Debian GNU/Linux on the Acer Travelmate 8004LMib

Summary

Part	Type	Status
Processor	Intel Dothan Pentium M 1.7GHz	Works
Memory	1 GB DDR	Works
Video card	Radeon 9700 Mobility (RV350 M11) 64MB	Works
Sound card	Intel ICH4	Works
Touchpad	Synaptics Touchpad	Works
Keyboard	Acer with hotkeys	Works
Hard disk	60GB IDE TOSHIBA MK6025GAS	Works
PCMCIA Cardbus	O2Micro OZ711M3	Works
Network	Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5705 Gigabit Ethernet	Works
Wifi	Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG	Works
Bluetooth	Cambridge Silicon Radio, Ltd Bluetooth Dongle	Works
Infrared		Untested
4 USB 2.0 ports	Intel ICH4 with TetraHub	Works
IEEE1394 (Firewire) port	Texas Instruments TSB43AB21	Untested
ACPI		Works
DVD-RW	MATSHITA DVD-RAM UJ-831S	Works
Modem	Intel/Agere AC97	Works
TV-Out	S-Video port	Untested
Card reader	O2Micro OZ711Mx	Unsupported
Smartcard reader	O2Micro OZ711M3	Unsupported
Port replicator	100-pin Acer Portreplicator connector	Untested

Introduction

I run Debian Sid (unstable) on the Travelmate, with GNU/Linux kernel 2.6.11.
You can find summaries of possibly useful files and program output at the bottom of this mini-howto.

The Acer laptop came with a few pre-made partitions (after I let it install Windows XP). A small acer partition (diagnostics or whatever), then the 30GB WinXP partition and then a 30GB "ACERDATA" partition (which probably held the ghost images for the XP versions). Luckily for me, these were FAT32 (as I can read/write data from Linux much more reliably). I used Partition Magic to do some resizing. C: became 43GB, the rest is Linux (100MB /boot, 512MB swap).

Disk /dev/hda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 383 3076416 12 Compaq diagnostics
/dev/hda2 * 384 5919 44467920 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda3 5920 7296 11060752+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 5920 5932 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 5933 5998 530113+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda7 5999 7296 10426153+ 83 Linux

To install Debian, I used a woody CD to do a netinstall, where I ran into some problems.... The onboard network card wasn't supported, and my PCMCIA NIC (3c575) refused to work. Both lights lit up, but no connection :| I ended up doing a regular 1-CD install, then installing more over the net, as strangely, the PCMCIA card started working after I rebooted. When woody was installed, I apt-get dist-upgraded to Sarge, then up to Sid. apt-get install module-init-tools, compile a fresh 2.6.11 kernel, and off we go. All hardware which was supported is described below, no more need for the PCMCIA card. Feeling bleeding-edge, and after hearing Robert Love's talk at Fosdem 2004, I also installed udev on my system. You can find my kernel .config in the files section.

I suggest installing the hotplug package for easy and on-the-fly loading of modules and firmware (you'll need it for ipw2200). laptop-net might also be handy, and waproamd with ifplugd if you use wifi a lot.

Processor

Thanks to Tomas Drajsajtl I have CPU frequency scaling working on the laptop. From /proc/cpuinfo:

model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.70GHz
stepping : 6
cpu MHz : 996.947

I installed the cpuspeed package, coming from this aptsource:

deb http://tassi.web.cs.unibo.it/debian/cpuspeed ./
deb-src http://tassi.web.cs.unibo.it/debian/cpuspeed ./

Videocard

I have installed the ATI Radeon drivers by following the Howto by Flavio Stanchina. Ofcourse you can also use the 'radeon' opensource driver if you don't need all that speed... glxinfo shows DRI is enabled and fgl_glxgears runs very smoothly. I've played Armagetron, Tuxracer, Tuxkart, lxdoom, Race and they all run nicely as well ;) My XF86Config-4 file is here.

For 2.6.11, I needed to patch the ATI driver a little with this patch. That way, the driver compiled. However, the module did not load due to unresolved symbols - I'm back at 2.6.10.

Sound

The soundcard works nicely with ALSA, using module snd_intel8x0. Don't forget, with ALSA, on bootup the sound is muted. I don't mind, I even like it to boot muted, if I want sound I'll enable it (nicely with a hotkey, see below).

