Tiny Core 3.4.1 on Eee 900

[OldAdamUser2]

First off, I have been (and still am) an absolutely ecstatic user of TC 2.8.1 on my Eee 900. I wrote about my method of istallation on the wiki page under netbook tips. I'm pleased that one can still download that version of Tiny Core by going to

http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/tinycorelinux/2.x/archive/?C=M;O=A

However, I do like to contribute in my small way to this project and so I have been experimenting with TC 3.4.1. Since I don't have access to an ethernet connection or to a CD drive, I have been enjoying the challenge of setting up a USB-SDHC installation.

The good news is that I now have 3.4.1 operational, but it has some serious drawbacks.

1. 915resolution.tcz no longer has mode 50 1024 600, which I believe to be required for the Eee 900. (It does  have that mode in the 2.x version.) Attempting to change modes using 915resolution has no effect whatsoever on my display, which I believe always comes up at 800x600 in TC 3.x.

2. Mouse movement is jerky and imprecise. This may be related to the problem mentioned above. Using the mouse tool in the control panel does not correct this.

3. A double-tap-and-hold on the track pad does not work as normal for dragging windows around or dragging slider bars. Nor can I use double-tap-and-drag to highlight text. There are also other oddities in mouse/track pad behavior.

4. I used to be able to connect my wifi with simple commands in bootlocal.sh, using iwconfig and udhcpc. Now I must use wicd. Perhaps I could somehow automate the process, but at the moment I must wait for the computer to fully boot into TC, open a terminal, type in sudo wicd-start, bring up the pop-up menu, start wicd, wait for it to open, and click on connect three times before I am connected to wifi. (Using TC 2.8.1, my Eee 900 can fully boot, connect to wifi, and open Opera in less than 30 seconds!) If I can solve the display and mouse problems mentioned above, I will give serious attention to figuring out how to speed up and automate wifi connection in TC 3.x on the Eee 900.

I would appreciate any hints about what I can do to fix these problems. (But please don't tell me to try Xorg instead of Xvesa. First, I have already tried that. I just can't get it to work in Tiny Core on the Eee 900. Second, I don't want that cruft on my computer. When I really must use GIMP or Open Office, I just boot into Xandros or Knoppix.)

Since TC 2.8 can be set up optimally for the Eee 900, none of these problems are urgent. They may not even be relevant, given that the Eee 900 is now obsolete. But still . . .

[curaga]

2, 3) The more recent kernel of 3.x handles the eee keypad using a different driver, supposedly a better one. You can force the old behavior with a bootcode (psmouse something IIRC, do a forum search with that term).

4) lacks information, why can't you use a script in 3.x?

[OldAdamUser2]

Thanks for the response, curaga. I couldn't find anything about bootcodes for pmouse in the forums--but one thing at a time. First I'd like to understand what has gone wrong with 915resolution.

When I boot into TC 3.4.1 with 915resolution in tce/optional and in my onboot.lst, it doesn't seem to do anything at all. If I hit ctrl-alt-bksp to get into terminal mode, I can type "sudo 915resolution -l" to dis cover that the mode I think I need (50 1024 600) is no longer part of the package. If I replace the current 915resolution.tcz with the one from my installation of TC 2.8.1, boot, get into terminal, and list modes, I DO find the proper mode, but selecting it ("sudo 915resolution 50 1024 600) has no effect on screen resolutiion when I startx again. So I guess I'm stumped.

[Juanito]

Does your copy of the 915resolution extension have a start-up script in it (look in /tmp/tcloop/915resolution/usr/local/tce.installed) that might be causing the problem?

[curaga]

http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=6021.45

[OldAdamUser2]

curaga, thanks for finding the link. The boot option psmouse.proto=imps does solve the problem for me. Perhaps that needs to be added to the list of boot parameters in the official FAQ page.

Juanito, I'm beginning to think 915resolution is a real problem for the Eee900 in TC 3.x. The version that comes in the repository does not list a 1024x600 mode. When I swap in the version from the 2.x repository, it does try to invoke the correct mode on boot:

loop/915resolution/usr/local/tce.installed:

#!/bin/sh
/usr/local/sbin/915resolution 50 1024 600

So I assume that (as one might expect) the 2.x version of 915resolution does not work in 3.x. I'll try a couple of more configurations.

