Averatec 2370 / 2300 Guide

[dragonfyre13]

Avertec 2370 and Everex StepNote ST5340T Compatability Guide

Thanks to NickB, lawr_rawr, lythandrel, dragon76, and all the others who continually help people out in this thread, and with this guide.

I suppose this is just a thread to help others who get this great peice of equipment. I have most of the functionality working great, and I will update this as I get more working. I'm also including information about the laptop in here that will help others with drivers and such.

This is focused on Gutsy Gibbon, since that is what I am using, 64 bit should be covered soon, and should be about the same configuration as detailed here.

Unsolved:
Intermittent Wireless Issues

Works In Progress:
CPU Scaling Button (Thanks NickB) (Need to test this on Gutsy)

Completed:
Video Card Drivers
Suspend To Disk (Hibernate)
Suspend to Ram (Suspend)
Wireless with Network Manager and Encryption (WPA and WEP)
ExpressCard Recognition
Dual Core Recgonition
Desktop Effects (Compiz, etc.)

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Working by Default
Wireless with Network Manager and Encryption (WPA and WEP)
ExpressCard Recognition
Dual Core Recgonition
Suspend To Disk (Hibernate)
Suspend to Ram (Suspend)

Proprietary Nvidia Drivers
This is fairly simple. Just select Restricted Drivers Manager in System->Administration, and check the box to enable these.

Reboot. (Yes, reboot. You don't have to, it's just the easiest way.)

If your resolution is borked (mine was, it sets itself to 1024x768 ) open up System->Administration->Screens And Graphics. Get quite familiar with this application. You will be in it a few times.

You will have to "Fiddle" a bit. Basically, you may have to reboot and delete your xorg.conf files from recovery mode (from the commandline: sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf*) a few times to get this right. The goal is to set your settings with the LCD 1280x800 (make sure to check the widescreen option when you select the screen type) with a refresh rate of 51 khz and a resolution of 1280x800.

After you get that set, you just need to log out and back in again.

YAY! Have a cookie.

Desktop Effects

This is enabled by default. However, to get the true functionality, you will need to install the configuration package.

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Then, just execute the command:

ccsm

To change your settings.

A Quick Aside...

First, I wanted to say that Gutsy Gibbon fixes a lot out of the box. One of the reasons that this thread was here was because the rt73 driver was so hard to install and configure. This thread at least got you off the ground on that. Now it works by default out of the box. That is a huge win. While we are still tracking down issues with wireless, I think this is a huge improvement.

Second, I haven't put this entirely through it's paces yet. I'm trying, but I always need help from people who use it on the forums, and every comment counts. Even a "This guide covers everything" to a "X feature doesn't work". I can be aware of what I need to focus on to write it into this guide.

Just a short thanks again. Most of the original information, and much of the support for this laptop was off of the Ubuntu Boards, and from the Ubuntu IRC channel. Thanks to everyone that helped, including FrodoB, Kingsqueak on IRC, and others. Also, some of the info is off the Averatec Unofficial Forums. They aren't a great resource, but still, I thought I would mention them. Sorry if I forgot you. I know I mistreated you. Have a cookie.


Power Save Button
Thanks to NickB for this. I'm testing this now, and it's really good. Nick, have a cookie.

If you want to use the "S" button to put your laptop into powersaving mode, go to the following post, and install the attached Deb file for either 64 or 32 bit versions of Ubuntu (all architectures, we think. If it doesn't work on one, just post here.)

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...2&postcount=21
(There is a source file attached also for other Distros to port the app, or for you to compile it yourself)

Then follow the directions:

From the README:
In order to use the tray icon notifier in a GNOME desktop, open
System->Preferences->Sessions, select the Startup Programs tab,
click the Add button and type powersave-trayicon into the text
entry box and click OK. The next time you start your GNOME
session the tray icon will be active.

(Got a little Techie in you? He explains a bit about why he did it this way here: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showpost...0&postcount=12 )

Now, give a cookie to NickB. Yes, alright, you can have one too.


An Aside to Those Using Other Distributions

Hello, and welcome. We greet you from ubuntu-land. Let me say that this is neither a crappy, or a kiddie distribution, and that I have tried all of the top 10 Distributions on DistroWatch (and many that weren't) and I keep coming back to this for various reasons, and have stuck with it for my main OS since Warty Warthog (the first release) was released. We will welcome you to decide to join, but otherwise here's some information that you will likely find useful.

The driver for wireless is RT73 from Ralink. You need that driver. It has some peculiarities but the main thing is to make sure that you have the other drivers blacklisted, and don't plan on using a graphical tool. If you do need a graphical tool, there is one hidden in this thread, that is accessible from the commandline. However, if you need NM working with it, and it doesn't, try the serialmonkey drivers, or if that fails, go to Ndiswrapper.

Suspend works better generally with an external program (there are a few), or using a Suspend2 patched kernel.

