Re: NetBSD 5.0.1 on Dell E6400

[Havard Eidnes <he%uninett.no@localhost>]

> I'm trying to use NetBSD on this laptop. I know that Intel WiFi
> 5100 is not supported yet, [...]

Hm, yes, looks like it.

> [...] but even my vga card (Intel 45 express) shows as not
> configured [...]

Isn't that the normal state of affairs for basically all graphics
cards in NetBSD?  The software to drive the graphics beyond
normal text output resides in the X11 server, not in the kernel.
That is, if we're not talking about "direct rendering", which
does indeed require code in the kernel.

E.g. my office machine (which runs X11 just fine, out of 5.0) is
reporting

vga1 at pci0 dev 2 function 0: vendor 0x8086 product 0x29b2 (rev. 0x02)
...
vendor 0x8086 product 0x29b3 (miscellaneous display, revision 0x02) at pci0 dev 
2 function 1 not configured
...

and "pcictl /dev/pci0 list" says

000:02:0: Intel 82Q35 Integrated Graphics Device (VGA display, revision 0x02)
000:02:1: Intel 82Q35 Integrated Graphics Device (miscellaneous display, 
revision 0x02)

OK, so it's not exactly the same as what you have.

> [...] and NIC is not offered during installation.  After
> installation I can start my NIC with dhclient command and I can
> live for some time without wifi.

I can't make sense of this statement -- more concrete information
is needed.  If no nic was detected during installation due to
missing device driver support, it should not be available after
installation either.

> But what about X? I found this email
> http://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-x11/2009/05/10/msg000494.html 
> Does it mean that I must install Intel driver from package to
> get my vga working?

That depends on which NetBSD version you installed, and whether
you installed the X11 sets.  In NetBSD 5.0, it is the "xorg" code
which is used for the in-tree X11 bits at least if you run i386
or amd64, if I recall correctly, and therefore there should be
less of a need to install X11 bits from pkgsrc to get an X server
up and running.  Again, the exact details may differ depending on
the exact hardware you use, but I would try that route first.

Regards,

- Håvard