Another round of an Acer Aspire One tale, this time with Fedora 12 in play. Some of the newest additions to Fedora 12 are:
- Support for Bluetooth devices
- Improved NetworkManager
- Improved PackageKit
- Empathy, the new default IM-client (not in XFCE, you need to install it)
- Midori, a lightweight browser
And many other things. For more detailed information check out http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f12/en-US/html-single/.
Let’s get down to business and install Fedora 12 on our Acer Aspire One, shall we?
Preparing your USB-pen
Here we are again, preparing our USB-pen for Fedora 12. Unfortunately, the only way you can get hold of the ISO is by downloading it with a torrent, so it might take a while if you don’t have the right ports opened!
What we need to do is to install the Live CD to a USB-pen/drive. To do that download the torrent from here. With me having a stationary machine using Fedora 11, I’ll assume that you do as well. :D su to root and install the package livecd-tools:
# yum install livecd-toolsOnce the package is installed, and the iso has been downloaded, plug in your USB-pen/drive. I will also assume that your USB-pen/drive has been given the name sdb1. You can check it with the command dmesg, just look at the bottom of output if it has detected it. It should look something like this:
sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] 1974272 512-byte logical blocks: (1.01 GB/964 MiB) sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 00 00 00 sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through sdb: sdb1 sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
If your USB-pen has previously had another operating system running on it, the Master Boot Record (MBR) might already have some data on it that crashes with what we’re about to do. So to clear the MBR (excluding the partition table), you can do one of the two following things; Use the flag –reset-mbr when running livecd-iso-to-disk or using the dd command. I recommend using the first option, and if that fails, try the second one.
With your iso downloaded, execute the following command:
# livecd-iso-to-disk --reset-mbr /home/jorge/downloads/Fedora-12-i686-Live-XFCE/Fedora-12-i686-Live-XFCE.iso /dev/sdb1Fedora-12-i686-Live-XFCE.iso being the Live CD iso we just downloaded. This command will copy the Live CD iso to your USB-pen, making that your bootable device.
Now, if the MBR is still causing problems (like the USB-pen not booting), try the following:
Warning: This command can render your system useless, so be CAUTIOUS and sure before you use it. Make sure that /dev/sdb is in fact your USB-pen, and not some other device. You have been warned!
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=446 count=1And run the livecd-iso-to-disk-command above again.
For more information about how to create and use a Live USB device, check out https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraLiveCD/USBHowTo.
Installing Fedora 12
Now that the USB-pen is ready to go, reboot your Acer Aspire One, and at boot press F12 to be able to select what boot device to boot from. Your device should pop up in that list. Log in as usual, and double-click the icon that says Install to Hard Drive. Follow the process as normal, however, when it gets time to partition the disk, there are a few changes we need to make.
We’ll be using the ext4 filesystem on our Acer Aspire One.
We should be at the partitioning-screen now. Select Use Entire Drive (if you want to remove everything that is on the machine from before), and click the box that says Review and modify partitioning layout. Remember to click the box next to the device that says sda! If you select sdb, which should be your USB-pen, you’ll most likely wipe everything there. When done, click Next.
Now we should be in a new screen. We don’t want LVM on an SSD-disk, so we remove it.
Click on the line that says vol_MACHINENAME and click Delete.
Now click on the line that says /dev/sda2 and click Edit. Change the File System Type to ext4 and then change the Mount Point to /. Make sure that you have checked the box sda (and ONLY sda) in Allowable Drives and selected Fill to maximum allowable size. When done, press OK, and then click Next. A question will pop up, telling you that you haven’t selected a swap partition, and if you still want to continue with this partitioning scheme. Select Yes, and then select Write changes to disk. When a question about a boot loader comes up, simply press Next.
When the formatting and installation is done, you can reboot your Acer, answer a few questions, and your system should be up and going.
Disabling SELinux
As usual, SELinux remains the same pain as before. So we remove it like we’ve done so many times before.
Once you’re in the system, press Alt-F2, type terminal, su to root, and edit the file /etc/selinux/config and set the variable SELINUX to disabled. Save and close the file.
Optimizing Fedora 12
I assume that by now you are actually using the Fedora 12 installation. Here’s how to improve the system performance a bit.
Optimizing your disk
Quoting the Ubuntu wikipages:
Frequent writes to the SSD will cause failure eventually. We can reduce the number of writes to the SSD by moving our logs to a temporary filesystem in RAM that gets destroyed at ever reboot. Now this means your logs will not be persistent across reboots making debugging difficult in some cases. This step is optional of course, so if you need the logs for an extended period of time do not follow these steps.
