[vox-tech] UPDATE -- Re: Ubuntu x86 on Compaq Presario v2310us (amd64)

[Ken Bloom]

On 9/1/05, Ken Bloom <kbloom at gmail.com> wrote:

I have some updates to this adventure of configuring my Compaq v2310us
for Linux. I always seem to learn things by doing them wrong first,
writing about them, then finally getting them right.

*** Video ***
> The Ubuntu installer chooses to use the "ati" driver by default. DO
> NOT ATTEMPT TO LOG USING X BEFORE RECONFIGURING THE X SERVER. If you
> do, then as soon as QT attempts to draw a widget on the screen, the
> system will lock hard (no mouse, no keyboard, no virtual-console
> switching, and apparently no log messages explaining what went wrong.)
> A fuller description of the problem I encountered is in the vox-tech
> archives at
> http://www.lugod.org/mailinglists/archives/vox-tech/2005-08/msg00097.html
> .

I previously stated that you needed to use the FireGL driver in order
to use Linux successfully on the Compaq v2310us. There's actually a
simpler fix to this problem: just turn off hardware video
acceleration. It's really simple. Starting from the default configured
xorg.conf, add the lines marked with a plus(+):

 Section "Device"
         Identifier      "ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon Xpress 200M (RS480)"
         Driver          "ati"
         BusID           "PCI:1:5:0"
+        Option          "Accel"                 "off"
+        Option          "SWCursor"
 EndSection

The SWcursor option solves a problem with ugly cursors that occurs
when you turn accleration off.

What's the tradeoff for this? You gain the ability to suspend your
v2310us, but you lose 3D acceleration. The choice is yours.

I'm probably still hoping for a version of firegl that has the suspend
issue fixed.

*** Wireless Card ***

It turns out that although the 64bit wireless driver from linuxant.com
doesn't support the Broadcom 4318 wireless card inside the v2310us,
there's a driver for the card available from acer that does (according
to ps.google.com/group/linux.debian.ports.x86-64/browse_frm/thread/8e5191a44dde6d37/9d3d1d8ea10cb025?lnk=st&q=acer+64+bit+broadcom+driver&rnum=1&hl=en#9d3d1d8ea10cb025
and http://groups.google.com/group/lucky.freebsd.amd64/browse_frm/thread/3c23bfd99f6b5c7e/5eab3a4963601e49?lnk=st&q=acer+64+bit+broadcom+driver&rnum=7&hl=en#5eab3a4963601e49
)

I haven't tried it yet, (it will require a complete 64-bit reinstall)
but it can be downloaded from
http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/forms/portal.cfm?recordid=2473&formid=3394&website=AcerPanAm.com/us&originwebsite=acerpanam.com&central=1&words=All&keywords=broadcom&pupv=pu
(I verified that this is the correct driver by reading the bcmwl5.inf
file contained in side the .zip). Despite the fact that it doesn't
seem to work for the BSD guys, it sounds like it works just fine for
the linux guys.

I'll probably try this out in a few days, and I will either post
regarding whether it worked, or I'll write a whole new post about
installing 64bit kubuntu for submission to linux-laptop.net

*** Power management ***

Once you've got video setup with ATI, you'll want to make some changes
to the acpi configuration. You'll want to go through
/etc/default/acpi-support and enable the ACPI_SLEEP option, so that
you can suspend to RAM. I haven't hibernate to work yet. I couldn't do
anything with the laptop after trying to bring it back up. It may be
that I just haven't spent enough time playing with it to figure out
how it works.

Please note that I have SAVE_VBE_STATE=true enabled. I'm not sure
whether that's necessary for the ati driver.

I commented out all of the contents of /etc/acpi/powerbtn.sh, so that
the powerbutton wouldn't shut down the laptop if I pressed it. This
probably isn't the right way to do this, though. It's probably more
correct to edit /etc/acpi/events/powerbtn.

I also edited /etc/acpi/events/lidbtn so that it used the sleep.sh
script instead of the lid.sh script. Please note that after editing
any file in /etc/acpi/events, you need to send acpid a SIGHUP (or
restart acpid) to force it to reread those files. See acpid(8) for
more details.

I thought there was something with needing to hit the power button to
wake the laptop up, but in my tests while writing this that didn't
seem to be necessary if I put it to sleep by closing the lid. In any
case, if you find yourself needing to hit the power button to wake up
the computer, then you MUST somehow make the computer detect that the
computer is waking up so that it doesn't shut down right away.
Disabling the power button completely is an acceptable way of doing
that.

--Ken Bloom