Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

scot14 · 2014-07-04 11:55:59

masmullin wrote:

I have no idea why these patches aren't going into Linus' kernel main. But I'm pretty concerned as many of these patches are from october 2013, so I figure they should be in by now.

The reasons are different for each patch...

The touchpad code for the Haswell Chromebooks was written in October 2013, and rejected by some linux developers. A new version was accepted on the lkml mailing list by a subsystem maintainer in June, who said he would apply it to his repository on Wednesday. It's not clear whether this happened yet. Then he needs to send a pull request to Linus.

One of the suspend regressions was caused when someone added something to the tpm module around the beginning of the year. The fix is now in the Linux mainline.

The backlight problem appeared in 3.15. I've posted a patch that seems to be acceptable to an intel developer who is willing to upstream it, but it hasn't been applied to a repository yet.

Last edited by scot14 (2014-07-04 12:05:26)

pegasus21 · 2014-07-04 14:45:01

If you're still having issues with getting suspend to work more than once, check the following for pointers.

-Make sure you disable the tpm interrupts, ehci_hcd and ehci_pci in the kernel parameters
-Make sure that the ACPI wakeup interrupts for touchpad and touchscreen (if you're using C720p) are disabled

To disable tpm interrupts, ehci_hcd and ehci_pci in grub, edit /etc/default/grub and change the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT parameter

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet add_efi_memmap boot=local noresume noswap i915.modeset=1 tpm_tis.interrupts=0 modprobe.blacklist=ehci_hcd,ehci_pci elevator=noop"

Then rebuild grub with something like the following but modified to suit your set up.

# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

To check what ACPI wakeup interrupts are enabled use the following commands. Ideally, you'll want TPAD and TSCR to be disabled as I've found those 2 caused my system to wake up immediately if I suspend the system. If they are enabled, you can use the script I've pasted below and enable the script in systemd so that it'll automatically toggle them from enabled at boot up.

[root@Chromebook default]# cat /proc/acpi/wakeup 
Device	S-state	  Status   Sysfs node
LID0	  S4	*enabled   platform:PNP0C0D:00
TPAD	  S3	*disabled  platform:PNP0C0E:00
TSCR	  S3	*disabled  platform:PNP0C0E:01
HDEF	  S3	*disabled  pci:0000:00:1b.0
EHCI	  S3	*disabled  pci:0000:00:1d.0
XHCI	  S3	*enabled   pci:0000:00:14.0

/etc/systemd/system/c720_suspend.service

[Unit]
Description=C720 ACPI Workaround for Suspend

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/bin/sh -c "echo TPAD > /proc/acpi/wakeup" ; /bin/sh -c "echo TSCR > /proc/acpi/wakeup"

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

In regards to running out of space when you make the linux-mainline-chromebook package from AUR, I'll suggest making it on your desktop with a lot more CPU power so that it'll compile in a lot shorter time. On my i7 4770, it took around 20mins to complete. My C720p ran out of tmpfs space while compiling too since if I recall right, it takes about 4GB of temp space to compile the whole kernel.

Alternatively, you could be lazy like me and just download the precompiled kernel from the author. It's currently on RC3.

https://copy.com/yxLPq6leYvky

Last edited by pegasus21 (2014-07-08 15:22:19)

fisher-lebo · 2014-07-04 16:06:55

masmullin wrote:

fisher-lebo wrote:
fisher-lebo wrote:
This worked for me. Great job.
I hope a future kernel update makes this all unecessary. This seems like an amazing arch machine for the money.
Update on this. Worked mostly okay for several minutes (except when I closed and reopened the lid, the touchpad stopped working - probably a suspend issue mentioned in the wiki). However, after a reboot my touchpad has stopped working entirely. Specifically, I heard what sounded almost like a fuse popping, so I'm concerned something might have burned out, but I can't tell because my entire experience with the touchpad has been flaky. Edit: touchpad works fine after wiping arch and reinstalling chromeos. Still no solution.
Hard to beat for the money, but if anyone is considering getting this machine to install arch I might wait until some of these little issues are resolved.
Sorry to hear about your touchpad worries. I suggest you immediately put chromeOS back on your c720 and see how that is running (there is a method to dual boot btw... its really handy). If the touchpad is still broken, you should be able to make a warrenty claim (I'd suggest not mentioning that you were running linux). If the touchpad is good, give arch another try, but do the suspend disabling stuff that's listed on the wiki page. The kernel modules compiled via that github are *only* to work on the touchpad/touchscreen and backlight.
I didn't write any of these patches, nor did I write the script. I'm just a guy who wants my c720 to work, so I fiddled with the script a bit to get it working for me and figured I'd be a jerk if I didn't share. I'm actually kind of worried that I'm violating copyright, so please give both kudos and blame to the original author... whomever that is (I have absolutely no idea).
As for things getting easier with newer kernels, the opposite is true. Bitrot is causing some of these patches to not apply well; which is why I had to fiddle with the script. and the touchscreen patch doesn't apply at all on 3.16 due to many, many advances. I have a 3.16 branch which grabs a kernel with advances rolled back for the atmel_mxt_ts.c file in order to apply the touchscreen patch... but this is REALLY sub-optimal.
I have no idea why these patches aren't going into Linus' kernel main. But I'm pretty concerned as many of these patches are from october 2013, so I figure they should be in by now.

No problem. Thanks for your work.

fisher-lebo · 2014-07-04 16:09:05

BultiZ wrote:

Chromebook-mainline in AUR solved most of my module problems and problems, now its just some basic app configs and TLP or some alternative to get awsome battery life left to do :-)

Unlike linux-c720, this will build and install. However, touchpad doesn't work for me.

Latrina · 2014-07-04 17:14:43

Guys, I have an issue with the power button key, often during the day I happen to press it accidentally and as result the chromebook goes to sleep, and this turns me really nuts.

As according to the wiki I have added

HandlePowerKey=ignore

in /etc/systemd/logind.conf

however this didn't do the trick.

What am I doing wrong? Any suggestions? I would like to map the key with xblindkeys so that the shutdown / restart / logout panel is called anytime the poweron key is pressed.

Thanks

Last edited by Latrina (2014-07-04 17:17:17)

masmullin · 2014-07-04 17:51:02

Latrina wrote:

Guys, I have an issue with the power button key, often during the day I happen to press it accidentally and as result the chromebook goes to sleep, and this turns me really nuts.
As according to the wiki I have added
HandlePowerKey=ignore
in /etc/systemd/logind.conf
however this didn't do the trick.
What am I doing wrong? Any suggestions? I would like to map the key with xblindkeys so that the shutdown / restart / logout panel is called anytime the poweron key is pressed.
Thanks

Are you using Gnome? I had a similar problem in gnome which was remedied by:
1) installing gnome-tweak-tool (GTT)
2) in GTT going to the power tab
3) setting the "Power Button Action" to "nothing"

Latrina · 2014-07-04 18:36:17

masmullin wrote:

Latrina wrote:
Guys, I have an issue with the power button key, often during the day I happen to press it accidentally and as result the chromebook goes to sleep, and this turns me really nuts.
As according to the wiki I have added
HandlePowerKey=ignore
in /etc/systemd/logind.conf
however this didn't do the trick.
What am I doing wrong? Any suggestions? I would like to map the key with xblindkeys so that the shutdown / restart / logout panel is called anytime the poweron key is pressed.
Thanks
Are you using Gnome? I had a similar problem in gnome which was remedied by:
1) installing gnome-tweak-tool (GTT)
2) in GTT going to the power tab
3) setting the "Power Button Action" to "nothing"

Hey I am using cinammon .. Do you think this would work since cinnamon is a from of gnome3 ?

dhead · 2014-07-04 20:07:16

Sharing frustration:

I experienced today another freeze, rebooted the system and SeaBIOS failed to boot from the SSD (meaning to load syslinux).
I'm not yet sure if this is only a corrupt filesystem issue or also a faulty SSD (upgraded MyDigitalSSD).
Edit: It looks like an issue with my SSD drive, the cause might be related to the SSD's firmware.