Let’s assume that you want to do this. su to root, and open up the file /etc/fstab, and place these following lines there:
tmpfs /var/log tmpfs defaults 0 0 tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0 tmpfs /var/tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0
Also, modify the first line in /etc/fstab to include the options noatime and nodiratime. When done, your /etc/fstab should look something like this:
UUID=0dbcdea1-3f91-477a-b730-ea6033c45b5c / ext4 defaults,noatime,nodiratime 1 1 UUID=6f651dc4-3d50-4a28-b3d0-fc91b41f737c /boot ext4 defaults,noatime,nodiratime 1 2 tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0 devpts /dev/pts devpts defaults 0 0 sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 tmpfs /var/log tmpfs defaults 0 0 tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0 tmpfs /var/tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0
Save the file, and close it. The next thing we can do is to place the following into your /etc/rc.d/rc.local-file:
# Economize the SSD sysctl -w vm.swappiness=1 # Strongly discourage swapping sysctl -w vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50 # Don't shrink the inode cache aggressively # As in the rc.last.ctrl of Linpus echo ondemand > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor echo ondemand > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/cpufreq/scaling_governor cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_rate_max > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_rate echo 1500 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs echo 20 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_ratio echo 10 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_background_ratio echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/sched_smt_power_savings echo 10 > /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save echo 5 > /proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode #Decrease power usage of USB while idle [ -w /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-5/power/level ] && echo auto > /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-5/power/level [ -w /sys/bus/usb/devices/5-5/power/level ] && echo auto > /sys/bus/usb/devices/5-5/power/level /sbin/modprobe sdhci
Create a file named blacklist_msreader.conf in /etc/modprobe.d, with the following in it:
blacklist jmb38x_ms
Open up the file /boot/grub/grub.conf and add elevator=noop to the kernel-line, making this:
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.31.6-145.fc12.i686 ro root=UUID=0dbcdea1-3f91-477a-b730-ea6033c45b5c noiswmd LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=no rhgb quiet
Look like this:
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.31.5-127.fc12.i686 ro root=UUID=0dbcdea1-3f91-477a-b730-ea6033c45b5c noiswmd LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=no rhgb quiet elevator=noop
Proceed with rebooting your machine, and everything should be working fine. :)
Removing journaling
Another thing you can do to increase the speed of your disk is disabling journaling of the ext4 filesystem. I sure hope you have your USB-pen/drive in hand, because we’re going to need it. Reboot your machine, with your USB-thingie plugged in, and again press F12 at boot, selecting your USB-device as the boot device. When done booting to the Live CD, press Alt-F2 and type terminal, and su to root. Find out what the partition with Linux is named. If you’ve partitioned things according to this guide, it should be /dev/sdb2. It’s basically the partition that holds the root of your Linux.
What we first need to do is to edit the file /etc/fstab on your disk. Why? Some tools have yet to catch up. In particular, the version of e2fsprogs currently in Fedora 12 won’t read the UUIDs from such filesystems. And because the Fedora installer generates an /etc/fstab which identifies filesystems by UUID, if you just run the tune2fs-command we’ll be using, the system can’t find its root filesystem and so doesn’t get very far through the boot process.
So, in order to edit the /etc/fstab-file, we first mount up the partition /dev/sda2. So remember, Fedora 12 is now installed, but you boot on the LiveCD/LiveUSB, and have a terminal up and going. As root, execute the following commands:
# mkdir /mnt/disk # mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/disk # mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/disk/boot # cd /mnt/disk/etc
Now open up the file named fstab. The two lines that currently look like this:
UUID=6f651dc4-3d50-4a28-b3d0-fc91b41f737c / ext4 defaults,noatime,nodiratime 1 1 UUID=0dbcdea1-3f91-477a-b730-ea6033c45b5c /boot ext4 defaults,noatime,nodiratime 1 2
Should look like this:
/dev/sda2 / ext4 defaults,noatime,nodiratime 1 1 /dev/sda1 /boot ext4 defaults,noatime,nodiratime 1 2
We simply replaced the UUID-strings with the partitions /dev/sda2 and /dev/sda1. Once you’ve edited the file, save it, and close it.
Now we need to update /boot/grub/grub.conf.
Execute this command:
# cd /mnt/disk/boot/grub/And open up the file grub.conf. What used to look like this:
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.31.6-145.fc12.i686 ro root=UUID=0dbcdea1-3f91-477a-b730-ea6033c45b5c noiswmd LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=no rhgb quiet elevator=noop
Should now look like this:
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.31.6-145.fc12.i686 ro root=/dev/sda2 noiswmd LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=no rhgb quiet elevator=noop
Save the file, close it, and unmount the partitions like this:
# cd ~/ # umount /mnt/disk/boot/ # umount /mnt/disk/
Now that they both are unmounted, all we have to do is run the tune2fs-command to disable journaling from the ext4-partition:
# tune2fs -O ^has_journal /dev/sda2Reboot your machine, and you should now have an ext4 filesystem with journaling disabled.
Now should be the time to update all of your packages before proceeding. So when you are logged back into your system again, open up a terminal, su to root, and do a:
# yum updateBrace yourself, this might take a while. :)
Optimizing Firefox
There are quite a few ways to make your Firefox go faster, one of them being to disable caching completely. Try these out, and let me know how they work. In your Firefox, type about:config as your URL, and press enter. Search for these values, and change them to what I’ve written up here:
Select all text when click on the URL bar
In Windows and Mac, Firefox highlights all text when you click on the URL bar. In Linux, it does not select all the text. Instead, it places the cursor at the insertion point. Regardless which platform you are using, you can now tweak it to either select all or place cursor at insertion point.
- browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll: true
Caching
When a page is loaded, Firefox will cache it into the hard disk so that it doesn’t need to be download again for redisplaying. The bigger the storage size you cater for Firefox, the more pages it can cache.
- browser.cache.disk.enable: false
false disabled caching completely, true enables it. If you want to modify the amount of cache used (instead of disabling it), have a look at browser.cache.disk.capacity.
Network
Config name: network.http.pipelining
Default: False
Modified value: True
Config name: network.http.proxy.pipelining
Default: False
Modified value: True
Config name: network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
Default: 4
Modified value: any value higher than 4, but not more than 8
Config name: network.http.max-connections
Default: 30
Modified value: 96
Config name: network.http.max-connections-per-server
Default: 15
Modified value: 32
Enabling auto-login
First off, a huge thanks to the user mjc for this great tip which allows you to enable auto-login!
Edit the file /etc/gdm/custom.conf to make it look something like:
[daemon] TimedLoginEnable=true AutomaticLoginEnable=true AutomaticLogin=jorge TimedLogin=jorge TimedLoginDelay=0
Replacing jorge with the username you want to automatically log in as. When done, save and exit the file.
Now you have to remove the keyring password. Yes, that does mean that your keys and passwords will be unprotected.
To change/remove the keyring password:
- Open Passwords and Encryption Keys in Accessories
- Go to the Passwords-tab
- Right-click the Passwords:login-keyring and select Change Password.
Enter in your password in the top field and leave the new password fields (Password and Confirm password) empty to remove the keyring password. Click Change. Reboot your machine and you should log in automatically!
Thanks again mjc!
Ways to extend your battery life
There are several things you can do to extend the battery life on your Acer Aspire One.
- Turn the screen brightness down – your screen is the most power-intensive component in your laptop, and why turn the brightness all the way up if you already can see well enough?
- When not in use, turn of the wireless and bluetooth functions.
- If you have enough memory on your laptop, disable swapping (we’ve done it in this case). I would suggest putting in more memory, as swapping writes to virtual memory.
- Journaling-filesystem on a SSD-disk = baaad. More writing to disk means more power used. In this howto we’re using ext4 without journaling, but just wanted to remind you. :)
- Disable all services that aren’t used. A lot of distributions come with say httpd enabled at start up. If you don’t need it, get rid of it.
- When you’re in no need of sound – mute it!
Jason Farrel has these following tips to apply as well:
- Use powertop to eliminate more power hogs.
- If using mplayer to play video, and you see nasty horizontal tearing, it’s because the fast overlay isn’t being used by default. Edit ~/.mplayer/config and gui.conf to use vo=xv:port=XX where XX is the port returned from the xvinfo util for the overlay adaptor – this should be 79.
- To cut the bootup time almost in half (down to 25 seconds here), disable uneeded services. Here’s a bit of code to disable the services (run it as root):
- This one makes a big difference: don’t forget to disable Firefox’s disk cache or you’ll grind to death.
for s in atd auditd avahi-daemon bluetooth cups ip6tables \ mdmonitor sendmail livesys livesys-late microcode_ctl; \ do echo "chkconfig $s off"; chkconfig $s off; done
Thanks for the tips Jason (from the Fedora 10 post). :)
Now this next bit is VERY important, if you want your Acer Aspire One to perform as best as it can. Keep in mind that this applied to Fedora 10, and applies to Fedora 11 as well as Fedora 12:
I installed FC10 like you described. It works fine. I was a bit surprised the AAO appeared rather slow compared to my EEE 1000H. So I ran cat /proc/cpuinfo. It appeared the CPU ran at 800 Mhz. I first looked at the BIOS, but the CPU ran at 1600 Mhz over there. Then I looked at services and found cpuspeed running. This is for scaling the CPU speed. After disabling this service the cat /proc/cpuinfo reported 1600 Mhz CPU speed and the system runs much smoother (and most probably consumes more power!).
So start/stop the service:
# service cpuspeed [start|stop]Throw in a:
# chkconfig cpuspeed [on|off]To disable the service at boot-time.
Thanks to Jaap (from the Fedora 10 post) for the tip. :)
Minor troubleshooting
Make the sound work properly
When checking the initial volume-settings, you’ll notice that you can hear a little bit of sound, but not much, even if you’ve cranked up the volume to the max. Thing is, we need to specify a little something, just a line really, to make it work properly. Create a file named /etc/modprobe.d/sound.conf with the following in it:
options snd-hda-intel model=acer-aspireThanks to Bruno Malone (from the Fedora 10 post) for the tip. :)
In my case, I’ve removed pulseaudio because I tend to play movies over NFS quite a bit, and pulseaudio always makes the sound turn choppy. So after having executed a:
# yum remove pulseaudioI add a volume-icon on my taskbar by right-clicking on it, selecting Add New Items.. and adding the application Mixer.
