Summary of issues with clean install F8 in Dell D610

[Mike Cohler]

I am summarising the issues I have had with an F8 install using the
DVD iso in a Dell D610 laptop.

1) The install would not boot until a suggestion to add some
parameters to the kernel line as per
http://smolts.org/wiki/System/Dell_Inc./Latitude_D620 was done. This
allowed the install to continue through to a successfull first boot
although there were strange kernel messages during boot:
The same kernel messages appear in /var/log/messages as
"Nov  9 17:37:27 localhost kernel: Uhhuh. NMI received for unknown reason a1
on CPU 0.
Nov  9 17:37:27 localhost kernel: You have some hardware problem, likely on
the PCI bus.
Nov  9 17:37:27 localhost kernel: Dazed and confused, but trying to continue"

Subsequent boots are no different if the parameters mentioned above are used.

2) When I logged into KDE I had multiple kde crash handler messages
which came from the sound system. I had to turn off sound altogether
in kde control centre although amarok will play just fine. I have
reported this at

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=373881

3) I can manually start the wpa_supplicant daemon using "service
wpa_supplicant start" as root and this gives a good wireless
connection with wpa/psk, and I can collect an ip address with
dhclient.  However I cannot get the wpa_supplicant daemon to start at
boot time. I tried the f7 trick of changing the startup sequence
number from 12 to 09 in /etc/init.d/wpa_supplicant but this made no
difference. I could of course add these commands to /etc/rc.local but
it would be nice to be able to start the daemon at boot with chkconfig
wpa_supplicant on. Once the supplicant has started then the wireless
connection is solid and works fine.

Other than these I have not found a problem! However I would have
hoped to have had a smoother start to using F8!

If anyone has any suggestions as to a workaround for any of these
issues I would be grateful.

I would imagine there are quite a few Dell D610 laptops around so
these issues may well be seen by others with this machine.

-- 

mike cohler