Asus Eee PC 1015PN - graphic cards: Optimus and ION

[Lead Expression]

I made this trial with a freshly installed Ubuntu 12.10.

Actually I tried the procedure 4 times (all fresh installations, 3 with 12.04 and 1 with 12.10) but the result is always the same. At least for the 12.04 I have the problem of the dependencies on nvidia-current.
In any case ok, as the system now is using the nvidia only and it is very hot and power consuming, I will try a further time. It would have been more efficient to understand where the problem is before retrying following the same procedure without modification but unfortunately I really cannot figure out

[mtron]

ok, so we will go another route. Please to the following

- start with a complete fresh install of ubuntu 12.04 LTS
- update your system (don't forget to reboot in the Latest installed kernel)
- add the 1015pn and the x-swat ppa and install the "eee1015pn-acpitools" package and reboot

if it does not work after this i suspect a hardware problem on your Netbook. It works on numerous other 1015PN's so yours seems to be "special". If you are thus far please send me ssh or teamviewer account data via PM and i will poke around a bit to find out whats going wrong on your system.

[Lead Expression]

The last time I tried... It does work!
I have followed the same steps but no error in nvidia-current and nvidia-settings dependencies I have always had in 12.04.
The other difference is that I have installed the eee1015tool only without build-essential, debhelper, module-assistant and lm-sensors packets.

I don't know why... but now is working, this is the important thing.
Thank you very very much for your help and your time, mtron!

[mtron]

I don't know why... but now is working

Great! Though it would have been interresting to know what happened on your system...

I have also pushed a new version (eee1015pn-acpitools 0.9.0) to the ppa. It should get installed automatically once you run a system upgrade. To trigger such an upgrade now use

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Changelog:

* added Ubuntu 13.04 support
* updated fixglx and regenerate-glx functions for ubuntus new nvidia binary driver naming schema like nvidia-<first 3 digits of driver version>
* updated search path for nvidia kernel module for ubuntus new nvidia binary driver naming schema
* packaging: fixed postinstall script to find all installed nvidia drivers

Documentation /How to use:
http://mtron.co.nr/projects/eee1015pn

Distribution Upgrades:
If you plan to upgrade from quantal to raring make sure that you have min. 0.9.0 installed. After the upgrade completed run

sudo display-settings regenerate-glx

and reboot.

[gumbomumbo]

I just installed ubuntu and when I followed your "how to" I ran into problems. Your stuff has always worked for me, but it seems like some update killed it.

When rebooting after running "sudo sensors-detect". I now get

Starting Configure Display Device for EeePC 1015PN [fail]. How do I fix this?

Thanks a lot for your help mtron.

[talksloudsaysnothing]

I am having similar trouble like Lead Expression up there, I've just reinstalled 12.04 and as soon as I want to install your acpitools, it tells me that there is a problem with nvidia-current. Of note, it worked just a few days ago, back then I had a working 12.04 installed from last year with your tools working nicely. Either I did something to mess my installation up or it got messed up by something, either way I had to reinstall. 12.10 gave me random freezes so I tried to go back to 12.04 but keep getting the "nvidia-current is not going to be installed..." error (see previous page of this thread) when I try to install your stuff.

I tried your suggestions from above, tried to install the nvidia driver from x-swat and then install the acpitools. Upon reboot it looked fine at first, the fan got much quieter so it seemed to work, but weird enough the x-server wouldn't start anymore. Instead of seeing the login manager, I was kicked to commandline login. When I tried the start the xserver manually, I got this error:

/etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc: 3: exec: /usr/bin/X: not found
xinit: giving up
xinit: unable to connect to Xserver: no such file or directory

I rebooted into recovery mode as I thought maybe repairing broken packages might help, but all it did was throw out all the Xserver packages, so I had to reinstall again. Now I am on a fresh system, updated all my packages, still can't install your tools and don't know what to do.

[mtron]

can you provide me with ssh or teamviewer access to the netbook please? i'm really interested to see whats going on there since i cant reproduce this here. i'm too on 12.04 with nvidia driver 304.84 and everything works as it should.

[talksloudsaysnothing]

Did you actually try and reinstall it completely? Because everything did work for me a couple days back when I was still using my previous installation. It is installing it now that for some reason has everything messed up.

[mtron]

Did you actually try and reinstall it completely?

Yes. Here is what i did:

- default install from usb-stick. no updates during install

- rebooted

edited /etc/apt/sources.list (not via gui!)

