Asus EeePC: Installing Ubuntu 8.04 Desktop on a 16 GB SDHC card

I’m not quite done with all the install and optimization steps, but I thought I start this entry so that I won’t forget what I’ve done. There are quite a number of steps involved. I’ve installed it on a Asus 701 4GB model using a 16 GB class 6 SDHC card. Hopefully this will help others as well. You will need a physical copy of the Ubuntu 8.04 CD, so download it and burn it with your favorite burning software. You will also need a USB DVD/CD reader, I used a old plextor external drive I had lying around. So here we go:

1. Get the USB DVD hooked up to one of the USB ports on the Eee, doesn’t matter which.
2. Stick the boot CD in the DVD and turn everything on.
3. Press ESC on the Eee during BIOS load to turn on custom boot screen.
4. On the screen that follows choose your USB DVD drive and let Ubuntu boot.
5. Get Ubuntu installed. Be mindful of the following:
1. I did a custom partition scheme on /dev/sdc
2. I created three partitions:
1. /dev/sdc1 (8000 MB) is formatted ext3 and mounted on /
2. /dev/sdc2 (8000 MB) is formatted ext3 and is not mounted on anything
3. /dev/sdc3 (~430 MB) is formatted swap and is for swap
3. IMPORTANT: On the screen that says “Ready to Install” you HAVE TO click the advanced… button and change the location of the bootloader to /dev/sdc (which is the SDHC card).
6. Go and get coffee and/or have lunch/dinner. Writing to SD memory card is slow.
7. IMPORTANT: When prompted to Reboot at the end….DON’T. Press Ctrl-Alt-F2 to switch to one of the virtual terminals (you can use Ctrl-Alt-F6 to get back) and sudo to change the file /boot/grub/menu.lst so that all lines refering to (hd1,0) or (hd2,0) are changed to (hd0,0). Save the file.
8. IMPORTANT: sudo and edit the file /etc/rc.local and add this before “exit 0”: hal-set-property --udi $(hal-device | grep info.udi | grep storage_serial_USB2 | sed -e 's/.*org/\/org/' -e "s/'.*//") --key storage.removable --bool falseThis will prevent gnome-keyring to segfault. This happens when the Root device is on a removable media. Without this your gnome session will hang after the first reboot.
9. Now you can switch back to graphical install screen (Ctrl-Alt-F6) and tell the installer to reboot.
10. Hopefully you did not screw anything up :-) and you’ll get to the gnome desktop.
11. More than likely you will get a dumb Battery error. Ignore it and move on. If your Network card is not working turn the machine off and do this:
1. Disconnect the power cable
2. Take off the Battery
3. Put the Battery back on
4. Plugin the power cable
5. Boot up the machine and make sure you press ESC to get to boot menu…..choose Ubuntu.
12. Hopefully now the Network is working (Wireless will not be working at this point….later).
13. Do all the updates.
14. Reboot.
15. Note that ubuntu does not shut down the Eee properly. Shutting down your Eee will make the screen go entirely blank, but does not cut the power, and you will have to force it to fully shutdown by holding the power button.

    Sudo and add the following line:rmmod snd-hda-intelto the end of the /etc/default/halt script in order to make the Eee shutdown completely.

