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The following links are specific to Ubuntu (meaning that everything found there doesn't strictly apply to Debian), use them only to retrieve more information and news and/or test new features. <<BR>>
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[[http://www.jfwhome.com/2016/01/04/latest-steps-to-install-ubuntu-on-the-asus-t100ta/| John Wells - Latest steps to install Ubuntu on the Asus T100TA]] [[http://www.jfwhome.com/2016/01/04/latest-steps-to-install-ubuntu-on-the-asus-t100ta/| John Wells - Latest steps to install Ubuntu on the Asus T100TA]]<<BR>>
[[https://github.com/jfwells/linux-asus-t100ta| John Wells - T100TA drivers and scripts]]

Translation(s): none

DebianOn is an effort to document how to install, configure and use Debian on some specific hardware. Therefore potential buyers would know if that hardware is supported and owners would know how get the best out of that hardware.

The purpose is not to duplicate the Debian Official Documentation, but to document how to install Debian on some specific hardware.

If you need help to get Debian running on your hardware, please have a look at our user support channels where you may find specific channels (mailing list, IRC channel) dedicated to certain types of hardware.

Models covered
ASUS Transformer Book T100TA-DK002DH

- CPU: Intel Atom Bay Trail Z3740 (BYT-T)/BGA
- Video card: Intel HD Graphics (Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display)
- Screen: 10.1" HD SLIM WV(GL,LED-TP)
- Wireless card: Broadcom 43241b4 SDIO
- Disks: eMMC 32 GB (/dev/mmcblk0), internal USB Disk 7.5GB (/dev/sda, hidden, Windows recovery)
- RAM: LPDDR3 1067 2GB (on-board)
- Bluetooth: Broadcom (on-board BCM2035 HCI?)

Overall Status in Debian Stretch (testing)

Core Components

[ATTACH]

Boot Standard Kernel:

{OK}

Detect hard drives:

{OK}

Extra Features

Shutdown

{OK}

Reboot

{OK}

Hibernation

/!\

Sleep / Suspend

/!\

Battery monitor

{OK}

Xorg

{OK}

- OpenGL

{OK}

- Resize-and-Rotate(randr)

{i}

Screen backlight

{X}

Light sensor

{X}

Switch to External Screen (HDMI)

{OK}

Accelerometers

{OK}

Mouse

- Built-in (Touchpad)

{OK} (but no multitouch)

- Built-in (Touchscreen)

{OK} (but no multitouch)

Bluetooth

{i} /!\

Wireless/Wifi

{i} X-(

Keyboard's Hotkeys

{OK} (only some keys)

Sound

{i} X-(

MicroSD card reader

{OK}

Built-in camera

{X}

Legend :
{OK} = OK ; {X} Unsupported(No Driver) ; /!\ = Error (Couldn't get it working); [?] Unknown, Not Test ; [-] Not-applicable
{i} = Configuration Required; X-( = Only works with a non-free driver and or firmware

Important Notes

{i} The following information and procedures are mostly for the T100TA model (see hardware specifics above) and it is possible that they are not completely suitable for different T100 models. The T100TA has an hardware similar to that one of the Asus X205TA, informations and procedures regarding these two models can be usefully shared.

/!\ /!\ /!\ There is a grave issue in linux kernel > 3.16 (now available only in Debian Jessie) with CPU C-states which causes instability during mmc data operations, leading possibly to data loss and file system corruption. In linux kernel 4.2 the problem still persists and a workaround is proposed in the Power Management section, make sure to apply it also during the installation.

{i} Before installing Debian, Secure Boot needs to be disabled. Also, if dual-booting with Windows 8 it is recommended to disable its fast boot feature.

{i} Although the Debian Jessie (stable) installer includes all the needed modules and core changes to install and boot on this machine, it is advisable to install Debian Stretch (testing) and keep it up to date due to a lot of components still unsupported. If you really want to install Debian Jessie (stable) at least you can use the backports repository to install the latest kernels and firmwares when available.

{i} In order to install Debian using the internet (e.g. with a netinst image) the wifi has to be enabled. See the steps described in the WiFi section, prepare the needed firmware (see also the d-i manual Loading Missing Firmware) and reproduce the steps using a shell during the installation procedure.

{i} The T100TA is a mixed mode EFI system (i.e. a 64-bit CPU combined with a 32-bit EFI) without any legacy BIOS mode. By default, the Debian i386 installer images should boot on this machine via UEFI and let you install a complete 32-bit (i386) system. If you use the multi-arch amd64/i386 netinst or DVD image, you will also be able to install in 64-bit mode. You might expect slightly better performance that way, but the limited memory on the machine (2 GiB) will become more of an issue. For those installing Debian 64-bit without the d-i, e.g. with debootstrap, chroot to the newly installed Debian partition and install GRUB in this way:

# apt-get install grub-efi-ia32-bin
# grub-install --target i386-efi

Configuration

Power Management

CPU C-states issue with the internal eMMC

This issue causes instability during mmc data operations, leading possibly to data loss and file system corruption. This issue is discussed in this thread and a patch seems to be already proposed in this discussion. However a proper fix doesn't seem to be available yet. As a workaround it is necessary to boot the system with the kernel parameter:

intel_idle.max_cstate=0

Check this post for further suggestions and instruction. In brief, edit the file /etc/default/grub and add the above string at the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT line:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="intel_idle.max_cstate=0 quiet"

Then update grub:

# update-grub

and reboot.

