Arch on Asus EEE 901

lejonet · 2008-11-06 10:16:32

@jtmoulia

Have you tried checking in alsamixer if the channel is muted and have you added your user to the audio group?

sudo gpasswd -a USERNAME audio

I had to do this to be able to hear sound on my eeepc, and now it works perfect, alsa finds my device and everything, I can even chose my device in the mixer settings in xfce (to set which channels my sound mixer should control that is)

Edit:
You will have to logout and then log back in for the audio group to be added to ur user, but after that you should have the permission to see and use the soundcard

Last edited by lejonet (2008-11-06 10:29:35)

elliott · 2008-11-06 10:17:07

Etuxia wrote:

elliott wrote:
Oh, you just reminded me of something, if I go into alsamixer and disable "iSpeaker", the static goes away.
Yeah, and so the sound at all. Yaou can mute in the alsamixer with m, and you can mutee a single channel with "," and ".".

I'll have to play with that the next time I get the static, I only tried setting everything to 0, not actually muting it.

Etuxia · 2008-11-06 11:09:31

elliott wrote:

Etuxia wrote:
elliott wrote:
Oh, you just reminded me of something, if I go into alsamixer and disable "iSpeaker", the static goes away.
Yeah, and so the sound at all. Yaou can mute in the alsamixer with m, and you can mutee a single channel with "," and ".".
I'll have to play with that the next time I get the static, I only tried setting everything to 0, not actually muting it.

Hmm, I don't realy remember sso much from when I used Xandros. But I think I remeber that I got the same thing there, I can't sey exactly but... it is possible...

elliott · 2008-11-06 11:35:05

I used Xandros for less than a day and didn't do much, I used it as a "netbook", with Arch, I use it as a laptop. If all else fails, I'll reinstall Xandros and see if it still happens there, which I think is what Asus is going to ask me to do.

jtmoulia · 2008-11-06 12:01:30

@lejonet

Hey, away from my eee right now, but no, I didn't add my user to the audio group. Doh. I know alsamixer was giving an error, couldn't find some file. Probably because of the audio group issue. I'll let you know if it worked later. Thanks!!!

niklase · 2008-11-06 14:58:56

Hi everyone and thanks to chori and Robertek.

After buying a 901 and reading this whole thread I'm ready to install Arch. I got the 2008.06 FTP image on usb and boots into the installer. My problem is that the installer can't find my ethernet card, and therefor I can't use the FTP.

I've tried the 'hwdetect --show-net' in vc3 but it gives no output. and even so, shouldn't udev load it? I'm new to linux (bought the 901 just to practice on linux) and it's frustrating to not even being able to continue the installation. I would love some help.

More info: image taken from the ftp.gigabit.nu server and the install from usb wiki says at the bottom that usb stick should mount as /src. I have no /src and mount says that /dev/sdc is already mounted. I have a swedish 901. Thnx

Gringo · 2008-11-06 15:33:56

I used the core image to install Arch Linux first. Then I downloaded the zeneee kernel and put it on USB stick. Then I installed the zeneee kernel with pacman -U *package*. Linux now sees my ethernet card and I can update Arch Linux with pacman.

chori · 2008-11-06 15:40:37

niklase wrote:

Hi everyone and thanks to chori and Robertek.
After buying a 901 and reading this whole thread I'm ready to install Arch. I got the 2008.06 FTP image on usb and boots into the installer. My problem is that the installer can't find my ethernet card, and therefor I can't use the FTP.
I've tried the 'hwdetect --show-net' in vc3 but it gives no output. and even so, shouldn't udev load it? I'm new to linux (bought the 901 just to practice on linux) and it's frustrating to not even being able to continue the installation. I would love some help.

More info: image taken from the ftp.gigabit.nu server and the install from usb wiki says at the bottom that usb stick should mount as /src. I have no /src and mount says that /dev/sdc is already mounted. I have a swedish 901. Thnx

Just a clarification: do you mean your *wireless* card? Your ethernet card is the network interface that requires a cable to be plugged in.

The installer should contain a driver that works with the ethernet NIC. If you want to connect over wireless, you should follow @Gringo's instructions.

niklase · 2008-11-06 15:45:07

i mean the ethernet nic. i have the 901 plugged in to my switch for faster ftp-download. i will not bother with wlan untill i got the right kernel.

so it's my eth0 that isn't found by the installer. ifconfig -a only shows the local loopback interface.

