Linux on an Asus A6Q00V laptop

This is about my experiences with installing Debian/GNU Linux on my girlfriend`s (really! I know, this is one of the most written sentences...) laptop. The more specific model number is printed on the sticker where the serial number is listed: A6V-Q014H.

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/PM/GMS/910GML Express Processor to DRAM Controller (rev 04)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/PM Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 04)
0000:00:1b.0 0403: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
0000:00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 04)
0000:00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 04)
0000:00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 04)
0000:00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 04)
0000:00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 04)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev d4)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 04)
0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller (rev 04)
0000:01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8001 Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 13)
0000:01:01.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev b3)
0000:01:01.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C552 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 08)
0000:01:01.2 0805: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 17)
0000:01:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 08)
0000:01:03.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG (rev 05)
0000:03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility X700 (PCIE)

If you prefer the verbose output ('lspci -v') look here.

Distribution and X

The first difficulty was choosing the right distribution. No question, it had to be a Debian-based one. But unfortunately Debian stable, sarge, is too old to support the ATI X700 out of the box. Installing the proprietary ATI fglrx driver was no Problem with the packages of ???, but I didn't like the idea of building a new driver, everytime I build a new kernel.
So i tried Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy Badger, but as a debian-addict I felt strange with the Ubuntu-specific modifications. Additionally X also didn't work, although the X700 chip is said to be supportet by the included xorg driver (see 'man radeon').
Okay, so Debian testing, etch, must be the right thing for us. But now there was the same problem with X under Ubuntu: x-server starts without any errors but the LCD stays black. Noticing that it was dark-black brought the solution: The X700 switches to the wrong output when xorg starts.
Again 'man radeon' helps: adding the following line to xorg.conf tells the chip which outputs to use:

Option		"MonitorLayout" "LVDS, NONE"

Here you can download the complete xorg.conf.
Im quite sure theat the above solution also would have worked with Ubuntu. And for all of you who want to have an actual and complete distribution I recommend using Ubuntu because Debian testing lacks at the time of writing this some important KDE packages, e.g. k3b, digikam or amarok.

Kernel

Not much to say; I recommend using at least 2.6.15 for best compatibility. Feel free to use my kernel configuration and the output of 'lsmod'.

Sound

Sound works with with module snd_hda_intel. But to get the headphone-jack working you have to hand over a module parameter for example using 'modconf'. I use two parameters:

model=z71v position_fix=1

the second fixes noise problems -- use it if you experience an improvement. Instead of using 'modconf' you can edit/create /etc/modprobe.d/snd-hda-intel to look like mine:

options snd-hda-intel model=z71v position_fix=1

Now the headphone-jack works, but yet the volume controller of KDE's 'kmix' controls the volume of the headphone-jack and not the PCM volume. To change this, just right-click on kmix's icon in the tray and choose 'PCM' as the default channel.
For 'xine' or 'mplayer' to work correctly with DVD's it may be necessary to activate the down-mixing to stereo-sound. I haven't tried 5.1-output yet because of lacking the hardware.

ACPI and buttons

Most ACPI functions work fine when the kernel module 'asus_acpi' is loaded. LCD-on/off and -brightness (Fn+F7/F5/F6) work out of the box and with KDE a status bar for the brightness level pops up. The other buttons -- all except the WLAN-switch (Fn+F2) -- create ACPI-events which you can read with 'cat /proc/acpi/events', or if the acpi-daemon is running, with 'tail -f /var/log/acpid'.
Now we have to make the ACPI-events trigger an action: install acpid. Inspired by Ubuntu's solution, I think translating ACPI-events to keyboard-events is by far the nicest way for all actions which don't have to run with root privileges. Additionally, if keyboard-events are created, the user can decide what action has to be performed.
But how will we achieve this? Ubuntu-users are on the sunny side now, because Ubuntu already features the nice program 'acpi_fakekey'. We're using Debian and like Ubuntu benefits from the Debian, we try ro benefit from Ubuntu:
Go to packages.ubuntu.com and download the binary package called 'acpi-support' (the experienced user may also build it from the source package). Extract the .deb file, don't install it because you get unmet dependencies when not using Ubuntu. You only need two files:

'power-funcs': you can copy it to usr/share/acpi-support/ or another place you prefer, but in the latter way you have to modify the acpi-event-scripts.
'acpi_fakekey': copy it into a directory of root's $PATH.

