24 replies to this topic

[liable]

EDIT: take two ;)

EDIT: see comment #19, updated support.

EDIT: Now supports install over WPA PSK networks. see comment #21 and now #25

OK, everything appears to be back to normal. Lenny has upgraded to 2.6.24 and the repo seems to be back to normal. The installer now installs with 2.6.24.

For those that would like to be guineepigs for this installer, I would welcome feedback as to what does and what doesnt work. I have tested this myself but I am sure that I have probably missed a thing or two. During install, you should be able to choose ath0 to install via wireless. The scanning function in netcfg isn't very good at the moment, and it will either not associate to any ap at all, or will associate with the strongest one thats available. (it appears to be doing that for me at the moment, though the eee is sitting right next to my other laptop thats acting as the AP) If you have problems with it associating with the correct AP, then you can switch to vt2 (alt+F2) and use iwconfig to set the correct ap. (iwconfig ath0 essid yourap) Otherwise, if it asks for an ESSID, just put the name of your AP in and then the wep key if it needs one.

EDIT: after running another install, the installer actually has a menu item to put in your essid if network configuration fails, so theres no need to switch to vt2 (though its usefull to see which AP the installer has associated to)

Only open and WEP networks are supported at the moment, though WPA support may come a little further down the road (don't hold your breathe for that though :) )

Installation is exactly as per the instructions found on the wiki.
http://wiki.debian.o...C/HowTo/Install

The installer will add the eeepc.debian.net repo and download madwifi-eeepc-source, and also eeepc-acpi source and related dependancies. After install, you should be able to build madwifi and get wireless up and running again with minimal work. (I am hoping to get modules packages included in the repo soon, so this wont be neccessary) But, at the moment you will need to run the following commands as root after you have booted into debian.

/etc/init.d/networking stop
m-a a-i madwifi-eeepc-source
modprobe ath-pci
/etc/init.d/networking start

This should then hopefully get your wireless card associated with the AP that you used to install.
atl2 modules should also be installed, so ethernet should work out of the box.
Oh, and it will install the eeepc-acpi-scripts, so once you build and load the acpi module, then the hotkeys should all work. :)

The image can be found at
http://eeepc.debian.net/images
md5sum b678b9e0e7b78f17f38e362ae3bc2121

This is hosted on my personal server, so please be patient as my upstream is pretty bad.

For those that are curious in testing, but dont want to install debian, you can run the installer up untill the partitioner to see if the wireless part works, and then abort the installation without writing anything to disk.

Edit: the release key issue seems to have been resolved.
Have fun!

Edited by liable, 11 April 2008 - 07:21 AM.

[crypto]

liable, the image is booting well from a 16M mmc card, everything is ok until the network card configuration.

the wireless atheros card of the eee is non in the list, nor the madwifi is available.

sorry, I can't say I'm a guru, but it should be not that difficult.

further ideas?

just for fun

Edited by crypto, 26 March 2008 - 01:04 PM.

[mkrishnan]

It sounds like a good project... if the debian team can provide a basis for wireless functionality in the net installer that can migrate downstream to Ubuntu, etc, that would be wonderful, just for convenience sake....

[liable]

Bump for version two.

[Ben Armstrong]

Did anyone manage to snag version 2 before liable's connection tanked? I'll put it on a good mirror if someone can get it to me.

[Ben Armstrong]

After evaluating liable's image, we've put it up on http://eeepc.debian.net/images and made it the new installer image, replacing the old one (since it is currently broken anyway, and liable's image contains everything the old one did plus a number of enhancements, like automatically installing the wifi & acpi packages and adding our repository URL to the sources.list). So check out the updated http://wiki.debian.o...C/HowTo/Install for the latest instructions on how to use this image.

[micah]

I tried this and as far as the wireless part goes it works fine! Now after i got the base install done it went to the tasksel menu. I choose NONE of the options. I click continue because there is no cancel or back button. Next thing i know its trying to install 86 more packages!!! Well i let it install them and after its done it wants to install ANOTHER 100 in some packages!!!! Is this normal? When i used the other sid-usb.img it intalled the base system and that was it.