Last edited by niklase (2008-11-06 15:50:06)

chori · 2008-11-06 15:50:00

niklase wrote:

i mean the ethernet nic. i have the 901 plugged in to my switch for faster ftp-download. i will not bother with wlan untill i got the right kernel.
so it's my eth0 that isn't found by the installer.

Have you already done the base install? What I did was the base install from the Live distro ( select "1 CD-ROM or OTHER SOURCE" for installation source), which installed all the core pieces I needed off the USB key. Then I rebooted, the eth0 was up and running, and I executed "pacman -Syu" to bring everything up-to-date.

Last edited by chori (2008-11-06 15:51:41)

niklase · 2008-11-06 15:55:31

i'm trying to do the base install from the FTP-image, but from your post and gringos it looks like i have to use the core-image. will try this. i'll bet you see me later with more problems, but i try to learn by reading first.

steve___ · 2008-11-06 15:59:06

niklase wrote:

i mean the ethernet nic. i have the 901 plugged in to my switch for faster ftp-download. i will not bother with wlan untill i got the right kernel.
so it's my eth0 that isn't found by the installer. ifconfig -a only shows the local loopback interface.

I had this problem too. I ended up sneaker-wareing the 2.6.27 kernel, I suggest trying the 2008.10 image found here: http://downloads.archlinux.de/iso/archboot/2008.10/

elliott · 2008-11-06 16:56:41

Etuxia wrote:

elliott wrote:
Oh, you just reminded me of something, if I go into alsamixer and disable "iSpeaker", the static goes away.
Yeah, and so the sound at all. Yaou can mute in the alsamixer with m, and you can mutee a single channel with "," and ".".

Just had it happen again, I get static on both channels.

jtmoulia · 2008-11-06 17:36:32

lejonet wrote:

Have you tried checking in alsamixer if the channel is muted and have you added your user to the audio group?
sudo gpasswd -a USERNAME audio
I had to do this to be able to hear sound on my eeepc, and now it works perfect, alsa finds my device and everything, I can even chose my device in the mixer settings in xfce (to set which channels my sound mixer should control that is)
Edit:
You will have to logout and then log back in for the audio group to be added to ur user, but after that you should have the permission to see and use the soundcard

Alright, I did this and it helped, but some weird stuff is still going on. First off, dmesg still says

ALSA device list:
  No soundcards found.

I can run alsamixer and tweak with my volume settings and mplayer can play media w/ sound. Sweeet. But, apps like audacious and consonance can't play audio files, and audacious doesn't even show any possible audio output plugins under preferences.

Oh, and it's probably completey separate, but this error is also popping up in dmesg:

BUG: unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at 0000000c
IP: [<b02a0d96>]
*pde = 00000000 
Oops: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP 
Modules linked in: eee(+) ext3 jbd

Pid: 1031, comm: modprobe Tainted: G        W (2.6.27-zen3eee #1)
EIP: 0060:[<b02a0d96>] EFLAGS: 00010296 CPU: 0
EAX: 00000001 EBX: 00000000 ECX: 00000000 EDX: 00000069
ESI: 00000000 EDI: 00000069 EBP: f0016156 ESP: ef075e88
 DS: 007b ES: 007b FS: 00d8 GS: 0033 SS: 0068
Process modprobe (pid: 1031, ti=ef075000 task=ee4d9e60 task.ti=ef075000)
Stack: b03c7b80 017c9340 00000000 b17c9340 00000202 b17e2fe0 b015c4f9 b17e2fe0 
       00000202 f04cec7c 00000014 00000000 f0016980 b0139bf5 00000be4 ef075eec 
       00000003 f04ceed4 ef075f78 00000000 00000001 f04cedbc ee4b4e04 00000000 
Call Trace:
 [<b015c4f9>] <0> [<b0139bf5>] <0> [<f0016156>] <0> [<b02a1367>] <0> [<f0016182>] <0> [<b0101136>] <0> [<b0139e8a>] <0> [<b0102e85>] <0> =======================
Code: 5b 5e 5f 5d c3 55 83 e1 14 57 89 d7 56 53 83 ec 6c 89 44 24 08 8a 84 24 80 00 00 00 8b 5c 24 08 8b b4 24 84 00 00 00 88 44 24 07 <8b> 43 0c 89 f5 83 78 04 00 0f b7 c1 89 04 24 74 47 83 c3 20 89 
EIP: [<b02a0d96>]  SS:ESP 0068:ef075e88
---[ end trace f78eb5e12db3c71c ]---

niklase · 2008-11-06 19:34:44

chori wrote:

niklase wrote:
so it's my eth0 that isn't found by the installer.
Have you already done the base install? What I did was the base install from the Live distro ( select "1 CD-ROM or OTHER SOURCE" for installation source), which installed all the core pieces I needed off the USB key. Then I rebooted, the eth0 was up and running, and I executed "pacman -Syu" to bring everything up-to-date.