The first file will be used for detecting the active X-console and the active X-user. The second one is the really interesting one: it just generates the keyboard event you define. Try it out: 'acpi_fakekey 36' schould generate a newline on your terminal since 36 usually is mapped to the X-event 'Return'. We also will use the ACPI scripts you can find in the same .deb file. But we won't need all of them and most of the ones we need have to be edited to meet our requirements. If you don+t feel like editing about 14 files just download my /etc/acpi directory and copy it there. To make everything work, make sure that you have the appropriate XkbModel in your xorg.conf:

Option		"XkbModel"	"hp5185"

Or tell KDE in the control-center to use this model. After restarting X and the ACPI daemon, you can test if your efforts were successful: open 'xev', place the mouse cursor in the popped-up window and press for instance the Webbrowser-hotkey. Then xev should tell you in its terminal-output that it received the event 'XF86WWW'. If your buttons work, you can assign functions with your preferred window manager by setting up the keyboard-shortcuts.

You want to know how this solution works? Read ahead.

The XkbModel defines what X-event to be generated when a certain keycode is received. The quick and dirty way is to use 'xmodmap' to define this, but we want to do it nice, because we can define the keycodes ourselves. We just have to use an XkbModel which features at least the buttons (mapped to the X-events) that our laptop brings along:
In /etc/X11/xkb/symbols/inet you can see the models that are available. Jump to the section, where "hp5185" is defined. Here you can see, that all of the hotkeys of our laptop are present. But what means for example
```
 key <I20>   {       [ XF86AudioMute         ]       };
```
Now we come to the confusing part: This line defines, that the strange keycode <I20> will be translated to the X-event 'XF86AudioMute'. The thing is, what I called strange keycode is not really evident to the user. The translation table we need can be found in /etc/X11/xkb/keycodes/xfree86. There we can find, that <I20> stands for keycode 160.
This way we can find out, which keycodes the other hotkeys have to generate to be correctly translated to X-events by the XkbModel 'hp5185' we use.
Now, what happens, if we press a hotkey? The ACPI daemon 'acpid' detects the acpi-event and launches the action which is defined in the appropriate file in /etc/acpi/events. Usually it starts a shell-script that's located in /etc/acpi. That's where we need the previosly installed acpi_fakekey. Just look at my /etc/acpi directory -- it should be self-explaining. The only important thing is, that I inserted the keycodes I wanted to be generated for the XkbModel to translate correctly to X-events.

The following table lists the mapping I configured:

ACPI-event	event definition in /etc/acpi/events	script in /etc/acpi	keycode to be generated	X-event
button/power PWRF 00000080	powerbtn	powerbtn.sh	-none-	-none
hotkey ATKD 0000005c	asus-lock	asus-speed.sh	146	XF86Go
hotkey ATKD 00000050	asus-mail	mailbtn.sh	236	XF86Mail
hotkey ATKD 00000051	asus-internet	webbtn.sh	178	XF86WWW
hotkey ATKD 0000006b	asus-touchpad	asus-touchpad.sh	-none-	-none-
button/sleep SLPB 00000080	sleepbtn	/usr/sbin/hibernate	-none-	-none-
hotkey ATKD 00000032	asus-volume-mute	mutebtn.sh	160	XF86AudioMute
hotkey ATKD 00000031	asus-volume-dowm	voldownbtn.sh	174	XF86AudioLowerVolume
hotkey ATKD 00000030	asus-volume-up	volupbtn.sh	176	XF86AudioRaiseVolume
hotkey ATKD 00000040	asus-media-prev	prevbtn.sh	144	XF86AudioPrev
hotkey ATKD 00000041	asus-media-next	nextbtn.sh	153	XF86AudioNext
hotkey ATKD 00000043	asus-media-stop	stopbtn.sh	164	XF86AudioStop
hotkey ATKD 00000045	asus-media-play-pause	playbtn.sh	162	XF86AudioPlay

The brightness-keys as well as the LCD on/off switch are not listed because they work out of the box.
The 'XF86Go' event is triggered by pressing the hotkey with the little running man on the upper right. I use this event to launch a terminal. The power- and sleep button don't need to create X-events because it's more useful to trigger the appropriate actions with root privileges and not by creating an X-event. The touchpad-switch-script is insprired by the Ubuntu solution, too, but I added the functionality, that the email-LED at the front of the notebook ist shining when the touchpad is switched off.
The LED's for WLAN and email are switchable by echoing '1' or '0' to /proc/acpi/asus/wled respectively /proc/acpi/asus/mled.

WLAN

The Intel Pro/Wireless 2200 WLAN card (802.11b/g) works nice with the new drivers included in kernel 2.6.15. Also WPA (WPA-PSK, TKIP) works nice (using 'wpa_supplicant') for example in combination with Fritz! Box Phon-WLAN 7050. If you're not successful, you might want to see my /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf, /etc/default/wpasupplicant, /etc/network/interfaces and the output of 'lsmod'.
'kwifimanager' works great even switches the WLAN-LED on the front.
If you think I should spend some more time on explaining this topic, contact me.

Suspend

To be added soon...

Feedback

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