Acer Aspire One 722 Ubuntu 11.04 fixes

[jazz.h]

jazz, are you sure that it's a bug in diskUtility? i've found it working very well in my case. how did you partition your drive? by the installer? that should normally do it correctly afaik. could you post the outcome of

sudo fdisk -l

wifi led is working fine in my case, not using skype, but google talk works flawlessly for me.

Yes, I'm almost sure, I repeated the partitioning process 3 times. First, by the installer. Then 2 times manually:

1. Booted from Win7 Starter and made 1 extended partition from there (because of aligning).
2. Created ntfs sda5 (300 gb) into newly extended partition
3. Booted from live usb and created sda6 ext4 50gb for Mint12, sda7 ext4 50 gb for some KDE distro, sda8 swap.
4. Checked from Disk utility if warning align messages are gone, yes, now everything is fine, no errors.
5. Installed Mint12 into sda6.
6. Checked DiskUtility again - now mislaignment warning message is there again.

On this thread I first saw suspicions of bug in DiskUtility in case of extended partitions.
-> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1635018

The picture of my hdd before this action (but the warning is the same) is here:


I can't reproduce the response to "fdisk -l" cause my laptop is not here atm, but I'll do it later.

Any ideas...?

[ard213]

I see the same behavior as jazz.h on my 722, and running fdisk-l gives me the following:

Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0006b156

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048   621514751   310756352   83  Linux
/dev/sda2       621516798   625141759     1812481    5  Extended
Partition 2 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sda5       621516800   625141759     1812480   82  Linux swap / Solaris

For whatever its worth, this has not given me any problems, and I have successfully ignored it so far

[antiplex]

ard213, i think (although not 100% sure, can anybody confirm?) your partition scheme is fine and resembles what i suspect causes the warning on jazz.h's installation.

basically, if the drive used is not an advanced format one (=sector size 4096 bytes) the alignment can't be really wrong but with the new drives, data-partitions should be aligned to the physical sectors of the disk.

your fdisk states that its units consist of logical sectors that are 512 bytes big. so if you would want to align the start of a data-partition to the physical sectors, the numbers provided in logical sectors (512byte) should be divisible by 8 (because 8*512 = 4096 = 1 physical sector) without remainder.

your partitions start at 2048 (sda1), 621516798 (sda2, Extended) and 621516800 (sda5). the only number not divisible by 8 without reminder is the one of sda2, the extended partition. since this is not a data-partition but some sort of wrapper-partition (in your case holding one data-partition, sda5), the alignment doesn't really matter for this one as long as the contained data-partitions are correctly aligned.



bad news with my own issues (mainly hibernate atm), even when powering off wireless networking & bluetooth the system seems only to find 'orphaned inodes' upon resume and freezes right after login.

i also could not find any window-manager that merges its top window border with the top panel with maximized windows (and saves vertical space for more important panels). anybody seen something like this anywhere? hints welcome

regards, anti

[jazz.h]

could you post the outcome of [CODE]sudo fdisk -l

here it is:

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0e8f6e23

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1            2048    27265023    13631488   27  Hidden NTFS WinRE
/dev/sda2   *    27265024    27469823      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3        27469824   132327423    52428800    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4       132329470   976771071   422220801    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
Partition 4 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sda5       132329472   746729471   307200000    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda6       746731520   862074879    57671680   83  Linux
/dev/sda7       862076928   972576767    55249920   83  Linux
/dev/sda8       972578816   976771071     2096128   82  Linux swap / Solaris

[LewisTM]

bad news with my own issues (mainly hibernate atm), even when powering off wireless networking & bluetooth the system seems only to find 'orphaned inodes' upon resume and freezes right after login.

i also could not find any window-manager that merges its top window border with the top panel with maximized windows (and saves vertical space for more important panels). anybody seen something like this anywhere? hints welcome

Hibernation works perfectly here with Xubuntu 11.10 and open source video drivers. Sounds like your system fails to commit file changes to disk before hibernating which results in orphaned inodes. Maybe issuing a 'sync' command before hibernating could help (but it's hardly a permanent fix).

About your WM question, isn't a major point of the new Unity to provide that space-saving feature? In Xfce I restrict myself to one visible panel (+ 1 autohide dock), I use Chrome sans titlebar or menu and make heavy use of the Alt-F11 fullscreen shortcut.

Cheers!

