Fedora 12 on my Asus EEE 1000 SSD netbook

[Dandapani]

Fedora 12 is nearly turnkey on my Asus EEE 1000 SSD netbook. I just needed a few tweaks to get the wireless and touchpad seutp. All of this info is scattered in various places including right here on the FedoraForum, but I thought if it would help just one more person to have it all in one place, then so be it.

1) I used the Fedora 12 i686 Live iso.

2) I installed it on a 1GB thumbdrive using my desktop Fedora 11 system:

sudo livecd-iso-to-disk Fedora-12-i686-Live.iso /dev/sdg1

3) While booting the EEE, hit the Esc key and select the USB device of the thumbdrive. Make sure a wired ethernet is plugged in. We will restore the wireless later.

4) Pick the defaults, except when it comes to the disk partitioning. I have the pair of SSD drives, one 8GB and the other 32GB. I reduced the swap volume size to 2GB to match the memory in the device rather than using the 4GB default (2x memory) and increased the / volume size to the max. I planned on turning off swapping and only intended to use the swap space for the sleep/hibernate functionality. Otherwise, I let the installation setup the layout. a /boot with 200MB of space, 2gb swap volume, and the rest under LVM covering both SSDs.

5) Finish the installation. Reboot and create your user.

6) Apply any patches that are available using SoftwareUpdate. Reboot if necessary.

7) Now time for setting up the wireless. We need the rt2860 driver. This is available in the rpmfusion.org repro. First we need to set it up. Bring up FF and use this url:

http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/...ble.noarch.rpm

Do the install for the repo setup.

Next, bring up a terminal and become root. You need to be root to:

yum -y install rt2860

This will d/l and install the rt2860 driver. Reboot, removing the wired ethernet, and bring up the NetworkManager to setup the wireless connection.

8) Tired of hitting the mousepad buttons and prefer to tap the touchpad for clicks? Then create this file /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-synaptics.fdi using your favorite editor (as root, of course):

(cut/paste the following)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
  <device>
    <match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.touchpad">
       <merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">On</merge>
       <merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateTwoFingerMinZ" type="string">40</merge>
       <merge key="input.x11_options.VertTwoFingerScroll" type="string">1</merge>
       <merge key="input.x11_options.HorizTwoFingerScroll" type="string">1</merge>
       <merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton1" type="string">1</merge>
       <merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton2" type="string">3</merge>  <!--two finger tap -> middle clieck(3) -->
       <merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton3" type="string">2</merge>  <!--three finger tap -> right click(2). almost impossible to click -->
	<merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">synaptics</merge>
    </match>
  </device>
</deviceinfo>

Then reboot to restart HAL.

9) Finally we want to turn off swapping. No need to overexercise our SSDs.

as root:

echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

And to make it permanent across boots:

cp /etc/sysctl.conf /etc/sysctl.conf.ORIG

echo "vm.swappiness = 0" >> /etc/sysctl.conf

(notice the TWO > symbols!!!)

This leaves 2gb of unused swap for allowing the hibernate/sleep functionality.

10) The rest is just personal preference.


Note: I did notice the "dimming the lcd screen on idle" was a bit flaky, dimming the lcd at odd times, so in PowerManagement, I turned off idle dimming (this was with Gnome, doesn't seem to be an issue with LXDE, which I prefer to use).

That's it in a nutshell. Hope this helps at least one person. I wish I had this the other day

Edit: Another personal preference for LXDE, setting up power management.

http://jamesthevicar.com/blog/?post=20090716_lxde_gnome

[glb]

I'd just like to testify that the nilfs2 file system really does improve the user experience for those of us who have netbooks with only SSD hard drives. My EEE PC 900 absolutely crawled when doing file IO until I installed the OS onto a nilfs2 file system. I've been using it for a while now without any problems but anyone who wants to consider using it should be warned that this file system is still in development stages. Here is a link to an online article which hypes the use of nilfs on SSD's.