16. Sudo and edit /etc/init.d/rc file, look for CONCURRENCY=none and change it to:
    CONCURRENCY=shellConcurrent boot allows Ubuntu to take full advantage of dual-core processors, as well as processors that with hyperthread or multithread, e.g. Pentium III or higher.
17. To reduce drive writes sudo and set the ‘noatime’ or ‘relatime’ mount options in the /etc/fstab file. Look for the ‘defaults’ section and add ‘defaults,noatime’.
    UUID=57480a3f-e7db-4a5e-9fca-7df45f5a7d9d / ext2 defaults,noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
18. To further reduce drive writes sudo and put data that is not needed on a tmpfs, which is written to memory. Below is an example:
    tmpfs /var/log tmpfs defaults 0 0
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0
tmpfs /var/tmp tmpfs defaults 0 0
tmpfs /var/log/apt tmpfs defaults 0 0
    You will lose the data in these areas after a reboot. Data in /tmp is not a big deal, though you may want logs longer than that.
19. If you did create a swap partition and want to make sure the EeePC does not use it, you can sudo and add the following line to the end of the /etc/sysctl.conf file:
    vm.swappiness=0
20. You can also have a look at the AUFS (Another Union File System) instructions that will make your SDHC card read only (with options to unlock it from grub menu). If you choose this option you probably want to skip step 18 (or undo it by deleting the appropriate lines in /etc/fstab).
21. Download this superscript into your account and change it’s permissions to execute it as regular user (The script will sudo when needed).
    wget http://eee.ricey.co.uk/files/eee/RiceeeyTweak.sh
chmod 755 ./RiceeeyTweak.sh
./RiceeeyTweak.shDO NOT USE ON EEEPC900/901. Hopefully the site won’t go down but just in case it does here is the content of the script (use at your own risk):
    #!/bin/sh
echo "************************************"
echo "*** Ubuntu 8.04 LTS RiceeeyTweak ***"
echo "*** version 0.5 ***"
echo "*** eee.ricey.co.uk ***"
echo "************************************"
echo "thanks to http://www.x2on.de"
echo "thanks to http://ubuntu-eee.tuxfamily.org/"
echo "thanks to http://code.google.com/p/eee-osd/"
echo "thanks to http://wiki.eeeuser.com"
echo "thanks to Bombela"
echo "************************************"
echo "** Gnome settings"
echo "* Setting font sizes"
gconftool-2 --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/desktop_font --type string "Sans 8"
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/interface/document_font_name --type string "Sans 8"
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/interface/font_name --type string "Sans 8"
gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/general/titlebar_font --type string "Sans Bold 8"
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/interface/monospace_font_name --type string "Monospace 8"
echo "* Smaller toolbars icons only"
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/interface/toolbar_style --type string "icons"
echo "* Disabling UI sounds"
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/sound/event_sounds --type bool 0
echo "* Fixing mute key"
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/sound/default_mixer_tracks --type list --list-type string "[PCM]"
echo "* Fullscreen with -F11"
gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/window_keybindings/toggle_fullscreen --type string "F11"
echo "* Setting suspend when closing lid, blank screen"
gconftool-2 --set /apps/gnome-power-manager/actions/sleep_type_battery --type string "suspend"
gconftool-2 --set /apps/gnome-power-manager/actions/sleep_type_ac --type string "suspend"
gconftool-2 --set /apps/gnome-power-manager/buttons/lid_battery --type string "suspend"
gconftool-2 --set /apps/gnome-power-manager/buttons/lid_ac --type string "blank"
gconftool-2 --set /apps/gnome-power-manager/timeout/sleep_computer_ac --type int 0
gconftool-2 --set /apps/gnome-power-manager/timeout/sleep_computer_battery --type int 300
gconftool-2 --set /apps/gnome-power-manager/timeout/sleep_display_ac --type int 300
gconftool-2 --set /apps/gnome-power-manager/timeout/sleep_display_battery --type int 60
echo "* Don't display battery warning"
gconftool-2 --set /apps/gnome-power-manager/notify/low_capacity --type bool 0
echo "* Unconstraining windows to the top of the screen"
gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/compiz/plugins/move/allscreens/options/constrain_y 0
echo "Gnome settings done."
echo "** Installing ACPI modules"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y -f build-essential module-assistant eeepc-acpi-source --force-yes
sudo m-a a-i eeepc-acpi
echo "Done"
echo "** Building Eee Overclocking Driver"
wget "http://eeepc-linux.googlecode.com/files/eeepc-linux-0.2.tar.gz"
tar xvzf eeepc-linux-0.2.tar.gz
cd eeepc-linux/module
make
sudo cp eee.ko /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/
cd ../../
echo "Done"
echo "** Installing Modules and Driver"
echo "*Unblacklisting i2c-i801 module"
sed 's/blacklist i2c_i801/#blacklist i2c_i801/' blacklist.tmp
sudo mv blacklist.tmp /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
sudo chown root:root /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
echo "Done"
echo "*Updating /etc/modules"
sudo cp /etc/modules modules.tmp
sudo chmod 777 modules.tmp
echo "eeepc-acpi" >> modules.tmp
echo "i2c-i801" >> modules.tmp
echo "eee" >> modules.tmp
sudo chmod 644 modules.tmp
sudo mv modules.tmp /etc/modules
sudo chown root:root /etc/modules
echo "Done"
echo "**Installing Overclock Utilities"
wget "http://eee.ricey.co.uk/files/eee/oc.sh"
wget "http://eee.ricey.co.uk/files/eee/ocn.py"
wget "http://eee.ricey.co.uk/files/eee/Overclock.desktop"
sudo mv oc.sh /usr/bin
sudo chown root:root /usr/bin/oc.sh
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/oc.sh
sudo mv ocn.py /usr/bin
sudo chown root:root /usr/bin/ocn.py
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/ocn.py
mv Overclock.desktop ~/Desktop
echo "Done"
echo "** Installing OSD"
wget http://eee-osd.googlecode.com/files/eee-osd_2.1-0eeeXubuntu1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i eee-osd_2.1-0eeeXubuntu1_i386.deb
echo "Done"
echo "** Configuring Sound"
echo "options snd-hda-intel model=3stack-dig" > snd-hda-intel.tmp
sudo mv snd-hda-intel.tmp /etc/modprobe.d/snd-hda-intel
sudo chown root:root /etc/modprobe.d/snd-hda-intel
echo "Done"
echo "** Fixing Shutdown Problem"
sudo sed 's/#! \/bin\/sh/#! \/bin\/sh\n\n##Riceeey Eee shutdown fix\n\nrmmod snd-hda-intel\n/' halt.tmp
sudo mv halt.tmp /etc/init.d/halt
sudo chown root:root /etc/init.d/halt
sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/halt
echo "Done"
echo "** Adjusting Disk atime"
sudo sed 's/relatime/noatime/' fstab.tmp
sudo mv fstab.tmp /etc/fstab
sudo chown root:root /etc/fstab
echo "Done"
echo "** Installing WLAN"
wget 'http://snapshots.madwifi.org/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r3835-20080801.tar.gz'
tar zxf madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r3835-20080801.tar.gz
cd madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r3835-20080801
make clean
make
sudo make install
cd ../
echo "Done"
echo "All relevant drivers are now installed - hopefully!"
echo "If you have any troubles please refer back to eee.ricey.co.uk"
echo "Please reboot now"
22. Well, reboot and marvel at your handywork a bit.
23. To squeeze even a bit more from the boot process sudo and edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and add the following to the end of the kernel lines (after the “quiet” and “splash” options) for Ubuntu:
    clocksource=hpet