing with a weird glibc malloc error. I'm not sure if that's in any way related to my problem.

Right, I don't think the Nvidia device was really contributing to this. Puppy was a great idea. I ran the latest version off of a USB stick and it worked fine. It has a lower kernel 3.1.x, but it does not use the Intel driver for the display and uses the VESA driver instead. That gave me the hint and now I'm using my Debian with the VESA driver. So far it hasn't crashed!

To get this to work, I edited /etc/modprobe.d/i915-kms.conf and added the line

Code:

blacklist i915

and rebooted the machine.

Yeah, there was nothing in kern.log, syslog, Xorg.0.log. It seems like a hard lockup. But since now I know it's because of the Intel driver, I will follow your advice to pull some experimental Debian packages for the Intel driver and the kernel. If that doesn't work, I plan to install the latest kernel directly from kernel.org. This works fine with kpkg.

I'm not using wheezy by the name, just using the keywords 'stable' and 'testing' in my apt.conf. So, as named releases transition over time, I get new packages. I also recently added a priority scheme so dependency hells are less common. So I'll try pulling a few packages from the experimental sections.

I'll update the initial post now.. Thanks again, I really needed some ideas and motivation to tackle this!!!

 

Try the i915.i915_enable_rc6=0 boot parameter (after you remove i915 from the blacklist) since in 3.2, rc6 was enabled by default and it has caused problems on some hardware. I am willing to bet that's causing your lockups.

 

I tried setting the rc6=0 both using modprobe options and the boot parameter, but it was still locking up. What helped was to upgrade my 3.2 kernel and the xserver-xorg-video-intel packages to their latest versions that must have become available very recently after I built my system.

Now I have kernel 3.2.20-1 and xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.19.0-3 (testing/wheezy) and the lockups are much rarer, but unfortunately they still happen. Before, it would hang immediately when I start moving the pointer around on the screen (with touchpad or external mouse), but now it took 15 minutes to hang in the middle of composing this reply

I had the rc6 back on again, so I'll disable that permanently. I also installed the 3.4 kernel from the experimental section. EDIT: This configuration seem to be stable, but I cannot rule out the lockups until I use it for a while.

I suspect it was the xorg driver that mattered more than the kernel, since the Intel kernel module was last updated in Feb 2012.

 

Got the Wifi card working following the instructions and using the unpublished kernel driver from Realtek found on this page. It was pretty easy to install, including the small hack required to compile it for the 3.4 kernel.

EDIT: the hard lockups seem to have disappeared after doing the updates above AND using the rc6=0 parameter.

 

Hum... I just had a similar lockup in Mint 13. This one would be the second in four days and I'm starting to wonder if I don't have your problem. Was getting them more frequently booting from a Ubuntu 12.04 live usb but I put that down to live quirks. As they're both based off Debian and not exactly bleeding edge it seems to correlate. When I get around to Arch next week I'll definitely reference this thread.

 

It's been more than a week, and I didn't get any more lockups on mine. So it looks like with the above configuration (and setting rc6=0), the machine is usable!

I also got the multitouch features mapped in X11. I made a section in xorg.conf for the Elan touchpad, but it turns out the Gnome Pointer Configuration gives the options for the two finger scrolling. One, two and three finger taps were mapped to left, right and middle buttons by autodetection. The Synaptics Archwiki page gives some more information.

For instance, if you add the following line in xorg.conf:

Code:

Option "SHMConfig" "on"

inside the synaptics section, you can use the on-the-fly configuration by tools like synclient.

 

Hi,
Great! Seems like everything is working then? I plan to buy NP6165 soon and would be installing linux .. looking forward to it!

 

Mostly.. The headphone jack doesn't seem to be working in Linux. It may need tinkering with the ALSA kernel driver.

Also, still didn't get the chance to install bumblebee. My Debian went into dependency hell as I tried to install the requirements on this page. I will deal with it later or maybe directly install Gentoo.

 

I got the multimedia card reader to work. Apparently it's a Realtek 5289 that appears on the PCI bus. I added the instructions on the first post.

 

Did anyone else have trouble compiling the kernel module for wireless support? I'm getting "HW_BEACON_FILTER undeclared" when running make on Arch Linux

 

Just comment out that line:

Code:

base.c:320:         //IEEE80211_HW_BEACON_FILTER | 

It's explained in one of the posts there.

 

Is the wireless range with the compiled kernel module as bad as people are saying? I just ordered this machine and am planning on running Arch on it as well. Do you notice any dropped connections or any issues at all with wireless?

