Arch Linux

gothicknight

Member

From: Portugal

Registered: 2006-04-08

Posts: 219

Re: Acer Aspire One

I'm also having some random kernel panics on boot. I haven't still figure out what's happening.

zzats

Member

Registered: 2008-09-09

Posts: 6

Re: Acer Aspire One

Using noop -scheduler, gothicknight's kernel (rev 2) -- no kernel panics so far, dozens of boots, tho

gothicknight

Member

From: Portugal

Registered: 2006-04-08

Posts: 219

Re: Acer Aspire One

Using noop -scheduler, gothicknight's kernel (rev 2) -- no kernel panics so far, dozens of boots, tho

I've lost my old Kconfigs I'm not keeping backups of them. Does it have CONFIG_KERNEL_DEBUG enabled?

UPDATE:
I'm now testing a kernel without CONFIG_KERNEL_DEBUG enabled and so far no kernel panics.
I've also changed the default elevator from noop to deadline and for now, firefox doesn't hang so often and if it does its from far less intervals of time.

Last edited by gothicknight (2008-09-12 22:43:42)

bremac

Member

Registered: 2008-09-13

Posts: 13

Re: Acer Aspire One

UPDATE:
I'm now testing a kernel without CONFIG_KERNEL_DEBUG enabled and so far no kernel panics.

You are working in reference to the config shipped with the aspire one, of course? They lack CONFIG_KERNEL_DEBUG, but do have CONFIG_CIFS_DEBUG enabled (as a safety net, I presume.) I'm not saying that their config should be the ultimate arbiter, but I do think it might be a useful reference when things get broken.

Just in the off chance anyone lacks it and wants to refer to it: http://macdonellba.googlepages.com/config_080627
I've that running diffconfig and grepping the output, ie. `diffconfig config.aa1 config.arch | grep 'DEBUG.*\(->.*\|y\)'`, can be quite enlightening as to what is different between the subsystems of the two configurations.

EDIT: Of course, the reason I'm commenting instead of testing myself is because, due to an unfortunate accident of some sort in shipping, my AA1 is the only machine I have right now. I want to use ArchLinux again, but unfortunately I also need to be a rock-solid kernel to install before I'm willing to bet my only machine on it.

EDIT2: As well, keeping the Kconfigs in git / some SCM might be a good idea, if only to be able to roll back when you discover you've removed features too indiscriminately. It would also give you the ability to bisect in case a subtle regression slips in unnoticed for a few versions.

Last edited by bremac (2008-09-13 05:34:54)

gothicknight

Member

From: Portugal

Registered: 2006-04-08

Posts: 219

Re: Acer Aspire One

Hi bremac.

I don't think the origin of this Kconfig is base upon the one from Linpus, because I've pulled it from an already build and tweaked it to match my demands of a super fast boot, almost only laptop HW support and of course stability.

Unfurtunatly I didn't put these files into a CVS simply because I've never expected so many people were going to use it and thought only to be used as an idea to the developers in arch. And of course, I don't have a CVS account just lying around

The CONFIG_DEBUG_KERNEL disabled seems to have done the trick although I don't think its directly correlated with the kernel panic by itself but the order the modules are being loaded into kernel ( I've seen this happen in my times in Gentoo ).

You can try this kernel as long with the stock arch kernel with the only thing getting in the way are the madwifi modules + userspace utils, which you can safely (for now) install with -Sf because both use the same modified madwifi package as base. Arch's kernel *never* gave any problems although the boot time was tremendous.

Regarding the build I'm currently using. I'm going to upload it in a few hours, be aware that for now it doesn't have CONFIG_DEBUG_KERNEL so powertop won't work

If you find the reason behind the random kernel panics, you're must welcome to give some hints about it.

bremac

Member

Registered: 2008-09-13

Posts: 13

Re: Acer Aspire One

Hi bremac.