Anyone else still has system freezes with kernel 3.15 (and a desktop, I'm running Gnome) ?

Last edited by dhead (2014-07-05 00:57:28)

Stephen304 · 2014-07-04 20:11:43

masmullin wrote:

I haven't been able to get either linux-c720 nor linux-chomebook repos to work properly for me (linux-c720 stalls on boot saying something about wifi-menu, and linux-chromebook runs out of space while compiling).
So I've created a github repo that patches up the current kernel to add touchpad and touchscreen support. It adds a patch to replace patches 3078481 and 3078491, and includes a modified script which previously worked for the 3.14 kernel.
https://github.com/masmullin2000/arch-c720p.git
Unlike the previous iterations of the patching script, this does not use the tmp directory to download and compile, so you'll have to clean up for yourself.
Tested on 3.15.1
usage
git clone https://github.com/masmullin2000/arch-c720p.git
cd arch-c720p.git
sudo sh ./touch.sh

Just want to note that this worked for me on HP Chromebook 14 FALCO for 3.15.3. I hope it continues to be updated!

Latrina · 2014-07-04 23:00:08

masmullin wrote:

Latrina wrote:
Guys, I have an issue with the power button key, often during the day I happen to press it accidentally and as result the chromebook goes to sleep, and this turns me really nuts.
As according to the wiki I have added
HandlePowerKey=ignore
in /etc/systemd/logind.conf
however this didn't do the trick.
What am I doing wrong? Any suggestions? I would like to map the key with xblindkeys so that the shutdown / restart / logout panel is called anytime the poweron key is pressed.
Thanks
Are you using Gnome? I had a similar problem in gnome which was remedied by:
1) installing gnome-tweak-tool (GTT)
2) in GTT going to the power tab
3) setting the "Power Button Action" to "nothing"

Unfortunately this didn't work for me since gnome-tweak-tool wasn't unable to initiate under cinnamon, however I have found on internet another option which lets you disable the power button from dconf. Unfortunately this wasn't exactly what I wanted to accomplish, however at least its better to have it disabled rather than putting the machine to suspend everytime.

$ dconf-editor

dconf

Edit: I have managed to call the cinnamon-poweoff menu by simply setting the poweron button to interactive in dconf.

Last edited by Latrina (2014-07-07 04:24:22)

Latrina · 2014-07-07 04:27:28

For all those that just like me are experiencing random freezes to death on their c720 with linux-c720 3.16.rc4-1 kernel, could all of you post the BIOS version of your chromebook c720?

You can get it by simply typing

$ journalctl -l -b | grep Peppy | head -1

Thanks

Last edited by Latrina (2014-07-07 04:27:54)

oswald-p · 2014-07-07 13:56:01

Personnally I fixed kernel issues by using the LTS one...
Now, every things work great (suspend, touchpad, touch screen....etc...), I just have to re-launch the install script to update patched modules after kernel updates.

O-p

Latrina · 2014-07-07 15:04:02

oswald-p wrote:

Personnally I fixed kernel issues by using the LTS one...
Now, every things work great (suspend, touchpad, touch screen....etc...), I just have to re-launch the install script to update patched modules after kernel updates.
O-p

Hello,

do you have a c720 or c720p? Also, have you used additional kernel modules to get the touchpad to work or is everything built-in the kernel?
Lastly, what's this install script you are talking about?

Thanks

Latrina · 2014-07-07 18:38:50

oswald-p wrote:

Personnally I fixed kernel issues by using the LTS one...
Now, every things work great (suspend, touchpad, touch screen....etc...), I just have to re-launch the install script to update patched modules after kernel updates.
O-p

Okay I gave it a go and with the core/linux-lts 3.10.46-1 one I can't even get the wireless card to work, while with the linux-lts 3.14.11-1 testing one I can't get the touchpad to work, and the system overall feels a bit slagghish as well as the internet browsing experience.