NILFS: A File System to Make SSDs Scream

Getting Fedora 12 installed on a nilfs file system is a little tricky, but here is the procedure that worked for me.

--- Step 1. Perform a minimal install of Fedora 12 onto a small partition on your eeepc's ssd.

There are several ways to accomplish this. The method that I used was to use fdisk to put an active primary linux partition onto a usb drive (be sure to flag it as active by using the "a" hotkey so that it will be bootable) and I copied my /boot directory from another Fedora 12 computer and the kernel from a Fedora 12 install CD onto the thumb drive (I put what was under /boot into the root of the USB drive). The link below is to an online article which discusses which files are needed from the CD in order to boot into Fedora's installer.

http://gofedora.com/how-to-install-f...ithout-cd-dvd/

Note that Fedora 12 additionally requires the "images" subdirectory to be copied from the CD to the USB drive as noted in comment 16 of the aforementioned article.

After you have the files in place, you have to use the grub command to set up the boot sector of the USB drive to point at the correct files. Here is the sequence of commands that will accomplish this.

[user@computer ~]$ grub --device-map=/dev/null
grub> device (hd0) /dev/sdb
grub> root (hd0,0)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit
[user@computer ~]$

Install Fedora using the HTTP protocol and give it the url of a Fedora 12 mirror near you.

When going through the graphical install of Fedora 12, create just 1 1GB ext4 partition to contain your Fedora 12 installation and a swap partition. When you get to the screen asking what to install, uncheck all the package options and select "customize now" which will give you another screen that you can use to further customize what packages will be installed when you click next. When you get to the more detailed package selection screen, again uncheck EVERYTHING except the "base" category which I think is under the "base system" category (I'm writing this from memory). In the base category, you also want to uncheck almost everything EXCEPT for yum-utils, dump, and wget which you will need to add the rest of the system once you get it onto the nilfs file system. I think I left ACPI, prelink, symlinks, openssh-clients, and maybe a few others checked but I don't think any of them are needed (you shouldn't have much more than about 10 packages in all selected in the base category).

Proceed with the install which shouldn't take long because it is only about 500 MB worth of packages.

--- Step 2. Remove SELinux (nilfs2 doesn't support selinux file system attributes yet)

Once you are booted into your new installation, use vi to edit /etc/sysconfig/selinux and set SELINUX=disabled. Use vi to edit /boot/grub/grub.conf and add the options audit=0 and selinux=0 to the kernel line. Disable the "auditd" service by entering the command "chkconfig auditd off" at the command line. Reboot so that your netbook will be running with selinux completely disabled and run the following command to remove the selinux attributes from the file system.

find / \( -fstype ext2 -o -fstype ext3 -o -fstype ext4 -o -fstype btrfs \) -exec setfattr -x security.selinux {} \;

--- Step 3. Add Ahmad Abdel-Yaman's optimized kernel: http://www.fedora-netbook.com/.

You can download the RPM's to another system and transfer them using a thumb drive or you might be able to use wget on your netbook to fetch them directly from one of the mirrors that provide direct URL's to the RPM files.

Also follow his optimization recomendations (you'll have to use vi to edit the files at this point or use yum to install vim or nano). Don't try to install a big graphical editor like gedit at this point.

Make sure that the selinux=0 and audit=0 options are still set on the new kernel once it is installed.

--- Step 4. Use yum to install the nilfs-utils package.

--- Step 5. Use your bootable USB drive to grab an image of your minimal installation of Fedora 12 from the netbook's SSD.

Boot off of you USB drive again and proceed as if you were going to reinstall the OS but stop when you get to the first graphical screen. Once you are at that screen, you should be able to press Ctrl-Alt-F2 and get a command line from which you can work on your existing installation (you might have to press the enter key if the command prompt doesn't show right away).

You should now be in a fedora command-line environment that is running on a RAM drive in your EEE PC's RAM memory. At this point you need to mount your thumb drive's file system and your EEE PC's file system so that you can put a backup copy of your minimal fedora installation on your thumb drive.