Almost always, the CVS versions of drivers have fixes for this laptop in them. The serialmonkey drivers are one instance. Try it out. If it doesn't work, you can remove it.

If you have questions, post them. I'm not an Ubuntu Nazi, and I don't think people here are. We're a good support structure for the hardware, and if you have questions about it, the thread is pretty active. So post and ask. Almost all of the solutions are distro agnostic.

[dragonfyre13]

OK, got WEP working, and updated the above to reflect the changes.

[dragonfyre13]

Having issues with Full Screen OpenGL? (games, etc)

It's a bug in the NVIDIA 9629 drivers. You should either roll back the drivers (that has issues with the GeForce Go 6100 card in this laptop) or you can use the next version, at the link that was so graciously provided to us below. I will be sure to keep you up to date on when these hit the repository so that you don't have to jump through these hoops.

All you have to do is run the NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9631-pkg1.run file, after killing GDM (sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop) and removing the nvidia glx package from above (apt-get remove nvidia-glx) and you're golden.

You should restart the computer, or start gdm again. (sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start)

After the new drivers are in the repository, you just install the nvidia-glx package, and run the command above for installation, but pass a "--uninstall" command to it.

[dragonfyre13]

Getting closer to Suspend2 integration. I have everything working on my laptop, now I'm installing a seperate Ubuntu installation to make things nice and simple for those of you who don't have days to slave over it. ^_^

[deadlydeathcone]

Originally Posted by dragonfyre13 Suspend To Disk (Hibernate) This is partly working out of the box, but it takes forever to come back from hibernation, and doesn't have any sort of indication that it is coming back. Getting it to go faster and use a splash is a work in progress. I'm focusing on Suspend2 patched kernels to accomplish this.

I've owned an Averatec with finicky hibernation before, and the old tricks seem applicable here. "apt-get install uswsusp" enables compression and a splash indicator (or a psychedelic mess, depending upon what drivers you use), and using the /etc/default/acpi-support that I attached should get things up to speed.

As far as video goes, the bugs in the 9626 and beta drivers have all been fixed with the just-released 9631. Also, after using both for a while Beryl is much less buggy and resource demanding than Compiz on this machine, although both are blazing fast even with an integrated Geforce 6100.

Anyways, thanks for the guide. For one thing, I wouldn't even have known that stable native rt73 drivers existed without it.

[dragonfyre13]

Wasn't it evil finding that? ^_^

If you have something working, I wouldn't switch though. The rt73 drivers are in beta status, though they are official, and can be very hard to setup if you don't follow the guide EXACTLY.

I do prefer Beryl to Compiz also, mainly for the reasons that you stated. Thanks for the acpi file, I'll take a look next time I have a chance. I'm actually really close to getting "suspend to ram" working, mainly by majorly messing with a lot of stuff. I'm running edgy, which broke nearly all suspend to ram stuff, in all laptops from what I hear.

Either way, nice to know someone actually read it. ^_^

[victorxg]

Hello, I just want to say though I'm not a Ubuntu user, I'm a SUSE user, this thread has convinced me to get the 2370. I've been looking for a replacement for my ibook that doesn't cost too much. I have a question though, has anyone tried replacing the wifi card with a different one?

[dragonfyre13]

Originally Posted by victorxg Hello, I just want to say though I'm not a Ubuntu user, I'm a SUSE user, this thread has convinced me to get the 2370. I've been looking for a replacement for my ibook that doesn't cost too much. I have a question though, has anyone tried replacing the wifi card with a different one?

Good to know it helped someone. Actually, you shouldn't try to replace the card with something else. It's a usb wifi card, since the laptop doesn't have a standard pci interface. It uses PCI-E instead, which is new enough (on laptops) that there aren't mini cards for it. You can pick up a Express Card for wifi, and that makes things TONS easier, but they run about 70-80 bucks. Like I said, it's a new technology.

Good to see other Distros here. Let me know if there is anything that I can do to improve my tutorial for SUSE as well. I'd like it to be fairly standard across distros.

P.S. I think SUSE has rt73 drivers already packaged for it too.

[Joshua]

Has anyone tried this with Edgy for AMD64 yet? I can't get the wireless drivers to build.

[NickB]

I am running Edgy amd64 on this laptop. Download the network drivers from cvs:

cvs -dserver:anonymous@rt2400.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/rt2400 login
cvs -z3 -dserver:anonymous@66.35.250.89:/cvsroot/rt2400 co -P source

Go to the rt73 directory and make, make install. Copy the rt73.bin file as noted above, but DO NOT create/copy the rt73sta.dat, as it will cause a kernel Oops. You don't need it anyway.

I could not get this to work with NetworkManager; in /etc/network/interfaces, you need to have something like this:

auto rausb0
iface rausb0 inet dhcp
pre-up ifconfig rausb0 up
wireless-essid whatever
wireless-key blahblah...

Anyway, the pre-up line is most important. Won't work without it.

Hope that helps,
Nick