Arch Linux

nariox

Member

Registered: 2014-03-19

Posts: 128

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

@dhead
Not quite the same bug then I guess. In my case, the graphics of the ttyNs become completely unresponsive after a while (even before X starts misbehaving). Anyone else can confirm this?

joebonrichie

Member

Registered: 2014-12-09

Posts: 22

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

Linux 4.0 has hit core and i've updated 'Fixing Suspend' on the chrome os wiki page.

- Removed mentions of needing tpm_tis.interrupts=0 in your kernel parameters (Blacking ehci_pci in some way is still necessary).
- Additionally if you use John Lewis's SeaBIOS you will still want to blacklist ehci_pci
- Removed mention of patched linux-chromebook has it's not very relevant to fixing suspend any more and it is not maintained.

Just have a look over in case I've done something silly.

r3d4

Member

Registered: 2015-03-30

Posts: 2

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

Really just checkout?.. seems to be specifically written for ubuntu..  got an AUR package? systemd service file?

Yeah, the install instructions are for Debian/Ubuntu but as there are no further dependencies a simple "make" should be enough
to build the daemon. This should be quite generic for all kind of distributions.
If you want auto start at system boot maybe you need to adjust the provided sysV init script. Im not sure about the system startup in arch.
The suspend script should work as it is maybe the location on Arch is a bit different.

I'm not sure how to install it as a daemon, and need some guidance here. I'm new to Arch and the instructions are for Ubuntu (I don't have update-rd.d on my system,for instance), plus, I could not find a scripts/cb-hddledd file to copy (I have the hddledd binary but I doubt I should copy that to a init.d directory of sorts).

Indeed, the sysV init script in scripts/cb-hddledd was missing from the repo, its fixed now. But Im not sure if you can use it with Arch, Im not familiar with the system startup.
Maybe you need some kind of systemd service file if you want start the daemon at system boot.

LeoFa

Member

From: Netherlands

Registered: 2014-10-14

Posts: 35

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

just a heads up,
I could not boot linux mainline 4.1 rc4 with syslinux or grub..
I used the kernel from the repo by miffe http://arch.miffe.org/README.html
I posted about it on the Arch Linux Google+ page https://plus.google.com/+Faruk%C3%9Cnve … 2RZMMzcojJ ,
could someone check if they have any issues booting 4.1 rc4 on our device?
any advise on getting the proper kernel debug messages?

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@ ~/

nariox

Member

Registered: 2014-03-19

Posts: 128

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

@dhead
Not quite the same bug then I guess. In my case, the graphics of the ttyNs become completely unresponsive after a while (even before X starts misbehaving). Anyone else can confirm this?

@dhead: I've removed a few more parameters and this bug disappeared. My main suspects are semaphores and enable_fbc Can someone else confirm this? I'll try a little longer and if I can confirm it, I'll add it to the wiki.

dhead

Member

Registered: 2012-09-26

Posts: 190

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

@nariox

Why do you have these parameters? the bug which ended with gpu hangs was fixed.
I only have i915.modeset=1 in my kernel line and not a single drm module parameter.

Last edited by dhead (2015-05-29 14:36:55)

nariox

Member

Registered: 2014-03-19

Posts: 128

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

@dhead
I read in a few places that semaphores would help to reduce power consumption (I can recall Manjaro's wiki and Thinkwiki, but there were more places I saw this). But I was never able to find an explanation on what semaphores were supposed to do.

But good news is that I've narrowed down the parameters and it's "fastboot". I didn't even suspect this could cause any trouble... Should I add this to the wiki, or this option is so obscure only the foolishly adventurous would even try?

Watney

Member

From: Acidalia Planitia

Registered: 2015-01-25

Posts: 12

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

I only have i915.modeset=1 in my kernel line and not a single drm module parameter.

@dhead, could you please elaborate. Is this correct? Is this your grub default?

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="i915.modeset=1"

I'm using the stock SeaBIOS, and mine looks like

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet loglevel=3 tpm_tis.interrupts=0 modprobe.blacklist=ehci_pci"

I include tpm_tis.interrupts=0 to suppress an error message and modprobe.blacklist=ehci_pci in order for suspend to work. Are you saying that these parameters and not necessary?