You'll have to determine which device nodes contain which file systems by trial and error (although if your USB drive has only one partition and your SSD drive has two (a swap and a root file system) then you will probably be able to see what's what just by listing the sd* nodes under /dev -- your SSD will have both a "sda1" and a "sda2" partition whereas your USB drive will have only a "sdb1" partition).

Create two directories under /mnt (e.g. /mnt/usb and /mnt/ssd), mount the usb and ssd partitions, verify that everything is what you think it is by using ls to list the contents of those directories after you have them mounted, then use the dump command to make a backup of /mnt/ssd to /mnt/usb.

cd /mnt/usb && dump -0 -z9 -f ssd.rootfs /mnt/ssd

--- Step 6. Create a nilfs2 file system on the remaining free space of your netbook's SSD.

You might be able to download (with wget) and install the nilfs2 RPM in the installer's command-line environment that you are currently in (I think I succeeded in doing it that way during one of my trials). If not, you'll have to reboot back into your minimal fedora install to create the partition and restore the dump that you just made to it.

Use fdisk to create a linux partition on the remainder of the SSD's free space (or however large you want it to be) and then run "mkfs -t nilfs2 /dev/sda3" (substituting "sda3" with whatever partition number you just created) to format the partition with a nilfs2 file system.

--- Step 7. Put your minimal fedora installation on the nilfs file system.

Once you have the partition created and the file system formatted, create mount points under /mnt and mount your USB drive and your new nilfs2 file system and use the "restore" command to copy the backup of the minimal install that you just created to the new nilfs2 file system.

mkdir /mnt/usb
mkdir /mnt/nilfs2
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb
mount -t nilfs2 /dev/sda3 /mnt/nilfs2
cd /mnt/nilfs2
restore -rf /mnt/usb/ssd.rootfs
umount /mnt/usb

--- Step 8. Tweak the /etc/fstab file in the restored nilfs2 file system, move /boot to /boot.bak, and make a new /boot directory.

You'll need to edit /mnt/nilfs2/etc/fstab so that /dev/sda3 is mounted to "/" (be sure to set the file system type column to "nilfs2"). I don't think the "noatime" parameter works with nilfs2, so just leave that column set to "defaults" on the nilfs2 mount. You'll also need to add a line to mount /dev/sda1 (or whatever partition currently contains your minimal fedora installation) to "/boot". Since this is an ext4 file system, you'll want to leave the "noatime" flag set. We have to have a separate ext4 partition for the "boot" files because the linux kernel is not yet capable of booting off of a nilfs2 file system.

mv /mnt/nilfs2/boot /mnt/nilfs2/boot.bak
mkdir /mnt/nilfs2/boot
vi /mnt/nilfs2/etc/fstab
umount /mnt/nilfs2

--- Step 9. Reconfigure the ext4 partition to serve as the "boot" partition of your new nilfs root file system.

To perform this step, you'll have to be in an environment other than the minimal fedora install that is on the ext4 partition of your netbook's SSD. I used the command-line environment that is available in Fedora's installer as described in step 5.

Once you are booted into a suitable command-line environment, create a mount point under /mnt, mount your minimal fedora installation from the ext4 partition on your SSD to the mount point, and delete everything under the mount point except the /boot directory and its contents (you can also leave the "lost+found" directory).

cd /mnt/mountpoint && for i in $(ls -1 | grep -v "boot\|lost+found"); do rm -rf $i; done

Next, cd into the boot directory that is under the mount point and move all the files and directories under that directory up to the parent directory (i.e. "cd /mnt/mountpoint/boot && mv * .."). You can then delete the "boot" directory if you wish (cd .. && rmdir boot).

Next, edit the grub.conf file so that the kernel will select the nilfs2 file system as the root file system during boot. To do this, change the parameter "root=UUID=whatever" to "root=/dev/sda3" where "sda3" is substituted with whatever partition contains your nilfs2 file system. You'll also need to delete the "ro" parameter and you will also have to add "rootfstype=nilfs2" to the list of parameters. You'll also need to remove the leading "/boot" from the kernel and initrd lines.