Reboot, and your sound should be working perfectly fine, even after you’ve resumed from suspend. :)
Disabling Nouveau and using Intel
For me at least the driver Nouveau seems a bit choppy. So I decided to stick with Intel instead. Do the following to disable Nouveau and start using Intel:
# echo "blacklist nouveau" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.confProceed with opening up the file /boot/grub/grub.conf and add the following to the end of the kernel-line:
nouveau.modeset=0Reboot and voila, you should be using Intel instead of Nouveau.
Using Fn-Arrow Up/Down to control the volume
If you come to notice that Fn-Up/Down doesn’t work for controlling the volume, it can easily be fixed. :) A program that’s needed, named amixer, isn’t installed. So as root, install it this way:
# yum -y install alsa-utilsThat should make things peachy again. ;)
Why is everything so big?
This is easily fixed. Press the tiny Fedora-icon on your menu, and go to Preferences, Appearance, go to the tab Fonts and click the Custom DPI Setting, and type 80. Done!
Double tap and scrolling doesn’t work on my Touchpad!
The new upstream Synaptics driver disables tapping and vertical edge scrolling by default. In order to fix this, first install the package xorg-x11-drv-synaptics like this:
# yum -y install xorg-x11-drv-synapticsAnd place the following in a file called /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-synaptics.fdi:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <!-- DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE IN PLACE. This file will be overwritten with the next update. If you need to add custom options, copy the file into /etc/hal/fdi/policy/ first. See https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Input_device_configuration --> <deviceinfo version="0.2"> <device> <match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.touchpad"> <!-- To add custom options for the touchpad, modify the examples below to suit your needs. The available options are listed in the "synaptics" man page. After modifyfing this file, you must restart HAL. Check the output of lshal whether your modifications have been merged successfully. Note: Options must always be type "string". The following examples enable left, right, middle clicks on single, double, triple finger tapping, respectively. <merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton1" type="string">1</merge> <merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton2" type="string">3</merge> <merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton3" type="string">2</merge> --> <merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">synaptics</merge> <merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton1" type="string">1</merge> <merge key="input.x11_options.VertEdgeScroll" type="string">1</merge> </match> </device> </deviceinfo>
Save and close it, and reboot. Double tap should now be working.
Making suspend work when closing the lid
It seems that XFCE 4.6 comes with a native Suspend and Hibernate function, so this should work out of the box! Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite. Suspend works great, but I haven’t had success with Hibernate, yet. And thanks to EasyTarget, who commented on this post, I finally know why. Quoting EasyTarget:
Jorge, I think the reason your Hibernate fails is that the Swap has been removed (for good reasons, I don’t have swap on my A110 either).. IIRC linux uses the swapfile for it’s hibernate functions, and not having a swapfile (or not having enough free space on the swap for your system ram+currently swapped data!) causes this to fail. Strangely this means you need a Huge swapfile to reliably hibernate your system.. I think it’s simply a no-go for SSD based systems at the moment.
https://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/linux-pm/2007-July/013971.html
You might also be interested in..
http://wiki.debian.org/Hibernation/Hibernate_Without_Swap_Partition
Thanks for the information. :)
Other tips and tricks
Here are a few other minor tips and tricks.
Enabling the rpmfusion-repository
Easily done. su to root, and execute the following command:
# rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpmAnd that’s it! Search for a package by executing:
# yum search <packagename>Installing yum-presto
Note: This section applies only to people who have a bad internet connection. This will increase the disk activity of the Acer Aspire One, so only use if you have a slow internet connection.
The presto plugin for yum adds support for downloading deltarpms and using them to generate new packages. If user enables this plugin, it will make a substantial dent in the amount of data having to be downloaded for updates. In other words, normally if you need to upgrade a package, yum will remove the complete package, and download the complete new package, even if a lot of the content is just the same. By enabling yum-presto it will only download the difference between those packages, making it faster and goes easier on the bandwidth by up to 80%, in some cases. Simply enable it by installing the yum-presto package:
# yum install yum-prestoAnd you’re set.
Installing Flash
As always, we need Flash for our browser. Thing is though, there’s an Adobe-repository we can use. If someone is bound to release a new version of Flash first, it’s them. So do the following as root:
# rpm -Uvh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm # yum -y install flash-plugin
That’s it. Restart your browser, and you should now have Flash enabled.
Final words
So, that was it for this round! This post will be constantly updated with new things I stumble upon, or suggestions from people posting comments. Anything you’d like to add to this post? Get in touch, I’ll look it over!
Can’t end this post without a screenshot of Fedora 12 on the Acer Aspire One, can we? What you see below is the IM-client Empathy, along with the browser Midori, a file opened within the terminal with vim and the Eye of Gnome-program showing a picture taken with Cheese.
As always, comments and feedback is always appreciated.
Enjoy!
What recommended size sda1 /boot?
sda1 /boot it is taken out in separate section because of log/journal?
Comment by Gleb — December 1, 2009 @ 14:58
I was using your previous guide for installing Fedora 10 XFCE on my AAO A110 just a few months ago, it proved to be quite useful. Since then I tried Fedora 11 with default GNOME desktop environment, and ATM I’m using Fedora 12 XFCE, installed it the day it came out. I was searching for a solution for my no sound and kernel crash at boot problem and first result in google was this guide.
