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However, you can boot and install the vanilla debian-installer lenny beta2 and snapshot images fine. You don't really need anything from the DebianEeePC project.
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Make sure to install the build-essential package and the kernel headers (and kernel source?) package. Once you have downloaded the source, a simple "make && make install" should build you the latest madwifi toolset and drivers. Try "modprobe ath_pci" as root once installation finishes to see if the driver works. Make sure to install the build-essential package and the kernel headers (and kernel source?) package. (Note; The version in testing and built by module-assistant as of 20080809 works perfectly, there is no need to checkout an upstream version).
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Another piece of hardware that may not work after installation is the webcam. For this, you will need the uvcvideo driver. Simply checkout the latest revision of uvcvideo from svn://svn.berlios.de/linux-uvc/linux-uvc/trunk, and build it from source. Once you have downloaded the source, a simple "make && make install" should build you the latest madwifi toolset and drivers. Try "modprobe ath_pci" as root once installation finishes to see if the driver works.

Another piece of hardware that may not work after installation is the webcam. For this, you will need the uvcvideo driver. Simply checkout the latest revision of uvcvideo from svn://svn.berlios.de/linux-uvc/linux-uvc/trunk, and build it from source. (Note; Again, the source package included in testing works.).

Frequency scaling is supported via the acpi-cpufreq module. Loading this module will allow you to scale between 800Mhz and 1.6Ghz.
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The Aspire One has a RealTek RTL8101E Fast Ethernet controller, which uses the r8169 driver in kernels after 2.6.23. At the time of this writing, there are still some known bugs with this driver. The author used the driver that shipped with Debian's 2.6.25-2-486 kernel image without any problems after passing "noacpi" to the kernel at boot time. The Aspire One has a RealTek RTL8101E Fast Ethernet controller, which uses the r8169 driver in kernels after 2.6.23. At the time of this writing, there are still some known bugs with this driver. The author used the driver that shipped with Debian's 2.6.25-2-486 kernel image without any problems after passing "noacpi" to the kernel at boot time. (Note; I haven't needed noacpi on my Acer One at all, probably not nessarcy)
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Kernel versions lower than 2.6.25 cause modprobe to throw up on boot, and the boot process will seem to hang. Waiting and pressing Ctrl-C a few times will allow the machine to boot.. once it's running you should update the kernel.
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== Template ==
This is a template..

This is a project to make Debian work optimally on the Acer Aspire One

http://www.tommasovitale.it/images/AcerAspireOne.jpg

The ["DebianEeePC"] project also has a fair amount of documentation for getting Debian installed on an Atom processor, this page is devoted however solely to the Acer Aspire One.

However, you can boot and install the vanilla debian-installer lenny beta2 and snapshot images fine. You don't really need anything from the DebianEeePC project.

About this page

This page is designed to help with installation of Debian GNU/Linux on the Acer Aspire One Netbook.

Download

One way to install Debian on an Acer Aspire One is to use a USB stick with a net-install ISO image. Get the latest boot.img.gz file from testing (http://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/lenny/main/installer-i386/current/images/hd-media/boot.img.gz) and the latest net-install ISO image. It is CRITICAL that the kernel version in the boot.img.gz file and the net-install ISO are the same! Downloading the latest Lenny net-install ISO should be adequate.

Once you have both files, you will need a 256 MB USB stick or bigger. First, execute this command as root:

  • zcat /path/to/boot.img.gz > /dev/XXX

where /dev/XXX is your USB stick device node (this is usually /dev/sda on computers with IDE drives, and /dev/sdb on computers with SATA/SCSI drives). BE SURE YOU USE THE CORRECT DEVICE NODE! Afterwards, mount the USB stick and copy over the net-install ISO.

Install

Reboot your Aspire One with the USB stick in one of its USB sockets. When you see the BIOS screen, hit F12 to select the USB stick as the boot device. This will cause the Aspire One to boot the Debian installer from the USB stick.

When presented with the boot menu, you may need to pass "noacpi" to the kernel to get the Ethernet card to work.

After this, installation should proceed as normal--the installer will load the net-install ISO image's installer components and will continue the net-install procedure. Note that you will need a wired connection--wifi will not work with the installer!

