Acer Aspire One 722 Ubuntu 11.04 fixes

[LewisTM]

Did any of you experience hard disk clicks when running on battery? On my 722 they were regular, about once in 10 seconds, and for a long time I assumed this to be normal. And today I looked at:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DanielHahler/Bug59695
It seems that Ubuntu was trying to spin-down HD too often, and because the HD was in use, it was spinned-up immediatly after. I applied the proposed fix (hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda) and the clicks were gone! I just hope this didn't damage my hard disk too much...

zzarko, you did it again!

I placed the command in my rc.local file. Now my netbook is not only ninja quick, it's also ninja silent.

How this fix will impact power consumption remains to be determined. The proper power management of the hard disk could be a game changer. If we could prevent Ubuntu from needlessly accessing the HDD, we could take advantage of the aggressive power management settings.

Wonder if the (many) tweaks found here for SDD could also apply and benefit this netbook.

[emilywind]

Uhh, Jupiter plugs into power.d, that's how it works. I also know of several people that use it under kubuntu without any issue.

Good luck supporting this.

When use KDE I prefer KDE and QT apps; simple as.

Furthermore, Linux is quintessentially about choice, and I am choosing a lightweight, gui-free solution. These scripts are for others who wish to do the same and to know what is happening behind the scenes. I have no intention to start/maintain a project out of simple scripts.

Why do you have seemingly have inane issues with me choosing/providing a slim power management option?

[fuduntu]

When use KDE I prefer KDE and QT apps; simple as.

Furthermore, Linux is quintessentially about choice, and I am choosing a lightweight, gui-free solution. These scripts are for others who wish to do the same and to know what is happening behind the scenes. I have no intention to start/maintain a project out of simple scripts.

Why do you have seemingly have inane issues with me choosing/providing a slim power management option?

.. because your time would have been better spent working on improving the existing tool, rather than forking it and maintaining a fork.

The problem you have created is that you now have scripts in a forum that you have admitted that you won't support which reference an upstream project (which is required per the GPL) which is exactly where users of this script will go for help a year from now when you have long since gone on to something else and they need help.

I don't have any problem with you choosing what you are calling a "slim power management option". I do have a problem with your implication that it is an alternative option when you said yourself in this very reply that you have no intention of turning it into a project and supporting it long term. Once you paste them in public view, they are no longer "just simple scripts".

So, as I said, good luck supporting this.

[dflt]

so, how can I get the 1333mhz turbo boost? I've tried k10ctl and tpc but I get "not supported" and nothing changes.

[gnemo]

.. because your time would have been better spent working on improving the existing tool, rather than forking it and maintaining a fork.

Fuduntu, I thank you sincerely for the work you have done in creating and maintaining this useful tool. Nice work!

That said, Emilywind made it clear why she preferred to roll her own solution. She didn't like your toolkit of choice, and wanted a lighter solution that used less resources. It really isn't up to you to decide what is the best use of her time, you know, nor to dictate to anyone else the terms on which they are allowed to create or not create something of their own.

I can quite understand that you may be burned out from the work of creating and maintaining your own software, and would like additional help. I'm sure there are people out there who would help you if you asked them. But being rather rude to helpful and creative people who showed up on this thread (Emilywind) is not the way to get the help you want.

I now I hope this thread goes back to the very positive tone it has had right up until you got rather upset over Emilywind choosing to take her own direction and find her own solution, rather than use the one you provided.

I have recently become the owner of one of these nice little netbooks (Aspire One, A0722), and look forward to freeing it from the default Windows 7 OS and getting Linux humming nicely on it.

-Gnemo

[fuduntu]

Fuduntu, I thank you sincerely for the work you have done in creating and maintaining this useful tool. Nice work!

Thanks.

That said, Emilywind made it clear why she preferred to roll her own solution. She didn't like your toolkit of choice, and wanted a lighter solution that used less resources. It really isn't up to you to decide what is the best use of her time, you know, nor to dictate to anyone else the terms on which they are allowed to create or not create something of their own.

I didn't dictate terms. I simply complained. It is a free internet.

I can quite understand that you may be burned out from the work of creating and maintaining your own software, and would like additional help. I'm sure there are people out there who would help you if you asked them. But being rather rude to helpful and creative people who showed up on this thread (Emilywind) is not the way to get the help you want.

I'm not burned out, nor was I rude. I wouldn't really call taking something and chopping parts off and calling it your own - "creative", but that's just my opinion. If you'll re-read my comment I didn't complain that it was forked. I complained that it was called an alternative. It is hardly worthy of being called anything other than a hack job much less an "alternative", but I was trying to be kind.

