Fedora 9 on the Eee PC 901

[Quasar8000]

I've been playing with F9 on my Eee PC 901 for some time and I'd like to share the things I came to so far. I will attempt to provide an accurate simple method of how I got where I am now followed by a couple of questions I had.

Installing F9 on the Eee:
I wanted to use the full Fedora installer instead on the LiveCD version. My options were either to get an external DVD drive or to use a USB flash memory/HDD. I chose the latter.
1. Use this guide (http://blog.vodkamelone.de/archives/139-Installing-Fedora-9-from-a-small-USB-stick.html) to create a flash memory that can start the Fedora installer.
2. Copy the F9 ISO image to an external HDD (or another flash memory).
3. Plug the bootable flash memory into a USB port on the Eee PC, turn it on, go into the BIOS, set the USB flash as the the first device in the boot order, save and exit.
4. Once the installer starts, plug the external HDD to a second USB port, then choose the installation media to be the HDD. The installer will then scan the HDD, find the ISO image, and use it for the installation.
5. Continue with the installation normally.

Getting the Ethernet to work
Neither the wired nor the wireless network adapters work out of the box. Luckily, a simple kernel update can solve the Ethernet issue.
1. Obtain the latest kernel RPM here (http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/distributions/fedora/linux/updates/9/i386.newkey/kernel-2.6.26.3-29.fc9.i686.rpm), or from any other F9 mirror you prefer (2.6.26.3-29 at the time of writing this post).
2. Copy the kernel RPM to the Eee PC using a flash memory.
3. Open the terminal and use "rpm -i latest_kernel_here" as root to install the kernel.
4. Reboot and you'll find the Ethernet working :-)

Getting the wireless connection to work
The Eee pc 901 and 1000 come with a Ralink wireless chipset, which means the MadWifi driver can't be used on them. The good news is that Ralink provides Linux drivers for its wireless cards on its website. So all we need to do is get that driver and compile it for the newest kernel.
1. To be able to compile the driver we need a few extra packages. In the terminal (as root), type
yum install gcc kernel-devel kernel-headers
2. Obtain the latest Ralink driver here (http://www.ralinktech.com.tw/data/drivers/2008_0708_RT2860_Linux_STA_v1.7.0.0.tar.bz2) (1.7.0.0 at the time of writing this post)
3. Unzip the driver to a directory.
4. Open the directory, and go to 2008_0708_RT2860_Linux_STA_v1.7.0.0/os/linux/rt_main_dev.c
5. Look up "dev->nd_net" and replace it with "dev_net(dev)", then save the file and close it (thanx toCiaran McCreesh’s Blag (http://ciaranm.wordpress.com/2008/07/14/edimax-ew-7728in-80211n-ralink-rt2860-with-linux-2626/) for this tip).
6. Open 2008_0708_RT2860_Linux_STA_v1.7.0.0/os/linux/config.mk and change "HAS_WPA_SUPPLICANT" and "HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT" to "y".
7. Download hdp's patch (http://fedoraforum.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=16847), and copy it to 2008_0708_RT2860_Linux_STA_v1.7.0.0/os/linux
8. Open a terminal, cd to 2008_0708_RT2860_Linux_STA_v1.7.0.0/os/linux and type "patch sta_ioctl.c sta_ioctl.patch"
9. From the terminal cd to 2008_0708_RT2860_Linux_STA_v1.7.0.0 and type "make", it should finish without any errors.
10. Type "make install", then when finished, exit the terminal.
11. If you restart the Eee PC and enable the wireless from the BIOS, it should be recognized without problems.

Hotkeys
To get the hotkeys to work, I generally followed the instructions in the Fedora Eee Pc wiki (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EeePc#FN_keys_and_events_.28fixed.29) but made a few modifications.
1. Since the code used in /etc/acpi/actions/wlan.sh was written for the MadWifi driver, I changed it to the following code, which is suitable for the Ralink driver:
#!/bin/bash

PWR=$(cat /sys/devices/platform/eeepc/wlan)

case $1 in
poweron)
if [[ "$PWR" = "0" ]]; then

modprobe pciehp pciehp_force=1

echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/eeepc/wlan

sleep 1

modprobe rt2860sta

fi
;;

poweroff)
if [[ "$PWR" = "1" ]]; then

ifconfig ra0 down

rmmod rt2860sta

sleep 1

echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/eeepc/wlan

rmmod pciehp

fi
;;
esac
2. I added two lines to /etc/acpi/actions/camera.sh to automate the loading and removal of the camera driver as the camera is turned on and off, making the code:
#!/bin/bash

CAMERA=$(cat /sys/devices/platform/eeepc/camera)

if [[ "$CAMERA" = "0" ]]; then
echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/eeepc/camera
modprobe uvcvideo
else
rmmod uvcvideo
echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/eeepc/camera
fi

And that's all :-) You should now have the Fn keys, the wired, and the wireless networks, operating without problems.