[Edit] maybe I should have first asked whether you're using the stock BIOS or John Lewis's ROM.

Last edited by Watney (2015-05-29 19:20:34)

dhead

Member

Registered: 2012-09-26

Posts: 190

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

@Watney

I meant that 'modeset' is the only i915 option in my kernel line as @nariox was specifically referring to i915 options: semaphores and enable_fbc (i.e. i915.semaphores).
My kernel line includes other parameters which are not i915 options.

@nariox

I don't know if it's C720 specific, probably it's at least common to Haswell GT1 GPU so I guess if it fit the ArchWiki then it should go in troubleshooting section at the Intel Graphics page, but given that an Arch user that enables it should actually test for regression and that this behaviour might change after an update then I wouldn't add it myself.

Watney

Member

From: Acidalia Planitia

Registered: 2015-01-25

Posts: 12

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

@Watney

I meant that 'modeset' is the only i915 option in my kernel line ...

Got it. Thanks! And, thanks for all of your work helping many to successfully run Arch on a Chromebook. Greatly appreciate you and the community!

dhead

Member

Registered: 2012-09-26

Posts: 190

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

@Watney

Yep, the Arch community is pretty amazing, but I haven't done anything special myself, I was also followed the steps of others which contributed to the ArchWiki when I initially installed Arch on my system so my installation process was pretty smooth.

joebonrichie

Member

Registered: 2014-12-09

Posts: 22

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

I'm using the stock SeaBIOS, and mine looks like

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet loglevel=3 tpm_tis.interrupts=0 modprobe.blacklist=ehci_pci"

I include tpm_tis.interrupts=0 to suppress an error message and modprobe.blacklist=ehci_pci in order for suspend to work. Are you saying that these parameters and not necessary?

[Edit] maybe I should have first asked whether you're using the stock BIOS or John Lewis's ROM.

You don't need tpm_tis.interrupts=0 since kernel 4.0. Keep an eye on wiki history

Watney

Member

From: Acidalia Planitia

Registered: 2015-01-25

Posts: 12

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

You don't need tpm_tis.interrupts=0 since kernel 4.0. Keep an eye on wiki history

@joebonrichie Thanks! I'll try to do a better job. OT I believe you're the kind person who maintains the CMT driver package at AUR. Thank you!! Along with many, I really appreciate your help!

nariox

Member

Registered: 2014-03-19

Posts: 128

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

Anyone else here having trouble with kswapd0? Once in a while (specially with Firefox and some steam games), swap will be activated and then kswapd0 will take 100% of one of the CPUs, resulting in sluggish performance on games.

Using "# renice -n 19 32"  helps (the pid of my kswapd0 is always 32 not sure if that's expected), but it's just an ugly hack. This might not be exclusive to the C720 (in fact "kswap 100% cpu" returns many matches), but I wonder if I'm the only one experiencing it on this specific piece of software (one thread hinted that it might be related to "bad RAM")

Last edited by nariox (2015-06-01 02:05:48)

joebonrichie

Member

Registered: 2014-12-09

Posts: 22

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

Anyone else here having trouble with kswapd0? Once in a while (specially with Firefox and some steam games), swap will be activated and then kswapd0 will take 100% of one of the CPUs, resulting in sluggish performance on games.

Using "# renice -n 19 32"  helps (the pid of my kswapd0 is always 32 not sure if that's expected), but it's just an ugly hack. This might not be exclusive to the C720 (in fact "kswap 100% cpu" returns many matches), but I wonder if I'm the only one experiencing it on this specific piece of software (one thread hinted that it might be related to "bad RAM")

Yes, this is a big problem for me too. I recently switched from gnome to i3 in an effort to bring down RAM usage, however chromium is the main culprit of this.
Just having i3, a terminal and several chromium tabs leaves me with ~300MB of RAM and kswap begins thrashing.
Initially RAM usage is not too bad with several tabs open leaving me to believe there is some pretty bad memory leaks happening on chrome.
It does seem a little wierd that kswap uses 100% cpu for this, zram could helps in this, but that takes CPU cycles.

