Orzel:Asus W3Z
From Freehackers
Gentoo/linux on the Asus W3Z
This page describes my experience on installing/configuring linux on the Asus W3Z. The distribution is gentoo/amd64
I haven't found it on http://usa.asus.com although I've found the Asus page about the W3Z in french.
I do maintain this page. I would be happy to incorporate feedback from other users as well.
Contents |
[edit] Summary
What works:
- Ethernet
- Sound
- cdrom
- IDE Chipset
- ati/radeon 2D driver (sucks, but i can read divx)
- Wifi (ndiswrapper ok, bcm43xx.sf.net driver freezes)
- PC Card / PCMCIA
- ati/radeon 3D driver (was hard though)
Still to investigate:
- Modem(can't test, dont care)
- Bluetooth (probably works, don't have any bluetooth device here to test)
- SD card reader (probable works, can't test)
Unresolved issues:
- Irda / SIR (seems ok,but can't get any signal)
- Irda / FIR
- Boot (when you reboot, grub freezes, you need to stop, and restart the computer physically)
I have no problem booting, with grub or from the cdrom. Press F2 to go to the bios and configure boot order if you want to boot from the cdrom.
[edit] Ethernet
The module is skge. I have only tried with 100Mb, as I dont have anything 1Gb related at home (switch, other computer..).
Something strange to be noted, my 10/100Mbs switch light for the cable connected to the laptop doesn't light up. It works but the light is not up. I've tried other ports of the switch of course.
[edit] Video/Xorg
Summary : It starts to work, probably thanx to AMD releasing more and more specs, and improving their closed source driver.
[edit] Information about the chipset and graphic chip
The xpress 200m is actually a chipset, with integrated graphic. See this page as a start to try to understand where this card is among the numerous names ATI gave to their cards.
The exact information (see the lspci output at the end of the file) is "ATI Radeon XPRESS 200m 5955". According to this page, the codename for the xpress 200m is 'RS480M', and it features a 'Radeon X300 IGP' graphics core. The x300 belongs to the 'R300' serie.
I use xorg-x11 7.3.
[edit] Using proprietary driver
It had never worked for months. As of february 2008, it seems to improve, and partially works. I'm testing the package x11-drivers/ati-drivers-8.455.2-r1 as found in gentoo.
Using the fglrx kernel module and the "fglrx" driver in xorg.conf, X starts, and it even seems that OpenGl uses the ATI stuff:
% fglrxinfo display: :0.0 screen: 0 OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc. OpenGL renderer string: ATI Radeon Xpress Series OpenGL version string: 2.1.7281 Release
Information on Xorg.0.log seems ok :
(II) Loading extension ATIFGLRXDRI (II) fglrx(0): doing DRIScreenInit (II) fglrx(0): DRI initialization successfull! (II) fglrx(0): Acceleration enabled (II) fglrx(0): [DRI] installation complete (II) fglrx(0): Direct rendering enabled [atiddx] ASYNCIO init succeed!
The good:
- googleearth starts and actually work. (february 2008 : first time ever).
- mplayer works with XVideo ('xv') full screen.
The bad:
- i've got some random total freeze (hard reboot needed, i can't ssh). I never had this before.
- enabling desktop effect (compiz-like) in kde 4.0.1 gives a black screen. You can kill X and restart it(with ssh), but the screen remains black and you need to reboot..
- you can't switch to text mode (everything freeze, you can acces through ssh from another computer, but you can't do anything from the computer itself)
- glxgears blows up the screen, but a refresh will fix it, and i can use alt-tab to switch between windows.
- fgl_fglxgears fails miserably:
% fgl_fglxgears Using GLX_SGIX_pbuffer X Error of failed request: GLXUnsupportedPrivateRequest Major opcode of failed request: 163 (GLX) Minor opcode of failed request: 16 (X_GLXVendorPrivate) Serial number of failed request: 40 Current serial number in output stream: 41
[edit] Using DRM/DRI from gentoo
I've configured VIDEO_CARDS="ati radeon" in /etc/make.conf
Install xorg-x11 and x11-drm.
I load the drm module through kernel.autoload.d.
It fails (the drm module doesn't find the card). I tried the drm/radeon modules from the kernel (last try : 2.6.22, august 2007 and from the x11-drm package.
updated in august, 18th, 2007 : still not working using kernel drm or the latest drm from gentoo ebuild. Even with mesa/drm from the dri project (following http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/Building) The modules load fine :
[drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810 [drm] Initialized radeon 1.28.0 20060524 on minor 0 [drm] Used old pci detect: framebuffer loaded
But X doesn't want to use them :
(EE) AIGLX: Screen 0 is not DRI capable
[edit] Yet another try for free driver as of 2007-09-07
I unmasked xf86-video-ati from /usr/portage/profiles/package.mask. Updated the driver (x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati-6.6.193). I never managed to load drm.ko.
I tried :
- the one from the kernel (2.6.22)
- the one from gentoo ebuild : i first installed the drm (x11-base/x11-drm-20070314). i needed to patch it because i'm running a 2.6.22 kernel (remove all the #include <ioctl32.h>).
- the one from latest source code for drm (using git)
Each time it fails with some variation of :
FATAL: Error inserting drm (/lib/modules/2.6.22/x11-drm/drm.ko): Cannot allocate memory
There's nothing in dmesg, everything was compiled with the same gcc (4.1.2) as the kernel.
