Arch Linux

macman

Member

Registered: 2008-12-25

Posts: 2

Eee 900HA

DISCLAIMER: I have already tried searching so please forgive me if this has already been discussed...

For Xmas I got a Eee 900HA (!). Of course, I didn't want Windows on it and immediately started to install Arch Linux using an external cd-rom drive (for some reason usb wouldn't boot). I followed the Eee PC wiki entry, but there are some seriously confusing parts. For example, in the "Booting Arch the installation CD/USB," it says that the internal LAN would work out of the box with 2008.06 (which I have), but if it doesn't, get toofishes kernel. How am I supposed to get toofishes kernel if my LAN isn't working? Now, to be fair I downloaded it on a flash drive from another computer and installed it using pacman --add kernel-***-eee.pkg.tar.gz and it booted fine, but I got a bunch of fatal messages saying it could not load drivers. So I tried to reinstall using the auto-prepare hdd option (this is a 160gb hdd) and went to select packages, but there is no SUPPORT category. This is a base-devel category of which I selected everything and there was a wireless_tools and atl2 package, which I installed, but neither of them helped. When I run ifconfig -a, only the lo interface is listed, not even eth0. Please! I beg you to help me, I do not want to go back to XP and I love the speed of Arch!!!

Thanks,
Craig

Wittfella

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2008-05-27

Posts: 462

Re: Eee 900HA

Hey Craig,

Exactly the same thing for me on my 900AH.  I installed the 2008.06.img and had no wired or wireless on startup. The easiest solution is to grab the latest stock kernel from another computer (2.6.27-10 now I think) and install with 'pacman -U'.  Reboot and now wired and wireless should work. Both seem to be supported natively in the latest kernel.  Then you can 'pacman -Syu' and you are away.

With the booting from usb trouble I also had this, even though the priority was set to removable device in the bios, it always ignored it and booted into XP.  I messed around for ages thinking the usb img I was trying was borked.  Then I found out that if you hit 'ESC' at startup (before the bios post) it brings up a boot selection menu, select removable device and then it booted from the sd card slot no problems.  Not sure whats up with that, maybe a bios upgrade may fix it in the future.

Cheers,
Wittfella

Chrysalis

Member

Registered: 2008-07-07

Posts: 155

Re: Eee 900HA

Its a security thing with laptops/notebooks i think. Basically you are expected to password protect your bios/bootup options after purchasing and its disabled by default.

macman

Member

Registered: 2008-12-25

Posts: 2

Re: Eee 900HA

Hey guys,

Sorry I have not replied for a while because I did not see the replies to this thread (whoops) and decided to move on to eeebuntu. I have since broken that install (:lol:) I don't care that much its my toy and I was kinda playing around with system essential files ... But anyways I now have internet access through ethernet thanks to you and I was wondering whether I should install kernel-eee. Is it compatible with the 900HA? I want to follow the Wiki for the most part, but I don't know if its compatible with 900HA.

Thanks again,
Craig