Last edited by joebonrichie (2015-06-01 16:29:56)

LeoFa

Member

From: Netherlands

Registered: 2014-10-14

Posts: 35

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

just a heads up,
I could not boot linux mainline 4.1 rc4 with syslinux or grub..

rc6 boots fine again

also chromium for me stopped recognizing my touchscreen past builds 43, see issue here upstream https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issu … &id=486492
but I got that fixed. Chromium is now looking for the master pointer instead of the slave pointer id, why the switch? I donno..

xinput
⎡ Virtual core pointer                    	id=2	[master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer              	id=4	[slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Cypress APA Trackpad (cyapa)            	id=12	[slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Atmel maXTouch Touchscreen              	id=13	[slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                   	id=3	[master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard             	id=5	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                            	id=6	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                               	id=7	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                            	id=8	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Sleep Button                            	id=9	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Sleep Button                            	id=10	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ HD WebCam                               	id=11	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard            	id=14	[slave  keyboard (3)]

now  --touch-devices=2
before --touch-devices=13 < I like this number better.

Last edited by LeoFa (2015-06-04 16:07:30)

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@ ~/

ihre

Member

Registered: 2012-12-10

Posts: 13

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

I was following the wiki to install Arch on my newly acquired C720P. After enabling seabios (Boot to SeaBIOS by default), I'm unable to boot from the SSD through SeaBIOS. Booting the Arch USB installer works just fine, but selecting the SSD results in a permanent black screen. I've ran the ChromeOS recovery USB, and tried again: no dice.

During the dev splash screen, the following can be seen in the upper left corner:

gbb.flags is nonzero:0x00000489
read-only firmware id: Google_Peppy.4389.89.0
active firmware id: Google_Peppy.4389.89.0

What am I missing here?

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i5-2500K | Gene-IV | GTX 680 | 8GB 1866mhz | H2O

joebonrichie

Member

Registered: 2014-12-09

Posts: 22

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

The Chromium OS input driver 'cmt' has been uploaded to AUR4
It is important to note that once AUR4 becomes default the following packages have been renamed:

xf86-input-cmt-xorg -> xf86-input-cmt
libgestures-xorg -> libgestures

You should not need to worry until AUR4 becomes default (August 8th), but please be aware of this
if your aur manager gives you the option to download from AUR4.

Once AUR4 becomes default I recommend uninstalling xf86-input-cmt-xorg and as reinstall as xf86-input-cmt.

If you've noticed I've messed anything up, give me a shout

More info: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ar … tory#AUR_4
I shall make another post once AUR4 is default in a couple of months.

nariox

Member

Registered: 2014-03-19

Posts: 128

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

@ihre: When you set the gbb flags, did you remove the write-protect screw from the board?

rh1n0

Member

Registered: 2014-10-03

Posts: 6

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

I am experiencing some trouble using MPD on my machine. I have been using my chromebook as a TV sometimes and switch audio output to HDMI. When I switch back to my speakers, the sound works fine in VLC and firefox, but MPD doesn't seem to work with pulseaudio, even after a reboot. I have had the sound working with MPD before, has anyone else experienced this?

Edit: fixed issue by deleting my pulseaudio config directory and restarting

mv ~/.config/pulse/ ~/.config/pulse.bak
pulseaudio --kill
pulseaudio --start

Last edited by rh1n0 (2015-06-18 00:11:06)

thuddab

Member

From: Colombia

Registered: 2015-06-22

Posts: 1

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

Strange hardware behaviour and trackpad issues on C720

Hello to all in the Arch Linux community. This is my first post here, so I would prefer some kind guidance if I behave too noobish.

First of all, I would like to show my appreciation for all the hard work the community has put and keeps on putting into Arch Linux. I have moved away from Ubuntu because of some of the political and strategic decisions, but have found a solid and above all well-documented alternative here.

