F11 on Eee PC 1101: GMA 500 etc

[chaud lapin]

Hi all,

I've installed F11 on a new Eee PC 1101, which has a very nice 11.6" screen. Unfortunately, this netbook uses the Intel GMA 500 videochipset, which has had iffy support under Linux, but hopefully this may change soon, see: Is An Open-Source Poulsbo Driver Coming?.

Three questions:

1.) I've installed AdamW's xorg-x11-drv-psb package and dependencies from the RPMFusion repo. It installs a kmod for the 2.6.30.9-90 kernel. When I boot this kernel, the boot process appears to go without a hitch until around the time "Welcome to Fedora" and "Starting UDEV..." is displayed. The screen flickers then blanks out. X appears to start, and I can subsequently ssh into the Eee and see everything is running. But the display remains blank. FWIW, here is the autogenerated xorg.conf:

$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf
# Xorg configuration created by livna-config-display

Section "Files"
	ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
	Option	    "AIGLX" "on"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "Videocard0"
	Driver      "psb"
	Option	    "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
	Option	    "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

If I boot the 2.6.29.4-167 kernel, it complains about not finding a pbs kmod but boot fine and the display comes up. Any thoughts about why the display is blanking with the pbs driver?

2.) The highest resolution the vesa driver offers is 800x600, while the screen is rated at 1366x768. I tried adding this section to xorg.conf:

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Default Screen"
	Device     "Videocard0"
	DefaultDepth     16
	SubSection "Display"
		Depth     16
		Modes    "1366x768"
	EndSubSection
EndSection

X starts OK, but resolution is still 800x600. Am I missing something here?

3.) On the Fedora Wiki I added an subentry to the the Eee PC page: Eee PC#Eee PC 1101 Series. As I indicated there, several of the Fn key combinations don't work, such as screen brightness, and the WiFi doesn't come back on after Suspend. Under which packages should I file bug reports?

Thanks.

[egrep]

Originally Posted by chaud lapin

Hi all,

I've installed F11 on a new Eee PC 1101, which has a very nice 11.6" screen. Unfortunately, this netbook uses the Intel GMA 500 videochipset, which has had iffy support under Linux, but hopefully this may change soon, see: Is An Open-Source Poulsbo Driver Coming?.

I have the same thing in an Acer a0715 [I think that is the model]. Very good intructions on ubuntu over on their forums, and works well, but now I am testing Fedora.

Three questions:

1.) I've installed AdamW's xorg-x11-drv-psb package and dependencies from the RPMFusion repo. It installs a kmod for the 2.6.30.9-90 kernel. When I boot this kernel, the boot process appears to go without a hitch until around the time "Welcome to Fedora" and "Starting UDEV..." is displayed. The screen flickers then blanks out. X appears to start, and I can subsequently ssh into the Eee and see everything is running. But the display remains blank. FWIW, here is the autogenerated xorg.conf:
If I boot the 2.6.29.4-167 kernel, it complains about not finding a pbs kmod but boot fine and the display comes up. Any thoughts about why the display is blanking with the pbs driver?

2.) The highest resolution the vesa driver offers is 800x600, while the screen is rated at 1366x768. I tried adding this section to xorg.conf:
X starts OK, but resolution is still 800x600. Am I missing something here?

3.) On the Fedora Wiki I added an subentry to the the Eee PC page: Eee PC#Eee PC 1101 Series. As I indicated there, several of the Fn key combinations don't work, such as screen brightness, and the WiFi doesn't come back on after Suspend. Under which packages should I file bug reports?

Thanks.

I heard that in early incarnations, you could not have any usb devices pluggeds when starting x. Cannot hurt to try.

If I get things working, I will reply back here.
--steve

[chaud lapin]

Thanks for the reply.

There is an Amazon customer review of the 1101HA in which the author indicates he was able to get Fedora working on this model:
http://www.amazon.com/review/R11XYCNXTRZQGX

Also, in case you are not aware, the latest Mandriva has support for the Poulbos chipset, but when I try to boot it from a USB stick I get a similar blank screen during the initrd stuff.

Qua screen-size, keyboard, and all, this Eee is just super, but these problems with the Poulbos driver are really frustrating.

[egrep]

I got things working almost perfectly using ubuntu - I would also try Slackware, but too many problems getting Slack to see the funky /dev/sda disk drive - can install, but gives a scsi boot type (8,0) error. Not to say try it, but here is a thread that references the ubuntu fix for the drivers, Might give you an idea what stuff to look for in fedora. happyassassin also seems to have an rpm available. Maybe I will try it also.

Ubuntu forum link:
http://ubuntu-virginia.ubuntuforums.....php?t=1253406
AdamW on happyassassin.net:
http://www.happyassassin.net/2009/09...in-rpm-fusion/

Worth taking a look. If anything works for me, I will reply back in a bit.
Hmmm... AdamW's repository is not available for fedora 12, bummer.

[chaud lapin]

Hi again,

In case it wasn't obvious, Adam W (happyassassin)'s packages are in the RPMFusion repo, which I mentioned in my original message. I had no luck with them.

Officially the GMA 500 is not supported by Ubuntu 9.10, but someone has already fixed that: Poulsbo (GMA500) Support in Karmic (9.10). The new Mandriva release also supports Poulsbo. But I no luck with either of them. I don't particularly care which distro works, I'll try anything. But I am beginning to think there is something flaky about the 1101HA I have. I am hoping that the new Intel driver -- which is due in a few months -- will fix things.