Guide: Ubuntu 9.04 on Gateway T-6836

[kaoskorruption]

If you are reading this, you likely reading my guide for Ubuntu 8.10 on the Gateway T-6836. I am finally getting around to making a guide for 9.10! Overall, 9.10 does work a lot more smoothly, though I would suggest doing a full reinstall rather than an upgrade. I took the upgrade path, which worked okay, but I later found that reinstalling just works more smoothly.



As I said in my previous guide, the Gateway T-6836 is a great laptop for the price and I would recommend it. It is a sibling of the T-3828 too, so what works for one might work for the other (though not always). Anyways, on with the guide...

Headphone Issue
The headphone jack does not work properly upon installation. To fix it, you basically have to upgrade your sound drivers:
1. Download this script: http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.p...3&d=1241945700 (if that does not work, find the Alsa Upgrade script in this post: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...10#post6589810) - Best to save to desktop rather than opening.
2. Extract the contents to your desktop.
3. Open the terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal) and enter

sudo ./AlsaUpgrade-1.0.x-rev-1.17.sh -di

4. This should take 10-15 minutes. If you think it is frozen, just keep waiting, you wouldn't want to stop the script while it is running.
5. In the terminal again, enter

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

6. At the very end of the file, add these lines:

# This line fixes the headphone jack on the T-6836
options snd-hda-intel enable_msi=0 model=eapd

7. Save, exit, and reboot.
8. Play "Time Of The Season" by the Zombies, relax, and enjoy your working headphone jack.

The only other issues with the T-6836 are that Compiz does not work and that the brightness buttons don't work. I will add information on how to get these working as soon as I figure it out. Hope you enjoy your new, working operating system!

[odwyerda]

Hi

Thanks for your guide for 8.04 helped me loads with issues I was having.

I currently still use 8.04 mainly due to my college network. The network in 8.10 did not connect to the wireless network for more than 30 seconds after I upgraded. This issue as far as I could tell was due to the fact that the network manager did not have WPA enterprise only WPA enterprise 2 and for some messed up reason no stable connection could be made. This problem only occured for this laptop and not any others that had 8.04 installed.

Before I upgrade is there a possibility of using the 8.04 network manager? because with out the internet it is pointless.

Many thanks

David

[Genecks]

First off, I wouldn't say the old thread was irrelevant. It was useful. It still may be of use to many users.

Headphone issue:
Has anyone experienced a problem with headphones after putting a computer to sleep or hibernating it? I have used the ALSA update script provided on the Ubuntu forums for Debian Lenny. It worked. However, when I put the computer to sleep/hibernation and woke it up, the headphones no longer worked. I had to restart the computer for things to work again.

Screen brightness idea:
If anyone could get a command for the brightness to change on the screen, then I suspect the brightness keys could be hotkeyed using xkeys or something.

I know xbrightness and xbacklight are two command-line based things for controlling light output. I'm not sure if xbrightness would help reduce battery usage.

I took a look at this from the old thread:

#!/bin/bash
if on_ac_power; then
setpci -s 00:02.0 F4.B=FF
else
setpci -s 00:02.0 F4.B=B2
fi

I got into a root terminal and tried this:
setpci -s 00:02.0 F4.B=B2

I noticed that it dimmed the screen. This is a good thing.
So, what I have in mind is creating a script that keeps track of what percentage the computer is on.
For instance, at startup, the script will have 100%.

Let's say the file is $HOME/.lcdbrightness/percent

When you use a brightness key (hotkey'd, of course), it checks the percent in that file, cats it to terminal, and either brings down or up the percentage (mathematically), logs it, and then it applies that percentage.

That looks like a good way to tackle this remaining issue.


It looks like it's based on hexadecimal to decimal.
So, the FF = 255.
And the B2 = 191

So, B2 is 191/255 = 0.749019608
~ 75% brightness


http://www.easycalculation.com/hex-converter.php


There should be a way to give a non-root user the ability to use the setpci command. I suspect this would be creating a secondary script with setpci already in it, and giving regular users permission over it:

all users read/execute access:

setpci -s 00:02.0 F4.B=

And then a third script does the math above, appends it to that secondard script, and eventually changes the brightness.

Hi

Thanks for your guide for 8.04 helped me loads with issues I was having.

I currently still use 8.04 mainly due to my college network. The network in 8.10 did not connect to the wireless network for more than 30 seconds after I upgraded. This issue as far as I could tell was due to the fact that the network manager did not have WPA enterprise only WPA enterprise 2 and for some messed up reason no stable connection could be made. This problem only occured for this laptop and not any others that had 8.04 installed.