I don't think the origin of this Kconfig is base upon the one from Linpus, because I've pulled it from an already build and tweaked it to match my demands of a super fast boot, almost only laptop HW support and of course stability.

I know the Kconfig you're using isn't, but all the same the one from Linpus does have a few interesting differences.

Unfurtunatly I didn't put these files into a CVS simply because I've never expected so many people were going to use it and thought only to be used as an idea to the developers in arch. And of course, I don't have a CVS account just lying around

That's why I suggested git - just create a repository on your personal machine, and you don't need to bother uploading it anywhere (just use it for backup). It's certainly easier than creating a CVS repository.

You can try this kernel as long with the stock arch kernel with the only thing getting in the way are the madwifi modules + userspace utils, which you can safely (for now) install with -Sf because both use the same modified madwifi package as base. Arch's kernel *never* gave any problems although the boot time was tremendous.

Thanks for the info.

If you find the reason behind the random kernel panics, you're must welcome to give some hints about it.

If I can get my other laptop repaired so that I'm not completely dependent on this one, I'll get right on that.

gothicknight

Member

From: Portugal

Registered: 2006-04-08

Posts: 219

Re: Acer Aspire One

Never thought on using GIT. Thanks! On monday I'll start studying the application of it (weekends are rather busy for me).

The new build is online at the same URL as before (I forgot to raise the pkgrel) http://clientes.netvisao.pt/gtknight/ke … pkg.tar.gz

qylvaran

Member

Registered: 2006-07-27

Posts: 46

Re: Acer Aspire One

The new build is online at the same URL as before (I forgot to raise the pkgrel) http://clientes.netvisao.pt/gtknight/ke … pkg.tar.gz

I just installed this kernel, and now my wireless is broken.  ath0 no longer shows up in iwconfig.  wlan0 looks like it's supposed to take its place, but 'iwlist wlan0 scan' doesn't find my network.  No kernel panics so far, though, so that's good.  The last kernel I used was kernel26-one-2.6.26.5-2-i686.pkg.tar.gz

schuay

Package Maintainer (PM)

From: Austria

Registered: 2008-08-19

Posts: 564

Re: Acer Aspire One

I know it's annoying, but anyone have an update for any clues with regards to an unsuccessful suspend? I took a look at some scripting on the default Linpus installation, and from what I can gather, they use HAL to suspend? Does that make sense?

[...}

I'm having the same problem.. Suspend doesn't work out of the box with pm-utils. echo "mem" > /sys/power/state works like a charm though.

Anybody have any ideas on how to get suspend working normally?

Edit: added my user to the "power" group, suspend works fine now!

By the way, I can confirm that DPI is set correctly when using

Section "Device"
...
    Option "NoDDC" # You need this to set correct DPI (HUGE font issue).
...
EndSection
 ...
Section "Monitor"
    ...
    DisplaySize  195 113 # This whill set correct DPI (96 x 96) 
    ...
EndSection

from the Gentoo wiki.

Last edited by schuay (2008-09-17 14:43:48)

qylvaran

Member

Registered: 2006-07-27

Posts: 46

Re: Acer Aspire One

The last kernel I used was kernel26-one-2.6.26.5-2-i686.pkg.tar.gz

So I just attempted to downgrade to that kernel.  ath0 was still gone (and the kernel panics were back).  I can't think of anything else I changed.  Could my wireless card have spontaneously died?  I'm kind of panicking here.  I'll post more information if you tell me what to post (I'd just post whatever I could think of, but I have to type it out since my Acer is an island right now).

Thanks,
--joe;

Edit:  I discovered wlanconfig, which I guess creates ath0 from wifi0.  It didn't help, since I have wlan0 and wmaster0, but no wifi0 (and using those two instead of wifi0 didn't work).  I'm trying, but I'm stuck.

Last edited by qylvaran (2008-09-14 06:53:15)

antis

Member

From: sweden

Registered: 2007-05-18

Posts: 108

Re: Acer Aspire One

<snip>...Arch's kernel *never* gave any problems although the boot time was tremendous.