This brings us to the questions I had. Firstly, I'd appreciate any feedback on the above small tutorial. Secondly, I had a small problem with the loading of the wireless drivers: If I enable the wireless from the BIOS, I can enable it and disable it from Fedora as much as I like without problems, but If it's disabled in the BIOS when booting, clicking Fn+F2 lights up the wireless LED on the Eee but doesn't show anything on the network manager, and ifconfig returns only eth0 and lo, no ra0. Any ideas on how to solve that?

Another question I had is regarding the Bluetooth. As I understand, there's currently no way to enable it and disable it from within Fedora. Why is that? When I enable the Bluetooth from the BIOS, Fedora identifies it and works with it without any problems, and since the Bluetooth is USB connected, just like the camera, why isn't there a way to activate it like we activate the camera?

[D-Caf]

Looks good, that's about the same as what I've done so far.

As for bluetooth, I'm still looking through the original scripts from the xandros install. I'm hoping I can come up with something that might work. I saved all the old software to try and reload under fedora (at least the parts I thought were interesting). I'm wondering if just loading and unloading the driver might work.

[hotdog]

Good stuff Quasar8000, I'm going to give the ACPI config (with your changes) a go. I don't have much to add to what you've already written, but there a few things which spring to mind.

lock-keys-applet

The 901 doesn't have LEDs for Caps-lock, Num-lock or Scroll-lock, so I installed lock-keys-applet (it's in the Fedora repositories, so just 'yum install lock-keys-applet') and added it to my panel. The Scroll-lock doesn't seem to work so I disabled it, but I now have a graphical display of the Caps-lock and Num-lock status somewhere I can easily see it.

noatime

By default ext3 filesystems (which are standard for Fedora) keep a record of the most recent access time for all files and directories. This means that every time a file or directory is opened the system will write a new access time to disc. All these writes aren't good for solid state discs such as those in the Eee PCs, and not only that but disabling them can also give performance improvements. One way to do this is to edit /etc/fstab. For each ext3 partition/logical volume you want to add the noatime and nodiratime options after 'defaults'. Here's my fstab as an example:


/dev/VolGroupSSD/LogVolRoot / ext3 defaults,noatime,nodiratime 1 1
/dev/VolGroupSSD/LogVolHome /home ext3 defaults,noatime,nodiratime 1 2
UUID=3ff66307-4d87-41d8-992a-608acc6190a2 /boot ext3 defaults,noatime,nodiratime 1 2
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
UUID=454d90ab-dbaf-4b85-a47f-8c83376cca62 swap swap defaults 0 0


External monitors

I followed the guide here (http://www.intellinuxgraphics.org/dualhead.html) to edit my xorg.conf so that my laptop would work properly when hotplugging external monitors on the VGA port. Until I did the default virtual screen size was preventing me from using the Gnome display configuration GUI to set up my external monitor successfully. Here's my /etc/X11/xorg.conf:


# Xorg configuration created by pyxf86config

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
# keyboard added by rhpxl
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel 945GME"
Driver "intel"
Option "Monitor-VGA" "vga"
Option "Monitor-LVDS" "lfp"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "vga"
Option "Preferred Mode" "1680x1050"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "lfp"
Option "Preferred Mode" "1024x600"
Option "Below" "vga"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Intel 945GME"
Monitor "vga"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1680x1050" "1024x600"
Virtual 1680 1650
EndSubSection
EndSection


Suspend and hibernate

Both work fine for me, no configuration required. I did create a swap partition slightly larger than my RAM size (2GB) especially to enable hibernate to work, however I'm not sure whether this was absolutely necessary? Partition schemes in general are probably worth some discussion.

Known issues

As discussed in another thread, after returning from suspend the LCD brightness controls no longer work. Switching to another virtual terminal and back clears the problem.

The Wiki

For the benefit of others we should probably be adding all this acquired knowledge to the Eee PC page (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EeePc) of the Fedora Project Wiki too. I'm planning to restructure the page by Eee PC families (see the discussion tab) and I think we've got some useful new content to add too.

[Quasar8000]

Thank you for your responses, and hotdog, thank you for the additions, there were a couple of things I forgot to add to the tutorial, and a couple of things I didn't know myself :-) I completely agree on the necessity of updating the wiki page and sectioning it by model number, I think that's very important since it's quite outdated now.

I'll keep playing around with the Bluetooth and the Wifi, and report back if I can solve any of the two issues.

[Quasar8000]

It seems Ubuntu has support for the Bluetooth enabling/disabling feature. I think what we need is a patch for the eeepc-laptop kernel module since it was originally written for the Eee PC 701/900 which don't have Bluetooth. There's a patch here (http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?pid=304343) but I don't think it would work on Fedora.