Some two years ago, I bought my wife Acer's C720 ChromeBook, which she has been using enthusiastically ever since. I bought a 128GB SSD from Amazon and installed it in the chromebook and installed arch on it, after giving her her 32GB ChromeOS partition back. The C720 has been working flawlessly for all this time. Since my laptop had found an unwanted new owner, I needed to replace it. I decided on a ZenBook UX305, which should have come with a 256GB SSD (again from Amazon), but unfortunately turned out to be dead after my first attempt to replace Windows with something much better. So, I swapped  out the 128GB SSD from the C720 and put it into the UX305. I still had the original 16GB SSD from the C720 and put that back into the device.

My wife started to complain about freezes and intermediate crashes nearly immedately. After resetting the SSD several times, I ran all the hardware tests in ChromeOS and everything comes back fine. So I revert to installing Arch (using the latest installation media). Everything works, except for the trackpad. No crashes, however. Since I can't get the trackpad to work, I go for Ubuntu (not chrubuntu, but the full release) with XFCE. I install it (Ubuntu's latest kernel 3.17 or similar) and the trackpad doesn't work. However, after doing a software update under Ubuntu (which updates the kernel), the trackpad works fine! The system works reliably, but doesn't suspend well. My wife gets tired of having a system that works, but doesn't suspend and therefore sucks the battery dry in four hours. I decide to give ChromeOS back to her in the hope Google has resolved the problem. After two days filled with crashes, she is ready to throw the machine in the bin.

I decide to go back to Arch and see if I can get the trackpad to work. I currently use a bluetooth mouse on the machine and have it working and suspending and everything else without fail. No crashes either. But the trackpad doesn't move the mouse pointer. I used xinput (from xorg) to check the trackpad, and it works. If I move the mouse pointer onto a link, and use the trackpad button to click it, it follows the link, indicating the trackpad button(s) work. With xinput I can even see finger movement on the trackpad. But X11 doesn't move the pointer.

I have used both the directions in the C720 arch linux install documentation and some alternative input device config for X11 which tries to use the synaptics driver for the trackpad. (I can dig up links if needed). I turn to the BBS / Forum as a last resort; I even consulted the xorg docs, but they also say it should just work with evdev hardware probing. It doesn't.

I am happy to write down my experiences to add to the already abundant documentation if people are interested.

Many thanks for reading, and I'm very interested to see what people have to say. Of course, I am happy to provide any file data people would need to help me analyse the problem.

Regards,
Rob

cian

Member

Registered: 2010-04-12

Posts: 7

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

Recently my chromebook seems to be using rather more power in sleep than I think it should. What kind of power consumption are people getting in sleep mode? And does anyone know how I might find out if any modules are using a lot of power in sleep?

On candidate is the USB key that I use as a 'second drive'. It's possible that's the problem, but I'm at a loss as to how I might track this down. journalctl was less than helpful.

cian

Member

Registered: 2010-04-12

Posts: 7

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

And I've answered my question. Apparently I was still using pm-utils. Don't use pm-tools people.

gothmog123

Member

Registered: 2012-10-31

Posts: 124

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

An alfa ath9k_htc usb wifi dies all the time when I'm using it on my c720, while it has no problems running on my Toshiba. Does anyone know of any special usb considerations I might not be aware of?

edit: some dmesg messages:

[  336.954538] ath: phy1: Chip reset failed
[  336.954545] ath: phy1: Unable to reset channel (2432 Mhz) reset status -22
[  336.954548] ath: phy1: Unable to set channel
[  336.964982] ath: phy1: Failed to wakeup in 500us
[  336.975091] ath: phy1: Failed to wakeup in 500us

I added usbcore.autosuspend=-1 to the kernel command line and it got a little better but still happens.

Last edited by gothmog123 (2015-06-26 06:31:21)

nariox

Member

Registered: 2014-03-19

Posts: 128

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

@thuddab: Hi Rob, that seems indeed strange. Did you flash a custom rom on your C720? Did you restore the ChromeOS using the ISO google provides?
As for the touchpad, I have no idea how to help, seems like the hardware and drivers are working fine. Have you tried using the cmt driver?

@gothmog123: Are you using the USB3 or USB2 ports? Some usb devices seem to dislike being plugged to the "wrong" port. It might also be that this device pulls more current than the C720 is willing to provide.