Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Asus Eee PC: Hardware support in Ubuntu 8.04

Software tested: Ubuntu 8.04 alfa 4 + updates available on 20080219
Hardware environment: Asus Eee PC 4G (Black Galaxy)

Wifi:

The wifi chipset - Atheros AR2425 (AR5007EG) - is identified, and the propietary drivers are loaded.



Sadly, right now, wifi can not be used unless you install the appropriate patches. The dmesg command shows an error message: Hardware revision not supported, so the driver has not support for that piece of hardware.


394-[ 41.672159] ath_hal: module license 'Proprietary' taints kernel.
395-[ 41.802765] ath_hal: 0.9.18.0 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413, RF5413)
396-[ 42.159082] ACPI: Battery Slot [BAT0] (battery present)
397:[ 42.223421] wlan: 0.8.4.2 (0.9.3.3)
398-[ 42.450675] ath_pci: 0.9.4.5 (0.9.3.3)
399-[ 42.451801] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:01:00.0[A] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
400-[ 42.451824] PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:01:00.0 to 64
401-[ 42.500081] wifi%d: unable to attach hardware: 'Hardware revision not supported' (HAL status 13)
402-[ 42.500114] ACPI: PCI interrupt for device 0000:01:00.0 disabled


Wired Ethernet:

Hardware on the Eee PC according to the original Xandros: Atheros Technology Corp. L2 100 Mbit Ethernet Adapter. Ubuntu 8.04 detects it as Attansic Technology Corp. L2 100 Mbit Ethernet Adapter and loads the correspondig drivers (atl2). The wired network seem to work properly. I have found just a small bug in the counter of the outbound traffic (always zero).

The original Xandros uses
Atheros(R) L2 Ethernet Network Driver - version 1.0.40.4

while Ubuntu uses
Attansic(R) L2 Ethernet Network Driver - version 1.0.40.2


As you can imagine Atheros and Attansic are just the same right now.

ACPI:
Suspend: You can suspend the computer (it takes a long time but finally it does suspend). When you restore, everything seems to be right. The only small detail is that the screen brightness does not maintain the previous settings. The screen brightness is set to max when you restore. You only have to adjust the brightness.

Power off: The live CD powers off properly. Once installed you have to press the power button for several seconds to power the computer off.

CPU frequency: Not tested

Audio:

It seems to work right. Some ocassional strange noises. Maybe not still 100% supported, but it works well enough to be usable without modifications.

Camera:

The video camera works out of the box. just be sure to have the camera enabled on the BIOS. The system loads the uvcvideo drivers and the camera is just ready to use.



Special buttons:
I have tested the suspend, Wifi on/off and brightness adjustment buttons. They work properly with no need for previous configuration.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey there, i was just wondering how things have been going on your eee with hardy alpha 5. email me at dpsleep at gmail dot com

josean said...

My main concern right now is to access the SSD in UDMA66 mode. The rest of the issues (touchpad scroll and wifi mainly) are not so relevant for me in this moment.

The kernel in Alfa 5 (I update daily the Eee PC, so I have alfa 5 right now) still does not support the parameters to force the UDMA66 mode.

Anonymous said...

so when you installed alpha 4, you say that all the fn buttons worked? i installed strait to alpha 5 and i have no such support. do you know of any plans to support the eee in ubuntu?

josean said...

I have no idea about plans to support the Eee PC. I just updated to kernel 2.6.24-10 and I have lost the DMA access to the SSD.

The SSD disk is UDMA66, it previously was accessed as UDMA33, and with the new kernel it is being accessed as PIO4.

I have passed from a speed of about 20MB/s to a speed 2MB/s (i.e almost unusable!). I am just looking for information on how to solve the problem.

Anonymous said...

i am unable to get the wifi working... i installed alpha 5 and am currently dist-upgrading... i wonder if the new kernel and the new jockey (restricted manager) will make it work...

when i used gutsy, the ubuntu eee hacks worked
but i ran it on hardy and it didnt work for me..

when i installed xp on it... i was able to get a hacked intel driver that let u do 800x600 without scrolling..

can we force a graphic resolution?

Anonymous said...

I have installed alpha 5 on a sdhc, but could not
1. get the wifi to work though the driver is identified
2. get the camera to work

Any idea?

Joe

Anonymous said...

to get wifi to work
sudo apt-get install build-essential
wget 'http://snapshots.madwifi.org/special/madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007.tar.gz'
tar zxvf madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007.tar.gz
cd madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007
make clean
make
sudo make install
reboot

source: http://wiki.eeeuser.com/ubuntu

to get the touchpad working, in terminal type sgedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

add this section
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "HorizEdgeScroll" "0"
EndSection

add this at bottom of the file
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen "Default Screen"
InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad"
EndSection

be sure to backup the xorg file

josean said...

About the camera, be sure to have it enabled. You can do it with this command:

echo 1 > /proc/acpi/asus/camera

justingill said...

To the author: I just wanted to say thank you very much for this blog post - if it wasn't for you I'd still be ripping the hair out of my head. I've put up a blog post and made reference to your article as being the thing that made me find the Golden Fleece with is Ubuntu 8.04 on the EEE PC.


http://justingill.com/blog/2008/03/16/the-perfect-out-of-the-box-asus-eee-pc-linux-install-ubuntu-804/

Anonymous said...

was about to quit till this worked. you're a rock/rap/country/classical music star... take your pick. thank you

minijoo said...

I was wondering if you got your wifi to work on your eeepc with ubuntu. Because I just installed ubuntu hardy on my eeepc which had xp before and i'm seeing the same proprietary drivers in the "hardware drivers" section. What should i do to make my fn keys work and more importantly my wifi?

josean said...

I am currently using Ubuntu 8.10 en my Eee PC 701. The wifi has been working without problems since very early beta versions.

The final version of Ubuntu 8.10 upgraded the kernel (2.6.27-7), introducing some problem with this wifi card (the module seems to be disabled). If you work with a previous kernel version (I am using 2.6.27-2) everything will work perfectly.

You can find a lot of information on this topic here