[charactermatter]

I am not very familiar with the deb package management and have never ran a deb system. My 901 worked pretty good out of the box. I added some repos and installed KDE for a full desktop mode. I messed up and tried to install firestarter. It seems that the Xandros kenel they used does not support IP tables. It confused me though. I see IP tables are installed when I look at the synaptic package manager. Does this thing have a firewall running out of the box, or am I nakedly exposed? (I'm not a whiz kid, but I have compiled and done a custom install of gentoo, which really stretched my amateur hobble abilities ). My question is, is it worth the trouble to install the Fedora on it? THe xandros with KDE runs pretty good on it. Are there real 'tofu and potatos' benefits from installing Fedora? I am much more familiar with Fedora, I have ran every version since FC 1 first came out. So someone give me the push over the edge to go through compiling the wireless driver, and tailoring the hot key drivers., and all the other hoops I will have to go through. ..And, should I wait for 10 and see what works on a clean install of 10. ( and I don't mean Bo Derek) ( Did I just date myself?)

[Quasar8000]

Well, the way I see it, the only one who can answer this question is you. The default Xandros that comes with the Eee is made to be easy to use and everything works out of the box, but with Fedora you get the "Fedora experience". It's simply a matter of what you feel comfortable with. Personally, I think that if you simply want to use the Eee as a netbook then you don't need to remove Xandros, but it you want to experiment a little more with it, then Fedora is definitely the way to go :-)

[Quasar8000]

Here's another tip that I use for my F9 installation:

Window content on low resolution screen
I use Gnome and unfortunately, not all windows fit on the Eee screen leaving some content invisible. While the windows can be moved down beyond the lower limit of the screen, they can't be moved up. To fix that:
1. In the terminal, type:gconftool-2 --set /apps/compiz/plugins/move/allscreens/options/constrain_y --type bool 0
2. Enable "Desktop Effects": System -> Preferences -> Look and Feel -> Desktop Effects

Now you can right-click on any window in the panel, click "Move", and move it beyond the upper or the lower screen limits, and you get the added perk of having cool desktop effects :-)

[D-Caf]

That's up to you as other have said, but here is my take for comparison.

I ran the Xandros that came installed with my EeePC 1000 for about a month. Hardware integration was excellent, very impressed. But, the software stack is lacking. My biggest issues were:

1. Security: No firewall, they left it out of the kernel, no iptables

2. Security: Samba server on by default and not easy to uninstall

3. Security: If you launch the virus scanner it starts a webserver that listens to all interfaces, and it's a out of date version of that particular firewall.

4. No spellcheck. The version of StarOffice installed on my EeePc has no English spell check installed, it has polish, but no English. And yes, this is the US version of the EeePc. I've found no easy way to add this functionality into the version of StarOffice on the Eee.

So because of the above I decided to take the plunge and install Fedora. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, but the hardware integration isn't quite at the same level as the base install. But, I now have a firewall, no webserver, and actual English spell checking!

Oh, and if you are curious here are the fixes to the samba and webserver on the EeePC:
http://www.cafaro.net/2008/08/14/how-to-secure-and-eee-pc-1000-and-why/

Now this is all based on the EeePC 1000, but I'm assuming that minus the 10" screen and bigger storage the software and hardware are the same or very similar.

I am not very familiar with the deb package management and have never ran a deb system. My 901 worked pretty good out of the box. I added some repos and installed KDE for a full desktop mode. I messed up and tried to install firestarter. It seems that the Xandros kenel they used does not support IP tables. It confused me though. I see IP tables are installed when I look at the synaptic package manager. Does this thing have a firewall running out of the box, or am I nakedly exposed? (I'm not a whiz kid, but I have compiled and done a custom install of gentoo, which really stretched my amateur hobble abilities ). My question is, is it worth the trouble to install the Fedora on it? THe xandros with KDE runs pretty good on it. Are there real 'tofu and potatos' benefits from installing Fedora? I am much more familiar with Fedora, I have ran every version since FC 1 first came out. So someone give me the push over the edge to go through compiling the wireless driver, and tailoring the hot key drivers., and all the other hoops I will have to go through. ..And, should I wait for 10 and see what works on a clean install of 10. ( and I don't mean Bo Derek) ( Did I just date myself?)

[D-Caf]

Here's another tip that I use for my F9 installation:

Window content on low resolution screen
I use Gnome and unfortunately, not all windows fit on the Eee screen leaving some content invisible. While the windows can be moved down beyond the lower limit of the screen, they can't be moved up. To fix that:
1. In the terminal, type:gconftool-2 --set /apps/compiz/plugins/move/allscreens/options/constrain_y --type bool 0
2. Enable "Desktop Effects": System -> Preferences -> Look and Feel -> Desktop Effects

Now you can right-click on any window in the panel, click "Move", and move it beyond the upper or the lower screen limits, and you get the added perk of having cool desktop effects :-)

Just so you know, you can move windows beyond the screen limits with out enabling Desktop-Effects. Just press the ALT key and hold it as you left click anywhere on a window. It "grabs" the window while you hold down the left mouse key and and lets you drag the window anywhere you want. If you enable compiz (Desktop Affects) then you have to do the above you mentioned to continue still be able to move it out side the screen limits.

[Quasar8000]

Just so you know, you can move windows beyond the screen limits with out enabling Desktop-Effects. Just press the ALT key and hold it as you left click anywhere on a window. It "grabs" the window while you hold down the left mouse key and and lets you drag the window anywhere you want. If you enable compiz (Desktop Affects) then you have to do the above you mentioned to continue still be able to move it out side the screen limits.
Interesting...I was trying the "Move" and it wouldn't let me move the window beyond the top of the screen. Thanx for the tip.