I can tell that Fedora 12 XFCE works very much straight out after installing with no tweaking needed to be made. However, sound was cracky sometimes, and after recent updates, I have not sound at all. Glad to discover this new guide, I’ll apply the tweaks needed for the sound, hope it’ll work :)
Neverthless, it really is a difference in performance comparing to 11 gnome or 10 xfce. I’m also using ext4, with no signs of SSD hangs, despite it’s the worst SSD in the world (8 GB intel ssd).
Comment by Iceman2160 — December 1, 2009 @ 15:40
@Gleb: If your /boot is on a separate partition, you will still be able to boot if your file system gets corrupted. It’s also useful if you have many Linux-distributions. As for the size, it all depends on the size of the disk, but I would go with the default value. As I explain in the guide, only modify the things I mention, and nothing else, and things should be fine. :)
Comment by jorge — December 1, 2009 @ 17:55
@Iceman2160: I sure hope your sound-issues sort out! I suspect the choppy sound on your part might be Pulseaudio. I’ve never really fancied it, and it was taking up quite the resources at one point. So I just removed it, and the choppy sound was gone. You can of course configure Pulseaudio, but I don’t really see the benefit of having it. And I completely agree, the difference in performance is -huge-. :)
Comment by jorge — December 1, 2009 @ 17:57
Check up please /etc/sysconfig/desktop for me such file is not present.
P.S. For me it is installed Russian Fedora Remix 12.
Comment by Gleb — December 2, 2009 @ 09:35
@Gleb: Are you thinking about the section of setting up autologin? If the file doesn’t exist, create it. :) I’ll modify the guide and specify that.
Comment by jorge — December 2, 2009 @ 11:34
@Jorge
Yes, it is an autologin.
I thought that the given part of a manual is not adapted for F12.
In the evening I will check up…
Comment by Gleb — December 2, 2009 @ 11:54
Hi Jorge,
I’ve been using your walkthrough’s for Fedora on the AAO since F10 and they’ve proved invaluable.
The only point I haven’t implemented was to disable journaling. Would this create a huge lag in performance as I have 1.5gb RAM installed.
Also I’d be happy to make financial donations when using your walkthroughs if that is possible. It beats paying the M$ tax!!
Many thanks,
AFD
Comment by AFD — December 2, 2009 @ 15:58
@jorge
I suggest using the –reset-mbr (instead of zero filling, wich takes some time) and –noverify (because there is no need to validate the file using md5, since it was downloaded via bittorrent, wich automatically does this when download completes) flags for the livecd-iso-to-disk command, without the zerofill :)
Comment by Iceman2160 — December 2, 2009 @ 16:55
@AFD: Hi there! I’m not sure how much of a lag in performance you’ll get if you don’t disable journaling on your ext4 system. But remember, a journaling file system is a file system that logs changes to a journal (usually a circular log in a dedicated area of the file system) before committing them to the main file system, so there will probably be quite a few write-operations to the disk. Imagine what happens when you have 200+ packages to upgrade (such a pain!). :)
I appreciate the thought of financial donation, really! But I am more than happy to help out, and as long as others have use of what I know, I’m all good. :)
Comment by jorge — December 2, 2009 @ 17:39
@Iceman2160: I’ll add the –reset-mbr option as suggested, but I’ll keep the md5-validation as is. :) Doesn’t hurt if things are checked twice, you can never be too sure!
Comment by jorge — December 2, 2009 @ 17:40
The autologin works!
Comment by Gleb — December 2, 2009 @ 18:26
You’re a good man Jorge ;)
I’ve not disabled my journaling yet but think I’ll give it a shot.
I did try skype audio/video for the first time since making your changes today and the audio was screwed. No option to change to a non pulse-audio setting under the options until I removed pulseaudio as per your walkthrough.
Now I can’t edit the volume though – from system/preferences/sound or via the fn+up/down cursor keys. I also don’t have a mixer app to put on my top panel when I right-click and “add to panel”.
Could you recommend a terminal line to install the necessary mixer app or anything else to control my volume please.
Comment by AFD — December 3, 2009 @ 14:01
@AFD: Hey! Did you create the file /etc/modprobe.d/sound.conf with the content specified in the guide? And do you have the packages alsa-utils and xfce4-mixer installed? If not:
# yum install alsa-utils xfce4-mixerCheck if the Mixer-application is there now, and if you are able to add it, and turn your volume up/down with Fn-Up/Down. I’ll explain how you can modify your keyboardshortcuts when I get my hands on my Acer Aspire One at home. :)
Comment by jorge — December 3, 2009 @ 14:44
I followed this guide and am noticing sounds issues eg, no login sounds etc and also when I hit the arrow keys I have to mute fully then max volume and I hear sound again also any app that uses sound has a 1-3sec delay before sound actually plays… also noticing that suspend isnt working right (system not waking back up) are there any fixes for this or should I go back to F11?
