Fedora 9 on ASUS EeePC 900

[Jos Vos]

Hi,

I'm investigating the issues that I can expect when I want to install
Fedora 9 on an ASUS EeePC 900.

I found some references, mainly referring to Fedora 8 and the EeePC 701,
and I found the Fedora Wiki page <http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EeePc>;,
that lists various issues.

Will the wired Ethernet still not work for installing F9, for example?

Any references to more detailed information are welcome.

Thanks,

--
--    Jos Vos <jos(a)xos.nl&gt;
--    X/OS Experts in Open Systems BV   |   Phone: [phone]
--    Amsterdam, The Netherlands        |     Fax: [phone]

[Arjan van de Ven]

On Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:09:30 +0200
Jos Vos <jos(a)xos.nl&gt; wrote:

>  Hi,
>  
>  I'm investigating the issues that I can expect when I want to install
>  Fedora 9 on an ASUS EeePC 900.
>  
>  I found some references, mainly referring 
I recently installed F9 on an 901 (the one with an atom cpu)

turns out the ethernet is a new chip, for which a patch got posted to
lkml 3 days or so ago (search for "L1E")

-- 
If you want to reach me at my work email, use arjan(a)linux.intel.com
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visit http://www.lesswatts.org

[Jos Vos]

On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 12:40:48PM -0700, Arjan van de Ven wrote:

>  I recently installed F9 on an 901 (the one with an atom cpu)
>  
>  turns out the ethernet is a new chip, for which a patch got posted to
>  lkml 3 days or so ago (search for "L1E") 
I was looking at the 900, as I thought the 901 is not yet available
(at least not here in NL).  The 901 is still preloaded with Xandros?

-- 
--    Jos Vos <jos(a)xos.nl&gt;
--    X/OS Experts in Open Systems BV   |   Phone: [phone]
--    Amsterdam, The Netherlands        |     Fax: [phone]

[jeff]

Jos Vos wrote:
>  Hi,
>  
>  I'm investigating the issues that I can expect when I want to install
>  Fedora 9 on an ASUS EeePC 900.
>  
>  I found some references, mainly referring to Fedora 8 and the EeePC 701,
>  and I found the Fedora Wiki page <http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EeePc>;,
>  that lists various issues.
>  
>  Will the wired Ethernet still not work for installing F9, for example?
>  
>  Any references to more detailed information are welcome. 
Ethernet works with default fedora kernel with atl2 driver (well, with -libre 
kernel, I presume fedora's too).

Wifi does not work, but just in the last week Nick Kossifidis got a driver 
built which works (and I'm happily using):
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/mickflemm/compat-wireless-2...

Note this ath5k driver does not depend on a binary HAL.

Yay Nick!  :)

This did not build for me against kernel-libre-2.6.25.10-86.fc9.1.i686 packages 
but did build and work with linux-2.6.26-libre1.tar.bz2.


The driver for the camera is uvcvideo and I think is available in stock fedora 
kernel and hit linus in 2.6.26 iirc.


I just install it from an external USB drive. You should be able to pxeboot it too.

I have random notes, code, scripts  etc here:

ftp://ftp.blagblagblag.org/pub/BLAG/developers/jebba/eee/
ftp://ftp.blagblagblag.org/pub/BLAG/developers/jebba/eee/FREEEEE.TXT

-Jeff

P.S. Now we just need EeePC coreboot v3  ;)

[jeff]

Jos Vos wrote:
>  Hi,
>  
>  I'm investigating the issues that I can expect when I want to install
>  Fedora 9 on an ASUS EeePC 900.
>  
>  I found some references, mainly referring to Fedora 8 and the EeePC 701,
>  and I found the Fedora Wiki page <http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EeePc>;,
>  that lists various issues.
>  
>  Will the wired Ethernet still not work for installing F9, for example? 
I have a kernel available for the ASUS EeePC 701 and 900. It supports all 
hardware, including wifi (ath5k). It should work fine with fedora 9 systems.

See:
http://www.freeeee.org/i386/RPMS.FREEEEE/

Latest as of this email:
http://www.freeeee.org/i386/RPMS.FREEEEE/kernel-libre-2.6.25.14-106.1.fre...

-Jeff

[Jos Vos]

On Mon, Aug 04, 2008 at 01:43:26AM -0300, jeff wrote:

>  I have a kernel available for the ASUS EeePC 701 and 900. It supports
> all 
>  hardware, including wifi (ath5k). It should work fine with fedora 9 systems. 
What are, except for the working ath5k, the differences with the latest
F9 update kernel?

AFAICS the latest F9 kernel also supports everything, except the wireless
card (the ath5k driver is loaded, but not functioning).  I got that
working now with the latest madwifi driver (including latest HAL stuff,
the latest madwifi driver itself did not work).

Can we expect a standard F9 kernel with a working ath5k driver soon?