Then i updated to latest kernel (i'm using the mercurial stuff at http://www.kernel.org/hg/) to some post-2.6.23-rc5. As X just plain start on boot, it automatically loaded the (kernel) drm and radeon module.
i now have xdriinfo saying
Screen 0: r300
When i start glxgears, i got a black window and X freezes. The mouse can move, but that's all. My ssh still works, though.... X can't get killed -9...
[edit] Bluetooth
I can't test it (i have nothing related to bluetooth), but there's a button on the right of the notebook. If you press it, the blutooth led becomes blue, and you can see the bluetooth device appearing in dmesg as usb, exactly as if some usb device has just been plugged externally. So i guess it's ok :)
[edit] Wifi
summary : doesn't work.
(last update : march 12th, 2008)
The wifi chipset is a Broadcom BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g]. Following the advices on http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43
I installed the firmware for bcm43xx, b43legacy, and b43. I did not use the '*cutters' from gentoo, but the one given in the previous link.
b43legacy : doesn't work, but it's probably ok, bcm4318 is not supported by this one i think.
bcm43xx : the kernel prints "bcm43xx driver" when loaded, nothing else. The module is 'unused' in lsmod, and no new device is created. Seems like it can't find the wifi card.
b43 : It seems to work, but doesn't really. If i insert the module, i have (in dmesg)
Mar 12 19:15:36 farfalla b43-phy0: Broadcom 4318 WLAN found Mar 12 19:15:36 farfalla b43-phy0 debug: Found PHY: Analog 3, Type 2, Revision 7 Mar 12 19:15:36 farfalla b43-phy0 debug: Found Radio: Manuf 0x17F, Version 0x2050, Revision 8
Then i do
ifconfig wlan0_rename up
which gives :
Mar 12 19:16:15 farfalla b43-phy0 debug: Loading firmware version 351.126 (2006-07-29 05:54:02) Mar 12 19:16:16 farfalla b43-phy0 debug: Chip initialized Mar 12 19:16:16 farfalla b43-phy0 debug: 32-bit DMA initialized Mar 12 19:16:16 farfalla Registered led device: b43-phy0:tx Mar 12 19:16:16 farfalla Registered led device: b43-phy0:rx Mar 12 19:16:16 farfalla Registered led device: b43-phy0:assoc Mar 12 19:16:16 farfalla b43-phy0 debug: Wireless interface started Mar 12 19:16:16 farfalla b43-phy0 debug: Adding Interface type 2 Mar 12 19:16:16 farfalla ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0_rename: link is not ready
Then i do
iwlist scan| grep SSID
Once (and only once) I managed to see the ~30 AP there are here. But then i have this in dmesg
Mar 12 19:18:12 farfalla b43-phy0: Radio turned off by software
And after this, everything is random. iwlist scan sometimes show 2 or 3 (useless) AP, or nothing. And i can't have the whole list anymore, even if i do
rmmod b43; rmmod `lsmod | grep 802 | cut -f1 -d\ `; modprobe b43
Unlike i highly dislike it, i tried ndiswrapper, and it worked.. :/ The difficulty was to find a proper amd64bit windows driver. (see the last section "links"). Unzip the file, and use ndiswrapper -i on the *.inf. then insmod the ndiswrapper module, and you're done.
Last thing i want to say : the wifi card is a mini-pci card, easily accesible from behind the laptop. So you can easily change it for another more linux friendly mini pci card.
[edit] Internal 56k modem
It's said to work, though I haven't tried. And probably never will, i dont care about modem, as much as i dont care about floppy disks or PATA IDE Cable. All are old rubbish stuff.
[edit] Sound
No problem, you just need to configure Intel HD Audio in the kernel configuration (Device Drivers --> Sound --> Advanced Linux Sound Architecture --> pci devices) and modprobe snd-hda-intel. (it took some time to find out this was the one).
Even when i put all levels to 100%, the sound isn't very loud. Even worse when i put a headset. I'm kinda upset by this limitation. Be aware of it before deciding to buy this laptop.
[edit] PC Card / PCMCIA and other cards
It just works, using the yenta_socket module. Just emerge pcmcia-cs.
There is a useful SD card reader. You need the module mmc_block to use it, but then, it's easy.
I also have a pcmcia compact flash reader, which works well too.
[edit] Irda
According to the BIOS the irda can only be configured as FIR, not SIR. well..
Following the section Laptop port in SIR mode (using irtty driver) on this link Basically, i emerged net-wireless/irda-utils, added a file /etc/modules.d/irda (see Files section below), changed /etc/conf.d/irda (ttyS2 changed to ttyS1) and it seems to work:
from syslog
farfalla irattach: executing: echo farfalla > /proc/sys/net/irda/devname
farfalla irattach: executing: echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/irda/discovery
farfalla irattach: Starting device irda0
Now.. i've never been able to get any signal with either lirc or various irda utility (obex).
I failed to configure it with SIR driver. (haven't tried a lot, though). There's suppose to be a utility but it doesn't compile on my amd64.
The chipset is a SMsC LPC47N07 Super IO. (according to the bios).
[edit] Misc
I configured /etc/conf.d/hdparm with all_args="-d1 -c3 -u1 -m16"
[edit] Information
My /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6
Windows amd 64 bit driver, the one that works for me.
cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : AuthenticAMD cpu family : 15 model : 36 model name : AMD Turion(tm) 64 Mobile Technology MT-32 stepping : 2 cpu MHz : 1800.000 cache size : 512 KB fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 1 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 3dnow pni lahf_lm bogomips : 3604.19 TLB size : 1024 4K pages clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management: ts fid vid ttp tm stc