Other than wireless and setting i915_enable_rc6=0, does everything else seem to work fine with linux? Thank you for making this thread, by the way.

edit: Oh, another question, your first post says the Intel HD 4000 works with xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.19.0-3; does this mean we don't need to set i915_enable_rc6=0 or is that workaround still required?

 

I compared the wifi range with another Macbook Pro and it got the same range as the laptop, so there aren't any problems for me. However I'm still trying to get X working...

EDIT: nvmd, got it working

 

Sorry for the late reply..

Yes, there is a WiFi problem that only shows up in Linux. It's not a "range" problem, but actually the card starts switching among multiple APs when the signal is low. I was able to get a stable connection by making it choose one AP with:

Code:

iwconfig wlan0 ap XX:XX:XX:XX

(put the MAC of the AP)

Yes, except the mic. I still didn't get around to get any sound from the mic or the mic plug. Also, I *still* didn't try bumblebee, but it'll be soon.

Yes, it's still required, but let me know if you get it to work w/o it.

 

Does the MAC of the AP have to be configured on every reboot? Also, if you get the microphone working then I would love to know how you did it. I will be needing it. I'll try to get Bumblebee up and running as well when I receive my laptop, so I'll report back here with results.

 

Keep up the good work! All I can say is during my brief testing of Mint 13, everything was functional with the exception of Bumblebee and the occasional lockup!

So, you're on the right track. I'm going to be moving back to Arch shortly.. Once I figure out this recurrent "BEEP BEEP BEEP... 1 minute later BEEP BEEP **SHUTDOWN**"

I'm not a big fan of Debian distributions since I've began using Arch/Gentoo.

 

No, you can put the iwconfig line in a configuration file. I don't use Arch, so I'm not sure how it works, but for Debian/Ubuntu, you can put a line in /etc/sysconfig/network

 

Hey Linux Sager users, I just wanted to let you all know that I've worked out a recipe for getting Bumblebee working with the Optimus GT650M and the NVidia proprietary driver. I don't promise anything, so don't go out and buy one of these laptops just because I said it works, but if you have one already, you might want to check out my recipe here: Hybrid Graphics Tutorial - NVidia Optimus with the GeForce GT 650M on Linux

It's been tested on a Clevo W150ERM running Linux Mint 13 Cinnamon, and I have a report of it working with a GTX660M on Ubuntu 12.04 as well. That being said, it should work with slight modifications on any Linux distribution.

Basically, until Bumblebee 3.0.1 and the nvidia driver 304.22b make it into your distro's repositories, you'll probably need to follow a similar procedure to the one explained in my tutorial.

The tutorial explains how to install the official version of the NVidia driver in a non-standard location, without removing all your existing OpenGL stuff. It goes on to explain how to get the newer version of bumblebee installed from the git repository, and configured to be able to find all the NVidia libraries, but to use an Intel driver when accessing the framebuffer.

Full instructions are at the link I provided, but please only follow them on a fresh install of your operating system, with all important data backed up somewhere else first.

Sager is awesome, I still have a 3GHz P4 system probably from around 2003ish, and it's only needed a replacement hard drive and cd drive over the years, and it still blows a lot of newer laptops out of the water.

Keep rockin' those Clevos everyone!

 

+1

Well done mate!!

 

Wow, that's alot of work! Glad you got it sorted out.

I ended up getting my 680M working by using the xorg-edgers ppa. It has a newer kernel (3.5 for the IvyBridge mouse scroll freeze issue) and the 304.22 Nvidia driver (which is the first driver to support my card).

I might try this method next time I need to do a re-install. Excellent write-up!

 

Nicely done, mate!

One question though... Don't Debian distros no longer use /emu1/ and instead use /usr/lib32?

Testing via Mint 13, /emu1/ was not a valid location.

 

Hey Rauch,

The 64-bit nvidia installer put all the 32-bit libs under the /emul directory when I installed on Linux Mint 13 Cinnamon (note it's emul with an "L", not a "1"). There seemed to be no command line args to change that directory, even though there are args to change the directories for everything else. It's possible the installer might put them somewhere else on a different distro, but when I did it on Mint 13, they definitely went under the /emul directory (no-one else seems to use that directory for anything, so NVidia is probably just a bit out of touch with Linux)

 

That was my mistake, I meant /emul/.