[glb]

--- Step 10. Reinstall the grub boot loader.

unmount the nilfs2 filesystem that you had mounted in step 9 and reboot.

Boot off of your USB drive one more time (your netbook's SSD won't be bootable at this point because you've moved the files around in the boot partition). When the grub boot loader comes up, press the "c" key to enter grub's command mode. From grub's command mode, you should be able to enter the following sequence of commands to reinstall the grub boot loader on your netbook's SSD.

grub> root (hd1,2)
grub> setup (hd1)

I'm assuming that (hd0) would be your USB drive at this point and (hd1) your SSD drive but it might be the other way around. It shouldn't hurt to set them both up or you could try using the "cat" command to view the grub.conf file on the filesystem to determine which is the correct one.

grub> cat /grub/grub.conf

Once grub is reinstalled, you should be able to remove the USB drive and reboot and be happily on your way with a really fast solid-state-only netbook. Once you have the minimal fedora install working correctly on a nilfs2 file system your netbook, you can type yum groupinstall "X Window System" and yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop Environment" to start building the system up to a fuller and more useful Fedora installation.

gb

[glb]

--- Troubleshooting:

One error I made while trying to get Fedora onto a nilfs file system was with the settings in the grub.conf file. Remember that the "root (hd0,1)" line needs to point to the ext4 boot partition but the "root=/dev/sda3" line needs to point at the / partition.

I've also successfully used this procedure to install Fedora 13 on nilfs2 but I had one issue with it and that was with a package that tried to install while running "yum update". The package that would not install was setup-2.8.20-1.fc13.noarch. It failed to install twice in a row with the error "installing package setup-2.8.20-1.fc13.noarch needs 1 inodes on the / filesystem". To get yum to give up on the package and move on I had to add "exclude=setup" to /etc/yum.conf, move the /var/lib/yum/transaction-all.yyyy-mm-dd.hh:mm.ss file to /var/lib/yum/transaction-all.yyyy-mm-dd.hh:mm.ss.disabled, and run "yum clean all".

gb

[smr54]

I think this willl be very helpful to people, including those with different laptops that have that Realink card.

[Fahim]

Thanks for these instructions. Is there a possibility to update these instructions for Fedora 13. I have always been unsuccessful getting the wireless to work on my eeepc1000( which happens to be the exact one that you are using). What I did was; made a Fedora 13 boot-able dvd iso and installed fedora 13. After the installation I did 'yum -y update'. When this finished I did 'yum -y install rt2860' after enabling the free and non free rpmfusion repositories. Then rebooted the computer and found that where earlier I was able to see the hotspots around me none exist anymore.

[Dandapani]

Thanks for these instructions. Is there a possibility to update these instructions for Fedora 13. I have always been unsuccessful getting the wireless to work on my eeepc1000( which happens to be the exact one that you are using). What I did was; made a Fedora 13 boot-able dvd iso and installed fedora 13. After the installation I did 'yum -y update'. When this finished I did 'yum -y install rt2860' after enabling the free and non free rpmfusion repositories. Then rebooted the computer and found that where earlier I was able to see the hotspots around me none exist anymore.

I'm sorry, but I haven't tried F13 on my EEE. I was afraid of what just happened to you. I will play with this using an external USB drive and see what I can come up with.

---------- Post added at 10:29 AM CDT ---------- Previous post was at 02:53 AM CDT ----------

I'm sorry, but I haven't tried F13 on my EEE. I was afraid of what just happened to you. I will play with this using an external USB drive and see what I can come up with.

Well, I used the /usr/sbin/liveusb-creator to make a bootable F13 1Gb thumbdrive.

From there I booted it and install F13 on a 6gb USB HD.

When the installation completed, I boot the HD and did a full update including the latest kernel. I think that is an import step.

After rebooting on the new kernel, I went to http://rpmfusion.org and installed the free and non free RPM repository. Then I installed the wireless driver.

yum -y install rt2860

After that, rebooted, logged in and selected my WiFi connection which was clearly listed. Entered my passcode and the wireless connected. Looks fine.

