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- 31.05.2012 08:51
[blog...]
fit-pc2 Running With Kernel 2.6.39.2 and Ubuntu 11.04
Kernel 2.6.39.2 with gma500 driver from staging tree
Recently, I spent a couple of hours to update and upgrade my fit-pc2.
I started with the kernel which was running 2.6.37.1 with the psb driver for the Intel GMA500 (Poulsbo) graphics engine. Unfortunately this driver isn't maintained anymore and does not compile with 2.6.38 or even 2.6.39 kernels.
But in the meantime, a new driver entered the staging tree of the kernel and is already part of 2.6.39. This driver-directory is called gma500 but the module is named psb_gfx and the driver is named psbfb. This driver supports Kernel Mode Setting (KMS) and uses the fbdev driver from xorg.
It took me some hours to get this running. Of course because I even compile the kernel on the fit-pc2 which is not that fast. But the biggest problem was to find a working kernel config and the setting for the right display resolution. In my case the monitor is connected to DVI (on the HDMI plug) and has a native resolution of 1440x900.
Here is my kernel config for 2.6.39.2 and I had to change the grub default settings in /etc/default/grub for my monitor:
?GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor acpi_skip_timer \
nomodeset video=DVI-D-1:1440x900 pci=nocrs mem=896mb"
Please note: the current driver doesn't support reading your monitor EDID data by itsself. It will start with 1024x768 by default. To get information about the connector (in my case DVI-D-1), I added the parameter "drm.debug=7" to the kernel command line.
I don't know why, but I still need a xorg.conf file. Without it, the USB keyboard and mouse won't work.
After the kernel, I upgraded Ubuntu from 10.10 to 11.04 without any problems.
Sound with Intel HDA
With the new kernel, it was'n possible to use the sound as normal user. So I was checking the drivers and the permissions. After killing pulseaudio, it was possible for the root user to playback sound.
When reloading the alsa drivers there was always a strange warning I've never seen:
sudo alsa force-reload
lsof: WARNING: can't stat() fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon file system /home/ab/.gvfs
This was the solution: there were some permission issues for this userfilesystem. My solution was the following in the /home/ab/ directory:
sudo umount .gvfs
chmod 755 .gvfs
sudo /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfs-fuse-daemon .gvfs
Scanimage with Canon LiDE 20
I have a simple flatbed scanner connected via USB and this scanner didn't work with the new 2.6.39 kernel anymore. But why?
This was another permission issue because root was able to scan. In my kernel config I disabled CONFIG_USB_DEVICE_CLASS because it is marked as DEPRECATED. The current Ubuntu udev rules seems to prefer the old fashioned way. I had to change the permissions for the new style in /lib/udev/rules.d/50-udev-default.rules:
# libusb device nodes
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", MODE="0666"
This is of course a dirty workaround and no solution. But anyway. Let's wait for Ubuntu 11.10!
The scanner is found now and working as usual:
ab@ab-fit:~$ scanimage -L
device `plustek:libusb:004:009' is a Canon CanoScan N670U/N676U/LiDE20 flatbed scanner
Using Mplayer With Custom Playlist
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Sometimes it's so easy if you the command line parameters. Yesterday, I googled again for a solution to substitute exaile and amarok on my fit-PC2. I use this tiny computer as desktop replacement and I play from a music playlist in shuffle mode.
First I used amarok. But this is sometimes really slow. So I found exaile comming with the XFCE desktop. This is much better but still consumes a lot of memory and CPU power. Ok, in the screenshot on the right, amarok seems to be less consumptive. Please keep in mind, it's only a snapshot!
But why not playing from the command line? It's only a matter of knowing the command line parameters. I choose mplayer. For sure, it should be possible with play, madplay or something better.
???mplayer -shuffle -playlist my_playlist.pls