Comment by David — December 4, 2009 @ 02:11
Sorry forgot to mention that im using the 8GB SSD aspire one AOA-110
Comment by David — December 4, 2009 @ 02:12
@David: Hi there. I am using the exact same machine (8GB SSD Acer Aspire One 110), and everything is working fine here. Did you follow the guide from top to bottom? Skipping the autologin-bit? Suspend actually works, but there seems to be an issue when you close the lid. If you press the Logout-button though, and select Suspend, it should work just fine. How much memory do you have on your machine?
Comment by jorge — December 4, 2009 @ 05:52
My Acer has 1.5GB of DDR2400 ram I know the machine supports 533 but that stick was free :D I just burned a CD of F12 LIVE (Gnome) I was running F11 Gnome before, thats about the only difference I did from the guide. I noticed from F11 that Battery life wasn’t much different from XFCE to Gnome. So far Booting the Acer from the F12 (live) CD off a USB CD-ROM drive im noticing that everything is working off the live user Even closing the lid without hitting the suspend button.. maybe I was having an issue with the USB thumb drive. I’ll try reinstalling from CD now and see if everything works if it does I’ll let you guy know :D
Comment by David — December 4, 2009 @ 16:06
Thanks Jorge for a detailed guide again. I had to create a swap partition btw to complete the installation, which was a bit odd.
An easier way to “automatically log in” is to do the following:-
Edit /etc/gdm/custom.conf and add:
[daemon]
TimedLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLogin=
TimedLogin=
TimedLoginDelay=0
Save custom.conf. Now you have to remove the keyring password. Yes, that does mean that your keys and passwords will be unprotected.
To change/remove the keyring password:
1.Open “Passwords and Encryption Keys” in Accessories
2. Go to the Passwords-tab
3. Right-click the “Passwords:login”-keyring and select “Change Password.”
Enter in your password in the top field and Leave the new password fields (password and confirm password) empty to remove the keyring password. Click Change.
Comment by mjc — December 4, 2009 @ 17:33
For some reason my above post was missing some important entries in the custom.conf file. Not sure why they were omitted:-
[daemon]
TimedLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLoginEnable=true
AutomaticLogin= (YOUR USERNAME e.g, Star123)
TimedLogin= (YOUR USERNAME, eg, Star123)
TimedLoginDelay=0
Comment by mjc — December 4, 2009 @ 17:41
@mjc: You are a -genius-! It works perfectly! I’ll definitely add this to the guide, thank you! Much better, quicker and safer than the process I typed up. Yours will certainly replace it, thanks!
Comment by jorge — December 4, 2009 @ 18:29
I just finished installing F12 Live from CD did all the tweaks and updates, everything so far seems to work great. I must have had a bad USB thumbdrive then
Comment by David — December 4, 2009 @ 20:31
I spoke too soon it seems that suspend is broken again :( I hope there is a fix for it soon I would rather stick with F12 then go back to F11
Comment by David — December 4, 2009 @ 21:28
Hello Jorge, i disabled Nouveau like you mentioned. But i am still having graphical problems when using programs like Google Earth and Secondlife, the graphics seem kind of messed up. Have you or has anyone come across this problem ?
Comment by Alican — December 5, 2009 @ 13:49
@Alican: Hello! What kind of graphical problems are you having? Could you describe it? I don’t really know much about the requirements of Second Life. Could you paste the output of the command:
Comment by jorge — December 5, 2009 @ 18:59
I somehow bricked my netbook :(
I disabled journaling as per your instructions (although my ssd was sda1 so changed the terminal lines accordingly) and then removed pulseaudio and installed the ALSA stuff.
It booted twice, I updated everything via yum and now it won’t get to login…
Also I’ve got a hangover – not a great sunday.
Comment by AFD — December 6, 2009 @ 12:20
Jorge, here’s the output:
uvcvideo 51116 0
videodev 30160 1 uvcvideo
v4l1_compat 12312 2 uvcvideo,videodev
i2c_core 23120 5 videodev,i2c_i801,i915,drm,i2c_algo_bit
video 19088 1 i915
output 2468 1 video
I think there is a problem with OpenGl. In Google Earth, there are many elongated lines everywhere, bad rendered graphics: (http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/1830/screenshot1tt.png) but the satellite images are fine. SecondLife also has bad graphics :(http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/9320/screenshotyv.png). I wonder if anyone has those.
