Debian Sid on an Acer 5051AWXMi

The motherboard on the old Vaio R600-HEP I've been using for work died at the start of 2007. I needed a new laptop in a hurry; nothing fancy, I use it for some light development work and reading mail while on the road. I dithered briefly over a cheapie Dell or the Acer, and ended up going for the Acer because it didn't look like the Dell offering had a 64bit CPU. There's a chance I might need to be doing some 64bit compilation during the lifetime of the beast.

The Vaio was running Debian Unstable (Sid). Rather than spend time copying stuff over, I just removed the hard drive from the Acer and replaced it with the one from the Vaio and reconfigured.

Not the best Linux platform, but it'll just about do. Suspend works, hibernate doesn't, and the video support isn't great.

So, what's in the beast?

00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 Host Bridge (rev 10)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge
00:04.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge
00:05.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 5a37
00:06.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge
00:07.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge
00:12.0 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc ATI 4379 Serial ATA Controller (rev 80)
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller (rev 80)
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller (rev 80)
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB2 Host Controller (rev 80)
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 SMBus Controller (rev 83)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller ATI (rev 80)
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SB450 HDA Audio (rev 01)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-ISA Bridge (rev 80)
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-PCI Bridge (rev 80)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RS482 [Radeon Xpress 200M]
08:01.0 CardBus bridge: ENE Technology Inc CB-712/4 Cardbus Controller (rev 10)
08:01.1 FLASH memory: ENE Technology Inc ENE PCI Memory Stick Card Reader Controller (rev 01)
08:01.2 Generic system peripheral [0805]: ENE Technology Inc ENE PCI Secure Digital Card Reader Controller (rev 01)
08:01.3 FLASH memory: ENE Technology Inc FLASH memory: ENE Technology Inc: (rev 01)
08:01.4 FLASH memory: ENE Technology Inc Unknown device 0551 (rev 01)
08:02.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
08:04.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)

Like the wireless drivers, you have a choice between drivers with open-source goodness and closed-source propriatory drivers that offer greater performance.

For my use, zippy 3D performance isn't so important. If it came down to it, I'd cheerfully swap that for reliability and especially smooth suspend and hibernate.

The open source drivers work well enough for my purposes. This is my /etc/X11/xorg.conf device section.

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "ATI Radeon Xpress 1100"
        Driver          "ati"
        BusID           "PCI:1:5:0"
EndSection

I explicitly set the monitor size to get the correct display dots per inch. If you don't do this, your font sizes will be wrong.

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier      "Acer Aspire 5050"
        Option          "DPMS"
        DisplaySize     301 192
EndSection

I haven't yet tried the external VGA.

My one beef with the open source drivers at present (Xorg 6.6.3) is that if suspend and then resume, when you then later come to shut down, instead of reverting back to the VGA console when the X server exits, the video mode is incorrectly set to remain at its graphical setting. So you can see the on-screen display pattern changing as the shutdown messages appear, but you can't read them.

I've not crossed swords with the ATI binary drivers before. I have had experience with the nVidia drivers.

AMD don't acknowledge such a thing as a Radeon Xpress 1100 on their website in the list of hardware supported by their Linux driver. The Linux driver is an all-in-one driver anyway, and according to the hardware list at The Unofficial ATI Linux Driver Wiki the 200M - to be precise, the 200M (RS482 5975), the device in the 5051AWXMi - is supported by the driver.

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "ATI Radeon Xpress 1100"
        Driver          "fglrx"
        BusID           "PCI:1:5:0"
EndSection

This driver has not been a pleasant experience for me. I eventually managed to get the 3D drivers installed and working, by downloading the latest (21/2/07) drivers from the AMD website and following their build and install process. Once I followed up hints on various web pages to blacklist the ati_agp kernel modules, commented out “dbe” and “dri” in /etc/X11/xorg.conf and added

Section "Extensions"
        Option      "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

I got glxinfo to admit to ATI hardware acceleration. I very nearly gave up at several points along the way.

I then tried a suspend and resume to see if the shutdown problem I mentioned for the open source drivers was cured. Disaster! Something similar happens; but instead of not setting the video mode correctly, but otherwise working, the entire machine locks solid.

I will be checking to see if things improve in the future. But as things stand, I will be suggesting to anyone thinking of getting a laptop that they make sure they get Intel or nVidia graphics.

For the present I'm sticking with the open source drivers.

The built-in wired Ethernet port is a good 'ol RTL-8139. The Linux kernel knows exactly what to do with these.

Onboard wireless is provided by a Broadcom BCM4318.

In theory there are two possible lines of support, ndiswrapper and the native bcm43xx driver.

Like all right-thinking persons, I would much prefer to use the open-source kernel driver bcm43xx. Unfortunately I couldn't get it to work reliably. Sometimes I could get a connection, other times nothing would work. I think a possible clue to why arrived when I tried bcm43xx-fwcutter to cut firmware from the Windows XP driver. The firmware cutter did its job perfectly, but bcm43xx refused to load the resulting firmware blobs, saying that it didn't support firmware versions later than 0x128, and this firmware was 0x135. I suspect the hardware is a later revision than bcm43xx can handle.

So I fell back on ndiswrapper. This works beautifully with the Windows XP driver. As a bonus, it also observes the front network switch, so you can switch off wireless with a flick of the thumb.

There are comprehensive instructions on installing ndiswrapper on Debian at the main ndiswrapper site, http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/index.php/InstallDebian. The module-assistant method to get the kernel module worked fine for me.

