Ubuntu5.10OnAcerAspire1692WLMi

Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy) on Acer Aspire 1692WLMi Laptop

Hardware Specifications

Serial Number: LXA8405xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
BIOS version: 3A28 (07/27/05)
Intel Pentium M processor 740 (1.73GHz, 533MHz FSB, 2 MB L2 cache)
15.4 WXGA CrystalBrite TFT LCD (1280x800 Natural Resolution)
ATI MOBILITY RADEON X700 PCI Express With 256MB RAM
80GB HDD (Hitachi HA3OA70G 74GB)
Slot-loading DVD-Dual (DVD+R Dual Layer / DVD+-RW) (Slimtype DVDRW SLW-831S)
1GB DDR2 (support dual-channel) RAM
Gigabit Ethernet (NetXtreme BCM5788 Gigabit Ethernet)
802.11b/802.11g wireless LAN (Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG)
3 USB 2.0 ports (82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI)
Type II CardBus PC Card (Texas Instruments PCIxx21/x515 Cardbus Controller)
IEEE 1394 port (Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller)
MS/MS PRO/MMC/SD FlashMedia Reader slot (Texas Instruments PCIxx21 Integrated FlashMedia Controller)
AC'97 Audio Controller (Intel 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Audio Controller)
56k PSTN Modem (Intel 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Modem Controller)
82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller
Infrared Port

Product Family Page at Manufacturer's Web Site

http://global.acer.com/products/notebook/as1690.htm

Installation Procedure

Power On the Laptop by pressing the power button on right-top corner.
Insert the Ubuntu 5.10 Installation CD into the DVD drive.
The bios is set by default to not boot from the dvd drive. Press F2 when the corresponding prompt whows up to enter into the bios configuration. Go to "boot" screen and follow the instructions on the right to move "CD-ROM/DVD Drive" at top (or on top of "Hard Drive"). Press F10 to save changes and reboot.
Due to an incompatibility between laptop's ACPI implementation and default Linux ACPI Drivers the installation will freeze just after displaying "Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the kernel." on the screen, if you just press Enter at the boot prompt. I had to boot with noapic option, by typing "linux noapic" and pressing Enter at the boot prompt.
Once the installation program has started just complete all the installation steps. When finished the installation program will ask your confirmation to reboot the machine. Remove the installation cd and hit enter to reboot.

First Boot

After the reboot the new system will be booted and the installation of packages will continue. When asked about the Xorg configuration just perform the steps and choose 1280x800 resolution for the display. When all the packages are installed and configured. The laptop screen will go blank. This happens because an option is missing from the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file generated by the installer. Press CTRL+ALT+F1 to swich to the virtual console and be able to login.

Fixing X.org

$ sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

in order to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf configuration file. Add the following line

Option "MonitorLayout"    "LVDS,TMDS"

in the Device Section for the Graphics Card. After editing the Device section sould look like this:

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon Mobility X700 (RV410)"

        Driver          "ati"

        BusID           "PCI :1:0:0"

        Option          "MonitorLayout"         "LVDS,TMDS"
EndSection

After saving the changes and exiting nano run

$ sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

in order to restart the X server.

Ubuntu's graphical login screen will be displayed.

Note

The default ati X.org driver does not support 3d acceleration. In order to have 3d acceleration (DRI) in X you have to install fglrx driver. I installed fglrx driver through easyubuntu script (http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/), but can be manually installed throught synaptic (the package name is xorg-driver-fglrx). After installing xorg-driver-fglrx run

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

and when asked, select the fglrx driver. You will have to add again

Option "MonitorLayout"    "LVDS,TMDS"

to Device section of the new /etc/X11/xorg.conf that dpkg-reconfigure will generate and then restart X.

(When installing fglrx through the easyubuntu script, easyubuntu will automatically run a graphical X configuration utility. Exit this graphical utility, switch to console by pressing CTRL+ALT+F1 and run dpkg-reconfigure from there. Otherwise there is a possibility to freeze the machine wihile configuring X and to have to hard-reboot by switching off and on again.)

Gigabit Ethernet Controller

The ethernet controller is recognized as eth1 and works with no additional configuration (tg3 module used). Run Sustem -> System Administration -> Network and select "Ethernet Connection" to configure your network.

802.11b/g Wirelless Controller

The wireless controller is recognized as eth0 and works with no additional configuration (ipw2200 module is used). Run Sustem -> System Administration -> Network and select "Wireless Conection" to configure your network.