I'm just curious.... when you say that the boot time was tremendous, how long did it take for you to get into X?
I'm using the stock Arch kernel right now and it takes the computer about 15 seconds to get from grub to Slim. I concider that being quite ok. What's the speed of your own kernel?

Last edited by antis (2008-09-14 07:09:08)

AndyRTR

Developer

From: Magdeburg/Germany

Registered: 2005-10-07

Posts: 1,641

Re: Acer Aspire One

i'm back next week having some days off. how's the state? i'm going to update my kernel and add everything you have found out to be helpfull.

gothicknight

Member

From: Portugal

Registered: 2006-04-08

Posts: 219

Re: Acer Aspire One

Humm... That wireless change from ath0 to wlan0 seems to be from some alias or udev rule. Did you change any of those?

My boot time is faster than vanilla kernel simply because udev now takes about 1.7seconds from the previous ~9seconds. IMO this is because udev now doesn't need to load nothing nor detect nothing else because they're already in-kernel.

qylvaran

Member

Registered: 2006-07-27

Posts: 46

Re: Acer Aspire One

I had gotten rid of some entries in modules=() that are built into gothicknight's latest kernel but not in AndyRTR's original one, but that was a couple boots before I upgraded from -2-i686 to -4-i686.  Udev is untouched by me.  Haven't even done a 'pacman -Syu' recently.  /etc/udev/rules.d/ shows a 50-udev-default.rules~ in addition to 50-udev-default.rules, but a diff didn't show anything that looked related to this.

thomasd

Member

Registered: 2008-08-11

Posts: 114

Re: Acer Aspire One

Regarding the different versions of the custom kernel, has anyone noticed a significant increase in battery life in comparison to the stock kernel? I don't have the time to setup and run some kind of benchmark, but perhaps anyone has done that?

gothicknight

Member

From: Portugal

Registered: 2006-04-08

Posts: 219

Re: Acer Aspire One

thomasd: I think someone spoke of that in a few posts back. A ~20% more battery life.

Although I don't think that a custom kernel build can raise much the battery life, in contrast to a better handling of userspace applications usage, lower cpu scaling, low brightness and wifi signal/usage.

It can help by reducing the amount of stuff the kernel has to do but that ain't much.

qylvaran, I really don't have a clue on how that happened. My wireless keeps the same device name as before as everything else. Do you have some kind of filesystem corruption? Did you disable the blacklisted modules from the wiki? Memstick isn't even compiled anymore but the ath5k is (don't really know why, probably it'll be remove next time I've compile this).

mikoro

Member

From: Espoo, Finland

Registered: 2007-03-27

Posts: 20

Website

Re: Acer Aspire One

gothicknight, does the sound work with your kernel after resuming from suspend? I don't have any sound and the wiki suggested putting "options snd-hda-intel model=acer" in /etc/modprobe.d/sound. But what to do now when the modules are compiled in kernel? Sysctl? But what to write there?

zzats

Member

Registered: 2008-09-09

Posts: 6

Re: Acer Aspire One

gothicknight, does the sound work with your kernel after resuming from suspend? I don't have any sound and the wiki suggested putting "options snd-hda-intel model=acer" in /etc/modprobe.d/sound. But what to do now when the modules are compiled in kernel? Sysctl? But what to write there?

add " snd-hda-intel.model=acer " to your kernel options, and the suspend/resume works nicely. Tell me how to fix my ath_pci suspend/resume problems in exchange?

gothicknight

Member

From: Portugal

Registered: 2006-04-08

Posts: 219

Re: Acer Aspire One

gothicknight, does the sound work with your kernel after resuming from suspend? I don't have any sound and the wiki suggested putting "options snd-hda-intel model=acer" in /etc/modprobe.d/sound. But what to do now when the modules are compiled in kernel? Sysctl? But what to write there?

add " snd-hda-intel.model=acer " to your kernel options, and the suspend/resume works nicely. Tell me how to fix my ath_pci suspend/resume problems in exchange?