Setup

Most everything should work out of the box once installation finishes. The wireless card, however, is an exception. The Acer Aspire One ships with an Atheros card with the AR5007 chipset, which is not yet supported in the madwifi-source package at the time of this writing. Consequently, to get wireless working, you will need to download a subversion snapshot of the madwifi driver from the madwifi homepage. This command will fetch the source:

Make sure to install the build-essential package and the kernel headers (and kernel source?) package. (Note; The version in testing and built by module-assistant as of 20080809 works perfectly, there is no need to checkout an upstream version).

Once you have downloaded the source, a simple "make && make install" should build you the latest madwifi toolset and drivers. Try "modprobe ath_pci" as root once installation finishes to see if the driver works.

Another piece of hardware that may not work after installation is the webcam. For this, you will need the uvcvideo driver. Simply checkout the latest revision of uvcvideo from svn://svn.berlios.de/linux-uvc/linux-uvc/trunk, and build it from source. (Note; Again, the source package included in testing works.).

Frequency scaling is supported via the acpi-cpufreq module. Loading this module will allow you to scale between 800Mhz and 1.6Ghz.

Troubleshooting

Since these instructions involve using the latest available net-install ISO image and the latest USB installer image, you may encounter some difficulties.

One such difficulty the author experienced was that the USB stick image did not have the nls_utf8 kernel module available, preventing the installer from mounting the ISO image. The "fix" was to grab the nls_utf8 kernel module from a working Debian system with the same kernel version, put it on the USB stick, execute a shell from the installer, and insert the nls_utf8 module manually before continuing.

The Aspire One has a ?RealTek RTL8101E Fast Ethernet controller, which uses the r8169 driver in kernels after 2.6.23. At the time of this writing, there are still some known bugs with this driver. The author used the driver that shipped with Debian's 2.6.25-2-486 kernel image without any problems after passing "noacpi" to the kernel at boot time. (Note; I haven't needed noacpi on my Acer One at all, probably not nessarcy)

This is likely a bug in the Aspire One's hardware/firmware, but at the time of this writing it does not detect an SD card insertion in either of the card slots. However, rebooting the computer with the card inserted will cause it to be detected (as /dev/mmcblk0).

Kernel versions lower than 2.6.25 cause modprobe to throw up on boot, and the boot process will seem to hang. Waiting and pressing Ctrl-C a few times will allow the machine to boot.. once it's running you should update the kernel.

Tips and Tricks

The SSD on the Aspire is somewhat slow (the author recorded a peak 28.8 MB/s read time with O_DIRECT and 7.0 MB/s write time). Consequently, you may want take extra measures to minimize disk I/O.

If you are using ext3 as your filesystem, you may want to add "noatime" and "nodiratime" to the options section of /etc/fstab. This will turn off timestamps on your files, but it will noticeably decrease the number of I/O ops.

Another trick is to mount /var/cache, /var/lock, /var/log, /var/run, /var/mail, /var/spool, /var/lock, /var/tmp, and /tmp on one or more ramdisks. Here are the steps to do this:

1. Add this line to your /etc/fstab:

  • none /tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0

2. Make directory /var/volatile

3. Mount /var/volatile as a tmpfs volume (the command is "mount -t tmpfs none /var/volatile")

4. Move /var/cache/apt to /var/apt. This way, /var/apt will not take up RAM (because it can become large when installing software).

5. Move the cache, lock, log, run, mail, spool, and lock directories to /var/volatile.

6. Symlink those directories in /var/volatile to their counterparts in /var. Now any I/O ops to files in these directories will happen on the ramdisk mounted on /var/volatile transparently.

7. Optional: Put this script in /etc/rcS.d/S36setup-volatile.sh:

#!/bin/sh

error() {

  • echo $1; exit 1

}

echo "Setting up /var/volatile..."

mount -t tmpfs none /var/volatile || error "Could not mount /var/volatile!!!"

for i in cache local lock log mail run spool; do

  • mkdir -p /var/volatile/$i

done

ln -s /var/apt /var/volatile/cache/apt

exit 0

8. Enjoy a faster system!

Where to buy

AOA110-1295 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115489