I now I hope this thread goes back to the very positive tone it has had right up until you got rather upset over Emilywind choosing to take her own direction and find her own solution, rather than use the one you provided.

You read too much emotion into a post where there was none. It isn't a case of "upset", it is a case of noticing something being called something that it is not and commenting on it. I do have the right to comment on whatever I want. That being said, I stand by the implications made in my original comment.

If you want to take it further, I can call it a GPL violation because it uses my source and does not include the proper licensing information.

If I wanted to be rude, I could have hit the report button and had it erased for violating the license I released Jupiter under.

.. but I didn't.

[xterminus]

I've just got a new AO722 today. I've installed Ubuntu 11.10 after going through the install of the abomination that is Windows 7. Nevertheless, I haven't been able to sit down with the laptop and really use it on Ubuntu just yet. What fixes as seen in the first post are actually applicable to Ubuntu 11.10? Cheers.

I just got my AO722 the other week. Installed 11.10 on it after fooling with Win7 for a total of maybe 10 minutes. As far as I can tell...

1. You still need to do the BIOS boot re-ordering so it tries to Network boot first. It's not much of a hassle to enable and deal with, I think it adds maybe 1 second to the boot process anyway.

If you don't need the ethernet port, removing the Atheros driver REALLY stabilizes things. eg:

/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-atheros.conf

# Additional Stuff for 4313 Driver
blacklist bcma
blacklist brcmfmac
blacklist brcmsmac

# Blacklist ethernet card, elminate lockups
blacklist atl1c

By disabling the ethernet card when I don't need it (which is pretty much never), I got resume/hibernate to work flawlessly.

You'll notice I disabled bcma, etc. The stock kernel driver seems to get in the way of the sta driver, which I prefer. Mostly because while the stock driver works great on 802.11a/b/g networks, it totally mucks up on 802.11n connections and I get a lot of packetloss/dropped connections. The STA driver works fine on those high-speed wifi connections.

2. I don't use or like jupiter, but I have a few scripts I drop in /etc/pm/power.d that do the same thing. (they aren't AO722 or acer specific, they just fool with the governor, laptop-mode settings, etc, etc) There really isn't anything in jupiter that I know of acer specific other than the provided scripts in the above post. In any case, if you don't want to play around in /etc/pm/power.d, jupiter is probably a good idea.

3. I couldn't get the screen rotating in sync with the touchpad to work properly at all. The ppa for the synaptics driver causes a failure to even load the touchpad driver. I had to plug in a usb mouse, remove the new synaptics xorg driver, remove the ppa, install the old driver, and reboot to get working again. So I'd avoid that ppa for now.

4. Alsa/Pulseaudio jack sensing works fine out of the box so far, no fix needed.

5. Capslock indicator is probably a good idea. I use the gnome-shell equivalent.

6. Multitouch (two finger scrolling) is okay if you like it. The AO722 has a "scroll area" on the touchpad anyway, which I think is more convenient.

7. The Catalyst video drivers (the proprietary ones) did NOT work well for me at all. They were prone to cause wierd artifacts on the screen, crash X at random, and other such fun. That and sleeping/hibernation is impossible with them too. Stick with the default radeon x server/driver. I'm not a gamer so super-performance in my video isn't really needed. 480p videos look fine. Haven't tried anything more (yet).

8. Power regression notes for grub were a good idea.

[hitime]

For some reason I can not get the microphone working on my system, I'm running Xubuntu 11.10 with pulseaudio. I'm tring to use Audacity to do some test recording with no luck. The line seems to get static when selecting Conexiant for audio in (can see it in the monitor) but nothing external at all. I'm not seeing anything in the mixer(s) either. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
hitime

[shugoshin]

For some reason I can not get the microphone working on my system, I'm running Xubuntu 11.10 with pulseaudio. I'm tring to use Audacity to do some test recording with no luck. The line seems to get static when selecting Conexiant for audio in (can see it in the monitor) but nothing external at all. I'm not seeing anything in the mixer(s) either. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
hitime

Try installing kernel 3.1.4. This solved my problem with Lubuntu (and recently with Linux Mint LXDE 11) With this kernel if you run

alsamixer

in terminal you may see three options for capture device. Selecting one of them should work.

[dwaszuk]

Hi, I'm stucked trying to install Ubuntu in a brand new Aspire One 722. I've tried with versions 11.04 and 11.10 but it hangs at startup (just after the logo with the buttons that change colors below it).

I've created the usb with both 'Startup Disk Creator' and 'Unetbootin' with the same result. Also tried with network as first boot option and usb as second, without luck.

I'm sorry for not giving more info, but I don't know what else I can do.

Any help will be appreciated.

Happy new year,