How To: ubuntu natty (11.04) on asus a53s (k53sv family)

**cucisan** · July 6th, 2011

hm why didnt you mention earlier that it worked without lags/crash on 10.10 ..?

guess i would have searched for changes between those two versions which could lead to IO lag im experiencing... also, when it does crash or lag heavily, do you hear the harddrive clicking? what does hdparm -B /dev/sda say when on AC power/battery power? does it always crash or just when on battery power? how long do you need to produce a crash? 4hrs uptime? 10hrs uptime? more?

for me there is no crash or lag since yesterday 9a.m. but im trying hard to get it crashed as im not 100% about the harddrive issues... but comments on amazon etc make me feel right about the harddrive... someone changed his harddrive without doing any tweaks to the original HDD, and he says everything is fast and snappy after doing so using win7...

do you have lags or performance problems under win7? some ppl complain/confirm about lags on windows7 on amazon (german site)...

as i mentioned earlier.. i dont have a single lag on AC (always) and on battery power (since i issued the hdparm -B 254 cmd)... but it can also be just a coincidence

the only problem i currently have is: sometimes after standby, i have a garbled screen... but no problem: i switch to console (strg+alt+f1) and then back to X... and the garbled screen is gone

as for grub: you will find it easily with google, i don't know it by heart

**qmater001** · July 6th, 2011

wait... i was talking about 10.10, but i didn`t mentioned that it was on my previous notebook.

so i didnt tried 10.10 on a53s yet. but i think i`ll give it a shot, tough i kind of got used with 11.04. everything was working fine for me too, no freezings all night long, and today also. but after an update (also running on battery) it froze 2 times... so i`m not sure yet if it was just beacause of the battery or update...

**cucisan** · July 6th, 2011

ah ok... :/

does it always crash when on battery? or after you used the battery and returned to AC?
the harddrive clicking only occurs on battery power (it may get triggered because of the powermanagement).. but NOT always..
when it starts clicking.. it wont stop, no matter what you do with hdparm parameters.. until it freezes...

well, if it happens so often on battery for you, just try this and see if you can make the battery empty without crashing (its just temporary, so no worries!):

1, pull the AC cable
2, powermangement will kick in and set the APM level to 128 (default value, also lowest value possible; you can check that in terminal with "sudo hdparm -B /dev/sda")
3, open a terminal and type the following:

Code:

sudo hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda

(or 255 to disable APM for the harddrive completely!)

4, use your laptop normally and see if its crashing (i guess it wont)
5, REPORT BACK

**qmater001** · July 6th, 2011

OK. i`ll try that.
btw, how`s glxgears for you?

mine with optirun64, the first time after i updated to the patched kernel (2.6.38.10) gave me 800fps. (and ofcourse i was amazed); then i ran it a second time, and 350-400fps. and every time now the same (350-400). ?

**cucisan** · July 6th, 2011

for me its not constantly at the same speed...

but remember, glxgears is not a good benchmark.. only on the same system you could try to use it as a benchmark..

i play many 3d games via steam (using wine) and they all work quite well.

remember: the intel card is used to display those graphics so if the framerate is low, that may be also be the cause...

Code:

optirun glxgears
 * Starting Bumblebee X server bumblebee
_PS0 Enabling nVidia Card Succeded.
DGPS Enabling nVidia Card Succeded.
 *       [ OK ] 
4144 frames in 5.0 seconds = 828.725 FPS
2962 frames in 5.0 seconds = 592.322 FPS
3043 frames in 5.0 seconds = 608.477 FPS
3148 frames in 5.0 seconds = 629.556 FPS
2295 frames in 5.0 seconds = 459.000 FPS
 * Stopping Bumblebee X server bumblebee                                                   * .
_DSM Disabling nVidia Card Succeded.
_PS3 Disabling nVidia Card Succeded.
DGPS Disabling nVidia Card Succeded.
   [ OK ]

sidenote:
on my old laptop with a geforce 9600 i get 8000 fps from glxgears, but the games i play via steam didnt work that good as they work now...

**qmater001** · July 6th, 2011

it`s ok the same for me.. i hade it install offline, and probably went wrong. now it` seems to be fine, i get the same results as you. still i`m wondering, why is oscilating so much? from 400 -800 ?

**qmater001** · July 6th, 2011

i`ll tell you what. i`ll put a different hdd (i have another 500gb), and see if it`s the hdd or not.
the only thing that i got (in the past 3 hours of use) is the laggy freezing (laggs untils is frozen). how` yours working?

**cucisan** · July 6th, 2011

no problems so far, over 30hrs uptime on AC and many times on battery (using hdparm for apm adjustment). no freeze no lag.

it seems there are many WD caviar blue 2.5" with apm issues.. just googled a bit lately

but on win7 there are no freezes

**cucisan** · July 7th, 2011

hm, another day and no freeze on battery

i wonder if someone who has freezes und reads this thread will acutally confirm this

**qmater001** · July 7th, 2011

well i changed the hdd and with a seagate momentus (the one the i had on my previous notebook). and i ran glxgears in a loop for 5 hours. se everything seems OK. one thing though, The search function in Unity Dashboard is very laggy, and it wasnt on my previous instalation. any ideas?