Touchpad

The touchpad is detected by the kernel upon boot:

Synaptics Touchpad, model: 1
Firmware: 5.8
180 degree mounted touchpad
Sensor: 29
new absolute packet format
Touchpad has extended capability bits
-> 4 multi-buttons, i.e. besides standard buttons
-> multifinger detection
-> palm detection
input: SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad on isa0060/serio4

For X, we need the XFree synaptics input driver: apt-get install xfree86-driver-synaptics, then we can configure our pointing device in XF86Config-4:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "LeftEdge" "1900"
Option "RightEdge" "5400"
Option "TopEdge" "1900"
Option "BottomEdge" "4000"
Option "FingerLow" "25"
Option "FingerHigh" "30"
Option "MaxTapTime" "180"
Option "MaxTapMove" "220"
Option "VertScrollDelta" "100"
Option "MinSpeed" "0.12"
Option "MaxSpeed" "0.28"
Option "AccelFactor" "0.5000"
Option "SHMConfig" "on"
Option "Buttons" "7"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

You can also find my full XF86Config-4 in the files section.

You can tweak the acceleration values etc. if you want to. Vertical scroll works, but I haven't gotten sideways scroll to work yet.

You can also install a synaptics control applet for KDE with apt-get install ksynaptics.

Keyboard

The keyboard itself is working fine, naturally. But we also want the hotkeys to work...

Initially, pressing hotkeys (except for the Bluetooth one), does nothing. Some of them (P1 & P2) actually generate messages in dmesg:

kernel: atkbd.c: Unknown key pressed (translated set 2, code 0xf4 on isa0060/serio0).
kernel: atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e074 <keycode>' to make it known.
kernel: atkbd.c: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0xf4 on isa0060/serio0).
kernel: atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e074 <keycode>' to make it known.
kernel: atkbd.c: Unknown key pressed (translated set 2, code 0xf3 on isa0060/serio0).
kernel: atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e073 <keycode>' to make it known.
kernel: atkbd.c: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0xf3 on isa0060/serio0).
kernel: atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e073 <keycode>' to make it known.

To enable these to be correctly recognized by X, we need to run the following (before starting X):

setkeycodes e074 180
setkeycodes e073 182

I have put these commands in a little script which I made to run upon boot.

Then what I did is make a script called modmap with the following content and put it in ~/.kde/Autostart:

#!/bin/bash

xmodmap -e 'keycode 236 = F16'
xmodmap -e 'keycode 178 = F17'
xmodmap -e 'keycode 176 = F18'
xmodmap -e 'keycode 174 = F19'
xmodmap -e 'keycode 160 = F20'
xmodmap -e 'keycode 251 = F15'
xmodmap -e 'keycode 138 = F14'

This fixes, in this order: mail, web, volume up, volume down, mute, P1, P2.
I have bound the hotkeys to unused F-keys. You can find these codes yourself by running the xev command. Noteworthy is that the bluetooth and the wifi button do not generate a key code anywhere that I can see. (See Bluetooth and Wifi for more information)

PS: As you might have guessed, stuff in the ~/.kde/Autostart is executed on login by KDE.

Then, to assign the keys, open the KDE Control Center and go into "Regional & Accessibility", then "KHotkeys". In there, I made a group (doesn't affect the actual use) called Acer hotkeys, then entered some keys which started a program. After you've done the above settings, you can just press the corresponding key to program the action. I bound the mail key to evolution, the browser key to mozilla, P1 to konsole, haven't decided about P2 yet.

Also, in the KMixer applet, I bound fn-up to "master volume up", fn-down to "master volume down" and fn-F8 to "mute", which is also exactly what those do under Windows ;)

Hard Disk

The disk controller is supported by Linux. You can tweak the speed and powersaving of your harddisk with the hdparm tool. I have put the following configuration in /etc/hdparm.conf:

quiet

/dev/hda {
mult_sect_io = 16
dma = on
interrupt_unmask = on
io32_support = 1
spindown_time = 241
}

This accomplishes the following: sets multisector I/O to 16bytes, enables DMA, 32-bit support and interrupt unmasking. These make disk access quite a bit faster. Spindown time is set to 30 minutes, so after 30 minutes of idling, the disk will spin down to save battery life.

PCMCIA Cardbus

Works fine with the yenta_socket cardbus driver module:

Yenta: CardBus bridge found at 0000:02:06.0 [1025:0051]
Yenta O2: res at 0x94/0xD4: ea/00
Yenta O2: enabling read prefetch/write burst
Yenta: ISA IRQ mask 0x08b8, PCI irq 6
Socket status: 30000006
Yenta: CardBus bridge found at 0000:02:06.1 [1025:0051]
Yenta: ISA IRQ mask 0x08b8, PCI irq 6
Socket status: 30000006
Yenta: CardBus bridge found at 0000:02:06.3 [1025:0051]
Yenta: ISA IRQ mask 0x08b8, PCI irq 6
Socket status: 30000410

Curiously, there is only one card slot, but cardctl ident shows:

Socket 0:
no product info available
Socket 1:
no product info available
Socket 2:
product info: "O2Micro", "SmartCardBus Reader", "V1.0"
manfid: 0xffff, 0x0001

Seems like the smartcard reader is implemented as a PCMCIA device. Inserting my 3Com PCMCIA cardbus card (3c575) worked fine.

