Dell Precision M4600

This article or section does not follow the
Laptop page guidelines
.
Reason:
Missing IDs in the hardware table,
#Function keys
might need a cleanup. (Discuss in
Talk:Dell Precision M4600
)
Hardware
PCI/USB ID
Working?
Touchpad
Yes
Keyboard
Yes
GPU
Yes
Ethernet
Yes
SD-Card slot
Yes
Audio
Yes
Wireless
Yes
Fingerprint reader
Untested
TPM
Untested
Installation
This laptop shipped with a BIOS only firmware option. A subsequent firmware update introduced the option for
UEFI
. This option is disabled by default, and must be selected in BIOS.
BIOS settings can be reached by tapping
F2
at the first loading screen.
Note
At the boot device selection screen, the first section is for Legacy boot devices only. While an Arch Linux install USB will boot if selected here, it will boot in Legacy (BIOS) Mode,
not UEFI
. To boot an Arch Install USB in UEFI mode, it is necessary to arrow down to the second section, "UEFI BOOT" and select the option that shows up as
UEFI: INT13(USB,0x80)
. From that point on, installation should proceed according to the
Installation guide
without issue.
Accessibility
The appearance of the BIOS is pretty simple and not very colorful, so it might work well with OCR software. However, it requires the user to use a mouse.
Note
Blind users should request the help of a sighted person to change BIOS settings
Firmware
fwupd does not support this device yet. Further, there are reports, and experienced by the Author, of this laptop refusing to update the firmware beyond a certain point, potentially due to Secure Firmware Update being enabled in one BIOS update, which then blocks all subsequent updates due to a signature mismatch. There is no known work around at this time, other than replacing the Motherboard.
Secure Boot
Requires further research. Might be supported, but needs further verification.
Fingerprint reader
Needs further research.
Function keys
Key
Visible?
1
Marked?
2
Effect
Fn+F1
Yes
Yes
XF86Sleep
Fn+F3
Yes
Yes
Scroll_Lock
Fn+F5
Yes
Yes
XF86TouchpadToggle
Fn+F8
Yes
Yes
Super+p(?)
Fn+Home
Yes
Yes
3
Print
Fn+End
Yes
Yes
Print
Fn+Ins
Yes
Yes
Pause
The key is visible via
xev
and similar tools
The physical key has a symbol on it, which describes its function
Does not seem to coincide with mark on key
Mute, Volume+, Volume-, Prev, Play/Pause, and Next buttons are present, but currently on my system behave very erratically. To wit, pressed singly, they return a generic keycode.
FocusOut event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0x2400001,
    mode NotifyGrab, detail NotifyAncestor

FocusIn event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0x2400001,
    mode NotifyUngrab, detail NotifyAncestor

KeymapNotify event, serial 34, synthetic NO, window 0x0,
    keys:  2   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   
           0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0
If pressed two at a time, one of the expected XF86 codes is returned, but it is nearly impossible to guarantee which code it will be.
Power buttons
This article or section is a candidate for merging with
Help:Laptop page guidelines#Capturing function keys
.
Notes:
This section duplicate the explanation of how to capture keys. They have been copied from
Dell Latitude 3500#Power buttons
since it is cited as a reference in
Help:Laptop page guidelines
. (Discuss in
Talk:Dell Precision M4600
)
This device has two detected power buttons and one sleep button.
$ loginctl seat-status
├─/sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXPWRBN:00/input/input3
│ input:input3 "Power Button"
├─/sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXSYBUS:00/PNP0A08:00/LNXVIDEO:01/input/input14
│ input:input14 "Video Bus"
├─/sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXSYBUS:00/PNP0A08:00/device:28/LNXVIDEO:00/input/input13
│ input:input13 "Video Bus"
├─/sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXSYBUS:00/PNP0C0C:00/input/input1
│ input:input1 "Power Button"
├─/sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXSYBUS:00/PNP0C0D:00/input/input0
│ input:input0 "Lid Switch"
├─/sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXSYBUS:00/PNP0C0E:00/input/input2
│ input:input2 "Sleep Button"
[...]
(The following is copied from the Dell Latitude 3500 page. As far as I can tell it is correct and accurate, but I was unable to log the PowerButton events on my system.)
In this case,
LNXPWRBN:00
(
/dev/input/event3
) is the "real", physical power button. You can verify this by inhibiting the handling of the power button
# systemd-inhibit --what=handle-power-key sleep 1h
and recording the events:
# stdbuf -o0 evemu-record /dev/input/event3 > event3
Pressing the power button should log an event.
The other detected power button seems to be a virtual, firmware-handled button. This power button will be triggered when your device runs out of battery.
It seems like this is a long button press and it will cause
systemd
to only wait a few seconds before killing a process, so your machine will most likely only take a few seconds to power off.
Sleep button
Sleep button is
Fn+F1
. It appears to work with no necessary configuration.
See
logind.conf(5)
for more information on handling specific keys.