well, i did like u said. installed from archlinux-2008.06-core-i686.img on usb-stick. arch installed and all, but after reboot eth0 isn't up and running. will try that arch-2008.10 which was linked.

yay! 2008.10 shows eth0 in ifconfig

Last edited by niklase (2008-11-06 19:56:16)

potterzot · 2008-11-06 21:54:08

lejonet wrote:

@potterzot
That is usually because you have a power manager (like gnome-power-manager) and have checked the box labelled "Reduce screen backlight" under the battery tab, what that does is that it sets screen backlight to 0, so the screen is not blank, its just very very dark, if you try to turn up the screen brightness it should work.
I had this problem too, so ive unchecked the "Dim screen brightness" under the battery tab and I set it myself in a terminal instead (xbacklight -set <number of % that you want the backlight too(i.e 50 sets screen backlight to 50%)>)

Hey Thanks, you're exactly right. The power manager I'm using is just the acpi-eee package. In my case the culprit is BRIGHTNESS_BATTERY=2 in /etc/acpi/eee.conf. At 3 or higher the screen is visible. At 1 or 2 its black. I set mine to 4.

lejonet · 2008-11-06 22:12:14

@jtmoulia

I am glad to help, and it does make sence if alsamixer would return a permission error of some sort (the file not found sounds like it just didn't have the permission to "find" it )
Tell me how it goes, ive had my fair share trying to get my 901 to work (just read my posts before and you'll understand ) so if you got anymore questions, the likely hood of me having had that problem is quite big (it feels like )
Edit:
Did you logout and in? (I am assuming you did cuz mplayer worked you say ) and do you have the right packages installed? alsa-utils might be required unless you already got it? Otherwise I would say to try to change ur base mixer option (if you have like xfce or gnome installed)
I personally dont think I will use the sound on my 901 except for rare occasions so I wont even intall sound programs and try, but if you cant get it to work I might give it a shot to see what happens for me
@potterzot

I had the exact same problem like you said and I was all like "WTF?! What is it doing?!?!" and then after looking at it from another angle I could see the silouhette(spelling? :S) of my running programs so I tried to turn my brightness up and it worked and when you described it I knew it was the same And now I think im going to uninstall my power manager and just use the eee.conf, my power manager hardly has any options available anyways

Last edited by lejonet (2008-11-06 22:28:04)

elliott · 2008-11-06 23:25:12

potterzot wrote:

Hey Thanks, you're exactly right. The power manager I'm using is just the acpi-eee package. In my case the culprit is BRIGHTNESS_BATTERY=2 in /etc/acpi/eee.conf. At 3 or higher the screen is visible. At 1 or 2 its black. I set mine to 4.

Mine is fully visible even at 1, you might want to try updating your BIOS. I've heard reports of backlight issues with older BIOS revisions.

Grab 901-ASUS-1703.zip from here:
http://update.eeepc.asus.com/bios/

Unpack it and rename the .ROM to 901.ROM.

Put it on a FAT formatted USB thumbdrive.

Reboot with the thumbdrive in and at the BIOS screen, press ALT-F2.

It should take care of everything from there, if it likes your thumbdrive, I have one that it refuses to read from for some reason.

lejonet · 2008-11-07 09:42:28

@elliott
I have the latest bios (revision 1803 I think) and I think the cause is the gnome-power-manager for my part (Side-question for jtmoulia: Do you use gnome desktop enviorment?) Because now when you mention it, I have removed all gnome things I had (I use Xfce as DE) and set that setting to 3 and it was quite bright when I restarted on battery power.
And I read in a forum that the 901 and gnome-power-manager setting "Reduce backlight brightness" had a error together that causes the backlight to become 0 instead of "just" reduced.
I will try to set the setting to 1 and 2 and report backwith my findings

Etuxia · 2008-11-07 10:10:35

lejonet wrote:

@elliott
I have the latest bios (revision 1803 I think) and I think the cause is the gnome-power-manager for my part (Side-question for jtmoulia: Do you use gnome desktop enviorment?) Because now when you mention it, I have removed all gnome things I had (I use Xfce as DE) and set that setting to 3 and it was quite bright when I restarted on battery power.
And I read in a forum that the 901 and gnome-power-manager setting "Reduce backlight brightness" had a error together that causes the backlight to become 0 instead of "just" reduced.
I will try to set the setting to 1 and 2 and report backwith my findings

[ ] 901-ASUS-1703.zip 06-Nov-2008 07:26 375K
The latest one, released yesterday

EDIT:
Just flashed my bios to the latest one.

