Arch Linux

samkostka

Member

From: Smallest State, Longest Name

Registered: 2015-09-07

Posts: 18

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

How can you tell which CPU model you have?  I'm asking because I'm thinking about dual-booting Arch and ChromeOS.

nariox

Member

Registered: 2014-03-19

Posts: 128

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

@samkostka: try

 cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep "model name"

samkostka

Member

From: Smallest State, Longest Name

Registered: 2015-09-07

Posts: 18

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

Well, apparently I have a Celeron 2957U.  Damn it, I was hoping to not have to use a patched firmware.  Would the John Lewis RW_LEGACY replacement work to fix the trackpad, or do I have to use the BOOT_STUB / Full ROM?  I'd really like to keep Chrome OS booting.

Last edited by samkostka (2015-10-08 19:06:45)

nariox

Member

Registered: 2014-03-19

Posts: 128

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

@samkostka: I have no idea. Probably not. You can always try.
Another possibility is to patch your kernel. Until 3.17, that's what all of us had to do anyway. You can take this script and base a script for the new patches with this one.

skidpa

Member

Registered: 2015-10-02

Posts: 7

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

@samkostka
I also have the 2957U CPU with the elantech touchpad this is what i had to do since i couldnt get the patches to work propperly.

1. downloaded coolstar's rom
2. downloaded flashrom from johnlewis's site
3. backed upp original bios with ./flashrom -r newbios.img
4. write the new rom to bios with ./flashrom -w /path/to/rom
5. celebrated that the touchpad worked with a beer.

for simplicity i put both flashrom and the rom in the same folder, dont forget to remove the write protect screw!
I dont know if you'll be able to get chrome os back on if you'd like in the future, I know I dont.

I did this through a terminal in a temporary manjaro install, after a succesful reboot i just reinstalled arch. and the touchpad have been working fine.
I had some kernel panics with 4.2.2 and 4.2.3 but earlier kernels have been fine, newer testing kernels have been fine aswell.

flashrom: https://plus.google.com/109975529031081 … H6nYjv5mys

bios rom: https://www.reddit.com/r/chrubuntu/comm … h_celeron/

jason.oliveira

Member

Registered: 2015-07-19

Posts: 14

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

The coolstar rom I linked to earlier is not the best answer. if you have a 720P with the Elan touchpad, you'll have issues with input dying upon suspend, plus no touchscreen.
The best answer would be to install the https://github.com/GalliumOS/galliumos-haswell contents into your system, and patch your kernel's drivers/platform/chromebook/chromebook_laptop.c accordingly. the "stock" johnlewis.ie roms work without issue.

I now have both touchscreen and elan touchpad working fine using johnlewis' rom. I might be the first.

I built a custom kernel (4.2.0), and if anyone would like a config.gz to work from, here you go:
http://pastebin.com/pudAW1ra
(systemd/kdbus disabled for religious reasons)

Last edited by jason.oliveira (2015-10-16 03:52:18)

samkostka

Member

From: Smallest State, Longest Name

Registered: 2015-09-07

Posts: 18

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

Yeah, I came to the conclusion that it would be best to use a kernel patch, since I want to keep Chrome OS bootable.  Unfortunately, my first install attempt failed since I deleted unused Chrome OS partitions, making it freak out and essentially powerwash itself on next boot.  Ah well, I'll get around to it eventually.

jason.oliveira

Member

Registered: 2015-07-19

Posts: 14

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

Yeah, I came to the conclusion that it would be best to use a kernel patch, since I want to keep Chrome OS bootable.  Unfortunately, my first install attempt failed since I deleted unused Chrome OS partitions, making it freak out and essentially powerwash itself on next boot.  Ah well, I'll get around to it eventually.

As per your previous question, you don't have to flash a full rom to your chromebook. However, if you choose to do so, more features are enabled, such as virtualization support.

I'm not sure why people would want to boot back into ChromeOS. the entire system feels constrained and painful to use. YMMV. I'd personally flash the full rom, install arch with a patched kernel, and run it exclusively. Especially now that everything is working correctly. I'd keep a USB stick with a backup of both my old firmware and a ChromeOS restore image from google, if I ever needed to go back.