Network

Supported through the tg3 module:

tg3.c:v3.14 (November 15, 2004)
eth0: Tigon3 [partno(BCM95705A50) rev 3003 PHY(5705)] (PCI:33MHz:32-bit) 10/100/1000BaseT Ethernet 00:c0:9f:69:c2:d3
eth0: RXcsums[1] LinkChgREG[0] MIirq[0] ASF[0] Split[0] WireSpeed[0] TSOcap[1]

Wifi

Supported through the ipw2200 project at sourceforge. You need the hotplug and wireless-tools packages. Also make sure your kernel has wireless extension support enabled. Put the firmware into the correct directory, make, make install, modprobe ipw2200.

If you get a message in dmesg that the radio kill switch is on, you'll need to press the "wifi" button at the front. I don't always get this (and in the BIOS it's set to always activate the radio), but it's consistent, if it says that, it won't work until you press the button. I haven't gotten the LED to work (yet?), but the radio is definately working.

Also, I found this card to have a very good range.

Bluetooth

The bluetooth connection is very nicely done, in my opinion. Upon pressing the bluetooth button, a "bluetooth dongle" gets "inserted" into the USB bus. As such, it simply appears as a well-supported USB device, and when disabled, it's "unplugged" from the bus. I have tested the connection with my Dell Axim X30 PDA, and it works.

A nice addition for KDE users is the KDE Bluetooth project:

deb http://www.stud.uni-karlsruhe.de/~uddw/debian ./

apt-get install kdebluetooth will give you an extra panel in the KDE Control Center and an icon in your system tray if you wish so. The bluez bluetooth stack will also come in handy ;)

Infrared

Untested.

4 USB 2.0 ports

After loading the uhci-hcd driver, lsusb (from apt-get install usbutils) shows the following:

Bus 004 Device 002: ID 04b4:6560 Cypress Semiconductor Corp. CY7C65640 USB-2.0 "TetraHub"
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 0a12:0001 Cambridge Silicon Radio, Ltd Bluetooth Dongle
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

The TetraHub are actually the 4 ports at the left side of the acer. I assume the other devices may be usable through the port replicator.

IEEE1394 (Firewire) port

I don't have any firewire gear to test, but the modules load fine and I get an extra ethernet device as well.

ohci1394 31556 0
ieee1394 94712 2 eth1394,ohci1394

and in dmesg:

ieee1394: Initialized config rom entry p1394'
ohci1394: $Rev: 1223 $ Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org>
ohci1394: fw-host0: OHCI-1394 1.1 (PCI): IRQ=[10] MMIO=[d0218000-d02187ff] Max Packet=[2048]
ieee1394: Host added: ID:BUS[0-00:1023] GUID[00c09f000030143e]
eth1394: $Rev: 1224 $ Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org>
eth1394: eth2: IEEE-1394 IPv4 over 1394 Ethernet (fw-host0)

ACPI

After apt-get install acpid, the power button works nicely... Debian's script goes as follows: If you are logged into KDE and press the powerbutton, you're logged out. If you press the powerbutton again (or aren't using KDE), the system shuts down.

I did notice something odd (which has no impact on usability):

tom@deepspace:~$ acpi -V
Battery 1: charging, 95%, charging at zero rate - will never fully charge.
Thermal 1: ok, 44.0 degrees C
AC Adapter 1: on-line

ACPI is reporting the charging rate is 0 (see "present rate" in /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/state), which is what causes the "will never fully charge" message. If you refresh that file a few times, you'll see however that the battery IS charging. Just a minor glitch :)

Second battery in the media bay works fine as well.

DVD-RW

The writer is recognized in k3b as a DVD writer automatically (I'm using the ATAPI interface with kernel 2.6).

Modem

At first, looks like loading snd-intel8x0m should do the trick, as it's modem support for the AC97 chipset, but no way ofcourse.. This is a winmodem (or now, a linmodem), which needs separate drivers... I've looked around for them, and browsed tons of pages, so now I know ...

Getting the modem to work in a few easy steps (you need a compiler installed ofcourse):

wget http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/packages/smartlink/slmodem-2.9.9a.tar.gz
apt-get install libasound2-dev
tar -zxvf slmodem-2.9.9a.tar.gz
cd slmodem-2.9.9a
make && make install
cd modem
make ALSA_SUPPORT=1
./slmodemd --alsa --country=BELGIUM hw:1

Tada, you now have a /dev/ttySL0 to fire AT commands at. I put the slmodemd line in my startup script (don't forget the & behind it!), as it needs to be running to use the modem.