Comment by Alican — December 6, 2009 @ 13:40
hi
if anyone has a memory stick with 2 gb + then i would recomend getting gparted, (yum install gparted). once it is installed on the top right box make sure it is sdb or whatever you usb stick it. then click device > create partition table. it will come up with a warning saying that it will delete all your data so make sure it is backed up on your system. then on the bit which says unnalocated, right click > new. on the box that has the list of formats make sure it is on Fat16. on the label section type something like F12 or fedora, on the size box i think that the fedora 12 takes up 613 mb but id do 620 to mae sure theres enough room. then click create. then click apply at the top (it should look like a green tick) then you can do the same in the other bit that says unallocated but with your customized settings so you dont waste most of your usb stick
Comment by Tim — December 6, 2009 @ 16:43
is there a possible way to log in as my root user. i know you can use sudo and su but i would like to be able to log on to this user. when i try it just says unable to authenticate user. is there a gdmsetup or something like that like on linpus
Comment by Tim — December 6, 2009 @ 16:46
@Tim: Hi there! If there’s a way to log in as your root user, hm.. May I ask why you would want that? The reason for having a regular user and a root-user is to limit as much of the administrative tasks as possible to the super user, in this case root. This means that if an accident should occur, and you delete some important system file that you shouldn’t, having a regular and super user will be another wall to climb over, preventing it from happening. I’ll point you to http://www.everyjoe.com/newlinuxuser/explain-why-not-log-on-as-root/, there you can read a bit more about it. But sorry, don’t really know if it can be done. :)
Comment by jorge — December 7, 2009 @ 14:14
ok ill stick with using sudo
Comment by Tim — December 7, 2009 @ 19:33
hi
is there a program for customizing the themes and stuff for gdm that i can get like the gdmsetup that was on linpus. well done on this guide by the way
Comment by Tim — December 9, 2009 @ 23:00
@jorge: is your way of installing flash just a simplified way of the method described here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Flash ? Because I was always using the guide from http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Flash to install flash.
Comment by Iceman2160 — December 9, 2009 @ 23:00
@Tim: Not that I know of. :)
Comment by jorge — December 10, 2009 @ 08:52
@Iceman2160: It’s indeed a simplified way of doing it as documented in the Fedoraproject-wiki. :)
Comment by jorge — December 10, 2009 @ 08:53
Hello again Jorge,
I’m up to date with all your F12 pointers apart from disabling logging in ext4 and setting up custom shortcuts for the ALSA sound mixer.
I’m using a single boot and store partition for F12 on /dev/sda1
Fancy helping me out?
Comment by AFD — December 10, 2009 @ 19:46
Thanks for the detailed instructions!
Just wondering, though, why you disable SELinux. I have run Fedora on my Dell laptop for many years now with SELinux enabled and no problems. What is it causing all the “pain” with?
Comment by lugnuts — December 11, 2009 @ 01:27
@AFD: Sure, I’ll give you a hand. :) It’s easier doing it “live” though. How about you log on to IRC, the network DALnet (irc.dal.net) to the channel #linuxhjelp. You can find me there under the nick jbg.
Comment by jorge — December 11, 2009 @ 11:12
@lugnuts: Hello! First off, let me quote Wikipedia:
Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) is a Linux feature that provides a mechanism for supporting access control security policies, including U.S. Department of Defense style mandatory access controls, through the use of Linux Security Modules (LSM) in the Linux kernel. It is not a Linux distribution, but rather a set of modifications that can be applied to Unix-like operating systems, such as Linux and BSD.
SELinux represents one of several possible approaches to a problem of restricting the actions that installed software can take. In other words, if a new person to Linux encounters an issue which he/she has problems resolving, SELinux will just be another thing to take into consideration. It may be a better option to make changes to the policy to permit the operations that are being blocked – but this requires knowledge of writing policies and may be a steep learning curve for some people. When I write up guides, I take into consideration the new people trying Linux out. It was difficult for me, and I’m just trying to make things a bit easier.
But, that’s a matter of opinion, and this is mine. :)
Comment by jorge — December 11, 2009 @ 11:21
Thank you very much for your usefull post. You rock man :D
Comment by Rodrigo Amaya — December 13, 2009 @ 23:30
I noticed you recommend the Live Cd version any reason to NOT use the full distribution 3.5GB?
Comment by John A. Ward — December 16, 2009 @ 00:57
@John A. Ward: Hello! No main reason, but several small ones. Quoting http://spins.fedoraproject.org/about :
Fedora spins are alternate versions of Fedora, tailored for various types of users via hand-picked application sets and other customizations.
In this case, it was XFCE. :) The full distribution of 3.5GB is, well, 3.5GB large, while the spinoffis around 600MB, which means less time downloading and more time playing around. :) So again, no particular reason, I just preferred it. :)
Comment by jorge — December 16, 2009 @ 14:29
Thank you, I don’t mind the time and I prefer staying with the method I have been using in the past, full distro and pick features, again, thank you and excellent outline.
John
Comment by John A. Ward — December 20, 2009 @ 06:00
hi Jorge!
thanks for the updates on installing Fedora xfce on the AA1. I used F11 xfce for about a year and it was an amazing combination!
now I’m installing F12 xfce on my AA1 but the installer refuses to continue without swap.
any workaround known? on the other hand with discouraging swap the partition is still useful for hibernating…
Meine
AA1 8G SSD
Comment by meine — December 26, 2009 @ 13:02
Thanks Jorge. Using F12 on my AAO SSD 512 MB ram. Works ok, but wifi disconnects without any reason and has to be reconnected. Whhy?
Comment by tofi — January 9, 2010 @ 16:45
hi jorge,
1. i have openoffice.org3.1.1 and whenever i do my updates i have to untick ure-openoffice.org cuz when i update it any openoffice program wont work, got any ideas what i should do
2. now thats kernel packages have gotten to 3.6.30 my wifi led just flashes instaed of staying on when its on and off when wifi is off, and my switch dont work, i have the aoa150 by the way, do you know whats wrong?
