Toshiba NB100

SiC · 2009-01-08 20:14:16

Ok, so i have been a bad boy and bought a toshiba nb100, which is their netbook, i bought it as i noticed toshiba are doing a rebate of £30 on all netbooks bought in january and that got the device down to about 200 quid, which i thought was reasonable enough.

I got the nb100-11R which is the 512MB ram 80GB hd version running ubuntu netbook remix, it seems pretty quick, although i have had it out of the box for about 15 minutes. Now I quite like the remix interface for the nb100 and it seems to work quite well, however I am now thinking about putting arch on it. Has anyone got this netbook and if so do they have any experience putting arch on it, I am assuming that it would be pretty much the same as the aspire one or any other netbook given the style.

Any thoughts?

byteforscher · 2009-01-10 13:08:19

I own the same machine and tried booting the 2008-06 release from a usb stick. Unfortunately the harddisk wasn't detected. There was only sda which is the usb stick. I want too look into this in the next days.

SiC · 2009-01-10 17:33:32

ok cool, well I will do the same, not had the chance yet, although to be honest having used this version of ubuntu for a couple of days I actually quite like it. Having said that I have no idea why toshiba decided to include a product recovery CD for a device with no optical media.

byteforscher · 2009-01-11 11:16:54

yeah, the recovery cd is a joke and and a usb recovery stick would cost nearly nothing these days.

I also like the preinstalled Ubuntu. But sadly it's 8.04 and I wanted to have the Gnome Network Manager 0.7 with buildin 3G support. I installed some gnm packages for hardy which killed my wireless connections ... now its time for Arch.

SiC · 2009-01-11 13:53:43

If you are having problems getting the hard drive to detect during install, go into the bios and change the hard drive ahci mode.

SiC · 2009-01-11 19:55:54

Update: That didn't work properly for me.

I now have arch installed off the 08.06 disk image. To get the install completed, I had to change the drive from AHCI to compatibility, and then pass the following parameters to the kernel on boot:

irqpoll acpi=off

The install then boots ok. Install went through successfully, I then had to pass the acpi=off parameter to the kernel to boot the install after it was done. Unfortunately I do not have any network access, ethernet comes up but is unable to get an IP from the router, so cannot do an update. I am currently downloading the packages manually so as to be able to update them from a flash drive. I am hoping that this will give me full access to everything. Will update as I get further.

SiC · 2009-01-12 13:24:41

Ok, Final update.

I now have a fully working installation of arch. To get the installer working from a USB stick, you need to change the SATA mode from AHCI to compatibility, and then boot the image, change the grub settings during boot to add "irqpoll acpi=off" and then boot. You will then be able to install from the latest live image.

You also need to add these kernel parameters to the menu.lst of your new install.

Once you have installed, you will need to download all the core repository files from the ftp server, including the core.db.tar.gz file.

Having done this, copy the .pkg.tar.gz files to the /var/cache/pacman/pkg folder. If you have these files on another machine, then just copy those instead. Make sure you get the i686 files NOT the x86_64, as I haven't tested the x86_64 version.

Logged in as root do the following:

cd /var/lib/pacman/sync/core
rm -rf *
tar -zxf /path/to/core/db/file/core.db.tar.gz

This will now give you the latest synced repository for pacman.

Do pacman -Syu. You will now have a fully up to date system.

Reboot.

Having done this, you will be able to remove the irqpoll and acpi=off kernel parameters, as the latest kernel works perfectly. You can also change the SATA drive mode back to AHCI from compatibility. You should now have a fully installed version of Archlinux.

Update and install stuff as you need.

The video driver you want is xf86-video-intel, same as with the Aspire one.

I found that Audio, video, webcam, and power management worked out of the box once the system was updated, changing your /etc/acpi/handler.sh to include pm-suspend when the lid button is pressed causes the device to suspend when you close the lid, resume works perfectly also.

I have yet to test battery life properly, but I am sure that it will need some optimisation to get it working correctly. I have also not installed a custom kernel as yet.