# apt-get install module-assistant
# module-assistant auto-install ndiswrapper

To stop the native driver being loaded, I created /etc/modprobe.d/wireless-blacklist containing

# Prevent loading of the native bcm43xx driver. I can't get it to work
# reliably with this machine.
blacklist bcm43xx

Then follow the instructions to install the Windows driver. If you need to, you can download the Broadcom Windows XP driver from http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers/notebook/as_5050.html.

Windows XP reports the audio hardware as Realtek High Definition Audio. lspci prefers to call it ATI Technologies Inc SB450 HDA Audio. Either way, spend 5 minutes with Google and you will find all manner of reports of intermittent working and logs filled with error messages.

I bashed my head against this wall for a while, too, before digging down to an answer. The problem is that the ALSA driver thinks it finds an extra codec beyond the soft modem codec and the audio codec expected. It's that extra codec that confuses it beyond measure. The solution is to confine the driver to checking for the expected codecs. I made a new file /etc/modprobe.d/sound containing:

alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
options snd-hda-intel index=0 probe_mask=3 position_fix=3

index=0 specifies that the HDA device is to be the first audio device, and is really redundant. probe_mask=3 restricts the driver to examining the first two codecs, and is the important bit here. Finally, on my laptop, on playing sound the driver would warn that it couldn't use its intended play method and would fall back to another. position_fix=3 specifies the fallback from the start, and so while it removes an entry from your logs it is probably redundant too.

The audio outputs are a bit curious. I recommend some playing with a mixer. I have tested the onboard speakers and the front headphone socket. These are not interlinked; plug in headphones and you will continue to frighten your neighbours with scratchy sounds coming from the onboard speakers until you take action with the mixer. On my machine I use the first channel labelled '3D' to control the external speaker volume. The headphones respond to the channel labelled 'Front'. The 'PC Speaker' channel does nothing.

With the 'Front' output being the headphones, you'd think that 'Front Mic' would be the microphone socket. Sorry, that's 'Mic'. 'Front Mic' is the microphone built into the case (look just above the F9 key).

I had configured the touchpad in /etc/X11/xorg.conf but it didn't work.

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Synaptics Touchpad"
        Driver          "synaptics"
        Option          "SendCoreEvents"        "true"
        Option          "Device"                "/dev/psaux"
        Option          "Protocol"              "auto-dev"
        Option          "LeftEdge"      "1700"
        Option          "RightEdge"     "5300"
        Option          "TopEdge"       "1700"
        Option          "BottomEdge"    "4200"
        Option          "FingerLow"     "25"
        Option          "FingerHigh"    "30"
        Option          "MaxTapTime"    "180"
        Option          "MaxTapMove"    "220"
        Option          "VertScrollDelta" "100"
        Option          "MinSpeed"      "0.09"
        Option          "MaxSpeed"      "0.18"
        Option          "AccelFactor"   "0.0015"
        Option          "SHMConfig"     "on"
EndSection

I then found that I needed the evdev kernel module loaded. I added it to /etc/modules and all is now fine.

I haven't tried this. I suspect the drivers sold by http://www.linuxant.com would work.

Acer pepper and salt the keyboard with a smattering of extra keys. On other Acer laptops you have to use either acer_acpi or acerhk to access these. Neither of these work on the 5051AWXMi, because the BIOS ACPI handling has changed. Luckily, the Linux 2.6.18 kernel sees all these keypresses as, well, keypresses. Some do not have entries in the kernel keymap, and generate logs telling you how to add them. Even the two front panel switches, for the wireless and bluetooth (if it had bluetooth) generate key events.

I have not yet hooked up any of these keypresses to do anything.

The function keys for adjusting screen brightness work out of the box.

Hibernating (suspend of disc) just doesn't work for me. The machine suspends fine, and then locks up hard when resuming.

Suspending (suspend to RAM), on the other hand, seems to work fine, apart from the problem reverting to the console noted above.

I added

cpufreq-userspace
powernow-k8

to /etc/modules and loaded powernowd. The CPU clock now steps between 800MHz, 1.6GHz and 2GHz depending on the load.

The Acer support webpage at http://www.acer.com/support/download.htm has an interesting link. 'Linux Software' and a drop-down menu. One of the items listed here is 'Notebook Live CD'.

Follow that, and you'll find yourself in ftp://www.linpus.com.tw/pub/source/livecd. There's a subdirectory aspire and in that an ISO image.

I tried downloading that image. It downloaded very slowly, but after quite a few hours I eventually got a CD. On booting it, you see a splash for something called 'Linpus Linux'. That's as far as it gets for me; the whole thing then grinds to a complete halt saying it can't find the CD device. The problem seems to be that various kernel drivers are present in module form, but don't get loaded because they are for the wrong kernel version and anyway the booted kernel doesn't like the supplied insmod.

I had a quick look in some of the CD files. It looks like it will set you up to expect an i810 video driver.

All in all, I think this might at one time have worked for some Aspire models, but it's no more than a coaster for your 5051AWXMi.

There's nothing in the above that would suggest that running Debian/amd64 should be a problem. So I tried installed it on a spare partition. Sure enough, everything works exactly as Debian/x86.

The only item you'll need to obtain is the Windows 64bit driver for the wireless. Acer don't have one on the their website list of drivers for the Aspire 5050. A little googling found they do have one hidden away at ftp://ftp.support.acer-euro.com/notebook/ferrari_4000/driver/80211.zip. The same googling also turned up an much more recent driver at ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp34001-34500/sp34488.exe. I downloaded the latter, used cabextract to extract the files, and it works fine.