Running Ubuntu Netbook Remix on the Acer Aspire One
$Id: index.html,v 1.2 2010/03/10 13:30:43 simonb Exp $

Running Ubuntu Netbook Remix on the Acer Aspire One

I recently bought an acer aspire one, and decided to install Ubuntu netbook remix on it. Heres some stuff that others might find useful if they are trying to do the same...

Install Ubuntu Netbook Remix

First, download and install UNR, either from the official UNR distro point (you want the .img file for a USB install) or locally from this directory. On an existing linux system run a terminal and use dd to transfer the image file to a USB disk. 
dd if=unr-1.0.1.img of=/dev/sdX bs=1M
where /dev/sdX is your USB disk. Reboot, hit F12 to boot from the USB disk. *warning* - this will wipe all the data on your disk, so make sure you have a backup before you continue is you need some data from the machine! After it's installed, you can simply reboot to the new system. I had some issues with some usb disks working whilst others wouldn't, so if you get problems try another USB disk!

Install all the build tools you need

Hopefully you're connected to a network at this point. You need to install the build stuff so you can have a working dev environment. This is documented in a few other places, so I won't bother here, though "sudo apt-get install build-essential" may work and suffice. can't remember.

Custom Kernel

I've been playing and tweaking a kernel config for the acer aspire one. I'm using 2.6.27.9 version.

Here's the config to rebuild one for yourself. Everything works, with the exception of alsa (which needs to be built seperately, and madwifi.

Here's the steps to build your own custom kernel. My build doesn't seem to suffer from the wireless timing out, however for some reason the ethernet card is always detected as being up. I'll look into it...

Download the kernel source from ftp.kernel.org, in these example we're using 2.6.27.9. 

tar zxvf linux-2.6.27.9.tar.gz
cd linux-2.6.27.9
wget http://kaizo.org/misc/aa1/config-acer-aspireone
mv config-acer-aspireone .config
make oldconfig
make menuconfig (and just exit once the ncurses interface comes up)
make bzImage
make modules
make modules_install

All that will take some time... Leave it running, then once the build has finished we need to install the kernel stuff: 

cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27.9 
cp System.map /boot/System.map-2.6.27.9

Then, add the new kernel to the grub menu.lst 

root@maple:/usr/src/linux-2.6.27.9# update-grub 
Searching for GRUB installation directory ... found: /boot/grub
Searching for default file ... found: /boot/grub/default
Testing for an existing GRUB menu.lst file ... found: /boot/grub/menu.lst
Searching for splash image ... none found, skipping ...
Found kernel: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27.9
Found kernel: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-spb
Found kernel: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-lpia
Found kernel: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-18-lpia
Updating /boot/grub/menu.lst ... done

then, we need to create an initrd for this kernel install: 

root@maple:/usr/src/linux-2.6.27.9# update-initramfs -c -k 2.6.27.9
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27.9

However, if we reboot now, the wireless will not work on reboot, so the safest thing to do is to download the sources while we still have a network connection. You may also want to save a copy of this webpage too ;-) 

wget http://snapshots.madwifi.org/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r3835-20080801.tar.gz
Upon reboot, extract the madwifi source, and do the "make all install" thing. Update the initrd once again: 
root@maple:/usr/src/linux-2.6.27.9# update-initramfs -c -k 2.6.27.9
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27.9

You can reboot again, and the wireless card should be working. Hopefully. ;-)

Lastly, we need to install alsa-driver for sound card support. I'm using version 1.0.18a. Download it somewhere, extract it all, and install the modules using the following commands: 

cd /usr/local/src
wget ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/driver/alsa-driver-1.0.18a.tar.bz2
tar jxvf alsa-driver-1.0.18a.tar.bz2
cd alsa-driver-1.0.18a
make clean
./configure --with-isapnp=auto --with-cards=hda-intel
make 
make install

and, once again, update the initrd. 

update-initramfs -c -k 2.6.27.9