# See http://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes

## Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS main archive
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise main restricted universe multiverse

## Major bug fix and security updates 
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security main restricted universe multiverse

## N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as
## extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes
## newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features.
## Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review
## or updates from the Ubuntu security team.
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-backports main restricted universe multiverse

## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from Canonical's
## 'partner' repository.
## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by Canonical and the
## respective vendors as a service to Ubuntu users.
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu precise partner

## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by third-party
## developers who want to ship their latest software.
deb http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise main

- only syc online repositories, don't actually install updates

sudo apt-get update

- install the ee1015pn-acpitools package

sudo apt-get install eee1015pn-acpitools

and i get:

The following NEW packages will be installed:
  acpi acpi-call-dkms acpi-call-source bbswitch-dkms build-essential debhelper
  dh-apparmor dkms dpkg-dev eee1015pn-acpitools fakeroot g++ g++-4.6 gettext
  html2text intltool-debian libalgorithm-diff-perl libalgorithm-diff-xs-perl
  libalgorithm-merge-perl libdpkg-perl libgettextpo0 libgif4 libglade2-0
  libid3tag0 libimlib2 libmail-sendmail-perl libobrender27 libobt0
  libstdc++6-4.6-dev libsys-hostname-long-perl libtimedate-perl libunistring0
  mesa-utils module-assistant nvidia-current nvidia-settings obconf openbox
  openbox-themes po-debconf screen-resolution-extra yad

the 'nvidia-current' driver comes in this case from the ubuntu "precise-updates" repository and is the nvidia binary blob version 295.40

install works fine:

Setting up nvidia-current (295.40-0ubuntu1.3) ...
update-alternatives: using /usr/lib/nvidia-current/ld.so.conf to provide /etc/ld.so.conf.d/i386-linux-gnu_GL.conf (i386-linux-gnu_gl_conf) in auto mode.
update-alternatives: warning: skip creation of /usr/lib32/libOpenCL.so because associated file /usr/lib32/nvidia-current/libOpenCL.so (of link group i386-linux-gnu_gl_conf) doesn't exist.
update-alternatives: warning: skip creation of /usr/lib32/vdpau/libvdpau_nvidia.so.1 because associated file /usr/lib32/nvidia-current/vdpau/libvdpau_nvidia.so.1 (of link group i386-linux-gnu_gl_conf) doesn't exist.
update-alternatives: warning: skip creation of /usr/lib32/libvdpau_nvidia.so because associated file /usr/lib32/nvidia-current/vdpau/libvdpau_nvidia.so (of link group i386-linux-gnu_gl_conf) doesn't exist.
update-alternatives: using /usr/lib/nvidia-current/alt_ld.so.conf to provide /etc/ld.so.conf.d/x86_64-linux-gnu_GL.conf (x86_64-linux-gnu_gl_conf) in auto mode.
update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)
INFO:Enable nvidia-current
DEBUG:Parsing /usr/share/nvidia-common/quirks/dell_latitude
DEBUG:Parsing /usr/share/nvidia-common/quirks/put_your_quirks_here
DEBUG:Parsing /usr/share/nvidia-common/quirks/lenovo_thinkpad
DEBUG:Processing quirk Latitude E6530
DEBUG:Failure to match ASUSTeK Computer INC. with Dell Inc.
DEBUG:Quirk doesn't match
DEBUG:Processing quirk ThinkPad T420s
DEBUG:Failure to match ASUSTeK Computer INC. with LENOVO
DEBUG:Quirk doesn't match
Loading new nvidia-current-295.40 DKMS files...
First Installation: checking all kernels...
Building only for 3.2.0-32-generic-pae
Building for architecture i686
Building initial module for 3.2.0-32-generic-pae
Done.

bbswitch:
Running module version sanity check.
 - Original module
   - No original module exists within this kernel
 - Installation
   - Installing to /lib/modules/3.2.0-32-generic-pae/updates/dkms/

depmod....

DKMS: install completed.

- also the glx libs are properly created and everything works here.

sudo display-settings fix
...
INFO: mesa glx MD5 sums are
      4f5109cec4bee6e1edfe4cc03c3f3d8c
      4f5109cec4bee6e1edfe4cc03c3f3d8c
INFO: mesa checksums OK
INFO: nvidia glx MD5 sums are
      ab5d73191f397fbe120eb63001d5623c
      ab5d73191f397fbe120eb63001d5623c
INFO: nvidia checksums OK
...

so i cant reproduce this at this stage. i will try to actually install all system updates after initial install but i can't see a reason why it should break then. I need very percise steps to reproduce this bug please.

EDIT: next try. this time install all upgrades, updated kernel and nvidia drivers via x-swat ppa:
- basic install usb stick
- sources.list update as above
- full system update

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

- install latest 3.5 kernel from quantal for precise

sudo apt-get install linux-image-generic-lts-quantal linux-headers-generic-lts-quantal

- add the x-swat and eee1015pn ppa

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mtron/eee1015pn 
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

- reboot into 3.5 kernel
- install acpitools and nvidia driver

sudo apt-get install eee1015pn-acpitools

now it's kernel 3.5 with nvidia binary blob 304.84 and again everything works here. No idea what's wrong in your case.

[talksloudsaysnothing]

Ah, thats much different from what I did. I basically always updated everything before trying to install the acpitools. Will try this again when I am back at my computer later. Thanks! I'll report back if it worked.