Before I upgrade is there a possibility of using the 8.04 network manager? because with out the internet it is pointless.

Many thanks

David

No, I wouldn't screw with an Ubuntu update. Whenever you need a specific OS, keep in mind to always keep it on the HDD. Debian users who play with Sid (unstable) and stable know this.

Ubuntu 8.04

Released April 2008 and maintained until April 2011 – ideal for large deployments

I suggest you partition the drive -- backup first -- and then install the newer ubuntu onto a different partition. Otherwise, you could play with a Live-CD and see if you can get things working. But don't delete something that works.

[odwyerda]

I suggest you partition the drive -- backup first -- and then install the newer ubuntu onto a different partition. Otherwise, you could play with a Live-CD and see if you can get things working. But don't delete something that works.

Don't I know it. Thanks

Dave

[enriqg9]

Manually install Kernel 2.6.30 and you will have the Gateway T-6836 running perfectly!, the headphone jack will natively work perfectly, including the brightness keys, and all know issues will be correct now!!

[Salvar Fawkes]

Manually install Kernel 2.6.30 and you will have the Gateway T-6836 running perfectly!, the headphone jack will natively work perfectly, including the brightness keys, and all know issues will be correct now!!

Hmm. Is that going to be the kernel used in Karmic?

[c_wilson]

Manually install Kernel 2.6.30 and you will have the Gateway T-6836 running perfectly!, the headphone jack will natively work perfectly, including the brightness keys, and all know issues will be correct now!!

Kernel 2.6.30 does fix the screen brightness and brings compiz back, but i still have to upgrade alsa to get the headphones working. Are you getting headphones without the upgrade?

I am experiencing the sound breaking in flash both when the upgrade script is invoked with -di and when invoked with -snap. Sound in flash works fine unless you open a music player before you open your browser in which case flash has no sound. The opposite is true as well (if you play flash, and then open rhythmbox or audacious, you won't be able to play music) My current work around is just closing and opening applications in the necessary order, but perhaps someone has a better option?

EDIT: Solved through Preferences --> Sound. Changed everything to ALSA instead of Autodetect. Rapidly running out of things to fix!!1

[kaoskorruption]

My sound suddenly stopped working completely. I suspect a recent update. Has this happened to anyone?

[lilyselden]

My sound suddenly stopped working completely. I suspect a recent update. Has this happened to anyone?

Hi to all. This is my first post after weeks of lurking/learning.

Same problem here (on a T-6836 running 64-bit Jaunty.) This was after I updated with a lot of medibuntu stuff to try to get my DVD and Mp3 players working, and restarted.

Question: While I absolutely LOVE the fact that there is an Ubuntu 9.04 guide specifically for my laptop (Yay!) I have to wonder if this is a guide only for the 32-bit version on a T-6836?

The reason I ask is actually not because of my current issue; I'm sure I broke the sound all by myself.
It's just that earlier (as in, today), the speaker sound was fine, but not the headphone sound, and I did the nifty headphone jack trick detailed in the first post and it didn't work. And I'd previously been running 32-bit Jaunty, and had the same issue, and it DID work perfectly in 32-bit.
(In fact, I had the 32 bit working perfectly until I broke it earlier this week trying to disable Nautilus wallpaper --don't ask) and after failing miserably at trying to repair Gnome and Nautilus from the rescue mode command line, I decided to do a complete reinstall with the 64-bit version. And this time I created separate partitions of /boot, /home, /usr, /var, etc.

I'm dual-booting with 64-bit Vista (which I'd love to leave altogether one day), and all of my files are backed up already, so...long story short...I can afford to scrap this version (again) and go back to 32-bit, where I, at least---through a whole lot of reading this forum--I did have all of my sound and multimedia working. Even Compiz was perfect. I've had many more issues since I went to 64-bit. Not looking forward to another reinstall, but like I said, I can do it; it won't kill me.

Should I just go back to 32-bit? Anybody running 64-bit got it running okay? Believe me, I don't mind at all trying to FIX the current problems, because it's the only way you learn, but if another 64-bit related issue will just pop up, and 64-bit is just more trouble than it's worth.....

Thanks in advance for any suggestions or insight.

(And yes, I did read the sticky post about the pros and cons of 64-bit vs. 32-bit. The cons didn't seem so bad. And I felt stupid not taking full advantage of my 4G RAM, 64-bit machine.)

[c_wilson]

I've been using the 64-bit version of Jaunty and gotten pretty much everthing up and running by upgrading Alsa and manually upgrading to kernel 2.6.30. Others can speak for themselves, but i'm pretty sure i'm not the only one on 64-bit