[Ben Armstrong]

There are some additional packages required in order to build and install the drivers. In a future release instead of building these drivers on the Eee, prebuilt packages will be available from our new repository. This will cut way down on the total number of packages installed.

[micah]

I tried it again and your right its all the build-essential etc... packages. Any time frame for when that will be ready?

[Ben Armstrong]

The next version will fix it. I expect it will be ready by the weekend.

[ath]

I'm in the process of installing Debian from your image to SDHC partition. Its so looooong, so I have some time to type this message.

1. I copied your image from other Debian installation to USB stick, but can't get my EeePC (701, bios 0801) boot from it.
2. To my surprise, when Windows XP was booted, it could see my USB stick as logical disk with your files.
3. I run setup.exe, it made some black magic with C: and after boot prompt I rebooted right into classic textmode Debian installer. White windows on blue.
4. All two network interfaces (100Mb and WiFi) were detected.
5. WiFi interface started by asking me SSID of my network. I was prepared to select it from the list, but have to type SSID by keyboard.
6. Then I type in password (my network use WPA-PSK), but installer failed to connect to this network. Network is working okay from the same EeePC, from Windows XP.
7. So I had to fallback into Ethernet mode. Its even better, because faster.
8. Installer selected weird cities. I guess, that if I specify Russia as my location, I could get at least Moscow (where I am) as option. But there were only four or five small cities, more or less associated with my country. No capital, kinda insult.
9. I decided to go without swap on my 2Gb RAM. So suspend package wrote me big red warning. Right side of this window wasn't cleared, and it is still on my screen during all installation process.

The only problem I foresee so far is that my USB stick (and internal SSD) took /dev/sda and /dev/sdb, so my /target is on /dev/sdc. This could bring problems if booting Debian from SDHC without USB stick and/or mouse.

I wish I had disconnected USB stick during first reboot (as I can always connect USB devices after booting Debian), but instruction was not clear about it.

Also I made Debian partition as ext2, but Windows XP seems to have some torjan code, dealing with ext2 partitions. It can't read them, but gives them drive letter, sometimes stealing it from FAT32. If this would be a case, I want to convert Debian partition to ext3 asap.

But installation is in progress (about 60% of configuration), so other issues could follow. Thank you for your work and I hope, my testing will help to make Debian installation even easier to anyone.

Edited by ath, 03 April 2008 - 06:35 AM.

[Fitzey]

I downloaded and installed from the newest image last night but im having some troubles
my acpid stuff all worked when I first installed it but it has since stopped, the only function keys that work are the brightness
my ethernet does work but the tray monitor cannot detect any network devices

modprobe can find ath-pci but if i attempt to turn it on using ifup it says its cannot find the device ath0

and a minor inconvenience is my clock keeps resetting to an hour and a half behind where it should be.

but once again, this all worked perfectly on first boot.

[liable]

ath, how did you copy the image to your usb stick? I haven't seen anyone having problems booting the actual image yet. The installer doesn't support WPA also, so that is why you couldn't use the wireless. (its mentioned above and on the wiki.) I hope to have a properly woking WPA installer in the not too distant future. (I have one that works, but requires some tweaking in vt2 if anyone would like to test it.) The devices changing is a problem that I have no answer for. When I test and install to the sd card, I also have this problem. I think its the 24 kernel as I didn't seem to have a problem with it with the 2.6.22 kernel that we used previously. Apparently there is a usb-persist option somewhere in the kernel, but is considered dangerous to use.

