Install Ubuntu Hardy (8.04.1) Guide

I have a reasonably working Ubuntu on my A1 (just no satisfactory sound...)

However I wanted to logon to a wireless network on another location.
To my surprise I found a whole bunch of networks, but not the one I was looking for.
It took me a while to realize that the network I wanted was set to channel 13 - one of the allowed channels in the EU.

Setting the router to a lower channel confirmed that the higher channel was the problem.
Doing some searching in Google gave me a bit more information and it confirmed that the WiFi card with the MadWiFi drivers only enables channels 1 to 11....
Further I found that the countrycode and regdomain are both set to 0, sort of default off-factory settings.
Further attempts to change either of the 2 parameters gave no results (as read in the MadWiFi documentation).

This is very inconvenient and could actually mean - in some places - that the WiFi part is not compliant with local type approval requirements.

Has anyone been struggling with this too? And, more important, does anyone know how to resolve the issue (= set countycode and/or regdomain)?

 

I have noticed this before, just didn't realized it was the driver.. To me, this is pretty bad..

After a week of ubuntu, I have noticed the following downsides compared with stock Linpus (in no particular order):
- Bad audio support
- Boot time at least twice as long
- Bad card reader support (most importantly to me: no Memory Sticks)
- Wifi doesn't support channel 12 and 13
- Suspend badly supported (I get kernel panic about one in every four suspends)
- Webcam mirrored

I'm going on a holiday soon and I'll probably revert to Linpus for it.

 

Did you try:

From: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne

 

Thanks. Yes I did. Did you get memory sticks to mount?

EDIT

I understand the miscommunication. I was talking about Sony Memory Sticks, not USB flash sticks.

 

Hi.

During installation and compile of the Madwifi drivers, I ran into some trouble, later this morning. More specifically, the

part, where, even with "sudo", Ubuntu wouldn't let me do the command. I browsed a bit through the forum and found the solution in the Atheros thread. Could be simple enough for people used to Linux, but I consider myself one of those "Windows power users = Linux worst noobs", so I didn't know what to do. Here's what you need to do before the command works, if permission is denied:

Code:

sudo -i

After the command is run, just type

Code:

exit

and continue with the rest.

 

Alternatively, you could just "sudo gedit /etc/modules" and add the line "ath_pci" to the end.

 

or sudo pico (instead of gedit, if you don't have it)

 

Sound solution

Installing ALSA 1.0.17 and "model=acer" seemed to do the trick, with one minor exception:

Recording from the internal microphone worked in some programs but not others. Some experimentation revealed that it was able to record in stereo, but in mono produced silence. This is kinda surprising, as the mic itself is mono and one would only really want to use it in mono mode.

It turns out that the hardware only supports stereo recording. Normally this fact is hidden because the default ALSA recording source can adapt from one source format to another, so it would record in stereo from the mic and then mix the channels together to create the mono channel requested by the application.

Unfortunately the mic on my aspire one, when recording in stereo, produces a left channel that is a perfect negative image of the right channel. This works fine when recording in stereo, because you get the two opposite channels. But when recording in mono, ALSA helpfully mixes the two opposite channels together to produce.. silence!

It's possible to avoid the problem by always recording in stereo, but that's not a very good solution. To enable recording in mono from any application, I setup a new default recording source that routes the left channel to the mono channel and discards the right channel. The following in /etc/asound.conf:

Code:

pcm.newdefault
{
  type asym
  playback { pcm "plughw:0,0" }
  capture
  {
    pcm
    {
      type plug
      slave
      {
        pcm "hw:0,0"
        format S16_LE
        channels 2
        rate 44100
      }
      route_policy copy
    }
  }
}
pcm.!default newdefault

 

Excellent solution Mike82,

Will try this asap.

tks

 

Thanks Mike82... My internal mic is now working.

 

hey i installed ubuntu and have everything i want working fine except for my sd card. I mounted it but when i try to copy files to it or make a new folder it gives me this "Error while copying "...." there was an error copying the file into /media/disk details: Error opening file '/media/disk/....' persmission denied

I think i don't have ownership on it and am stumped on how to get it.

