Ubuntu 8.04 on the EeePC

After a kernel-update for Ubuntu 7.10 yesterday all my EeePC-specific modifications didn't work anymore. Things like overclocking to 900 MHz on-demand were lost, wifi as well as the control of the sound volume via function keys. After fiddling around with the init-scripts, ACPI-events and so on I decided it's not worth the effort. So this morning I finally started a fresh installation of Ubuntu 8.04, that version with long-term-support.

Since 8.04 came out, a lot of people came up with very useful tools and scripts to make it easier to customize the Ubuntu-installation for the EeePC. First, I had to create a bootable USB-Stick with the installation-CD-image. I found the project UNetbootin on Sourceforge. The developers created a tool which takes an image of an installation-CD for e.g. Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva or FreeBSD and creates a readily bootable USB-Stick from that. It is available as sourcecode, but packages/binaries for Linux and Windows are downlodable on the project-site as well.

The installation from that USB-Stick went straight-forward. I connected my EeePC via cable to the net so the installer could download language-packs and other things. After the first reboot I got offered more than 180 updated packages, resulting in another 200 MB which got downloaded and installed. You might want to delete the contents of the cache-folder in /var/apt to save some space on the tiny solid-state-disk.

The network connection is also useful for the RiceeeyTweak.sh-script. It downloads all the necessary sources, scripts and packages for overclocking the processor on demand, for the wireless-driver and it also adopts the font sizes, makes changes for reducing write-operations to the SSD and more.

The customization for the EeePC for Ubuntu 8.04 is as simple as this: Start the terminal. Type

mkdir temp
cd temp
wget http://eee.ricey.co.uk/files/eee/RiceeeyTweak.sh
chmod +x ./RiceeeyTweak.sh
./RiceeeyTweak.sh

Watch the script running, asking you for the superuser-password every now and then. It only takes a few minutes and you're done.

I did another check with that Pinnacle 72e USB-DVB-dongle. It didn't work out of the box. I had to fetch the updated v4l-sources and compile and install the new driver from linuxtv-org. I used the SVN-snapshot. Simply unpack the tarball and compile and install the drivers. Keep the file v4l/Module.symvers, you'll need it to build a working webcam-driver again later. The firmware which is already installed by the default Ubuntu-kernel doesn't work with the dongle though. I used the firmware from this old package to replace the non-working installed firmware by typing in sudo cp firmware/dvb-usb-dib0700-1.10.fw /lib/firmware/linux-2.6.24-19-generic.

Then I had to install subversion: sudo apt-get install subversion . The webcam-driver-sources can then be fetched via svn checkout svn://svn.berlios.de/linux-uvc/linux-uvc/trunk. Copy the file Modules.symvers to the trunk-directory. A simple make and make install then lead to the installation of a working driver for the webcam.