Last edited by jason.oliveira (2015-10-21 19:23:59)

samkostka

Member

From: Smallest State, Longest Name

Registered: 2015-09-07

Posts: 18

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

I just like how Chrome OS just works.  It's so smooth, even though I only have 2 GB of RAM.  And since I have a 128GB flash drive (which happens to be larger than the drive I run my desktop arch install off of), I have room for both a Chrome OS + crouton install and a full arch install.  If arch ends up being perfect for my use case (college student), then I'll definitely switch, but for now I'd like to have a backup in case I screw up on installing arch.

henchman24

Member

Registered: 2015-11-04

Posts: 2

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

I am sorry if this has been answered for but the most part I have read this over and over and still no answers.  There are no answers in the wiki either,  I get this error on my c720.

USB 1-4: string descriptor 0 read error: -22

This happens are boot and when I let it sleep it will show up in the terminal.

Last edited by henchman24 (2015-11-04 18:46:28)

nariox

Member

Registered: 2014-03-19

Posts: 128

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

@henchman24: it's fluff. Shouldn't mean anything bad. I believe most of us have the same message. It has to do with the bluetooth adapter not being properly initialized (but it works fine). If you want more info, you could try to talk with John Lewis, but he'll probably say the same thing.

henchman24

Member

Registered: 2015-11-04

Posts: 2

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

@naiox I was guessing as much just from what I could find out about it.  It just drives my add crazy so I thought I would ask and see if people fixed it or just do not care.

Thank you

jason.oliveira

Member

Registered: 2015-07-19

Posts: 14

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

@naiox I was guessing as much just from what I could find out about it.  It just drives my add crazy so I thought I would ask and see if people fixed it or just do not care.

Thank you

submit a bug report. for each one of us with an itch need scratching, there are probably 30 more that give up on arch before filing a bug, and another 100 that see the bug, and ignore it while working. do it for the 130.

nariox

Member

Registered: 2014-03-19

Posts: 128

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

@jason.oliveira & henchman24: since this is a firmware bug, you'd need to report it to coreboot (but it might turn out that this is part of a blob and cannot be "fixed").

EDIT: Actually, seems like it's the bluetooth firmware's fault. As for LINK.
You can find a workaround here: LINK

Last edited by nariox (2015-11-05 13:39:14)

samkostka

Member

From: Smallest State, Longest Name

Registered: 2015-09-07

Posts: 18

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

Just a heads up, apparently not all Celeron 2957U C720's have an elantech trackpad.  Using the stock firmware, stock kernel, and xf86-input-cmt, my trackpad works just fine.  I only wish I had tried installing the driver before compiling the kernel twice.  Nice waste of 3 hours on my desktop :\.  Back to the trackpad, it shows up as a Cypress APA Trackpad (cyapa) in XFCE settings, and just to verify I do indeed have the Celeron 2957U:

[samkostka@Archer_C720 ~]$ cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep 'model name'
model name	: Intel(R) Celeron(R) 2957U @ 1.40GHz
model name	: Intel(R) Celeron(R) 2957U @ 1.40GHz
[samkostka@Archer_C720 ~]$ 

I guess I just got lucky.  I'm glad I won't have to compile any more kernels, as it's painfully slow. 

On an unrelated note, has anyone else had [kswapd0] just suddenly use a core at 100%?  And if so, have you been able to fix it?  Whenever it happens, I have to either close stuff and wait a while, or run this command as root (and for some reason, sudo doesn't work for it):

echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

The weird thing is, neither swap nor RAM are heavily used when it happens.  Last time it happened, RAM was at 40% utilization and swap was at just 8%.

nariox

Member

Registered: 2014-03-19

Posts: 128

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

@samkostka: you should be able to compile just the trackpad modules, not the entire kernel, but it takes a while to get the hang of it.