 

Hi all,

It might not be the most elegant way to solve the problem but I just installed A1 linpus distro kernel (kernel, modules, etc.) in a Ubunty 8041 install and I now have everything up and running! :-D


I may detail the process if you wish to but it is pretty straightforward (copy kernel image, you'll need to mkinitramfs, add to grubs menu.lst). There's a config file in the linpus install so it eases compiling additional modules if you need to.

Hope it helps!

 

Hello
Thanks for your tips !

Can you explain the complete procedure with mkinitramfs ?

I try actualy to compile a vanilla kernel with the .config of linpus

I hope to resolve my problem of slowness and blocking ssd

(for a few seconds ssd is blocked and the cpu is 100% below htop)

Sorry for my English

 

Hi,

I didn't compile the linpus-distro kernel. I just put the binary coming with linpus in my ubuntu install. In a nutshell, admit you have linpus install in /linpus:

/$ cp /linpus/boot/bzImage /boot/bzImage.linpus
/$ cp -R /linpus/lib/modules/2.6.23.9lw /lib/modules
/$ mkinitramfs -o /boot/initrd.linpus 2.6.23.9lw

add entry to /boot/grub/menu.lst

We need to inspect this but for now disable apparmor and klogd:
/$ sudo update-rc.d -f apparmor remove
/$ sudo update-rc.d -f klogd remove

I thinks it all...

 

Extra !
I'll try it! , Thank you very much for your answer.

 

hey i installed ubuntu and have everything i want working fine except for my sd card. I mounted it but when i try to copy files to it or make a new folder it gives me this "Error while copying "...." there was an error copying the file into /media/disk details: Error opening file '/media/disk/....' persmission denied

I think i don't have ownership on it and am stumped on how to get it.

 

I've already removed linpus, so I don't have the binary. Does anyone know where I can get a copy without reinstalling?

This sounds like a promising method to get everything working all at once.

 

Found it, everything's on the recovery dvd in the hdc1._.tar.bz2 archive.

 

I'm quite new to Linux, so I don't really understand how different an Ubuntu distro with a Linpus kernel would be from a genuine Linpus distro. In other words, what do you gain and what do you lose from doing this ?

 

The Linpus kernel has (we assume) been optimized for the particular hardware of the AA1. While the latest Linux kernel (2.26.19 and above) supports the Atom Processor, it is not necessarily optimized for it. This is one reason Linpus boots so quickly and is less laggy than other distros. There is always a species of Linux tragic that will seek ways to get the last millisecond of speed from any new hardware (and this is a Good Thing for the rest of us but we generally sit back and wait until they have worked everything out for us). This can be as "easy" as removing kernel modules that are not needed for the AA1 (bluetooth?) or changing the values of some key parameters in the kernel to take full advantage of the AA1's particular hardware.

The Ubuntu versions of the Linux kernel (and those of most other mainstream distros) are very generic because they try to work on the widest possible range of hardware (and do a pretty good job of it). But that does mean that any particular box will not be running as fast and efficiently as it possibly can.

A well optimized kernel running Ubuntu on the AA1 will be significantly faster than the generic kernel version. It will probably not be as fast as Linpus because Ubuntu itself is a bit bloated (for good reasons IMO).

There's really no downside to this if (and only if) the optimized kernel does fully support the hardware you have and it takes account of Ubuntu's particular configuration needs.

IMO, while I applaud the hackers who do this (thanks guys!), I'll wait until it has been more thoroughly tested before I try it. It is also likely that future official Linux kernels (which come as free upgrades, BTW) will better support the AA1 hardware anyway.

Several Linux distros are bending over backwards to better support netbooks right now, so I expect further refinements and rapid change to be a constant for the next six months or so. If you are happy with the way your little box is performing, don't rush in to try every hack right away.

Linux is messy because all this hacking is done in public and you don't need to work for "the company" to participate. Keep an eye on it by all means but don't feel that it is necessary to join in or even understand what they are doing.