Anywho, it didn't seem to place them there for me on Mint 13 Cinnamon Strange, huh? Any chance you could list off the files you copied just so I can compare?

Bumblebee is working nicely as it is. So for some strange reason maybe the installer had messed up somewhere or another.

 

I don't have access to the system anymore, but maybe you installed the nvidia driver from a PPA? Distro-packaged versions of the nvidia driver will put their files in the correct place for the distro... Sorry I can't tell you the exact files you'd need to copy, but next time you do an install using the official driver (at least if you follow my instructions), it should make the /emul folder for you, and put all the required 32-bit libs under that location. Honestly, I had to reinstall Mint so many times to work out this method, if things aren't working for you 100%, you should start with a fresh install and try following my tutorial (unless you know of a better way).

 

Thanks! Apparently I missed this message of yours. The lockup may be fixed by resetting rc6 parameter for the Intel 4000HD. See the first post.

That sounds bad. I saw your other posts now.

I was able to update my Debian installation using apt-get. Somehow aptitude was getting confused. I forced apt-get to get everything from testing and it was fine. Now some of the other stuff is not working, but it's just a matter of time of fixing them.

I may install Gentoo on a separate partition down the road. No time now.

 

One more issue, my NP6165 forgets my custom touchpad setting after wakeup from sleep or hibernation, so found out I can run some command line tools to fix it everytime:

Code:

synclient VertTwoFingerScroll=1
powersave -k 0 # lowest backlight setting
...

powersaved seems to be discontinued, although it was the only command-line utility I found to be able change the backlight. Do you know any other program?
Also, does anybody know how I can trigger calling this script after a wakeup automatically?

Edit: Found how to adjust backlight w/o powersaved:

Code:

echo 0 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness

which puts your brightness to lowest. You can also see the actual_brightness and max_brightness values in the same directory.

 

Hi, I just received my W150ER yesterday and have spent a day with it running Linux Mint 13. My machine worked almost perfectly right out of the box. Wireless was detected right away (I have a different card with an rtl8192ce chipset), the integrated ivy bridge graphics worked well running Cinnamon, and the touchpad worked well with edge scrolling. I have to say, I'm really liking this computer. The keyboard is much better than I imagined it being, the touchpad has a better texture than I assumed based on reviews, and the 1080p matte screen looks excellent.

I followed the tutorial on page 3 to get Optimus working. Worked without a hitch. My microphone and webcam also both worked out of the box. I think everything worked immediately, other than Optimus which is to be expected. There is even a way to change the brightness via a GUI.

 

I should have gotten that wifi upgrade too :-/

Getting the two-finger scroll is quite easy.

My mic still doesn't work. What's the kernel and ALSA versions in Mint 13?

 

I've settled with Arch Linux, so I don't have Linux Mint to test on it, but the microphone and webcam work on Arch as well.

Alsa version: 1.0.25
Kernel version: 3.4.9-1-ARCH

I don't think the wifi was an upgrade, it was just the stock option available from Malibal. I'm very happy with the compatibility of all the hardware Malibal packed.

One minor gripe, though, is that the touchpad is very sensitive. Barely touching the touchpad registers a click, which can be slightly annoying at times. Some people might like the sensitivity.

Do your backlight increase/decrease keys work? I've had to create my own keyboard shortcuts via xbacklight.

 

Thanks, my kernel is 3.4.5, so it sounds like it's time for moving to another distro. I'll check out Arch and Mint.

I see. I got mine through XoticPC. The default wifi card is crappy.

I didn't feel mine was too sensitive, but if it's bothering you, there are a million parameters you can adjust. If you install synclient, you can change parameters like ClickTime, FastTaps, and SingleTapTimeout to your liking. You can also set these from xorg.conf, but on-the-fly setting is so much easier to adjust.

No, mine don't work either. I tried to see how are they mapped, but they are definitely not handled by the regular keyboard. Some function keys translate to ACPI events, but the brightness controls don't seem to register there either. Makes sense to use xbacklight.

 

Pardon the necropost, but I was wondering if anybody has gotten the VGA button or fan power to work. I'm on Debian Sid with the 3.5 kernel, and pwmconfig/fancontrol is telling me that I have no PWM-compatible fans. I also have some scripts I can use to turn bumblee on and off, effectively switching between UMA and Optimus mode, but the VGA button has no button ID to map them two, and it isn't recognized by showkey.

I can confirm that the internal microphone works on the 3.5 kernel and not previous versions, because it didn't work on 2.6.x or 3.2.x.