Messages

16

Asus Eee PC / Building Your Own Custom Kernel

« on: May 16, 2008, 04:55:54 pm »

Ok I got all I wanted o my slack 12.1 working.
I still have xandros on SSD and use xandros grub to boot my slack on 4Gb SD.

Keep an eye out on  my homepage and I'll soon put up a detailed description for those who would like more help (and to remind me if i need to do it again).

17

Asus Eee PC / Building Your Own Custom Kernel

« on: May 15, 2008, 05:19:46 pm »

Pk probabbly even the asus_acpi stuff above worked because it may just b ethe way the pciehp module is loaded ...
anyway I used this:
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/univ...1.0.orig.tar.gz
along with loading the pciehp modul as thus:
modprobe pciehp pciehp_force=1 pciehp_debug=1

This got the wifi device correctly powered up upon echo 1 > /proc/acpi/asus/wlan

You might need to do a little tweeging with the acpi scripts depending on your distro.

18

Asus Eee PC / Anyone Else Getting, Or Have Gotten, An Eee Pc 900?

« on: May 14, 2008, 03:11:26 am »

After all the problems I'm finding in getting my 701 working I'll definitely keep away from ASUS for the rest of my life.

I wrote to them last night complaining that they are still violating GPL because the sources they have released are not the ones used on the eeepc (or at least need patches that are not documented).

19

Asus Eee PC / Building Your Own Custom Kernel

« on: May 12, 2008, 03:19:08 pm »

Ok I found out some other things that are bugging me:

1) the /boot/config-2.6.21.4-eeepd provided in the xandros distribution is not the one used to compile the kernel that comes with xandros .... I would trust only a /proc/config.gz but obviously they want to hide what they did so they did not compile that into kernel
the config shows that one should use asus-laptop but that module is not even loaded  

2) the eeepc_hotk module is not in the /lib/modules/2.6.21.4-eeepc tree and I was unable to find it in /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 ... so I guess it's an alias name .... I could not where it is aliased but I'm sure it's an alias of asus_acpi (incidentally selecting asus_acpi in kernel would disable the asus_laptop) ... but the version of asus_acpi used was built from outside the kernel and resides in /lib/modules/2.6.21.4-eeepc/acpi ... these might be the sources: ftp://ftp.asus.com/pub/ASUS/EeePC/701/ASUS_ACPI_071126.rar but might need patching from
http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/eeemodul...ules/acpi.patch
http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/eeemodul....makefile.patch
They build on 2.6.25.3 as long as you patch .... but it only turns on and off the led, not the wifi card.
The fact that asus is distributing GNU licensed software without giving the sources they modified (or links to download it) is a violation on GNU licence !!!!

20

Asus Eee PC / Standard Multiuser With Xandros

« on: May 11, 2008, 11:35:06 am »

ok since I cannot get all that I need working ither with slax6 nor with standard slackware 12.1 ....
anyone know how to get standard multiuser working on xandros ?

I mean something like real KDM login (with different profiles for different users) or even better text login and manual startx to get grafix ?

Something possibly looking like a more normal init that what's documented here: http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:multiuser

21

Asus Eee PC / Building Your Own Custom Kernel

« on: May 09, 2008, 02:59:36 am »

Ok I think I'll haveto start over again ... let me reedit the whole thing:

The eeepc user forum and wiki only treats customizing kernel with same bersion and same build environment (yes using modules built with different compiler than what was used on kernel will most likely make them unusable) ... so here I am trying to put up some info on how to put up a generic vanilla kernel on eeepc.

So how should one configure the kernel ?
I have found out by experience that taking your .config across kernel  releases might work but may lead to problems.
So I allways start out with a make mrproper and configure it from scratch ... this is a long and tedious process ... YES
Take the /boot/config-2.6.21.4-eeepc as a guide and enable and disable features you need.
You can safely disable the asus-laptop because it just will not work.
I aslo enabled a few more usb devices and had usb-storage built into kernel (for booting of the SD).
Do not use the ath5k kernel driver because it jus won't work yet with the atheros device in the eeepc .... instead use this
wifi driver which is also part of the madwifi project.

The atheros LAN device is not yet supported in the kernel so use this LAN driver to get the atl2 worling. If you are building with a kernel version diffrent to what the target will be you will haveto make some minor changes to the makefile.

I've managed to get the wifi led turn on and off with a   third party asus_acpi module source and a patch .... but it fails to actually turn on the wifi device .... I'll update on this as soon as I find a solution.

22

Asus Eee PC / How Do I Turn On Wifi

« on: May 09, 2008, 12:56:18 am »

Are you sure that Fn+F2 doesn't work? On my Dell, it appears to be hardware controlled (it works no matter what distro I have running, but the LED doesn't).

Wen not sure because I've recompiled a new kernel and the /proc/acpi/asus sutff has dissapeared .... it may work but I bet it will not untill I compile a 2.6.25.1 kernel that gets me back the stuff in /proc/acpi/asus.

OK I think I figured out what was wrong in my kernel:
in order to make the CONFIG_ASUS_LAPTOP option come out I neaded to fix up these dependencies...
        depends on X86
        depends on ACPI
        depends on EXPERIMENTAL && !ACPI_ASUS
        depends on LEDS_CLASS
        depends on BACKLIGHT_CLASS_DEVICE

I'm building the kernel right now ;-)

23

Asus Eee PC / How Do I Turn On Wifi

« on: May 08, 2008, 07:23:44 pm »

Well it looks like that if one enables correctly the ASUS ACPI interface you can get control over the integrated devices trough /proc/acpi/asus/

Echoing 1 or 0 in the appropriate device interface wil turn on and off the devices.

