Install Ubuntu Hardy (8.04.1) Guide

OK, thanks a lot for those very enlightening explanations.

 

Appreciate the guide. I was able to install Ubuntu without issue on my new Aspire One that I picked up earlier this evening.

Had been thinking about an eee 901, but the Aspire is priced so much better and I realized I didn't need the additional storage.

The A1 is exactly what I was looking for in a netbook pc...my only beef really is that I'd like to see some better battery life...perhaps the bigger batteries will be readily available at some point? I'm not a big fan of touchpads, but this one I like...primarily how it has the same finish as the rest of the topcase. I don't feel like it is an oil sponge like older touchpads.

Anyways, back on topic. I had an external CD drive, so I didn't need to do the USB thumb drive install. Wired recognized right away, madwifi drivers installed and worked just like the guide says. Overall I'm quite happy. I was giving the bundled distro a try but was too limiting. (could even get a java 6 plugin installed properly...and that is critical for me)

 

If you're like me and using the Netbook Remix's ume-launcher package, you may be interested in a new branch of it that I created to add some features and fix some bugs. Here's the changelog:

• Detect the insersion and removal of all local volumes (USB keys, SD cards, etc), and show appropriate icons for them in the sidebar, just as the Gnome "places" menu does[/*:m:3vi86llk]
• Do the same for all remote volumes (SFTP mounts, etc)[/*:m:3vi86llk]
• Show unmounted local volumes grayed out, clicking on them mounts them and opens them if the mount is successful[/*:m:3vi86llk]
• Show an eject icon for mounted volumes (local and remote), clicking it unmounts the volume or remote mount[/*:m:3vi86llk]
• Show a link to the Desktop, just like the Gnome "places" menu does[/*:m:3vi86llk]
• Show links to all bookmarked folders (Documents, Pictures, etc), again like the Gnome menu (sourced from ~/.gtk-bookmarks)[/*:m:3vi86llk]
• Remove the "Network" icon to save some space, however allow it to be displayed by including it as a bookmarked folder[/*:m:3vi86llk]
• Move the "remove favorite" trash icon to bottom of the sidebar, where it seems more natural[/*:m:3vi86llk]
• Do a flip animation when sidebar shortcuts are selected[/*:m:3vi86llk]
• Make all shortcut labels fade smoothly rather than change suddenly when hovering and selecting[/*:m:3vi86llk]
• Do a "bulge" animation when catbar shortcuts are selected (they needed to have something to match the other animations, but a flip didn't seem appropriate here)[/*:m:3vi86llk]
• Fix the rotation animation so that it plays every time the icon is launched, not just the first time.[/*:m:3vi86llk]
• Simplify and fix the label fading, correcting the case where the label temporarily fades to black or oscillates.[/*:m:3vi86llk]
• Fix a crash when launching a desktop item that points to a missing executable[/*:m:3vi86llk]

The source code is hosted at Launchpad:
https://code.launchpad.net/~mike82/netb ... ncher/work

If you want to try it out, you can add this line to your /etc/apt/sources.list:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/mike82/ubuntu hardy main
then run "sudo apt-get update" and "sudo apt-get install ume-launcher"

The package is setup so that the next official release from Ubuntu will overwrite it.

 

Not using the remix addons at all. Pretty much just vanilla Ubuntu. (which is what I want)

Thanks for contributing to the community...I'm sure there are others that will enjoy the hard work you are putting in.

 

If you are using Hardy, make sure you run this line or pm-utils will override your /etc/syslog.conf settings:

Code:

sudo chmod -x /usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/laptop-tools

 

Wow, I had thought of this but expected it was too simple to actually work..
So does this kernel give you full hardware support? Does it boot quickly?

Thanks for the tip and your answers!

 

if that all works great, could you write an howto????

 

copying the kernel and modules works for front mic and improves bootupspeed (30 secs as with linpus) at my tests.
unfortunatelly wifi and usb-hotplug do not work anymore, as well as sleep/suspend-mode and the wifi-led still doesn't work correct.
madwifi can't be compiled with that kernel because of missing source code... havent tested with 2.6.23.9 sources..