About kswapd0, yes, it was a problem for me too. You can search back and see other people complaining about it. I think it has to do with some programs that like to allocate large portions of memory (occurred mostly with browsers for me). I got a 4GB C720 later (after major accident with my old C720) and I don't seem to have the problem, but that's hardly a solution. See if you can figure out a way of limiting the memory to specific processes.

joebonrichie

Member

Registered: 2014-12-09

Posts: 22

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

Anyone had a problem with xf86-input-cmt not working? I haven't really used my laptop much recently and don't have the time to debug it, just rebooted and it wasn't working, xf86-input-synaptics working fine.

edit: looks like a problem with xorg 1.18

Last edited by joebonrichie (2015-11-18 18:23:24)

sakhnik

Member

From: Kyiv

Registered: 2011-07-09

Posts: 13

Website

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

Anyone had a problem with xf86-input-cmt not working? <...>
edit: looks like a problem with xorg 1.18

I noticed it too. Tried to report upstream, but still no attention: https://github.com/hugegreenbug/xf86-in … /issues/16

LeoFa

Member

From: Netherlands

Registered: 2014-10-14

Posts: 35

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

yes had same issue; comment on AUR by maintainer "doesn't work with xorg 1.18 at the moment",
it's probably because this PKGBUILD uses old debs from ubuntu, the xf86-input-cmt-git version does work, so it seems to be fixed upstream.
ps I had to first completely uninstall xf86-input-cmt, so did lose my modifications in the process , do a backup if you altered the config files!

---

@ ~/

sakhnik

Member

From: Kyiv

Registered: 2011-07-09

Posts: 13

Website

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

yes had same issue; comment on AUR by maintainer "doesn't work with xorg 1.18 at the moment",
it's probably because this PKGBUILD uses old debs from ubuntu, the xf86-input-cmt-git version does work, so it seems to be fixed upstream.

Well, that's what I missed. Thanks, and I'm going to close the issue upstream.

wba072

Member

Registered: 2010-11-11

Posts: 33

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

Has anyone used linux-grsec with the C720? I've tried it but my touchpad gets disabled, I believe due to this (found in dmesg):

PAX: size overflow detected in function i2c_dw_pci_probe drivers/i2c/busses/i2c-designware-pcidrv.c:259 cicus.33_91 max, count: 1, decl: nr; num: 0; context: i2c_adapter;

freeplay

Member

Registered: 2015-12-12

Posts: 1

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

The coolstar rom I linked to earlier is not the best answer. if you have a 720P with the Elan touchpad, you'll have issues with input dying upon suspend, plus no touchscreen.
The best answer would be to install the https://github.com/GalliumOS/galliumos-haswell contents into your system, and patch your kernel's drivers/platform/chromebook/chromebook_laptop.c accordingly. the "stock" johnlewis.ie roms work without issue.

I now have both touchscreen and elan touchpad working fine using johnlewis' rom. I might be the first.

I built a custom kernel (4.2.0), and if anyone would like a config.gz to work from, here you go:
http://pastebin.com/pudAW1ra
(systemd/kdbus disabled for religious reasons)

How did you apply those patches the 4.2.0 kernel? They fail in multiple places for me.

yelty

Member

Registered: 2015-12-30

Posts: 1

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

I'm having an issue with xfce4-power-manager on a clear installation.

The 'When laptop lid is closed' option  is set to suspend on battery.
It indeed suspends, but then the 'Lock screen when system is going to sleep' doesn't work.

Any idea of what could be causing this?

Edit: kind of got this solved by using systemd

Last edited by yelty (2015-12-30 04:10:53)

k7paul

Member

Registered: 2016-01-28

Posts: 9

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

Hi All!

I have 2955U

Does cros-haswell-modules.sh / patches exist for linux-4.3? Obviously the patches designed for kernel 3.x are failing. Does anyone know if the changes in the patchable area between kernels 3 and 4 are fundamentally significant (change in architecture), or is it more or less just finding the new places to patch in the same files?

Thanks

nariox

Member

Registered: 2014-03-19

Posts: 128

Re: Acer C720/C720P Chromebook

@k7paul: you don't need the patches anymore (since 3.17). All you have to do is install the appropriate xf86-input-XXXX driver and the touchpad should work.