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 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, 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 (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.

Hotkeys
To get the hotkeys to work, I generally followed the instructions in the Fedora Eee Pc wiki 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 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 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 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...-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.

Originally Posted by 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?)

[D-Caf]

Originally Posted by 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 :-)

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]

Originally Posted by D-Caf

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 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.