[Quasar8000]

I think I solved the wireless problem. I'll just restate the problem and the solution for anyone who's not sure what I'm talking about.

After updating to the latest kernel (2.6.26.3-29), the wireless network doesn't show up in the NetworkManager after pressing the WLAN hotkey (Fn+F2) even though the blue wireless LED turns on. ra0 doesn't show up in ifconfig either. If the WLAN is enabled from the BIOS when the Eee PC is started, the hotkey gets its functionality back completely (turning the WLAN on and off). I think the problem has to do with the pciehp implementation in the new kernel since it didn't happen in the previous one.

The solution to the problem is adding "pciehp_slot_with_bus=1" after "modprobe pciehp pciehp_force=1" in /etc/acpi/actions/wlan.sh making the line modprobe pciehp pciehp_force=1 pciehp_slot_with_bus=1
This solved my problem and now the WLAN hotkey works perfectly regardless of the status of WLAN in the BIOS on startup.

[Quasar8000]

I changed the hotkey configuration a little. I decided that I wanted the camera enabled and the camera module loaded at startup, since there's no sense in enabling the camera each time I want to use it. To do this I added the following lines to /etc/rc.d/rc.local
# Webcam switch
echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/eeepc/camera
/sbin/modprobe uvcvideo
This freed up the Fn+F6 hotkey, so I decided to restore the original functionality of controlling the CPU frequency using this key. To do this:
1. In the /etc/acpi/actions/hotkeys.sh file, remove the following lines (under the Fn+F6 section):
# Webcam switch
/etc/acpi/actions/camera.sh
# TaskManager
# /usr/bin/gnome-system-monitor

and replace them with:
# CPU frequency selection
/etc/acpi/actions/cpu_freq.sh
2. Type the following two commands in the terminal (as root):
chmod a+r /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/cpuinfo_cur_freq
chmod a+r /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/cpufreq/cpuinfo_cur_freq
3. Create the cpu_freq.sh file by:
gedit /etc/acpi/actions/cpu_freq.sh
4. Paste the following code to this file:
#!/bin/bash

FREQ=$(cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/cpuinfo_cur_freq)
GOV=$(cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor)

case $GOV in
ondemand)
cpufreq-selector -c 0 -g performance
cpufreq-selector -c 1 -g performance
;;

performance)
cpufreq-selector -c 0 -f 1600000
cpufreq-selector -c 1 -f 1600000
;;

userspace)
case $FREQ in
1600000)
cpufreq-selector -c 0 -f 1333000
cpufreq-selector -c 1 -f 1333000
;;

1333000)
cpufreq-selector -c 0 -f 1067000
cpufreq-selector -c 1 -f 1067000
;;

1067000)
cpufreq-selector -c 0 -f 800000
cpufreq-selector -c 1 -f 800000
;;

800000)
cpufreq-selector -c 0 -g ondemand
cpufreq-selector -c 1 -g ondemand
;;
esac
esac
This allows the user the toggle between 1.6GHz, 1.33GHz, 1.067GHz, 800MHz, On demand mode, and Performance mode by clicking the hotkey.
4. Make the script executable by:
chmod -v +x /etc/acpi/actions/*
5. If you'd like to monitor the CPU frequency in real-time you can add the "CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor" gnome applet (which also allows you to control the frequency in the same manner as the hotkey).

Note: For the above script to work, you need to have gnome-applets installed.

[cdamian]

Did anyone manage to get the multitouch (pinch zoom) with synaptics to work?

It came with the last update I downloaded for the Asus Linux version and worked with paint and firefox. It probably just maps to ctrl+- and ctrl++

[Quasar8000]

Did anyone manage to get the multitouch (pinch zoom) with synaptics to work?
Well, I found this excellent tutorial (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-touchpad/?ca=dgr-lnxw02os-touchpad&S_TACT=105AGX59&S_CMP=GRsitel) on how to do that, but I'm still trying to get the synclient to run. You can give it a shot and tell us how it goes.

[papa_lazarou_x]

Hi All

I am currently trying to get my wireless working on my Eee pc 901. I have tried following the instructions on this thread and the Eee pc 901 thread. I have downloaded version 1.7 and version 1.8 of the rt2860 driver but I have not managed to get either of them to work. I have followed the following instructions:

Getting the wireless connection to work
The Eee pc 901 and 1000 come with a Ralink wireless chipset, which means the MadWifi driver can't be used on them. The good news is that Ralink provides Linux drivers for its wireless cards on its website. So all we need to do is get that driver and compile it for the newest kernel.
1. To be able to compile the driver we need a few extra packages. In the terminal (as root), type
Code:

yum install gcc kernel-devel kernel-headers

2. Obtain the latest Ralink driver here (1.7.0.0 at the time of writing this post)
3. Unzip the driver to a directory.
4. Open the directory, and go to 2008_0708_RT2860_Linux_STA_v1.7.0.0/os/linux/rt_main_dev.c
5. Look up "dev->nd_net" and replace it with "dev_net(dev)", then save the file and close it (thanx toCiaran McCreesh’s Blag for this tip).
6. Open 2008_0708_RT2860_Linux_STA_v1.7.0.0/os/linux/config.mk and change "HAS_WPA_SUPPLICANT" and "HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT" to "y".
7. Download hdp's patch, and copy it to 2008_0708_RT2860_Linux_STA_v1.7.0.0/os/linux
8. Open a terminal, cd to 2008_0708_RT2860_Linux_STA_v1.7.0.0/os/linux and type "patch sta_ioctl.c sta_ioctl.patch"
9. From the terminal cd to 2008_0708_RT2860_Linux_STA_v1.7.0.0 and type "make", it should finish without any errors.
10. Type "make install", then when finished, exit the terminal.
11. If you restart the Eee PC and enable the wireless from the BIOS, it should be recognized without problems.

The driver appears to be compiling without any errors but I am getting the following error mesage when typing ifup ra0 :
Error for wireless request "SetMode" (8B06) :
SET failed on device ra0 ; Network is down.
Determining IP information for ra0.... failed.

Also i don't know if this issue is being caused by the fact that I am using the 2.6.26.5-45.fc9.i686 kernel as I cannot find anyone using this kernel and getting the wireless to work but I am unable to yum install the 2.6.26.3-29.fc9.i686 as this is not in the repository and I cannot find an rpm for it anywhere online as well as the kernel-devel and kernel-headers that I will need to compile the driver.

Another piece of information that may be useful: when i type dmesg as root I get the following messages:

IOCTL::unknown IOCTL's cmd = 0x00008947
and
===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 2(2) BBS returned, data->length = 172

If anyone requires any additional information to help me try and get my wireless working please let me know and i will do my best to provide it.

Many Thanks in advance.

[Quasar8000]

Can you tell us how you're enabling the WLAN? Are you using the BIOS or the WLAN hotkey script? As for the kernel, I can confirm that the driver works without problems with this kernel.

[papa_lazarou_x]

I am using the the BIOS to enable the WLAN.

[Quasar8000]

Could you paste the output of the following commands here:
/sbin/lspci
and
/sbin/lsmod | grep rt2860sta

[papa_lazarou_x]

lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 Network controller: RaLink Unknown device 0781
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Attansic Technology Corp. Unknown device 1026 (rev b0)

I am afraid I cannot find the shortcut to use the pipe key | on my laptop would you be able to tell me the shortcut please I have an english (UK) keyboard.

Thank you for your help

[Quasar8000]

You can just copy the command from my previous post and paste it in your terminal :)

[papa_lazarou_x]

The output of lsmod is:

rt2860sta 439616 1

[Quasar8000]

That's strange, everything looks fine...What do these commands produce:
/sbin/ifconfig
and
/sbin/iwconfig

[papa_lazarou_x]

ifconfig:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:22:15:FD:C1:A2
inet6 addr: fe80::222:15ff:fefd:c1a2/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1915 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1975 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:3
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:1438312 (1.3 MiB) TX bytes:239745 (234.1 KiB)
Interrupt:17

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:560 (560.0 b) TX bytes:560 (560.0 b)

ra0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:22:43:24:33:28
inet6 addr: fe80::222:43ff:fe24:3328/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:11014 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:16934 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:953928 (931.5 KiB) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:19

iwconfig:

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

ra0 RT2860 Wireless ESSID:"" Nickname:"RT2860STA"
Mode:Auto Frequency=2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:1 Mb/s
RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Link Quality=10/100 Signal level:0 dBm Noise level:-97 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

pan0 no wireless extensions.

I am sorry it is taking me so long to reply... I am currently unable to use my eee pc to connect to the internet via lan as my house mate is asleep in the room with the router so I am using my Windows XP box to reply to these message and I am having to paste the output to a usb stick and then copy it to XP to reply to you

[Quasar8000]

Well, it looks like there are no problems with your WLAN at all :) You don't need to use "ifup ra0" since ra0 is already up at startup, you just need to install a utility to look for available wireless networks and connect to them. This should be all you need:
yum install wifi-radar
You can run this utility from the menu, without using the terminal. Hope this fixes your problem :)

[Quasar8000]

Sorry, forgot to add that you might need to tweak the config file for the wifi-radar before it can see wireless networks properly. Run the wifi-radar once (to create the config file), close it, then in the terminal (as root) type:
gedit /etc/wifi-radar/wifi-radar.conf
Look for "interface = xxx" and put "ra0" instead of the "xxx". Save and close, then try to start the program again. That should be it :)

[papa_lazarou_x]

Hi Quasar8000

Thank you very much for your help and time. Unfortunately my wireless was still producing the same error and was unable to obtain an ip address. I have managed to get it working now though. I am currently not using wifi-radar and am using the command line. I have edited the following file RT2860STA.dat (located in /etc/Wireless/RT2860STA) and ensured that I have entered all the correct information into that. I have also had to add the following line to the bottom of resolv.conf (located in /etc) GATEWAY=192.168.1.254
My wireless is now working without any issues using the command ifup ra0 (as root).
I hope this helps anyone who is/was experiencing the same error as myself.

