Installing on the Dell Mini 12

[kylecronan]

1. That's the one. If you're not that familiar with the command line, it will not be an easy one to install. In addition to the problems I mentioned before, X won't start in VESA mode without the HorizSync/VertRefresh fix documented early in this thread. Also, I had to add cdrom-detect/try-usb=true to the boot options for the rescue mode. But give it a try. You will learn a lot, and I'd be happy to help you if you get stuck.

2. You could use a text editor. Or, my favorite: cp /dev/null /etc/X11/xorg.conf (although I take it back: I did have to add myself to the 'video' group for stuff that uses DRI)

[greggh]

kylecronan, thanks very much for the offer of help. I may take you up on it in the near future if I get totally stuck. But I'm optimistic that I'll be able to install it.

[greggh]

(although I take it back: I did have to add myself to the 'video' group for stuff that uses DRI)

How do you add yourself to the 'video' group?

[kylecronan]

The simplest way is to use the "Users and Groups" control panel under "Administration" (or sudo vigr).

[brteag00]

With regards to getting the lpia image to install - I ended up doing a network install using a PXE boot with appropriately configured DHCP and TFTP servers. That process is beyond the scope of this discussion - I'm sure a standard USB-stick install would work fine.

You can actually get the kernel to install from the installer with just one command-line trick - the installer will complain that it can't find a kernel. Tell it to continue with the installation. Then, when you get to the next screen (selecting packages, as I recall), go over to another virtual terminal (Alt+F2, I think) and, at the prompt, type "apt-get install linux-lpia". This will install the kernel, and then you can continue with the rest of the OS installation as usual. NOTE - you want the 'desktop' packages but NOT the 'mobile' packages, they conflict with eachother!

Sheesh. For all the polish that the rest of Ubuntu receives, the release engineering for this particular piece really stinks.

[kylecronan]

Yeah if you do a net install you don't have the issue with conflicting packages causing the install to fail (just the missing kernel). They must have fixed the lpia packages after the release was done.

Have you been able to get mplayer-vaapi working with this driver? I got it compiled, and when I play a file it opens up the psb_drv_video stuff just fine, but then I get this error:

VDec: vo config request - 368 x 480 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
Could not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vf scale...
Opening video filter: [scale]
The selected video_out device is incompatible with this codec.

Any idea why it would do that?

[brteag00]

VDec: vo config request - 368 x 480 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
Could not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vf scale...
Opening video filter: [scale]
The selected video_out device is incompatible with this codec.

Any idea why it would do that?

No, I don't. I havn't compiled a new version; I'm using the one I built a few months back (20090123). Are you using the version of libva that comes with Intrepid, or the one on the mplayer-vaapi website?

[kylecronan]

No, I don't. I havn't compiled a new version; I'm using the one I built a few months back (20090123). Are you using the version of libva that comes with Intrepid, or the one on the mplayer-vaapi website?

I installed the libva debs from the mplayer-vaapi website. I had to use --force-depends to get the libva-dev package to install, but I figure that's probably okay if it compiled.

[brteag00]

I had to use --force-depends to get the libva-dev package to install, but I figure that's probably okay if it compiled.

Yeah, I did too.

I just built the newest mplayer-vaapi, and it seems to work fine as well.

From my (admittedly limited) experience with video decoding, your "could not find matching color space" error sounds like a problem with Xv or XvMC. Are you sure you've got all your permissions, etc. correct? Ie, hardware-accelerated 3D works? Also check your /var/log/Xorg.0.log for errors. Beyond that, I'm not sure what to suggest...

[marduk667]

Wow this went really fast now, maybe they can do this for Jaunty, too? Do you know who is reponsible for the PPA?