Fitzey, make sure the eeepc-acpi module is loaded, and try your hotkeys again. It should be autoloaded at boot, but you may need to add it to /etc/modules (you havent installed a new kernel have you? because you would need to rebuild the acpi module) ditto for ath-pci. If you installed over ethernet, then there wont be a stanza for your wireless card in /etc/network/interfaces check that file, and if it doesn't have anything for it in there, follow the instructions as per on the wiki.

http://wiki.debian.o...eePC/HowTo/Wifi

Edited by liable, 03 April 2008 - 02:12 AM.

[ath]

liable,

I made dd if=debian-eeepc.img of=/dev/sdb (or where my USB stick appeared). When I pressed ESC on boot and selected USB stick as my boot device, BIOS ignored this selection and continued to boot from SSD.

Yes, I understood WPA problem, but too late and don't want to change network settings because of one installation either. BTW, I selected 2.6.24-1-686-bigmem kernel, because have 2Gb of RAM. Was blind solution, because installer have no help screen on what is "bigmem". Neither had instruction.

Finally I have Debian GNU/Linux, but there are few of problems with booting. I installed GRUB2 into boot sector of internal SSD, Debian is on the SDHC partition.

1. Debian is booted okay, but only with USB stick. I changed all (hd2,2) to (hd1,2) in /boot/grub/grub.cfg and this could fix things, but it seems I must compile grub.cfg somehow, because GRUB2 ignore this changes completely.

I can change (hd2,2) to (hd1,2) right inside GRUB2 boot menu. But GRUB2 fails to find his own modules if booted without USB stick, he writes "error: unknown device" and "Entering rescue mode...", don't know how to continue boot process manually.

2. Windows XP was detected, but on the wrong partition of my SSD. If I correct manually boot settings from (hd0,1) to (hd0,2), XP boots normally ("Debian installer" is still a boot option). This corrections are lost. Guess this is because I already changed (hd2,2) to (hd1,2) in some places, but actually can load GRUB2 menu only with USB stick inserted, from (hd2,2).

3. Of course with GRUB2 half on SSD, half on SDHC I'm unable to boot without SDHC card.

Actually I wanted GRUB2 on my bootable SDHC (keeping SSD untouched), but Debian installator had another idea. :( Any ideas how to correct the situation?

4. If I put USB stick into USB slot, select my SDHC card as HDD #3, Debian is booted from GRUB2 without any problem. I was surprised there is no Ethernet support in fresh Debian. ifconfig shows only loopback interface, can't turn Ethernet on via ifup.

I've read about extra atl2 packadges on wiki. But can't put them on USB stick with installator, because there is almost no free space. I guess I could format it now to the full capacity and somehow bootstrap Ethernet or WiFi to continue Debian installation from EeePC.

Edited by ath, 03 April 2008 - 05:39 AM.

[liable]

ath, at the moment, I dont have a solution to the device name problem unfortunately. Try looking elsewhere here as I believe its a known problem. I haven't used grub2 myself, so can't comment on that, but I have the same problem with grub, re the device names. Editing the grub menu interactively works at boot for me, and as I am only basically testing the actuall install process on my sdhc card, I havent looked at a real solution to that yet. As to why your bios didn't see the usb stick when you booted and pressed escape i don't know either, every time I have tested the installer, it has picked it up fine, and I haven't seen any other complaints as yet of similar issues. Hardware problem perhaps? Are you saying that after install you dont have ethernet modules available? When did you download the image? (I did have one testing installer that didn't have atl2 installed, but that due to the 2.6.24 kernel migration. And it wasn't available for long, this was about a week ago)

[ath]

Quote

ath, at the moment, I dont have a solution to the device name problem unfortunately. Try looking elsewhere here as I believe its a known problem. I haven't used grub2 myself, so can't comment on that, but I have the same problem with grub, re the device names. Editing the grub menu interactively works at boot for me, and as I am only basically testing the actuall install process on my sdhc card, I havent looked at a real solution to that yet. As to why your bios didn't see the usb stick when you booted and pressed escape i don't know either, every time I have tested the installer, it has picked it up fine, and I haven't seen any other complaints as yet of similar issues. Hardware problem perhaps? Are you saying that after install you dont have ethernet modules available? When did you download the image? (I did have one testing installer that didn't have atl2 installed, but that due to the 2.6.24 kernel migration. And it wasn't available for long, this was about a week ago)

I used the following image. Guess, its the latest:
b678b9e0e7b78f17f38e362ae3bc2121 debian-eeepc.img

May be I will fdisk/mbr to deinstall GRUB2 and reinstall Debian by booting w/o USB stick. Its pain to download all those gigabytes again (guess I can't just copy .deb files to another partition and specify the directory), but GRUB2 seems to have no documentation other than source code.