[antiplex]

here it is:

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0e8f6e23

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1            2048    27265023    13631488   27  Hidden NTFS WinRE
/dev/sda2   *    27265024    27469823      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3        27469824   132327423    52428800    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4       132329470   976771071   422220801    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
Partition 4 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sda5       132329472   746729471   307200000    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda6       746731520   862074879    57671680   83  Linux
/dev/sda7       862076928   972576767    55249920   83  Linux
/dev/sda8       972578816   976771071     2096128   82  Linux swap / Solaris

ah, just as i explained, the only misaligned partition is the one of the extended wrapper one (sda4) which doesn't matter.
sda5,6,7,8 are aligned nicely because
132329472 % 8 = 0
746731520 % 8 = 0
862076928 % 8 = 0
972578816 % 8 = 0

so, nothing to worry about regarding this, everything should be fine.

...
About your WM question, isn't a major point of the new Unity to provide that space-saving feature? In Xfce I restrict myself to one visible panel (+ 1 autohide dock), I use Chrome sans titlebar or menu and make heavy use of the Alt-F11 fullscreen shortcut. ...

you are probably right about the unity philosophy, i thought maybe some other WM had picked up this idea as well.
however, saving vertical space while browing is one use-case, another one would be hacking in eclipse where the resolution of 1356x768 is imho the absolute minimum which one could work with, same applies for advanced uses of gimp or inkscape for example.


i also think i finally found the reason why hibernation did not work for me and as it seems its got nothing to do with the aspire one 722 but more with my decision to choose 'encrypt my home folder' during installation. this seems to automatically lead to the setup of an encrypted swap (which makes absolutely sense seen from a security pov) which encryption key is randomly chosen on boot, so the hibernation-data is effectively gone right when the system powers off after writing the memory contents to swap.
as it seems this has been known for some time to break the ability to hibernate but the ubuntu-maintainers or howevers courtesty this might be have not yet introduced a hint stating such in the install dialogue or disabled the hibernate-selection for systems that use an encrypted home directory.
i've found this launchpad-bug helpful, in comment #15 there is a short description how to disable encrypted swap (which will lead to a security risk but should allow hibernation!).

i'll try that and let you know how everything turned out...

EDIT1: seems i get at least a step forward, instead of rebooting, the hibernation-data seems to be loaded but the x-server shows only garbled pixels. when changing to tty1 via 'CTRL + ALT + 1' i see messages like

[ 186.528352] radeon 0000:00:01.0: GPU lockup CP stall for more than 10064msec

any ideas how to solve this?!?

EDIT2: the lockups went away after further fiddling around but i messed my system up once more *sigh* so i did a fresh reinstall with similar settings as before. here is what i did to get rid of the encrypted swap (dev/sda2 in my case, make sure to adopt this to your swap-partition correctly, otherwise you could lose your data! the sections between '**' are comments and need to be left out):

sudo swapoff -a
sudo cryptsetup remove /dev/mapper/cryptswap1
sudo vim /etc/crypttab **comment out the swap device defined here**
sudo mkswap -L swap /dev/sda2
sudo blkid /dev/sda2 **the id is needed afterwards and might be different each time the previous step is performed**
sudo vim /etc/fstab **instead of '/dev/mapper/cryptswap1' use UUID= followed by the uuid of the previous step**
sudo vim /etc/default/grub **replace the line 'GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""' by GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="RESUME=UUID=" followed by the uuid (within the "")**
sudo update-grub
sudo vim /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume **set 'RESUME=UUID=' followed by the uuid (without '')**
sudo update-initramfs -c -k all
sudo reboot **after the reboot, check e.g. in system monitor if the amount of swap matches**

EDIT3:

I also use the hibernate script (apt-get install hibernate) to manage bringing various services online/offline, mute the volume/stop mp3 playback, etc, etc. It might be something to fool with when you get things working.

sadly in my case suspend2 of the hibernate package is not working and was the reason for breaking my system earlier. i like the additional output and the possibilities provided by it but resume just wont work, the resume-process stops right after

...
resume: Compressed image
Loading image data pages (<number> pages)... 100% done
wrote <number> MB in <number> seconds (<number> MB/S)
read <number> MB in <number> seconds (<number> MB/S)
total image i/o: <number> MB in <number> seconds (<number> MB/s)
resume: Compression ratio 0.33

nothing is happening after this, even when waiting for minutes.
uninstalling the package won't fix the now broken hibernate (my guess is that some kernel-modules are modified during installation), so the only way back would be a backup-recovery or a fresh install =(
bottom line for now: dont install the suspend2 (package hibernate) if you tweaked your way around encrypted swap like i did.


regards,
anti

[ard213]

For what its worth:

I recently tried switching to the open-source drivers, using the latest stable versions from https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat/+archive/x-updates, just so I could play around with the suspend feature, and with gnome-shells.