I would review your steps and make sure you have an updated system, then make sure both the rpm fusion repos are listed:

rpm -qa | grep rpmfusion

rpmfusion-nonfree-release-13-2.noarch
rpmfusion-free-release-13-2.noarch

then install or update the rt2860.

So, F13 is looking pretty good. I think I'll try a pre-upgrade on my EEE.

[Fahim]

I have been doing the update using the following command:
'yum -y update' as root.
Another thing is, that I am using the Live USB Creator to make a bootable 'DVD i386iso' and then installing fedora 13 using the bootable usb created. Do you think this method may be causing the problem?
Thanks.

[Dandapani]

I have been doing the update using the following command:
'yum -y update' as root.
Another thing is, that I am using the Live USB Creator to make a bootable 'DVD i386iso' and then installing fedora 13 using the bootable usb created. Do you think this method may be causing the problem?
Thanks.

I think that pretty much describes the path I just documented. The only diff was that the create d/l the 686 system and created the bootable thumb drive. You mention 386. I don't think that version is available. Again, steps in abbreviated form:

1) sudo /usr/sbin/liveusb-creator, choose the F13 686 option if given choice.
2) boot the thumbdrive on the EEE
3) install to disk
4) reboot onto newly installed system
5) su to root in terminal window
6) yum -y update # will install hundreds of files including a new kernel
7) reboot
8) use FF and go here:
http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/...ble.noarch.rpm
and
http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfr...ble.noarch.rpm
installing each.
9) yum -y install rt2860
10) reboot
11) check networkmanager for your wireless. Make sure the blue antenna light is on.

[Dandapani]

FOLLOW UP:

I performed a preupgrade upgrade from F12 to F13 on my EEE after the good experience above installing F13 on a spare drive and running that on my EEE. (It took >10 hours for the upgrade to finish!!!)

One annoyance is that the 1, 2, 3 button taps on the touch pad no longer work with the hal FDI file as originally reported above.

I had to just stick the synclient commands in my .bash_profile instead.

synclient TapButton1=1
synclient TapButton2=3
synclient TapButton3=2

[Fahim]

Works!! I think it is the 686 option that is the key. I have been doing the same thing you mentioned earlier, only this time I installed 686 option and boom it worked(following the instructions given). Thanks a lot!!!

[Dandapani]

Works!! I think it is the 686 option that is the key. I have been doing the same thing you mentioned earlier, only this time I installed 686 option and boom it worked(following the instructions given). Thanks a lot!!!

Excellent.

And let me thank you for your original post that got me thinking about upgrading MY EEE to F13!

Peace!

[Dandapani]

FOLLOW UP:

I performed a preupgrade upgrade from F12 to F13 on my EEE after the good experience above installing F13 on a spare drive and running that on my EEE. (It took >10 hours for the upgrade to finish!!!)

One annoyance is that the 1, 2, 3 button taps on the touch pad no longer work with the hal FDI file as originally reported above.

I had to just stick the synclient commands in my .bash_profile instead.

synclient TapButton1=1
synclient TapButton2=3
synclient TapButton3=2

I just installed F15 from scratch using the LXDE spin on a USB drive and all I had to do was these 3 lines. Network is working out of the box.

[smr54]

As I understand it---I might be wrong, but hopefully, someone will correct that....one reason the old hal stuff isn't working is that HAL is being deprecated, and removed, I think, in F16. However, synclient has to do with the xorg-x11-drv-synaptics, so isn't dependent upon HAL being there or not.

As I said, this is my understanding of something that I haven't really researched, so I could be completely wrong, but it seems at least somewhat logical.

[Dandapani]

Installed Fedora 16 LXDE from live spin off USB thumbdrive. Installation was perfect and everything ran fine. Only customizations were the synclient commands in my .bash_profile to enable the touchpad touches and downloaded Chrome browser.

(I did try the preupgrade from F15 but it failed again. The preupgrade runs and downloads files, then after the reboot it reverts to 15, no actual upgrade. POC?)