[ogetbilo]

Hello everyone,
I made rt2860 driver RPMS for the latest version of the drivers from Ralink (1.8.0.0).
I am going to put these RPMS to the rpmfusion repo so that everyone can benefit from them.
But we need testers to see if things work ok.
If you want to help, please see:
http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showpost.php?p=1092690&postcount=8
Thanks!

[zedstarr]

5. Continue with the installation normally.




Quasar8000 - did you choose the default partitioning (Using LVM and creating / over both SSDs) or use some other scheme...?

[Quasar8000]

Quasar8000 - did you choose the default partitioning (Using LVM and creating / over both SSDs) or use some other scheme...?
I chose a custom partitioning scheme as follows:

4GB SSD:
196 MB: /boot
The rest of the drive: /

16GB SSD:
1GB (or the same size of your RAM): swap
The rest of the drive: /home

I set swappiness to zero (by adding "vm.swappiness = 0" to the end of /etc/sysctl.conf) to force the system not to use the swap partition, I only created that partition to enable hibernation, which is also why I put it on the slower MLC SSD.

[zedstarr]

I chose a custom partitioning scheme as follows:



Many thanks - I followed that scheme on my second install (my first 901 had an SSD #2 that died after only a week).

My first yum update after install took me to 99.9% utilisation on / - a few updates complained that they couldn't save config information and I guess that was why.

After the fact I set cachedir=/home/yum so that can't happen again.

I also saved some space (about 300M!) on / by manually deleting unwanted language files from /usr/share/locale

[fed_core9]

Looks good also I had some trouble with my wireless but it has been fixed.

[Quasar8000]

I made an updated tutorial for installing Fedora 10 on the Eee PC 901/1000, it can be found here (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=206114) :)

[fredex]

Quasar8000, does the xorg.conf file you posted in earlier in this thread also work in Fedora 10? (I don't see it mentioned in your F10 tutorial).

I've just tried my F10 installation (eeepc 901) on a projector, and once the system detects the projector it switches into 800x480 for both the built-in display AND the projector. But I haven't tried your xorg.conf contents yet.

Thanks!

[Quasar8000]

Actually, I didn't try to modify the xorg.conf since I don't have an external monitor or projector to try it on. I can't see why the configuration should be any different though, so the one that worked for F9 should also work for F10. Just in case, make a backup of your original xorg.conf before making any modifications, and let us know how it goes :)

[hotdog]

I've got a fresh F10 install on my Eee PC 901, and I think an xorg.conf is going to be needed to get external monitors working properly. There are a few problems with the default behaviour you get without one:

1. The dual head configuration defaults to mirroring the two displays for which both displays have to be in the same mode. For most external displays the only possible common modes with the internal display are going to be very low resolution (i.e. 800x480). You can overide this behaviour later (using xrandr) but it's not ideal and you're still stuck with low-res boot and login screens. In fact this issue made it impossible for me to use an external monitor during installation, Anaconda can't be used at 800x480 resolution because the main buttons end up off the bottom of the screen...

2. The 'screen' size gets set on X.org startup to be big enough to accommodate all the attached displays, but no bigger. What this means is that if you boot up with the external monitor attached you can configure dual head for an extended desktop just fine, but if you attach the monitor later you'll be severely restricted in the resolutions and display placements you can select. The only way out of this situation would be to log out to restart X.org.

3. The gnome-display-properties application (System->Preferences->Hardware->Display Resolution) doesn't work properly, at least not for Intel 945GME graphics such as in our Eee's. The only reliable way to reconfigure the displays is with xrandr at the command line.

A xorg.conf should be able to easily fix the first two problems, however. Following the guide here (http://intellinuxgraphics.org/dualhead.html) you can set up a non-mirrored monitor layout for X.org to use by default when it detects an external monitor and you can also specify a default 'screen' size (the Virtual entry in the Screen section) large enough so you can hotplug external monitors without having to restart X.org. As for the third issue, well, I've filed it with Bugzilla...

[fredex]

Ah, Quasar8000 I was (confused!) thinking of the earlier post by Hotdog in which he showed a revised xorg.conf and a link to the intel page that describes the way to do it.

My eeepc, running F10, doesn't have an xorg.conf. Must be a new, smarter, X server :) So I just copied in the one Hotdog gave and rebooted and found no difference whatsoever in the behavior. :(

Attaching it to a projector at work (I don't know the max resolution of it, but I've run it at 1024x768 before) I can get 640x480 only. Switching back to the internal monitor resolution returns to 1024x600, but the upper and lower panels remain the sizes and positions they were when the display was at the lower resolution, i.e., they are now not the full width of the screen, and the bottom one is an inch or more up from the bottom. When I get more time I'll have to play with it some more, perhaps trying xrandr would let me set some better resolutions. Time will tell.