Connection to Ad-Hoc Wireless Network

I had some trouble to connect to an Ad-Hoc Wireless Network hosted by a Windows XP box through Breezy's network manager. Although the ssid of the Ad-Hoc network was listed at "Interface Properties" window, network manager failed to connect to it when enabling the interface. I managed to connect to the Ad-Hoc Network by running those commands in a terminal:

$ sudo iwconfig eth0 essid innovator mode Ad-Hoc nick innovator
$ sudo dhclient eth0

Replace 'innovator' with the ssid of the Ad-Hoc network you wish to connect to. The host of my Ad-Hoc network offers dhcp service. If your host does not offer dhcp, replace the seccond command with the appropriate configuration command (see man ip).

Audio

The sound card is recognized and configured automatically by ALSA (snd_intel8x0 module is used).

Acer Hot Keys

Hot keys seem to work on the default installation, but I also installed Acerhk found here http://www2.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~tauber/acerhk/.

Fixing Battery Status

After the installation Battery Status Monitor Applet erroneously shows AC Power and Battery Charge 0%, even when operating from battery. In other words it is unable to detect the power source and the battery status.

In order to be able to know the running power source and the battery charge level and remaining time, I had to install a fixed custom DSDT. Here is the procedure I followed:

Open a termainal and run
- $ sudo apt-get install bison flex-old build-essential gcc gcc-3.4 .
Download ACPI CA - Unix Build Environment from http://developer.intel.com/technology/iapc/acpi/downloads.htm.
Form the terminal go to the directory where you downloaded the tar.gz file and run the following commands.
- $ tar zxvf {downloaded_file}
  $ cd {generated_directory}/compiler
  $ make
  $ sudo cp iasl /usr/bin
Determine the BIOS version and download the corresponding DSDT from http://acpi.sourceforge.net/dsdt/view.php . (I selected ACER -> Aspire 1692WLMi -> 3A28_DDR2_X700 (custom) ).
Open the terminal, cd to the directory where you downloaded the DSDT file and run (substitute 'ACER-Aspire_1692WLMi-3A28_DDR2_X700-custom' with the corresponding part of the name of the file you downloaded):
- $ gunzip ACER-Aspire_1692WLMi-3A28_DDR2_X700-custom.asl.gz
  $ iasl -tc ACER-Aspire_1692WLMi-3A28_DDR2_X700-custom.asl
  $ sudo cp DSDT.aml /etc/mkinitramfs/
  $ sudo dpkg-reconfigure linux-image-$(uname -r)
Reboot. When booted up again the Battery Status Monitor Applet displays the correct information about the battery.

Modem (Not Working)

This laptop has an Intel SoftModem that is listed by lshw as:

*-communication UNCLAIMED
             description: Modem
             product: 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Modem Controller
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 1e.3
             bus info: pci@00:1e.3
             version: 04
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: generic cap_list
             resources: ioport:2400-24ff ioport:2000-207f irq:10

After googling I read that Intel's 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW family is supported by snd-intel8x0m kernel module, but when I tried to modprobe snd-intel8x0m under 2.6.12-10-686, kernel failed to load it giving the following error:

[4295176.920000] Intel ICH Modem: probe of 0000:00:1e.3 failed with error -13

I also tried to follow https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DialupModemHowto?action=show&redirect=WinModemConexantHSF and use linuxant's free driver, but with no luck.

I have not managed to make this modem to work.

PCMCIA/CardBus

It works.

The first time I used the PCMCIA slot with a PCMCIA-to-USB2.0 CardBus card it failed to initiaize, but then I rebooted with the card into the slot and it worked. From then it works no matter if I boot with the card into the slot, or plug it in after booting.

USB Ports

Just functioning.

Firewire Port

Not yet tested

CardReader Slot

Not yet tested

BlueTooth

BlueTooth works out of the box. To enable bluetooth just press the left of the two buttons on the front side of the laptop.

In order to syncronize Evolution Contacts with my T610i Cell Phone through bluetooth I searched from my phone for bluetooth devices, it detected my laptop and I added it to "my devices". Then I run the following commands from a terminal:

$ sudo apt-get install gnokii libgnokii2 $ hcitool scan

hcitool searched and found my phone. It displayed information about it:

Scanning ...
        xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx       T610

The first colon separated number "xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx" is the phone's mac address and "T610" is the model.

Then following "Gnokii configuration" section of https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NokiaEvolutionBluetoothSyncing?highlight=%28bluetooth%29 wiki page I run

$ zcat /usr/share/doc/gnokii/examples/gnokiirc.gz > ~/.gnokiirc

Then I edited ~/.gnokiirc and changed some settings:

port = My phone's mac address here
model = AT
- (AT is the model value for my Ericsson Phone)
connection = bluetooth

Then I run

$ gnokii --identify

Gnokii found and displayed info about my phone:

GNOKII Version 0.6.8
IMEI         : xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Manufacturer : SONY ERICSSON

Model        : AAB-1021011-BV

Revision     : R4D001      CXC125599EU6