Comment by Tim — February 4, 2010 @ 20:26
Hi Jorge!
Thanks for a great guide – didn’t know my “AA1 8G SSD” could work that great! (I even use it as a MythTV frontend once in a while).
A little question: You write “Making suspend work when closing the lid … should work out of the box”. Mine doesn’t.
In fact nothing at all happens when I close the lid… But the strange thing is, that also when I hit the power button, nothing happens! I don’t have any other experience with the Fedora XFCE distribution, but shouldn’t the “Log out”, “Restart”, “Suspend” etc. dialog appear when I hit the power button?
Comment by Sander — February 15, 2010 @ 17:09
@meine: I recently decided to reinstall F12 on my A110L 8 GB SSD with 512 MB RAM, and I’ve noticed the same issue, the installer demanding a swap partition to complete installation. I remember I installed F10 XFCE with no swap a few months ago, on the same netbook, so I suppose that maybe the installation requirements have grown. However, it should be possible to install with swap, and then just delete the swap partition by merging it with /.
I’ll try this evening to see if it’s possible.
Comment by iceman2160 — March 8, 2010 @ 14:51
Just wanted to say great tutorial Jorge. I used your Fedora 10 install on Acer Aspire One guide, and using your F12 guide to upgrade/resintall….Yes there is a nice boost in speed with F12 using your guide…
One thing that I did see missing in the F12 guide was enabling suspend on closing the lid. I used your instructions included in the F10 guide and it worked fine after a reboot. Wireless even works fine for me after resuming from suspend.
Just letting you know in cause you want to include in FF12 guide.
Comment by tokyoturnip — March 17, 2010 @ 16:30
Thanks Jorge for all.
I would need to have a Citrix client on my Acer/Fedora 12. I have installed OpenMotif and the latest ICA Client but I could not launch any Citrix server app. But somehow the “wfica” program was not associated with the “.ica” files and the server app is not started. Can you help me ?
Comment by Quang Vu — March 28, 2010 @ 12:30
Great step-by-step guide :-) After using the original Acer Linpus XFCE setup for a while I had a situation where the system became partially unusable (while I was mucking around with installing new packages). So facing the prospect of a reinstall I finally decided to try a different distro and Fedora 12 XFCE seemed like a good idea.
Here are some things to be aware of which aren’t covered by your guide:
I tried to upgrade from the original Acer Linpus installation to Fedora 12 but ran into a few problems:
a. When you make the Live USB from the ISO it uses the version of syslinux on Linpus (which is F8 based) and this is too old to boot the F12 ISO (I ended up with a blank menu). So you have to obtain a newer version of syslinux, then ensure it is in the path to replace the original and then make your Live USB image which will then boot to F12.
b. However, I still couldn’t then install to hard disk from the Live USB. It complained that the hard disk was still mounted (which it wasn’t) and that it was unable to modify the partition table.
The long and short of this is that I had to upgrade to F10 as an intermediate step which then allowed me to boot onto my F12 Live USB and then install to the HD.
It was all good for a while and then I decide to change the desktop wallpaper to one of the XFCE ones. I selected the new wallpaper and….
nothing happened! Tried reverting to the original and now I find that my desktop background will not refresh at all. Additionally my file manager now hangs. It attempts to read the file system but hangs as it reads. Applications like Firefox and terminal will display OK in the foregroun but I have no desktop in the backgroun or file manager capability which is a bit of a problem.
I don’t know my way around the XFCE internals enough to know where to look. Do you have any ideas where I should look to see what the problem is?
Comment by starman — March 30, 2010 @ 16:33
Hello Jorge!
I’ve been reading your posts since F8 and I GREATLY appreciate them.
One thing I’m curious about… You’re segment about disabling journaling assumes that the partitions aren’t in LVM.
Do I need to take the partitions out of LVM somehow or is there a better way to disable journaling on an ext4 volume in LVM?
Thanks in advance!
Comment by linuxophile — April 2, 2010 @ 22:55
I haven’t disabled journaling yet — shame on me — and a couple of these steps are obsolete at least on the ZG8 model — but thanks for the very useful writeup. Here’s what I found to be obsolete:
Installing synaptics for tap-click: it’s installed by default on the (non-XFCE) live installer. However, the feature is disabled by default, in Gnome go to System > Preferences > Mouse > Touchpad to enable it.
Function-arrow to adjust sound (or brightness) worked 100% out of the box, as did Fn-F6 to power off the display.
An additional note, if you prefer Google Chrome over Firefox, you can now disable cache by adding this to your Chrome shortcut icons:
–disk-cache-dir=”/dev/null/”
As in:
/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome –disk-cache-dir=”/dev/null/” %U
Comment by Nathan Hawks — May 21, 2010 @ 20:45
Hi,
I installed fedora, with LXDE desktop spin,
I followed some of your tips… like the mouse tapping…
I want to ask for your help…
1.. empathy works but I can’t use the webcam… apparently some telepathy-butterfly crashes when I open it….
2… How can i dissable keyring everything I log in….
Thanks for your hepl….
Comment by Luis Humberto — May 27, 2010 @ 16:33