[hotdog]

Hi fredex, it sounds like you're using the gnome-display-properties tool (System->Preferences->Hardware->Display Resolution) to set up the dual head display with the projector. I've found that it doesn't work properly at all for dual head (panels ending up in strange places, etc.) and so have to use xrandr to do display reconfiguration.

When you get a chance connect up the projector and just type 'xrandr' in a terminal. That should give details of the virtual screen size, list the usable modes of the currently connected displays, and indicate which modes are active and which are the 'preferred' modes (i.e. native resolution for an LCD). If the virtual screen size is still too small and the native resolution mode of the external monitor isn't listed than it means the xorg.conf hasn't done the trick.

To enable an external display as an extended desktop I just type the command 'xrandr --output VGA --auto --above LVDS' which enables the external display in its preferred mode and creates an extended desktop with the external display above the laptop display. Before disconnecting the external display I have to disable it using 'xrandr --output VGA --off'. The other options are described in the xrandr man page ('man xrandr'), it's quite simple to use.

It would be nice if this all happened automatically (especially disabling monitors when you disconnect them) but X.org, RandR, Intel and Gnome aren't quite there yet.

[hotdog]

OK, I've now put my money where my mouth is and created a pared down, minimal xorg.conf for my Fedora 10 Eee PC 901. This is intended to let X.org automatically configure as much stuff as possible, I've only included just enough to make it do more sensible things with dual head.


Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel 945GME"
Driver "intel"
Option "Monitor-VGA" "vga"
Option "Monitor-LVDS" "lfp"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "vga"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "lfp"
Option "Below" "vga"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Intel 945GME"
Monitor "vga"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Virtual 1920 1800
EndSubSection
EndSection


What this does is tell X to enable both the internal and external monitors on startup (if connected, if not it'll gracefully fall back to just using the internal monitor) and to configure them at their native resolution as an extended desktop with one above the other (instead of the silly mirrored setup which results in horribly low resolution modes when done on an Eee PC). The behaviour when booting up with an external monitor attached is now much more pleasant.

It also sets the virtual screen to a size that will enable me to 'hotplug' any external monitor after starting X and use it at its native resolution. The highest resolution monitor that the Eee PC can drive from the VGA port is 1920x1200, so to enable me to do that with the internal 1024x600 below it I need a virtual screen size of 1920x1800. Actually enabling and disabling the external monitor will still require me to use xrandr in a terminal, but at least I won't have to restart X.

Note, you won't be able to set up an extended desktop with the two monitors side by side with these setting as the virtual screen isn't wide enough. With Intel 945GME graphics if you go above 2048 pixels in either direction for the virtual screen direct rendering gets disabled, killing graphics performance, so I just settle for the vertical arrangement. It generally makes sense for me anyway, I usually have the laptop sitting in front of the external monitor so it really is below it.

[malath]

Dear guys,

i need help, i just installed fedora 9 on my eee pc, asus...i followed the tutorial iin the begining of this thread to get my cam to work and function keys, but unfortunately nothing is working. i edited the files but still also cam is not turned on and no hotkeys are working.

when i had a look for the files requested to be modified it was empty.

[scottro]

Look in the howto section, I believe he's posted an updated guide.

[zedstarr]

Has anyone found a definitive guide on getting all audio working on the eee 901?

I've never had the built-in front mic working. I have had some limited success at getting my bluetooth headset working with skype, but after the last kernel update I've now even lost the "front mic" as an input device - something's very broken :(

Playback is still OK, but audio capture seems chaotic to say the least.

I've googled and found either conflicting advice, or some debian specific stuff which talks about rebuilding the alsa driver ( see here (http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC/HowTo/Sound#head-847b48cb34f949d53644217dd51e50a01d262131) ) but does that rely on a 2.6.28 series kernel....


Maybe time to upgrade to F10 :)


zed.

[hotdog]

The front mics never worked for me with Fedora 9, and don't seem to with Fedora 10 either. I haven't tried very hard to find a solution though as I simply bought a USB headset for use with Skype, etc. instead and that has worked fine.

I hoping we'll get a 2.6.28 kernel in Fedora 10 soon myself, but for other reasons.

The touchpads in the Eee PCs (and some of the other netbooks) gets misidentified by Linux as a Logitech ImPS/2 Scrollwheel mouse (plus a few other incorrect bits of hardware, if I recall correctly). The touchpad still mostly works (two finger vertical scrolling and one, two and three finger taps for left, middle and right mouse clicks all OK) but you can't modify the settings.

The touchpads are actually Elantech pads, however, and there's now a driver (http://arjan.opmeer.net/elantech/) which causes the hardware to be identified correctly and adds support for it via the Synaptics touchpad driver. With this you can use all the Synaptics driver settings and tools, the one I'm particularly after is the daemon which automatically disables touchpad taps while you're typing. I keep accidentally brushing the pad and end up with my text inserted in the wrong part of the document I'm writing... It was added to the mainstream kernel for 2.6.28.

