SUSE on eee 701 problem

David Bailey wrote:

> Hi Erik,
>
> On Thu, 18 Dec 2008 23:00:40 +1000, Erik Neun wrote:
>
>> Hi!
>>
>> I've been istalling a special SUSE image for the eee 701 on a SD using
>> the image from here:
>> http://www.forcev.net/mojoportal/netbooks.aspx
>> At the time of booting from the SD card I get the following error:
>>> This kernel requires the following features not present on the CPU:
>>> pae unable to boot - please use a kernel appropriate for your CPU.
>>>
>> I've contacted Andrew Wafaa who has created the image with SUSE Studio.
>> He's toled me that the pae kernel is working okay for him on his 701 and
>> suggested to try a mailinglist for help.
>> Has anyone of you tried this and had a similar problem, or even better: a
>> sollution?
>
> I have just tried this and have run into the same error.
>
> I don't have a solution as yet. I am trying to recompile the kernel
> without PAE support. I will let you know how I go with that.
>
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Erik

Hi David!

Did you have any success in recompiling the kernel for the 701?

Erik

On Thu, 25 Dec 2008 05:21:36 GMT
David Bailey <newsgroups.RemoveThis@bailey.id.au> wrote:

>I suspect that a significant part of my problem is that I didn't make
>the initrd correctly. I need to do some research into how to make an
>initrd on one machine that is suitable for another machine with
>different requirements.
>

My guess is that this may be fairly tricky, since using 'mkinitrd'
requires having the correct driver modules listed in INITRD_MODULES
in /etc/sysconfig/kernel.


>If anyone can give any pointers, or knows of any useful howtos for
>making initial ramdisks, it would be appreciated.
>

This is a pretty good overview, helps to get your mind working in the
right direction on this:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-initrd.html

And there is some info in the openSUSE docs, too, especially 'openSUSE
Documentation Part III. System / Chapter 8. Booting and Configuring a
Linux System.'


--
Kevin Nathan (Arizona, USA)
Linux Potpourri and a.o.l.s. FAQ -- (temporarily offline)

Open standards. Open source. Open minds.
The command line is the front line.
Linux 2.6.25.18-0.2-pae
1:05am up 58 days 4:57, 22 users, load average: 0.99, 0.56, 0.66

On Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:04:41 +1000, Erik Neun wrote:
Hi Erik,

>
> Hi David!
>
> Did you have any success in recompiling the kernel for the 701?
>
> Erik

Well, I've recompiled the kernel without PAE, and tried to make a new
initrd (both on my main openSUSE 11.0 machine). However, I still get the
same error.

I suspect that a significant part of my problem is that I didn't make the
initrd correctly. I need to do some research into how to make an initrd
on one machine that is suitable for another machine with different
requirements.

If anyone can give any pointers, or knows of any useful howtos for making
initial ramdisks, it would be appreciated.

Regards,
David

Hi Erik,

I have bypassed this issue by installing openSUSE 11.1 onto my eeePC.

I did the installation directly from the 11.1 DVD (not the live CD). The
only trick with the DVD installation is that to get the graphical YaST
installation (not the curses version), you need to have a screen
resolution of at least 800x600. I just hooked up an external monitor and
used fn+F5 to switch the display to it. From there it was a normal
installation. If you don't have an external monitor it is still possible
to do the install via the curses version, but the GUI version is *much*
nicer.

I installed to the SD card (Lexar 16GB class 4 card). Before I started
the install, I went into the BIOS and changed the order of "disks" on the
machine to:
1) SD card
2) SSD
This meant that the SD card was the boot disk so I could leave the SSD
installation totally untouched. To boot back to Xanxros, I just have to
switch that back around.

I now have everything working quite well under 11.1. Most things Just
Worked (TM). eg:
* lan
* webcam (you must enable it in the BIOS though, whereas under
Xandros you didn't have to)

Some things required some minor work. I took most of my information from:
http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_on_the_EeePC
NB. This page only discusses 10.3 and 11.0, not 11.1. There are some
differences.
* screen resolution
You need the following modeline (in the Monitor section) in your /etc/
X11/xorg.conf file

ModeLine "800x480" 29.58 800 816 896 992 480 481 484 497 # 60Hz

(actually, I copied the xorg.conf file from the USB stick I'd used for
the 11.0 installation)

I installed the asus_acpi package from http://download.opensuse.org/
repositories/home:/appleonkel:/EEE/openSUSE_11.1
NB. This is a YaST repository, so you can add it to your sources if you
like.

* CPU frequency
As per http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_on_the_EeePC#CPUFreq I changed /
etc/rc.d/haldaemon to have:
function load_cpufreq_driver() {

CPUFREQ_MODULES="p4_clockmod speedstep_centrino powernow_k8
powernow_k7 powernow_k6 longrun speedstep_ich acpi_cpufreq"
CPUFREQ_MODULES_GREP="^p4_clockmod\|^speedstep_centrino\|^speedstep_ich
\|^powernow_k8\|^powernow_k7\|^powernow_k6\|^longrun\|^longhaul\|
^acpi_cpufreq"

###### load CPUFREQ modules############

(ie add p4_clokcmod and ^p4_clockmod\| to the start of each variable's
value respectively)

Do a "service reload haldaemon" after the changes to activate them. This
gives you (very) dynamic CPU throttling.


* hotkeys
(See: http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_on_the_EeePC#Hotkeys )
I did a bit of a mixture of Methods 2 and 3. I installed the eeeEvents
from http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/appleonkel:/EEE/
openSUSE_10.3_Update/i586/ (or possibly the 11.0 version) as well as
setting up /etc/acpi/hotkey.sh. It all seems to work (including on
screen display), except the Wireless on / off.


The only thing that gave me any real issue was the WIFI. 11.1 has the
ath5k module, which attempts to run the wifi card, but it doesn't work
correctly. It can see the card and it creates the /dev/wlan0 device (as
well as the controlling device). You can see it and try to set it up
with iwconfig. However it never actually connects to the AP and works.
I even tried removing all security from my AP to make the connection
easier, but it still didn't work.

Apparently this is a known issue. I haven't checked to see if there is
an official bug report on it yet.

I then blacklisted ath5k and tried to install madwifi (ath5k is the
'newer madwifi'). This didn't work either. There is an issue with
madwifi and kernel 2.6.27. You have to get the latest snapshot version
to even compile it. Even when you compile it and modprobe ath_pci, the
ath_hal gives an error and no devices are set up.

I eventually used ndiswrapper to set it up. The setup was quite painless.

Hope that helps.

--
Regards,
David Bailey
david _AT_ bailey dot id dot au