[tinypoodle]

AFAIK the FAQ lists all boot codes particular to TC.
Right below those there is a link to kernel parameters, that is where 'psmouse.proto=' is listed.

[SvOlli]

About 915resolution.tcz:

Did you notice, that you now need to specify the display resolution with "xvesa=1024x600"? It's also stated in the package description shown by the appbrowser. This change has been made to allow other resolutions like 1366x768 without the need for hacking some script buried deep inside this filesystem.

[OldAdamUser2]

Thanks, SvOlli. But "xvesa=1024x600" doesn't work either. I assume that is because 915resolution no longer supports 1024x600 (as indicated by "sudo 915resolution -l").

[SvOlli]

Of cause "sudo 915resolution -l" shows no 1024x600, since it only shows what's configured in the (patched) GFX-BIOS.

Try the following:
- Drop down or boot up in text mode.
- run "sudo 915resolution 50 1024 600 32"
- run xsetup and the 1024x600 mode should now appear

If it does add the parameter "xvesa=1024x600x32" to your boot configuration (the parameters like "quiet", etc.)

After that it should just work. At least on my 901 running 3.5 it does.

[OldAdamUser2]

Thank you! Thank you, SvOlli. That is exactly what I needed to know!

And big thanks to the great TC development team! Now that I have the mouse working properly and the screen resolution fixed, TC 3.4.1 seems even faster and more responsive that TC 2.8.1.

[OldAdamUser2]

I'm pleased to note that I now have TC 3.5 working perfectly on my Eee 900, complete with rapid and automatic connection to my home wifi network. I will mention how I got this to work since my experience could conceivably help others and since I'm still a bit curious about the reasons for the changes I have had to make.

In my installation of TC 2.8.1 I an auto-login through /opt/bootlocal.sh. Here is the cope that worked:

#!/bin/sh
# put other system startup commands here
         sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid any
          sudo udhcpc -i wlan0
# /usr/local/bin/flit &
sleep 1
/usr/local/etc/init.d/alsasound start
/opt/wlan0.sh &

When that failed to work in TC 3.x, I commented out the iwconfig and udhcpc lines, downloaded wicd.tcz, and connected to wifi by opening a terminal, typing --

sudo wicd-start <Enter>

Then I could start wicd through the pop-up menu as explained in my earlier post above. That was slow, but it worked.

Finally, I discovered by chance experiments that --

sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid any

just won't find my wifi signal any more even though --

sudo iwlist scanning

does show it. So the answer is to enter the actual ESSID number as revealed by iwlist.

Has anyone else been having problems with "sudo iwconfig essid any"?

[tinypoodle]

In my installation of TC 2.8.1 I an auto-login through /opt/bootlocal.sh. Here is the cope that worked:

#!/bin/sh
# put other system startup commands here
         sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid any
          sudo udhcpc -i wlan0
# /usr/local/bin/flit &
sleep 1
/usr/local/etc/init.d/alsasound start
/opt/wlan0.sh &

It's commented out, but 'flit' would be misplaced in bootlocal.sh

Wondering what a 'wlan0.sh' would possibly do after 'sudo udhcpc -i wlan0'   

[OldAdamUser2]

Wondering what a 'wlan0.sh' would possibly do after 'sudo udhcpc -i wlan0'  

I wondered what that line was doing there, tinypoodle. I have no idea how it got there, but after reading your query, I commented it out.

Back on the wifi issue. I set up a completely clean install of TC 3.5 on a USB drive. The only things in the tce directory were nano, opera, wireless, wireless-tools, wpa_supplicant, and the dependencies required. (I used the nifty get-tce code, which worked perfectly. http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=7243.0 Thanks, Jason W!) In TC 2.8 I think those were the only packages needed to establish a wifi connection. But in TC 3.5 "sudo iwconfig" does not show my wireless network and "sudo iwlist scanning" doesn't find it either. I made a couple of half-hearted attempts to find it through terminal commands and then went to the next step--downloading wicd. Wicd has a boatload of dependencies and installing all of them suddenly makes it possible for me to connect via "sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid my-essid#." Since wicd is a nice application to have on a Linux install, there is no real harm here, but it is curious.