[hotdog]

An update on the built in microphones, with the latest Fedora 10 kernel (2.6.27.7-134) I've been able to record from the front mics using Sound Recorder. Just make sure they're not muted anywhere in Volume Control or the Pulse Audio Volume Control and they should work.

I haven't tried them with Skype yet though.

[Uru Wolf]

Hey, I am a little stuck on the make process.

make: *** /lib/modules/2.6.27.12-78.2.8.fc9.i686/build: No such file or directory. Stop.
make: *** [LINUX] Error 2

and then it stops. I guess I need some extra files but am not sure where to get them. Could anyone help out at all?

[Hlingler]

You do not have the necessary kernel-devel package(s):
yum install kernel-devel kernel-headers

If you plan to compile stuff, you might as well get all the necessary tools too:
yum groupinstall "Development Tools" "Development Libraries"

Run ./configure and make as a normal user, make install as root user.

V

[Uru Wolf]

Well, I just get:
No package kernal-devel available
No package kernal-headers available

[Hlingler]

Please post results:
yum repolist
rpm -q kernel kernel-devel kernel-headers

V

[Uru Wolf]

here it is:

yum repolist
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
updates-newkey | 2.3 kB 00:00
fedora | 2.4 kB 00:00
updates | 2.6 kB 00:00
updates8-gdm | 2.6 kB 00:00
fedora8-gdm | 2.1 kB 00:00
repo id repo name status
fedora Fedora 9 - i386 enabled: 9,897
fedora8-gdm Fedora 8 - i386 enabled: 8,439
updates Fedora 9 - i386 - Updates enabled: 10
updates-newkey Fedora 9 - i386 - Updates Newkey enabled: 5,644
updates8-gdm Fedora 8 - i386 - Updates enabled: 1
repolist: 23,991

rpm -q kernal kernal-devel kernal-headers
package kernal is not installed
package kernal-devel is not installed
package kernal-headers is not installed

[Hlingler]

I see it now: you have misspelled 'kernel' - two 'e's, no 'a'. Try a copy-and-paste of the command:
yum install kernel-devel kernel-headers

V

P.S. Why do you have both F8 and F9 repos enabled ?!?!?!

[Uru Wolf]

XD Sorry, I was half asleep when doing this. I will give it another go with correct spelling. I use the fedora 8 login screen, so I could customise it.

[Uru Wolf]

^^ It's all working now, thanks Hlingler, for the help

[Uru Wolf]

Hi there. I followed this through and everything seems to work ok apart from a couple of things. I am not getting any wireless and the fn+f2 does not do anything, regardless of the BIOS settings. It worked fine in fedora 9 but not 10 (my current)

[adelton]

An update on the built in microphones, with the latest Fedora 10 kernel (2.6.27.7-134) I've been able to record from the front mics using Sound Recorder. Just make sure they're not muted anywhere in Volume Control or the Pulse Audio Volume Control and they should work.

I haven't tried them with Skype yet though.

Could you please post the output of alsa-info --no-upload? I'm using kernel-2.6.27.12-170 and when using arecord, I can only record whitenoise.

[greg.harvey]

Some excellent resources in this thread. Bookmarking! =)

I also used the wiki page here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EeePc

I have just put Fedora 10 on my EEE (got sick of Xandros not working properIy) and everything is fine, just as the wiki page suggests, except the wifi. I have the Ralink wireless PCI card and I've followed the instructions on the above wiki page to install the driver from RPMFusion. Software installed, device present, but no wlan0. Am a missing a stupid step? Most people say wireless just works after the driver is present but mine isn't doing anything! Any pointers? Blue wifi light is ON, btw and the device lists in Device Manager (I installed it to check from the UI) and doesn't report any problems.

[Quasar8000]

I have just put Fedora 10 on my EEE (got sick of Xandros not working properIy) and everything is fine, just as the wiki page suggests, except the wifi. I have the Ralink wireless PCI card and I've followed the instructions on the above wiki page to install the driver from RPMFusion. Software installed, device present, but no wlan0. Am a missing a stupid step? Most people say wireless just works after the driver is present but mine isn't doing anything! Any pointers? Blue wifi light is ON, btw and the device lists in Device Manager (I installed it to check from the UI) and doesn't report any problems.

I made this tutorial for F9, if you have F10 you should check out this one (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=206114). You can also visit my fedora-eee (http://www.fedora-eee.com/) website for a less time-consuming howto :)

[greg.harvey]

Thanks, that's great. So are you saying the Fedora EEE wiki page is wrong? They seem to be under the impression the RPMFusion driver works for the Ralink wireless card, but it seems this is not the case. I guess we should update it with links to alternative approaches if this is the case.

[greg.harvey]

All sorted ... posted exactly why I was having trouble here:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?p=1218048#post1218048

Seems the drivers in RPMfusion are out of date. My system wouldn't work with them anyway...

[greg.harvey]

This might be useful for anyone trying to work out how to get more space on the EEE desktop:
http://www.drupaler.co.uk/blog/fedora-desktop-small-screens/439

Kinda faux desktop zoom.