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pm-utils This might give us a clue on how to unload/load after a suspend/resume the ath_pci module

I'll test this and update the wiki (also, comment on the forum as well).

mikoro

Member

From: Espoo, Finland

Registered: 2007-03-27

Posts: 20

Website

Re: Acer Aspire One

gothicknight, does the sound work with your kernel after resuming from suspend? I don't have any sound and the wiki suggested putting "options snd-hda-intel model=acer" in /etc/modprobe.d/sound. But what to do now when the modules are compiled in kernel? Sysctl? But what to write there?

add " snd-hda-intel.model=acer " to your kernel options, and the suspend/resume works nicely. Tell me how to fix my ath_pci suspend/resume problems in exchange?

Thanks (I just realized this was already answered few pages back ). I had problems with the wireless too. I was using netcfg and it always failed to bring up network after resuming. Error message was something about network unavailable. But even though netcfg is complaining, using wicd I can reconnect the wireless again although I have to manually to do it.

gothicknight

Member

From: Portugal

Registered: 2006-04-08

Posts: 219

Re: Acer Aspire One

Ok... I've tested this a bit and found a way to have wifi after a suspend by simply:

vim /etc/pm/config.d/modules (it doesn't exist so please add a new one)
add: SUSPEND_MODULES="ath_pci"

done

qylvaran

Member

Registered: 2006-07-27

Posts: 46

Re: Acer Aspire One

Did you disable the blacklisted modules from the wiki?

THIS.  When I was trimming my modules section in rc.conf, somehow the '!' before ath5k got deleted.  Thanks.  Just a bonehead, 'staring me in the face the whole time' thing.

gothicknight

Member

From: Portugal

Registered: 2006-04-08

Posts: 219

Re: Acer Aspire One

Another happy customer

UPDATE:
I've added a section to AspireOne Wiki's WLAN section on how to resume wireless module after a suspend.
Also, I've found a URL to an old Andy's kernel. I won't put mine because I don't see it as a "the arch way" package (more of a sandbox ), but this should be updated with the new stuff being "discovered".

Last edited by gothicknight (2008-09-15 16:42:10)

Determination

Member

From: Southern California

Registered: 2008-07-24

Posts: 27

Re: Acer Aspire One

I'm having the same problem.. Suspend doesn't work out of the box with pm-utils. echo "mem" > /sys/power/state works like a charm though.

When I try echo "mem" > /sys/power/state the screen just flashes the cursor, backlight remains on, power LED remains on, and the WIFI LED remains blinking. I can see no HDD activity, and nothing I do changes this status. I have to hold the power button down for 5secs to cut the power to revive the computer from this state. I really am at the limit of my understanding how this works. The only thing left to me is to completely wipe the HDD and try again.

gothicknight

Member

From: Portugal

Registered: 2006-04-08

Posts: 219

Re: Acer Aspire One

I'm having the same problem.. Suspend doesn't work out of the box with pm-utils. echo "mem" > /sys/power/state works like a charm though.

When I try echo "mem" > /sys/power/state the screen just flashes the cursor, backlight remains on, power LED remains on, and the WIFI LED remains blinking. I can see no HDD activity, and nothing I do changes this status. I have to hold the power button down for 5secs to cut the power to revive the computer from this state. I really am at the limit of my understanding how this works. The only thing left to me is to completely wipe the HDD and try again.

How do you suspend your machine?
Which kernel do you use?
Can you please post a dmesg or /var/log/messages (you might have to modify the /etc/fstab for the logs be reboot persistent)?

Unlike m$ win, in Linux you don't have to "format and install again". That's plain wrong because if you won't find the reason in the first place, it's almost sure to happen again
Also, unlike ( which the name I shall not speak ), you have a über nice community to help