Last edited by Etuxia (2008-11-07 10:26:06)

niklase · 2008-11-07 14:44:28

Hi almost done with my arch, and it looks like an awesome distro. But since i'm new to linux i have some small questions. i have read this whole thread and lots of wikis, but it's a long thread and some things may have slipped my mind. greatfull for help.

1: Is rc.conf updated each time you sync pacman to zen-eee? i.e. will i lose my settings when i update the kernel? anything else i have to change after sync/update of roberteks kernel and acpi?

2: I get failure loading some sound modules at boot. the ones i have problem with is snd, snd-pcsp and soundcore. do i need them in MODULES or is something wrong? i have both alsa-lib and alsa-utils. how should a working MODULES() look?

3: what de/wm do you reccomend? i want something small, quick with minimum panels. maybe only a app-dock. but still sturdy enough to run big programs like OO3.

Etuxia · 2008-11-07 15:02:04

niklase wrote:

1: Is rc.conf updated each time you sync pacman to zen-eee? i.e. will i lose my settings when i update the kernel? anything else i have to change after sync/update of roberteks kernel and acpi?

Normaly, no. But sometime robertek maybe make changes in the kernel wich require that you modify a bit yourself. Have an eye in this thread

niklase wrote:

2: I get failure loading some sound modules at boot. the ones i have problem with is snd, snd-pcsp and soundcore. do i need them in MODULES or is something wrong? i have both alsa-lib and alsa-utils. how should a working MODULES() look?

This is working for me. (I maybe missed something for my wlan, I dunno. It does not work properly, It can be my wicd configs.

MOD_AUTOLOAD="yes"
MODULES=(pciehp rt2860sta atl1e)

niklase wrote:

3: what de/wm do you reccomend? i want something small, quick with minimum panels. maybe only a app-dock. but still sturdy enough to run big programs like OO3.

Im using wmii.

Gringo · 2008-11-07 15:19:47

niklase wrote:

3: what de/wm do you reccomend? i want something small, quick with minimum panels. maybe only a app-dock. but still sturdy enough to run big programs like OO3.

I'm using XFCE with OpenBox as WM. XFCE comes with XFWM4, which is a great WM, but I think OpenBox is a little more lightweight. XFCE feels complete, but not bloated. It includes everything I need; nothing more, nothing less. Because of it's modular design it's easy to just not include features as I have done with XFWM4. I totally recommend this combination!

niklase · 2008-11-07 16:14:55

ok, thnx for answers. how is it with composite/mesa/compiz-fusion? what do i need and what works? read somewhere that the intel video driver didnt work with composite.

edit: and how do i do a pipe (|) on swedish 901 with keymap sv-latin1? etuxia?

Last edited by niklase (2008-11-07 16:16:39)

Izuil · 2008-11-07 16:26:26

niklase wrote:

ok, thnx for answers. how is it with composite/mesa/compiz-fusion? what do i need and what works? read somewhere that the intel video driver didnt work with composite.
edit: and how do i do a pipe (|) on swedish 901 with keymap sv-latin1? etuxia?

fn + AltGr + pipe or was it fn + AltGr + Shift + pipe, can't rembember atm...

Btw I upgraded to xorg 1.5.2 from testing and my xkblayout dosn't work any longer, anyone else had this issue?

EDIT: Okey I found A solution but maybe not THE solution

In

/usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-x11-input.fdi

Add the line

<merge key="input.xkb.layout" type="string">se</merge>

and change the language setting (in my case se) to your liking.

Last edited by Izuil (2008-11-07 18:59:49)

Arch Linux

#651 2008-11-06 10:16:32

Re: Arch on Asus EEE 901

#652 2008-11-06 10:17:07

Re: Arch on Asus EEE 901

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Re: Arch on Asus EEE 901

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Re: Arch on Asus EEE 901

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Re: Arch on Asus EEE 901

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Re: Arch on Asus EEE 901

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