-- 
--    Jos Vos <jos(a)xos.nl&gt;
--    X/OS Experts in Open Systems BV   |   Phone: [phone]
--    Amsterdam, The Netherlands        |     Fax: [phone]

[jeff]

Jos Vos wrote:
>  On Mon, Aug 04, 2008 at 01:43:26AM -0300, jeff wrote:
>  
> > I have a kernel available for the ASUS EeePC 701 and 900. It supports all 
> > hardware, including wifi (ath5k). It should work fine with fedora 9 systems.
>  
>  What are, except for the working ath5k, the differences with the latest
>  F9 update kernel? 
Very stripped down config-i686. Not much else difference other than the 
mickflemm patches. Oh, and using linux-libre as a base.

Latest SRPMS here:
http://www.blagblagblag.org/FREEEEE/source/SRPMS.FREEEEE/kernel-libre-2.6...

[Philip Heron]

jeff wrote:
>  I have a kernel available for the ASUS EeePC 701 and 900. It supports
>
>  all hardware, including wifi (ath5k). It should work fine with fedora 9 
>  systems. 
Hi Jeff,

Is there anything in your kernel that might improve the stability of the 
intel video driver over the stock fedora kernel? I'm getting quite a lot 
of hard lock-ups and random X restarts if I don't disable video 
acceleration, but then playing video is impossible.

Everything else on my EeePC is working nicely.

-Phil

[Peter Robinson]

> > I have a kernel available for the ASUS EeePC 701 and 900. It
> supports all
> > hardware, including wifi (ath5k). It should work fine with fedora 9 systems.
>
>  Hi Jeff,
>
>  Is there anything in your kernel that might improve the stability of the
>  intel video driver over the stock fedora kernel? I'm getting quite a lot of
>  hard lock-ups and random X restarts if I don't disable video acceleration,
>  but then playing video is impossible. 
Have you tried disabling FrameBufferCompression?

Peter

[Philip Heron]

Peter Robinson wrote:
> > Is there anything in your kernel that might improve the stability
> of the
> > intel video driver over the stock fedora kernel? I'm getting quite a lot of
> > hard lock-ups and random X restarts if I don't disable video acceleration,
> > but then playing video is impossible.
>  
>  Have you tried disabling FrameBufferCompression? 
Thanks for the suggestion. I tried it last night but it didn't help.

Video played for about a minute, then the screen got corrupt and the 
machine locked up.

-Phil

[Philip Heron]

Philip Heron wrote:
>  Peter Robinson wrote:
> >> Is there anything in your kernel that might improve the stability of the
> >> intel video driver over the stock fedora kernel? I'm getting quite a 
> >> lot of
> >> hard lock-ups and random X restarts if I don't disable video 
> >> acceleration,
> >> but then playing video is impossible.
> >
> > Have you tried disabling FrameBufferCompression?
>  
>  Thanks for the suggestion. I tried it last night but it didn't help. 
For anyone else having this problem, I seem to have solved it by 
disabling the composite extension. I'm able to play video and games 
without any crashing or lock ups now.

I added these lines to my xorg.conf:

Section "Extensions"
	Option "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

Not ideal, but I've got a usable laptop again.

-Phil

[jeff]

Philip Heron wrote:
>  Philip Heron wrote:
> > Peter Robinson wrote:
> >>> Is there anything in your kernel that might improve the stability of 
> >>> the
> >>> intel video driver over the stock fedora kernel? I'm getting quite a 
> >>> lot of
> >>> hard lock-ups and random X restarts if I don't disable video 
> >>> acceleration,
> >>> but then playing video is impossible.
> >>
> >> Have you tried disabling FrameBufferCompression?
> >
> > Thanks for the suggestion. I tried it last night but it didn't help.
>  
>  For anyone else having this problem, I seem to have solved it by 
>  disabling the composite extension. I'm able to play video and games 
>  without any crashing or lock ups now.
>  
>  I added these lines to my xorg.conf:
>  
>  Section "Extensions"
>      Option "Composite" "Disable"
>  EndSection
>  
>  Not ideal, but I've got a usable laptop again. 
You could try this live image for eee 900, which is also installable:
http://freeeee.org/

-Jeff

[jeff]

Philip Heron wrote:
>  jeff wrote:
> > I have a kernel available for the ASUS EeePC 701 and 900. It supports 
> > all hardware, including wifi (ath5k). It should work fine with fedora 
> > 9 systems.
>  
>  Hi Jeff,
>  
>  Is there anything in your kernel that might improve the stability of the 
>  intel video driver over the stock fedora kernel? I'm getting quite a lot 
>  of hard lock-ups and random X restarts if I don't disable video 
>  acceleration, but then playing video is impossible. 
Nothing in particular over fedora's for that. I should note that this kernel 
has quite a few driver modules disabled for things that would likely never 
touch an eee. Selinux isn't compiled in either.