Ubuntu 12.04 on the Acer Aspire One D270

I got a sweet new netbook from govconnection and installed ubuntu 12.04 first thing. The install went mostly smooth, but I've done this before so the typical partitioning wasn't too tough. The SD reader, keyboard, and mouse just work, but I had some problems otherwise:

Backlight

After reboot, the backlight didn't turn on but I found a fix:

$ sudo vi /etc/default/grub
#2 (find an insert the arguments in red)
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash acpi_backlight=vendor“
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="acpi_osi=Linux"#3 (update the grub configuration)
$ sudo update-grub
#4 reboot

This enabled me to change the brightness with fn keys, or via

echo 10 > /sys/class/backlight/psb-bl/brightness

but the backlight was still off at boot time :-(
There is a bug report about this, with a recommendation to use 'setpci' to set the brightness in the console:

$ lspci | grep VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Atom Processor D2xxx/N2xxx Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
 ... make sure to use the listed device number below
$ sudo setpci -s 00:02.0 F4.B=aa

I added the last line to /etc/rc.local (without the sudo) to turn the backlight on at boot everytime. :-)

Suspend

The laptop suspends fine when I close the lid, but when it resumes, it displays only vertical colored lines and the mouse is some weird box. After maybe one of the above backlight fixes, the vertical colored lines no longer appear, but it resumes to a black screen (backlight on though) and it's still frozen. The ctrl-alt-f1-f7 keys don't switch to another console either.

I tried the snd-hda-intel fix, but it didn't change anything so I undid it.

The arch linux wiki has some troubleshooting on the gma500_gfx driver.
It suggests trying suspend with 'pm-suspend --quirk-vbemode-restore', which the pm-suspend man page says is a bad idea on Intel hardware. And it is correct: after resume my backlight did not even turn on. The machine was still running though, and I could at least reboot it blindly from the terminal.


Following: http://bbs.archbang.org/viewtopic.php?id=2174
Added /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-gpudriver.conf

Section "Device"
 Identifier "Card0"
 Driver     "fbdev"
EndSection

Added /etc/pm/config.d/config (note: this caused my screen to fade to white when I rebooted and otherwise appear hung so I removed this file)

SLEEP_MODULE="tuxonice kernel"
ADD_PARAMETERS="--quirk-s3-bios --quirk-s3-mode"

Added /etc/pm/config.d/modules

SUSPEND_MODULES="gma500_gfx"

Made /etc/pm/sleep.d/novatel_3g_suspend unexecutable

Looks like an acknowledged bug. :-(

The drivers loaded are:

$ lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
dm_crypt               22572  1
coretemp               13362  0
joydev                 17394  0
arc4                   12474  2
acer_wmi               27975  0
sparse_keymap          13659  1 acer_wmi
snd_hda_codec_realtek    64876  1
microcode              18396  0
snd_hda_codec_hdmi     31778  1
rfcomm                 38104  0
bnep                   17791  2
parport_pc             32115  0
bluetooth             189585  10 rfcomm,bnep
ppdev                  12850  0
snd_hda_intel          33029  3
snd_hda_codec         116477  3 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel
snd_hwdep              13277  1 snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm                81124  3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
lpc_ich                16993  0
psmouse                91022  0
serio_raw              13032  0
uvcvideo               72249  0
videobuf2_core         32212  1 uvcvideo
videodev              100265  2 uvcvideo,videobuf2_core
videobuf2_vmalloc      12757  1 uvcvideo
videobuf2_memops       13213  1 videobuf2_vmalloc
snd_seq_midi           13133  0
snd_rawmidi            25426  1 snd_seq_midi
snd_seq_midi_event     14476  1 snd_seq_midi
iwlwifi               364681  0
snd_seq                51594  2 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event
mac80211              475488  1 iwlwifi
snd_timer              28932  2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd_seq_device         14138  3 snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq
cfg80211              181041  2 iwlwifi,mac80211
mac_hid                13078  0
rts_pstor             353519  0
snd                    62675  16 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
soundcore              14636  1 snd
snd_page_alloc         14109  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
lp                     17456  0
parport                40931  3 parport_pc,ppdev,lp
gma500_gfx            198234  2
drm_kms_helper         47459  1 gma500_gfx
r8169                  56853  0
drm                   240232  3 gma500_gfx,drm_kms_helper
i2c_algo_bit           13317  1 gma500_gfx
wmi                    18745  1 acer_wmi
video                  19070  2 acer_wmi,gma500_gfx

Xorg is loading the following modules (drivers):

$ grep LoadModule /var/log/Xorg.0.log
[    19.273] (II) LoadModule: "glx"
[    19.323] (II) LoadModule: "vesa"
[    19.325] (II) LoadModule: "modesetting"
[    19.327] (II) LoadModule: "fbdev"
[    19.329] (II) LoadModule: "fbdevhw"
[    19.607] (II) LoadModule: "fb"
[    20.113] (II) LoadModule: "evdev"
[    20.152] (II) LoadModule: "synaptics"

CedarView

I tried installing the CedarView drivers to see if that fixes it, but they wouldn't compile. :-(
I went to System Settings->Additional Drivers and tried to activate 'Cedar Trail drm driver in DKMS format', which returned a popup with the error "Sorry, installation of this driver failed. Please have a look at the log file for details: /var/log/jockey.log", where I found the following relevant lines:

Loading new cedarview-drm-20120717 DKMS files...
First Installation: checking all kernels...
Building only for 3.5.0-23-generic
Building initial module for 3.5.0-23-generic
Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 3.5.0-23-generic (i686)
Consult /var/lib/dkms/cedarview-drm/20120717/build/make.log for more information.

The make.log contains:

$ cat /var/lib/dkms/cedarview-drm/20120717/build/make.log
DKMS make.log for cedarview-drm-20120717 for kernel 3.5.0-23-generic (i686)
Sat Apr 27 13:14:40 EDT 2013
make -C /lib/modules/3.5.0-23-generic/build M=`pwd` modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-3.5.0-23-generic'
  CC [M]  /var/lib/dkms/cedarview-drm/20120717/build/drm_auth.o
  CC [M]  /var/lib/dkms/cedarview-drm/20120717/build/drm_buffer.o
  CC [M]  /var/lib/dkms/cedarview-drm/20120717/build/drm_bufs.o
/var/lib/dkms/cedarview-drm/20120717/build/drm_bufs.c: In function 'drm_mapbufs':
/var/lib/dkms/cedarview-drm/20120717/build/drm_bufs.c:1557:4: error: implicit declaration of function 'do_mmap' [-Werror=implicit-function-declaration]
cc1: some warnings being treated as errors
make[2]: *** [/var/lib/dkms/cedarview-drm/20120717/build/drm_bufs.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/var/lib/dkms/cedarview-drm/20120717/build] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-3.5.0-23-generic'
make: *** [all] Error 2

I grep'd the build directory for Werror, but the only instance is in the logfile, so I guess I need to figure out how to turn that off?

There are apparently some tricks to getting them compiled manually, which I might try out another day.

VGA & HDMI output

Didn't work immediately when I plugged it in. :-(
I opened System Settings->Displays and it showed the HDMI attached monitor, but when I tried turning it on and applying the settings, a popup appeared saying "Failed to apply configuration: %s, timeout was reached."

Software

Next up was installing Chrome, ipython, and a couple of other tweaks.