If you get an error from wvdial saying Cannot open /dev/ttySL0: Cannot get information for serial port., upgrade your libwvstreams packages.

AT commands work fine, I also dialed up a BBS, that worked, then dialed up my ISP with wvdial, that worked. Good to go!

Only thing I need to figure out is how to hear the actual modem sounds.. I turned up all mixer slides with aumix but nothing...

TV-Out

Untested.

Card reader

Detected nowhere, no drivers found.

Smartcard reader

Seen in the PCMCIA cards. I have received a precompiled driver for 2.2.20-686, which I believe I'm not allowed to distribute. Unfortunately I cannot recompile anything for my kernel so I can't use it at all. Let's hope a version with an opensource wrapper (or even better yet, fully opensourced drivers) come soon :)

Port replicator

I don't have one and I don't intend to buy one, so unless I'm given one for free I don't think I'll ever test this ;) I have however read that if you use the replicator for networking, it only does 100Mbit and not gigabit. Also, the system detects a serial port (and/or modprobe 8250_acpi), this may be the one on the replicator (because unless I have severe sight problems, the laptop doesn't have a serial port).

Output & Files

lspci:

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82852/855GM Host Bridge (rev 02)
0000:00:00.1 System peripheral: Intel Corp. 855GM/GME GMCH Memory I/O Control Registers (rev 02)
0000:00:00.3 System peripheral: Intel Corp. 855GM/GME GMCH Configuration Process Registers (rev 02)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 855GME GMCH Host-to-AGP Bridge (Virtual PCI-to-PCI) (rev 02)
0000:00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
0000:00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
0000:00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
0000:00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB 2.0 EHCI Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 83)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801DBM LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801DBM (ICH4) Ultra ATA Storage Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 03)
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10]
0000:02:02.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5705 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 03)
0000:02:04.0 Network controller: Intel Corp. PRO/Wireless 2200BG (rev 05)
0000:02:06.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ711M3 SmartCardBus MultiMediaBay Controller
0000:02:06.1 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ711M3 SmartCardBus MultiMediaBay Controller
0000:02:06.2 System peripheral: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ711Mx MultiMediaBay Accelerator
0000:02:06.3 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ711M3 SmartCardBus MultiMediaBay Controller
0000:02:07.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB21 IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)

cat /proc/cpuinfo:

processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 13
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.70GHz
stepping : 6
cpu MHz : 1694.865
cache size : 2048 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss tm pbe est tm2
bogomips : 3366.91

/etc/X11/XF86Config-4: here
Kernel 2.6.11 .config: here
/etc/modules: here
/usr/bin/lshw: here
/usr/sbin/dmidecode: here
/proc/interrupts: here
/proc/ioports: here

Software suspend (hibernation)

For software suspend you need another kernel patch. I've successfully hibernated my laptop in text mode, hasn't worked from X yet (only tried once). You'll need to apt-get install hibernate to be able to use the interface.

Suspend-to-RAM

I read on some forum you could fix suspend-to-RAM by appending acpi_sleep=s3_bios to your kernel parameters, then using echo -n mem > /sys/power/state would put the machine to sleep. Pressing any key or the power button wakes the machine up fine. No magic required. NOT. The machine goes to sleep but hangs when trying to wake up. Could this be caused by the radeon driver again or something? I have no idea.

Power saving

Apart from the above-mentioned cpufreq and hdparm options, there are some minor things which might help...

Use tmpfs for the /tmp filesystem:

shm /tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0

This uses RAM for the /tmp filesystem, saving some disk writes.
Use noflushd (apt-get install noflushd)
This keeps the kernel from flushing the I/O buffers a lot, resulting in disk writes, which hinder the "spin down after X minutes of no activity". Do note this might cause some data loss if your laptop shuts down unexpectedly (out of battery, crash, ...)

Revision history

30-Jan-2005: Initial release
14-Feb-2005: Updated info about smartcard reader driver
17-Feb-2005: Added Suspend-to-RAM information
12-Mar-2005: Finally received extra 512MB of RAM and extra battery. Upgraded to 2.6.11, updated kernel .config file
27-Mar-2005: Tested modem and found it working perfectly
15-Apr-2005: Got CPU speed working a while ago, thanks to Tomas Drajsajtl. I had to add some other options to the kernel, and installed cpuspeed which uses /sys instead of cpufreqd which used /proc.
26-Apr-2005: Found out why my touchpad stopped working sometimes. So THAT's what that icon is for! (Fn-F7)

Contact information: Tom Laermans, sid3windr@sid3windr.be.

Last modified: 19-Aug-2012 - Valid XHTML