Would you mind to explain me what kernel are you using and the patched modules to get everything to work?

Thanks

madx · 2014-07-08 07:23:34

Hi everyone!

I bricked my chromebook a few days ago (dunno how, but I wasn't able to boot into legacy mode anymore) so I had to restore Chrome OS, then reinstall Arch.

I took this opportunity to try the newer solutions for C720, namely the linux-mainline-chromebook package.

Using pegasus21 instructions I had this setup pretty quickly, now I just have two remaining problems:

When I come back from suspend the system is completely frozen and I have to hard-reset using a long press on the power key
HandleLidSwitch=suspend in /etc/systemd/logind.conf is not working: I cannot suspend by closing the lid. Maybe this is related to the first bug.

The touchscreen/touchpad/backlight is working great however.

Has someone got the same issue?

parchedas · 2014-07-08 07:33:02

madx wrote:

Hi everyone!
I bricked my chromebook a few days ago (dunno how, but I wasn't able to boot into legacy mode anymore) so I had to restore Chrome OS, then reinstall Arch.
I took this opportunity to try the newer solutions for C720, namely the linux-mainline-chromebook package.
Using pegasus21 instructions I had this setup pretty quickly, now I just have two remaining problems:
When I come back from suspend the system is completely frozen and I have to hard-reset using a long press on the power key
HandleLidSwitch=suspend in /etc/systemd/logind.conf is not working: I cannot suspend by closing the lid. Maybe this is related to the first bug.
The touchscreen/touchpad/backlight is working great however.
Has someone got the same issue?

My guess would be you didn't rebuild grub after updating that /etc/default/grub as pegasus21 doesn't explicitly say to do it.

# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

oswald-p · 2014-07-08 08:51:01

Latrina wrote:

Okay I gave it a go and with the core/linux-lts 3.10.46-1 one I can't even get the wireless card to work, while with the linux-lts 3.14.11-1 testing one I can't get the touchpad to work, and the system overall feels a bit slagghish as well as the internet browsing experience.
Would you mind to explain me what kernel are you using and the patched modules to get everything to work?
Thanks

Hi,
I never had issue with the wireless card, but I did not update the kernel since the middle of june.
Concerning the script just go to the wiki page there and download the script for kernel 3.12 or earlier on the Acer C720p section. It will download and compile modules for the touchpad and the touch screen.
To fix suspend, just follow the steps of the "Fixing suspend" section. I do not have any issue, I can suspend/resume as many time as I want without any problem.

O-p

pegasus21 · 2014-07-08 15:24:13

parchedas wrote:

My guess would be you didn't rebuild grub after updating that /etc/default/grub as pegasus21 doesn't explicitly say to do it.
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

You're right. I forgot to mention to rebuild the grub config. If you don't rebuild the kernel options in, you'll get stuck after resuming from suspend. I have modified the post to reflect that. Thanks.

ysetdng · 2014-07-10 08:59:38

Hey guys!

First of all, thanks a lot for the ongoing discussion and support, my c720 works pretty neat under Arch Linux

Only thing I noticed recently is a high pitched whistling sound, I guess it comes from the CPU, at least it gets louder as i scroll or type. I'm running the 3.16 c720-custom-kernel and somehow I can't recall hearing it under the 3.15 kernel. Do you think it might be possible that a kernel downgrade will remove the sound?

