Tips for running Kubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) on an EeePC 901go [update3]

April 23, 2009

It has been a long time since my last post, but with my house building project time is short. But I found time to upgrade my Netbook from Kubuntu 8.10 to Kubuntu 9.04. The reason I was so eager to get the new version up and running are the graphics problems with 8.10 (poor graphics performance and rendering errors). Please take a look at my Post about Kubuntu 8.10 on my EeePC, as most of the stuff is still valid. I’ll write in this post only what I did differently.

• At the time of writing this (23.4.2009) it is necessary to install a custom kernel to activate UXA for your netbook. I used following howto to install the latest testing kernel 2.6.30-rc2 and updated drm and xserver packages. With these changes I don’t have rendering errors and the performace for the KDE 3D effects is ok. A short look at flash videos also shows that they are also ok, but I’ll take a closer look at videos in the next days and at it to this post.
• I did not install a special EeePC kernel so far as with Kubuntu 8.10. At the time of writing there seems to be also no Update to the Array Kernels and packages for Jaunty anyway. [Update] There is now but I’ll stay with the 2.6.30-rc2 for the time being. [/Update]
• I’v upgraded my script for installing additional packages for Kubuntu. Here is the file.
• I installed eee-applet which comes as Jaunty packages, but it didn’t work. [Update] I searched further and installed the Jaunty package from here. You need to install these packages (apt-get install python-gconf python-notify python-pyorbit) before installing the package like this: dpkg -i eee-control_0.9.0_all~jaunty.deb [/Update]

Sofar everything seems to run nicely. Anyway I’ll update this blog post if I find a problem or come up with an solution.

[Update]

• The WLAN stuff does do seem to have the same performance problems (=hangs) as with the Kubuntu 8.10 kernel. I’ll take a look at the way I solved the problem with the old kernel and try to do the same here. I’ll keep you posted.

[Update2]

• The problem with the Wifi is not as bad as with intrepid, as I don’t have packet loss. Maybe it is also a compatibility problem with my access point.
• I did forget to post the MRRT stuff I changed or better not changed according to the howto. Here is it:
  
lspci -vvnn


00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:27ae] (rev 03)
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device [1043:830f]
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- SERR-

Latency: 0
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 16
Region 0: Memory at f7f00000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K]
Region 1: I/O ports at dc80 [size=8]
Region 2: Memory at d0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Region 3: Memory at f7ec0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256K]
Capabilities:
Kernel modules: intelfb
cat /proc/mtrr
reg00: base=0x000000000 ( 0MB), size= 2048MB, count=1: write-back
reg01: base=0x07f800000 ( 2040MB), size= 8MB, count=1: uncachable
reg02: base=0x0d0000000 ( 3328MB), size= 256MB, count=1: write-combining


  You see that the prefetchable memory is at d0000000 and with an size of 256 MByte. (As Info: 256MB = 0x10000000). Therefore our MTRR line is
  echo "base=0xd0000000 size=0x10000000 type=write-combining" >| /proc/mtrr

  As you see I’ve this line already, so no need for me to add it.

[Update3]

• As it seems the ath5k driver for the WLAN is still not as good as the madwifi driver. I installed it like this. Go do http://snapshots.madwifi-project.org/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6/ and download the newest version there. In my case I did following:wget http://snapshots.madwifi-project.org/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r4016-20090429.tar.gz
Now extract it:
$ tar xzf madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r4016-20090429.tar.gz
$ cd madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r4016-20090429Now we need some packages installed:
  sudo apt-get install build-essential

  And now the actual compiling and installation
  cd scripts
sudo ./madwifi-unload
sudo ./find-madwifi-modules.sh $(uname -r)
cd ..
sudo make
sudo make install


  At last we need to add blacklist ath5k to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-eeepc and append ath_pci to /etc/modules. After a reboot you should have a better working WLAN.

• As of now I’ve an idle power consumption under 11 Watt, most of the time at 10.4 Watt. I’ve changed following in addition to the above stuff. I’m using powertop (apt-get install powertop) to take a look what could be improved.:
  • echo 1500 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs
  • Enable USB Suspend
  • disable HAL polling