Vector linux in Acer Aspire one?

[uelsk8s]

you dont have to go into text mode, just edit the vinstall-iso script and comment out the check_x line

[wcs]

Oh, didn't know that!
I was about to try it, but then it occurred to me that I wouldn't be able to create some new partitions with the only primary one (linpus) mounted....

So decided to put the hosted install aside and ran gparted from a usb cd drive.
Partitioned and installed vector 5.9 standard. Installation went fine.

First problem was that X didn't start, neither after vxconf, xorgconfig, or copying the linpus xorg.conf. Gives a "couldn't allocate video memory" message.

Turns out this seems to be a kernel problem (maybe with the i915 driver).... installing the 2.6.26.7 kernel from the repos solves it.
Doing a hardware autodetection from vasm loads the r8169 module for wired and ath5k for wireless... so everything seems fine.

Second problem was that vliloconf cannot find the linpus partition, so I'm not sure how to put it in lilo.... I don't see a vmlinuz anywhere.

I'll install again and see if I can retrace my steps.
I'll keep you posted.

[wcs]

Ok, vector now running very nicely on the aspire one.

The 2.6.26.7 kernel was necessary to get X starting (there might be another way, but installing the newer kernel solves it).

Both wired network connection (r8169) and webcam (uvcvideo) working automatically with this kernel.

However, ath5k didn't give me wireless.... A google search tells me that is only the case for kernels >= 2.6.27
So had to download and compile madwifi and blacklist ath5k. The ath_pci module does the job.

I'll try other things later... and am eager to test VL6 beta on this thing.

[wcs]

Another thing: with the newer 2.6.26 kernel, the touchpad didn't work (using linpus' default xorg.conf).
Needed to "removepkg synaptics" and it started working fine.

Alsa and sound are a bit of a problem, there are issues reported with the jack-in detection and problems after resume from suspend.
Needed to download the latest alsa driver (1.0.18a) which has an aspire one option.
Then edited /etc/modprobe.d/sound to include:

Code:

option snd-hda-intel model=acer-aspire

It works. Sound playback is turned off when plugging in headphones, the mic on the lcd panel is automatically turned off when plugging in a microphone.

I managed to get an external monitor and adjust it by using xrandr and doing a small change in xorg.conf to increase the size in the "virtual" line. It works fine, but I get an annoying flickering every once in a while. Wonder what that's about.

Haven't tried the card reader or hibernate yet.

Everything else is working with no problems. It's a joy to use.

[wcs]

Finally, suspend and hibernate.

Hibernate was working fine, but consistently I was only able to do suspend-to-ram once... the second time it wouldn't suspend. dmesg seemed to show that the problem was the hard drive, if I read it correctly.

Removed /etc/hibernate/* and grabbed the latest version of the hibernate script (1.99).
Both suspend-to-ram and hibernate work ok now!
Using wicd, the wireless connection also starts automatically after suspend-to-ram.
Put some entries under /etc/acpi/events (from the Arch wiki) and can get it to sleep by closing the lid.

(remember this is with 2.6.26.7, which seems to have been patched with tuxonice-3.0-rc7a... the 2.6.22 kernel didn't hibernate properly).

wow, this is getting long.... I should write a proper how-to at some point.

[uelsk8s]

wcs, Any way you can try with 6.0, would be nice to have all this working out of box

[wcs]

Slowly, I'm giving it a try with 6.0.

Some of the problems I reported above had to do with having to use another kernel, so that's fixed for 6.0.
I suppose X and hibernation should work.
(although the 1024x600 resolution should be added to the installers for proper out-of-the-box)

BUT

Wireless doesn't work out of the box. I cannot find any networks with wicd.
The ath5k module only works in 2.6.27, according to the arch and ubuntu wikis.
With the 2.6.26 kernel in VL6, only madwifi will work, I think.

And sound can only work perfectly with alsa 1.0.18 (loaded with option model=acer-aspire), which is only going to be in kernel 2.6.28 (I think).

Then there's the Fn-keys.... I guess that will always require setkeycodes with xmodmap and xbindkeys.

So hardly an easy setup (for a newcomer). I guess the reason the original linpus works is that it is full of patches.