But before I make all this again I must know, if its possible to install Debian w/o USB stick? As I guess after all those files came to my XP disk, USB stick is useless for installation process and could only harm. Instruction must be clear about this.

Yes, there is no ethernet modules after installation. They were available only during installation. There must be some instruction how to copy and install those modules on fresh install.

Also XP had no problems with a new ext2 partition on SDHC.

[ath]

So I successfully reinstalled Debian, and now it is booting from SDHC partition by means of GRUB2. Now just 686 kernel, without bigmem. No need of it at 2Gb RAM or less. Here are steps for those, who want to repeat installation:

1. Enable all devices in your BIOS Setup, even webcam and Ethernet boot ROM. Plug in your USB mouse. This doesn't mean, your Ethernet will work just out of box, thought. Just make you feel well. :-)
2. Plug your 100Mb Ethernet cable. WiFi could work, but it is too slow to download 1Gb of Debian files.
3. Copy debian-eeepc.img to your USB stick on GNU/Linux computer by `dd if=debian-eeepc.img of=/dev/sdb` or where your USB stick is.
4. Put this USB into your Eee PC with Windows XP and run SETUP.EXE from removable USB drive. (As I guess, Debian installator could be distributed in .zip package without need to search for working Linux machine.)
5. Installator asks about rebooting. TAKE OFF USB STICK!!!! and reboot.
6. Continue with installation. It will take several hours. And you can't sleep or relax, because Eee PC will ask you one or another question from time to time just to be sure you still awake and aren't dead or bored.
7. After installation run uninstall from C:\debian\ to clean Windows XP (C: and boot loader) from Debian installator. Delete this directory manually.

Now about bugs:

1. Timer and strange city selection was because installator force my location to ru_KZ (Kazakhstan?). I don't know, why KZ (I live in Russia), and have no option to select my location by myself.

2. Ethernet doesn't work after installation, was okay during installation. Solution was published:
http://forum.eeeuser...id=89843#p89843

3. Never reboot with plugged USB storage device, lol. Only if you want to boot from this device.

Good side is that video and audio will work just from the box. Check and install all other things, step by step. There are detail instructions on both wikies and this forum.

Edited by ath, 07 April 2008 - 06:23 PM.

[liable]

ath, glad you got most problems sorted, but I am a little puzzled as to why you dont have ethernet after install. The installer should install atl2-modules-2.6 which should install the modules for whichever kernel you have. There have been a few people that have used this installer now, and I havent seen this problem elsewhere, so I am at a bit of a loss as to why you don't have the modules installed after rebooting into your new install.

Also, if the page you linked to works, then it looks like you have an old copy of the installer, as that page links to the 2.6.22 modules.

[liable]

The latest reincarnation is now available. :)
Whats changed: No need to build anything after intall, wireless and hotkeys should work out of the box.

md5sum is in the same directory as installer.

http://eeepc.debian.net/images

Install instructions are as before, but there is no need to do anything after install. Wiki will be updated soon.

Edited by liable, 06 April 2008 - 01:10 AM.

[mkrishnan]

So if you use the wireless installer, both Wifi and the hotkeys (all of them?) work immediately? Which Intel video drivers are you currently using? The ones from Asus (most people change drivers out for these in Ubuntu) or the ones that are generally in the Linux stream? I'm getting fairly tempted to give this a try at some point....