I have discovered that the battery life decreases significantly from the closed-source ati drivers. I lost about 2 hours of battery life, and significant video performance on youtube. Suspend worked, as did gnome, but I found out that I really need the extra battery life, and that I really like unity.

I did not try the "bleeding edge" ppa ( https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa ), as I must have a stable machine.

So I'm back with ati (version 12.1 now). Stable, faster than open-source, long battery life, but no suspend or gnome shell (lots of flickering when logging in with any shell but unity). Your mileage may vary, of course, but I thought that this may be useful information for new users.

Again, my 722 has a C-60 apu...

[xterminus]

For what its worth:

I recently tried switching to the open-source drivers, using the latest stable versions from https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat/+archive/x-updates, just so I could play around with the suspend feature, and with gnome-shells.

I have discovered that the battery life decreases significantly from the closed-source ati drivers. I lost about 2 hours of battery life, and significant video performance on youtube. Suspend worked, as did gnome, but I found out that I really need the extra battery life, and that I really like unity.

The opensource drivers will suck juice without a little tweaking. I dropped the following script into /etc/pm/power.d/radeon to fix that.

#!/bin/sh

. "${PM_FUNCTIONS}"


enable_low() {
        # Change Power Profile to low
        echo low > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile
        # Turn backlight down to 1 (override gnome/whatever!)
        echo 1 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
}

enable_high() {
        # Change Power Profile to high
        echo high > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile
        # Crank backlight back up to 9 (override gnome/whatever!)
        echo 9 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness
}

case $1 in
    true) enable_low ;;
    false) enable_high ;;
    *) exit $NA ;;
esac

I'm still using the stock x drivers, nothing special about em other than they are the ones that come with oneiric.

I did not try the "bleeding edge" ppa ( https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa ), as I must have a stable machine.

So I'm back with ati (version 12.1 now). Stable, faster than open-source, long battery life, but no suspend or gnome shell (lots of flickering when logging in with any shell but unity). Your mileage may vary, of course, but I thought that this may be useful information for new users.

Again, my 722 has a C-60 apu...

As for video performance, the FlashAid firefox plugin correctly installed the beta version of the amd64 flash plugin. I saw a tremendous increase in flash performance as a result. I can now play 720p videos without any stutter and 1024p with a little jerkiness, where before it was almost unwatchable at either resolution.

[ard213]

The opensource drivers will suck juice without a little tweaking. I dropped the following script into /etc/pm/power.d/radeon to fix that.

I'm still using the stock x drivers, nothing special about em other than they are the ones that come with oneiric.

As for video performance, the FlashAid firefox plugin correctly installed the beta version of the amd64 flash plugin. I saw a tremendous increase in flash performance as a result. I can now play 720p videos without any stutter and 1024p with a little jerkiness, where before it was almost unwatchable at either resolution.

Thanks, xterminus! I forgot to say that I have Flash-aid, and so I'm running the latest 64bit Flash beta. Oddly, with radeon drivers I was still lagging a lot in 480p movies. And I got the occasional screen flicker in unity (none of that with the latest proprietary drivers).

As I don't have much use for the sleep feature (I can just turn my netbook off between classes, it doesn't take that long to boot) I'll happily stick with the ati drivers. It's much more important that I have 7-8 hours of running time on battery, anyway. Ati drivers with the jupiter applet give me that, so I won't mess with a winning team.

I just wanted to add a bit to the knowledge pool of 722 ubuntu users. There seems to be a strong preference towards the open source drivers, so I thought I'd add some insight into the proprietary ones. I may try the open source again in the (distant) future, as it gets ironed out a bit more (perhaps you should submit your script to the developers?).

Cheers,

[hitime]

Has anyone had any luck on bluetooth, the boot into windows is not an option for me since the 1st thing I did when I got mine was format and put Ubuntu on. Works great with Lubuntu 11.10, just want some bluetooth goodness....

Thanks,
hitime