[uelsk8s]

The 2.6.27.7 kernel will be included with 6.0, it is in the repo now.
the other things we may be able to put into a bulk pkg for AA1 users 

[rbistolfi]

Wcs, if you get a fully functional aao, I think we can make a pkg with all the customizations and release it as aao-setup or something like that, including all the config files and all the needed pkgs as deps. That would make very easy a VL setup for future aao && Vl users.
About the fn keys, first step would be to launch xev and press them all

[wcs]

The 2.6.27.7 kernel will be included with 6.0, it is in the repo now.

Cool. With the 2.6.27 kernel, wireless should work out of the box.
(though regarding tuxonice, I cannot see a patch for 2.6.27 yet on the website).

About the fn keys, first step would be to launch xev and press them all

Some of them like brightness and touchpad seem to be in the BIOS.
But the others did not show up in xev.
I needed to put several setkeycodes lines in rc.local, taken from the linpus init scripts.
Then they can get mapped with xmodmap, and only then can be assigned functions in the window manager (or xbindkeys).

Wcs, if you get a fully functional aao, I think we can make a pkg with all the customizations and release it as aao-setup or something like that, including all the config files and all the needed pkgs as deps.

Great. I'm documenting all the steps, so that it will be easy to put this into a package.
(hope there aren't many substantial differences between models)

[wcs]

Final step (or almost): Card reader.

Tried with an SD card.
Only shows up in the desktop (with HAL), if one does "modprobe pciehp pciehp_force=1" (does not work without the option).

Problem is, I put this line in /etc/rc.d/rc.modules.
The module IS loaded after reboot and /sys/module tells me that it was loaded with the force parameter.

But the card does not show up. I need to remove the module and load it again. Any ideas?

Edit: The situation is more complex... the card readers only show up in lspci if you put a card in. So to mount you need to put it in, remove it, and put it in again (with the right module loaded)....
But getting there.

[wcs]

Finally, after much trial and error, examining of linpus scripts, and wiki reading, the magic formula for getting sd cards working:

Code:

modprobe jmb38x_ms
modprobe pciehp pciehp_force=1 pciehp_slot_with_bus=1

After making the changes in /etc/rc.d/rc.modules and /etc/modprobe.conf, SD cards in both the left and right card readers are seen by hal as soon as inserted. This seems to be a problem for a lot of people/distributions.... it's good that it is working in VL.

I haven't tested other types of cards, though.
It's likely that the mspro_block module is necessary for Memory Stick Pro, so I loaded it anyway.

At least three other modules are loaded by linpus: flash_bd, xd_card, and jmb38x_xd. These are not included in the 2.6.26.7 kernel.

I haven't tried it with the VL6 kernel yet.

[wcs]

Spoke too soon.
The card reader modules obviously lead to all sorts of issues when suspending and hibernating....

Right, this was fun for a while, but it's just getting tedious now.

Overall, VL runs great on this machine, and except for the card readers and this weird interaction with hibernate, everything else seems to be fine.
So I'll leave it at that for the time being.

Hey, kidd, let's have a go at trying VL 6 on this at some point.

[rbistolfi]

wcs: that seems to be fixable from the hibernating configuration. you may have to unload the modules before hibernating and reload them after. I have some notes about it at home, I will try to find them.

[wcs]

Thanks for the tip, rbistolfi.

1000 reboots later, here's the situation:

If I DON'T insert/mount any SD card, hibernate and suspend work fine when using the default hibernate config.
The only issue is that it takes quite a bit more to resume from suspend. I presume that has to do with the pciehp module, which takes quite a bit to load with those options.

If I DO mount an SD card, unmount and take it out, then hibernate doesn't work. Trying modprobe -r on the relevant modules doesn't work, because the jmb module loads the memstick module, which cannot be removed because "it's in use" (even though there's no card on the slot). I also get some weird error messages when trying to shutdown.

Putting all three modules in the blacklisted modules of hibernate also works when no card has been mounted.
And it's faster.

BUT again, even with the blacklisted modules, it cannot go into hibernate after putting a card in the slot (again, I presume, because those 3 modules -- or just memstick -- are in use). It's even worse, because then it seems to go "half way" into hibernate.  I lose the wireless module, and when shutting down, it hangs at trying to stop alsa.

So, the problem is once a card goes in, things get messy and there's no way to get rid of the modules (even if the card goes out before hibernate)... ahhh, despair.