.
Get your own
Free Website now!
The default debian kernel has many problems with this laptop, gentoo doesn't come with a precompiled kernel and openSuSE has a kernel that is not able to suspend correctly this laptop, so in all cases, I highly recommend compiling a custom kernel with the beyond patches from http://iphitus.loudas.com/, as I did.
The process is simple although it may sound complicated to new linux users. For this reason, I include here full instructions for it.
UPDATE: Debian users can now use the kernel packages that I made. They include all the needed drivers for this laptop (including acerhk and ipw3945) except the nvidia driver (which is not open source and cannot be in such a package) and the gspca driver which is quite difficult to get into the kernel.
Download: linux-image-2.6.19-beyond4_aspire9113-1_i386.deb
Download: linux-headers-2.6.19-beyond4_aspire913-1_i386.deb
To use these packages just download and install them with dpkg:
$ su
# dpkg -i linux-image-2.6.19-beyond4_aspire9113-1_i386.deb
# dpkg -i linux-headers-2.6.19-beyond4_aspire9113-1_i386.deb
Now edit /boot/grub/menu.lst, and find a line that looks like that:
# kopt=root=/dev/sda5 ro
and change it to include the resume2=swap:/dev/<your swap partition> parameter, like that:
# kopt=root=/dev/sda5 ro resume2=swap:/dev/sda6
Now run the update-grub utility
# update-grub
...and proceed with installing the nvidia driver
Download the vanilla 2.6.19 kernel from
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.19.tar.bz2
and the beyond4 patch for kernel 2.6.19 from
http://iphitus.loudas.com/beyond/2.6.19/2.6.19-beyond4/patch-2.6.19-beyond4.bz2.
Note that on gentoo, you can just emerge beyond-sources instead of
doing it manually as I say here.
Also download three patches that I made for this kernel. The ipw3945-1.2.0 patch, the acerhk patch and the hid-input-fix patch (required to compile hid-input.c correctly, because of a bug in the beyond4 patch).
Now create a directory in your $HOME called linux. (You can actually skip that and do it your way, but I will refer to it in the instructions below). Here is the command:
$ mkdir ~/linux
Put all files that you downloaded in that directory and unpack (extract) the linux source but not the patches.
$ cd ~/linux
$ tar -xjf linux-2.6.19.tar.bz2
Now patch the kernel using the following commands:
$ cd ~/linux/linux-2.6.19
$ bzcat ../patch-2.6.19-beyond4.bz2 | patch -p1
$ cat ../acerhk.patch | patch -p1
$ cat ../ipw3945-1.2.0.patch | patch -p1
$ cat ../hid-input-fix.patch | patch -p1
Download the kernel configuration file that I use from here. Put it in the same directory as the others (~/linux) and then copy it in the kernel source like that:
$ cp ~/linux/config ~/linux/linux-2.6.19/.config
Note that the resulting file in the kernel source MUST be called .config (note the dot!).
If you are using gentoo and have used emerge beyond-sources, put the config in /usr/src/linux/.config (where linux must be a symlink to the beyond-sources. Use the symlink USE flag when emerging to create that symlink automatically)
If you want to review the configuration and/or make some changes in it, then issue these commands:
$ cd ~/linux/linux-2.6.19
$ make menuconfig
You will need packages gcc, make, ncurses and ncurses-devel to do that. gcc and make will also be needed later but ncurses and ncurses-devel are needed only for "make menuconfig".
In debian, install them with: apt-get install gcc make libncurses5-dev
While you are still in the same directory (~/linux/linux-2.6.19), issue the command:
$ make
This will take a lot of time to complete, depending on how many options are enabled in the kernel configuration. With my configuration it takes about 30 minutes. When it is finished, become root and install it:
$ su
# make modules_install
# cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/linux-2.6.19-beyond4
Now edit your grub configuration file (/boot/grub/menu.lst) as root and add these lines (On suse you can also do this with yast):
title Debian GNU/Linux kernel 2.6.19-beyond4
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/linux-2.6.19-beyond4 root=/dev/sda5 resume2=swap:/dev/sda6
Remember to change partition numbers if you are not using sda5 as your root partition and sda6 as your swap partition (change the (hd0,4) numbers too). Also change the title to whatever you like.
Debian users, if you don't want to maintain by yourself those grub entries, you can use the update-grub command. Rename your kernel from linux-2.6.19-beyond4 to vmlinuz-2.6.19-beyond4 and follow the instructions above to add the resume2 parameter to the # kopt=something line. Then run the update-grub command to add those grub entries automatically.
Reboot with your new kernel and remember not to delete the source directory. If it takes a lot of space you can just run make distclean to remove a lot of useless files.
|
This website is hosted for free by .
Get your own
Free Website now!
|