 

Same here, wifi doesn't work

 

This might be fixed by using the Windows driver and NDISwrapper instead of madwifi. I've found this how-to, but haven't tried it myself.
http://www.seejay.net/2008/03/get-ather ... under.html

 

Hi, excellent!

Did you configure like this: "./configure --with-sequencer=yes --with-isapnp=no --with-cards=acer"?

Regards rancor

 

Some tips for WiFi...

To get channels 1 - 13 when using wifi type:

modprobe ath_pci -r
modprobe ath_pci xchanmode=1

or make new file named "madwifi" to /etc/modprobe.d/
with line:

options ath_pci xchanmode=1

You can check out usable channels by typing:

iwlist ath0 chan

Other usable options for madwifi, type:

modinfo ath_pci

Warning: do not try overrun countrycode. it does not work!

That's all

 

You missed the next part of the guide. Further down (in the modifications to rc.local) there are more things you need to do to get the sd card working. I haven't actually done it yet, but I'm guessing if you do that then it'll work.

 

I appreciate this guide, and got pretty far using its official clone over at help.ubuntu.com: Ubuntu 8.04.1 is installed and the wired network connection works. I reformatted the entire flash disk as a single ext2 partition mounted on / (with no swap partition) and the process of copying files during the initial install took about 10 hours. (A lot more than the "1+" mentioned in the guide.) I don't know whether to blame the lack of swap, the slow flash drive inside the box, the relatively new gvfs, or something else. The update/upgrade step took several hours to finish as well.

Next priority is to get the wireless working. I have followed the instructions for downloading, compiling, and installing the madwifi drivers. All the steps seemed to work, but ... what next? In detail, ...

1. Is there some nice little application like the one that came with linpus that will show me a list of nearby connections and let me pick one? [/*:m:3046yuvt]
2. What should appear in the file /etc/network/interfaces? [/*:m:3046yuvt]
3. When messing around with the wireless features, which interface should be the target? (Candidates include ath0, ath0:avahi, and wifi0.)[/*:m:3046yuvt]

Any help you can supply will be warmly welcomed. Thanks!

Code:

philip@min:~$ iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

wifi0     no wireless extensions.

ath0      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"flourish"  Nickname:""
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.452 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Bit Rate:0 kb/s   Tx-Power:16 dBm   Sensitivity=1/1  
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=0/70  Signal level=-96 dBm  Noise level=-96 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

philip@min:~$ ifconfig -a
ath0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:22:68:90:81:f2  
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1e:68:94:3e:53  
          inet addr:192.168.2.111  Bcast:192.168.2.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:122 errors:0 dropped:1630362945 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:150 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:14818 (14.4 KB)  TX bytes:22862 (22.3 KB)
          Interrupt:219 Base address:0xe000 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:28 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:28 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:2072 (2.0 KB)  TX bytes:2072 (2.0 KB)

wifi0     Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr 00-22-68-90-81-F2-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00  
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:12269 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:280 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:597774 (583.7 KB)
          Interrupt:18 
philip@min:~$ cat /etc/network/interfaces 
auto  lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto  eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto  ath0
iface ath0 inet dhcp
wireless-key ******************** (edited before posting)
wireless-essid flourish

 

Thanks! Great tip.

 

It works for me too!
Great, thank you Prasanen.

 

Hey, running into some problems.

I grabbed the eeebuntu NBR CD and am using an external drive to attempt to install it, I select "Install" from the list and it pops up an (initramfs) command promp and just sites there. Am I doing something wrong? Anything I need to do special to get it to boot and install eeebuntu from a CD drive?

 

Yep, NetworkManager and the toolbar applet networkmanager-gnome.

 

I have added instructions for installing Netbook remix to the guide. I have also added a fix for the suspend/resume bug that the remix suffers from.

Cheers,


Allan

 

Mike,

I must have missed the tip regarding 1.0.17 and model=acer. Could you point me to it?

Allan