For example
echo 1 > /proc/acpi/asus/wlan
will turn on the wireless lan device

24

Asus Eee PC / How Do I Turn On Wifi

« on: May 08, 2008, 05:10:08 pm »

On the original distro pressing "Fn + F2" key combination toggles the wifi card from on to off.

Anyone know how to manage that on a generic, non eeePC tuned, distribution ?
I'd be even happy to run a command (or script to turn it on) but do not want to leave it allways on from bios (to save pattery life when unused).

25

Asus Eee PC / Alternative Distros

« on: May 08, 2008, 05:14:17 am »

I was having some trouble with slackware 12's mkinitrd .... in the meantime slackware 12.1 was released so I decided to start over again.

So I now have:
xandros on SSD untouched (eccept grub config to also boot slackware on SD)
slackware 12.1 installed on a 4 Gb SD and lilo also installed on Boot Record of SD (but very slow to load kernel and initrd .... this is why I'm using grub from xandros).

To get slackware 12.1 to boot up correctly I had to  make a little twinging:
build a custom kernel with usb-storage compiled in,
build an initrd anyway because the SD takes some time to settle so that kernel can see it (and hence a normal boot ended up in a kernel panic: cannot mount root),
made some adjustments to initrd to do fdisk -l and sleep for 10 seconds before attempting to mount root file system (found this helpful in order to boot successfully).

Hope this may be usefull to other people.

26

Asus Eee PC / Alternative Distros

« on: May 05, 2008, 02:54:38 pm »

Ok I installed slackware 12 on SD and I can load the kernel from lilo installed on Boot Record of the SD (press esc at boot and select the SD device to boot from .... that loads lilo from the boot record on the SD) ... but then I get kernel panic probabbly because the usb-storage driver is module and root is on usb-storage.

There is also another problem: it takes about 30 seconds after boot for the SD to be seen my kernel ... and this could be too long even if I compile usb-storage into kernel.

Somehow all these problems have been solved on slax6 ... but I still prefer making my own custom install.
Also it's not so clear exactly how these problems were solved.
I will try making a bootable usb-stick and see if I can boot up from there.

27

Asus Eee PC / Alternative Distros

« on: May 05, 2008, 12:33:26 pm »

Hum did not have a look at the wiki ....
but I've booted the slack 12 install CD (with usb CD from work) and I can see the SD card.

I'm currently installing slackware 12 in expert mode only choosing stuff that I actually use and I'm installing to SD ... I plan tu use xandros grub to boot my slackware on SD ... well at least I'm gonna try.

If I fail I'll look at the wiki ... well I'll look anyway to maybe see if other tweeks work better then what I'm dooing ..... and maybe find out howto ad konsole to favourites menu on xandros (which is going to be left untouched on the SSD.

28

Asus Eee PC / Alternative Distros

« on: May 04, 2008, 04:54:21 pm »

I just got one of those things ....
not sure if they are all the same but mine has:
900Mhz celeron M
512Mb ram  
4Gb Solid State Didk
antherons WiFi
antherons LAN
intel ICH6M chipset
intel 915GM/GSM/910GML VGA and display controller
internal SD/MMC card reader (on usb bus ... read below for more details on this)

I think all this hardware is widely supported by any distribution currently (might need a little tweeging on the less user friendly ones) so I'll be trying slackware asap (a deley dew to my usb cdrom not working on my EeePC).

I opened up the door on the bottom and all I saw was the ram .... the SSD is not servicable from there (has anyone opened it up ?)

The SD slot seems to be on the usb bus in fact I see devices plugged there as usb-storage and somewhere in dmesg one can see :
scsi x:0:0:0: Direct Access USB2.0 CardReader ......
That's where you plug in the SD/MMC ;-)

The thing boots up using grub but the real menu.lst is not accessible once up because of unionfs hiding the real one.
If you want access to the real filesystems pm me about it ... there is a sysadmin way to do this while rebooting but potentially dangerous if you do not know what you're doing.

BTW: there is no need to go snooping around for a terminal utility ... xandros comes with bothe xterm and konsole.
Use the file manager to to execute them with admin privileges (find them in /usr/bin).
I've put a copy of konsole in my home dir to reach it quicker.

Can someone tell me howto put it in the favoutits menu ? (usefull till I get slackware installed)

29

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Tomtom

« on: May 04, 2008, 12:35:22 pm »

what's more interesting is extracting the software from the device and running it on the zaurus  

Hey, wasn't someone working on that ages ago? Too bad he never got around to releasing anything...  

I think it did get working ... but required licences to run so in other words you neaded a tomtom hardware to have the licences.

Anyway unless Z gets working in an acceptable way on all models (I men I'm only satiftied with my c860 wile my C1K is  a disaster) what's the point in running tomtom in Z if it crashes while you navigate !

I got the console on my tomtom and it works fine ... now mplayer is next ... and last but not lest some gaming !!!!

Anyway I recently got an AUSU EeePC that's 2.5 times the size ov a Z over all (around 1.5 times length and with ... while the height is not that different).
it has intel celeron CPU @900 Mhz 800x600x16bit display, working sd slot, 3 standard usb 2 slots, 4Gb solid state microdrive, 512Mb ram, integrated wifi (antherons), integrated 100Mb lan, integrated audio, integretad webcm and integrated VGA plug .... it only costs 299 Euro and runs some xabdros linux distro (and comes with drivers for installing win XP if you like).

Ok you will not run it for 8 hours or so .... but for 4 hours I think it's possible.


I'm currently postint with it right now.

30

Zaurus - pdaXrom / Tomtom

« on: May 03, 2008, 06:34:10 am »

I just installed TTconsole on my tomtom ONE XL ... it's linux inside.

I wonder if it's worth while having a section in the "Model Specific Forums" ?