The same parameter can be used at the first boot/installation by editing the boot menu. Please be aware that using this workaround can impact on the battery duration, but it is better than lose data.

Status of the Intel Crystal Cove PMIC

The power management integrated circuit (PMIC) of the Intel Baytrail is called Crystal Cove. Full support for this PMIC is not yet available with kernel linux 4.2, so suspend to ram, hibernation and screen brightness controll does not work.

With Linux kernel 4.3:
- battery status information is available
- shutdown correctly works
- reboot correctly works
- suspend to RAM doesn't work
- hibernation doesn't work

Suspend to RAM does not work and sends the machine into a state from which one can only recover by forcing the shutdown. Hibernation partially works because, like the suspend, it requires to force the shutdown and at the following boot the system recovers but with some glitches. Some suggestions are discussed in this thread.

Screen brightness

Because the Crystal Cove PMIC is not yet fully supported the brightness level of the screen cannot be adjusted and it is locked at the maximum value. Some patches are discussed in this discussion.

However xrandr allows to change the brightness of the screen with a software only modification:

$ man xrandr
[...]
--brightness brightness
    Multiply the gamma values on the crtc currently attached to the output to specified floating value.
    Useful for overly bright or overly dim outputs. However, this is a software only modification, if 
    your hardware has support to actually change the brightness, you will probably prefer to use xbacklight.

meaning that it does not dim the backlight and therefore it does not reduce power consumption. The syntax is:

$ xrandr --output <OUTPUT> --brightness <VALUE>

where the <OUTPUT> can be found with:

$ xrandr | grep -w connected | cut -d" " -f1

and the <VALUE> should be something between 0 and 1. For example:

$  xrandr --output DSI1 --brightness 0.8

The script brightness_ctl.Stretch_ASUS_T100TA.sh makes use of the command above to progressively reduce the screen brightness.

Touchscreen

Intel Graphics using i915 driver, X.org works. On-board accelerometers are supported and the screen can be automatically rotated by adding the script ts_rotate.Stretch_ASUS_T100TA.sh to the startup applications (use your DE system settings).

The touchscreen is identified as ATML1000:

$ xinput
⎡ Virtual core pointer                          id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ ASUSTek COMPUTER INC. ASUS Base Station(T100)     id=9    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ ASUSTek COMPUTER INC. ASUS Base Station(T100)     id=10   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ ATML1000:00 03EB:8C0E                     id=11   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                         id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                 id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Sleep Button                              id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ ASUSTek COMPUTER INC. ASUS Base Station(T100)     id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Asus WMI hotkeys                          id=12   [slave  keyboard (3)]

Audio

The device is an Intel SST Audio / Realtek RT5640. The firmware can be installed with:

# apt-get install firmware-intel-sound

However a manual configuration of the device is still required. It is possible to do it using alsactl (available in the package alsa-utils) and a proper configuration file. The T100 Ubuntu community on G+ has many configuration files you can try but this one seems to work well. Download and apply the configuration file in this way:

# cp t100_B.state /var/lib/alsa/asound.state
# alsactl restore

Please be aware that there are reports indicating that in some cases the sound can be distorted and the speakers can be even damaged if the volume is high. Be careful in doing tests. Headphones work too but switching from the speaker is not automatic, it can be done using the audio manager of the DE or a dedicated application like pavucontrol.

WiFi

The wifi device is an on-board SDIO device Broadcom 43241b1, firmware and nvram file need to be installed.

The firmware can be installed with:

# apt-get install firmware-brcm80211

The nvram file can be found under /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/. If the directory is empty it may need to be (temporarily) mounted first by:

# mount -t efivarfs efivarfs /sys/firmware/efi/efivars

Then the nvram-file needs to be copied and renamed:

# cp /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/nvram-74b00bd9-805a-4d61-b51f-43268123d113 /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43241b4-sdio.txt

Note that brcmfmac43241b4-sdio.txt contains a wrong MAC address. However this is not a problem and does not need to be changed as the file is only a template.

After that reboot the system or reload the brcmfmac module:

# modprobe -r brcmfmac
# sudo modprobe brcmfmac

Built-in camera

The model should be "mt9m114". Further information has to be retrieved.


System Summary

lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series SoC Transaction Register [8086:0f00] (rev 09)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display [8086:0f31] (rev 09)
00:14.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series USB xHCI [8086:0f35] (rev 09)
00:1a.0 Encryption controller [1080]: Intel Corporation Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Trusted Execution Engine [8086:0f18] (rev 09)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Power Control Unit [8086:0f1c] (rev 09)

lsusb

Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0b05:17e0 ASUSTek Computer, Inc. 
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0b05:17e4 ASUSTek Computer, Inc. 
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Resources

Attachments

Some configuration files and sample outputs.

  • [get | view] (2019-06-23 21:05:34, 42.7 KB) [[attachment:photo.jpg]]
 All files | Selected Files: delete move to page copy to page

The following links are specific to Ubuntu (meaning that everything found there doesn't strictly apply to Debian), use them only to retrieve more information and news and/or test new features.
G+ group ASUS T100 Ubuntu
John Wells - Latest steps to install Ubuntu on the Asus T100TA
John Wells - T100TA drivers and scripts

Credits

Much of the information reported in this page were retrieved from the G+ group ASUS T100 Ubuntu and tested and adapted in order to work on Debian Stretch. Credits go to the developers that reported and solved the different issues.