I currently have a full GNOME desktop working, along with all my applications installed correctly. One point to note is that with this screen I have found it best to reduce font sizes to 7pt rather than the 10 they were originally.

charlie861i · 2009-01-12 17:38:35

Hey just something you didn't mention which is the most important part to me, does the wireless work out of the box at all? And what wifi card did yours come with? Mine came with the Atheros one.

Thanks, Charlie.

SiC · 2009-01-12 18:37:13

Yes, mine is also an atheros wifi adaptor. It doesn't work out of the box in terms of getting a wireless connection after the install. The ethernet adaptor is detected, but I was unable to obtain an IP address using it, either whilst booted into the livecd nor after installation. Which is why I recommend downloading all the core packages so you can do an update.

Once you have updated the system to the latest version of the packages, you are able to connect using your preferred means either via wireless or ethernet.

So the upshot is, you have to manually update pacman to get everything working, it's not complicated you just have to follow the steps I detailed above. Once you have done that, absolutely everything worked perfectly for me, so should do for you too

Just out of interest, did you get the XP or ubuntu version?

charlie861i · 2009-01-12 23:31:05

I got the Ubuntu version, since it was cheaper and because I already got the Advent 4211/Msi Wind with Windows so I wanted a Linux one. Thanks very much for your reply, I shall be installing this in a few days.

SiC · 2009-01-12 23:40:31

Lol... netbook fetish.. I like it

charlie861i · 2009-01-12 23:41:57

I've always loved tiny laptops Once I get a new job (Been made redundant ) I plan to get the new Sony one when it comes out. Has an amazing screen resolution.

moljac024 · 2009-01-12 23:44:02

Yes, I too have always dreamed of a really small, full-featured computer.
I'm just waiting for netbooks to become even better and I'll definitely buy one that will kick ass!

charlie861i · 2009-01-12 23:45:17

The great thing about the Advent/MSI was the bios overclock. Gets the Atom to a stable 2ghz (ish ) with 2gb ram.

SiC · 2009-01-13 00:49:59

Cool... that's pretty good... might have to take a look....

thameslink · 2010-02-05 09:25:16

Hi There,

This is my 1st post on the Archlinux forums.
I've installed arch to the second partition on my nb100 and I love it. I've got the system up and running; wifi, DE, booting into X all working (major achievements, I've only ever use pre-built distros before) but I cant seem to get the thing to boot when I change the SATA controller mode back into AHCI, I've tried changing the grub entry to root=/dev/sda5 default ro 5. and root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/XYZ default ro.

But I get Root device /dev/disk/by-uuid/XYZ dosen't exist, attempting to create it
ERROR failed to parse block device id's for /dev/disk/by-uuid/XYZ
then dropped into a recovery shell.
I get similar errors when I try to set root=/dev/sda5

Which options are you passing to the kernel at boot time? irqpoll and acpi=off don't seem to help me.
Incidently I found my eth0 worked from the core install so I didn't need to manually update.

Thanks for taking the time to documnet what you did, I found it very helpful.

Jake.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-01-08 20:14:16

Toshiba NB100

#2 2009-01-10 13:08:19

Re: Toshiba NB100

#3 2009-01-10 17:33:32

Re: Toshiba NB100

#4 2009-01-11 11:16:54

Re: Toshiba NB100

#5 2009-01-11 13:53:43

Re: Toshiba NB100

#6 2009-01-11 19:55:54

Re: Toshiba NB100

#7 2009-01-12 13:24:41

Re: Toshiba NB100

#8 2009-01-12 17:38:35

Re: Toshiba NB100

#9 2009-01-12 18:37:13

Re: Toshiba NB100

#10 2009-01-12 23:31:05

Re: Toshiba NB100

#11 2009-01-12 23:40:31

Re: Toshiba NB100

#12 2009-01-12 23:41:57

Re: Toshiba NB100

#13 2009-01-12 23:44:02

Re: Toshiba NB100

#14 2009-01-12 23:45:17

Re: Toshiba NB100

#15 2009-01-13 00:49:59

Re: Toshiba NB100

#16 2010-02-05 09:25:16

Re: Toshiba NB100

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