Charlular · 2014-07-10 15:42:11

[removed]

Last edited by Charlular (2023-10-24 13:51:00)

SolarBoyMatt · 2014-07-10 15:52:42

It's most likely a bug in the 64-bit install media, since it can boot i386 just fine on the last versions. A few pages back someone claimed to be able to do a 64-bit install from the then latest install medium after making SeaBIOS the default boot option, but I haven't seen any other claims of being able to do that. A bug report was filed for it a month or so ago, but it hasn't had any sort of activity yet.

https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/40637?project=6

Really the install medium doesn't make a huge difference since it will always just fetch the latest packages. The only difference is that you now need to refresh the developer keys before installing the base system. Other than that the age of the install medium won't make a difference.

madx · 2014-07-10 21:31:22

pegasus21 wrote:

parchedas wrote:
My guess would be you didn't rebuild grub after updating that /etc/default/grub as pegasus21 doesn't explicitly say to do it.
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
You're right. I forgot to mention to rebuild the grub config. If you don't rebuild the kernel options in, you'll get stuck after resuming from suspend. I have modified the post to reflect that. Thanks.

Haha, I did the grub-mkconfig part correctly, but after some proofreading I noticed I had written "tmp_tis" instead of "tpm_tis". Bad habit I guess

It works fine now!

Charlular · 2014-07-12 20:48:49

[removed]

Last edited by Charlular (2023-10-24 13:51:26)

parchedas · 2014-07-12 21:54:32

Charlular wrote:

So I decided I didn't want to wait and probably end up spending much more money anyway so I bought a used, current generation C720 with a 16 GB SSD for £125, I'll only be using it for basic tasks (word processing, watching movies, internet browsing) so the storage should be adequate for me assuming my entire system will probably comprise of Arch Linux + Xfce + LibreOffice + Firefox. I noticed there are currently a few AUR packages for the C720: linux-chromebook, linux-mainline-chromebook and linux-c720; could somebody please explain which of these I should be using and if they replace any steps contained in the ArchWiki page for the C720? I think it might also be worth adding information about these AUR packages to the wiki page (I can do this if necessary) as there will probably be people who go through the wiki page and don't know that these AUR packages exist.

Well generally you want linux-chromebook as that is the stable package, but you could use one of the other 2 if you want to try the mainline kernel.

Yeah good point about the wiki, if you can do that it would be great.

Yannick@ekiga · 2014-07-12 23:15:32

masmullin wrote:

I haven't been able to get either linux-c720 nor linux-chomebook repos to work properly for me (linux-c720 stalls on boot saying something about wifi-menu, and linux-chromebook runs out of space while compiling).
So I've created a github repo that patches up the current kernel to add touchpad and touchscreen support. It adds a patch to replace patches 3078481 and 3078491, and includes a modified script which previously worked for the 3.14 kernel.
https://github.com/masmullin2000/arch-c720p.git
Unlike the previous iterations of the patching script, this does not use the tmp directory to download and compile, so you'll have to clean up for yourself.
Tested on 3.15.1
usage
git clone https://github.com/masmullin2000/arch-c720p.git
cd arch-c720p.git
sudo sh ./touch.sh

Thanks to your work, I updated my script for Fedora 20 which has 3.15.4 by now.

Keep up the good work and thank you.

Arch Linux

#351 2014-07-04 11:55:59

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#352 2014-07-04 14:45:01

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#353 2014-07-04 16:06:55

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#354 2014-07-04 16:09:05

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#355 2014-07-04 17:14:43

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#356 2014-07-04 17:51:02

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#357 2014-07-04 18:36:17

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#358 2014-07-04 20:07:16

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#359 2014-07-04 20:11:43

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#360 2014-07-04 23:00:08

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#361 2014-07-07 04:27:28

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#362 2014-07-07 13:56:01

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#363 2014-07-07 15:04:02

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#364 2014-07-07 18:38:50

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#365 2014-07-08 07:23:34

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#366 2014-07-08 07:33:02

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#367 2014-07-08 08:51:01

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#368 2014-07-08 15:24:13

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#369 2014-07-10 08:59:38

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#370 2014-07-10 15:42:11

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#371 2014-07-10 15:52:42

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#372 2014-07-10 21:31:22

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#373 2014-07-12 20:48:49

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#374 2014-07-12 21:54:32

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

#375 2014-07-12 23:15:32

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

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