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Asus Z63A running Ubuntu 5.10

Growing Plant

The ASUS Z63A is a customizable version of the ASUS W3A and is also sold under some other names (such as PCs for Everyone's Thinkmate W3A).

This document describes the work I needed to do to get Ubuntu's Breezy Badger release (version 5.10) running on this machine. It may also be useful for Debian installations.

I am not quite done setting up everything I would like to, so have noted where some of the hardware's features are not yet working fully for me (including some notes based on the research I've done so far).

The Hardware

Overall, I'm very happy with the construction quality and ergonomics of this machine. The only less-than-excellently engineered aspect of this machine is the mouse buttons, which are very stiff and hard to use. At this point, I am using the touch pad exclusively also for clicking, which is done by tapping the pad (right and left mouse button clicks by tapping with two or three fingers, respectively).

A less critical engineering/design failure is the very light color used for the labeling on the LEDs and special keys located along the rim of the case on either side of the keyboard -- I can't read them at all in anything but the brightest light and then only at a favorable viewing angle.

I purchased the Z63A custom-built for me from GenTechPC.com (who offered a great price and smooth service) with the following options: 1 GB RAM (2x512), 2.0Ghz CPU, 80 GB 7200 RPM disk, Intel wireless pro 2915, and CD-RW/DVD drive (not DVD writer). Unlike a number of other sources I looked at, GenTechPC provided the machine without Windows installed.

Installation Steps

  • After the initial install, the laptop will reboot but the boot will hang in hotplug. Press Alt-SysReq-E to get the boot to complete (although several things will not be loaded correctly at this point).
  • Go to /etc/init.d and sudo chmod -x hotplug and same for hotplug-network. This prevents hotplug from loading.
  • Reboot. It should now work normally. The network should work also, although I had to use hardwired network initially and not wireless.
  • Download 915resolution which is used to get the screen running at the right resolution (1280x768 instead of the default 1024x768 you'll start with)
  • Using System / Administration / Synaptic Package Manager install make and emacs or other favorite editor while you're here (make is needed to build 915resolution). I found Ubuntu's default install is missing quite a bit I'm used to. You'll probably also want to add "Community Maintained" package source from Add Applications's Settings / Repositories menu item using the Add button with Community checkbox selected. Now would also be a good time to run the Update Manager to make sure you have updated all your installed packages with security and bug fix patches. If anything does update, it may be worth a reboot to check that some of the problems I had to work around below are not fixed in updates that happen after I write this document.

    Note: Confusingly, the touch pad on this laptop is a Synaptics touch pad -- obviously, this has nothing to do with the package manager.

  • Next, unpack the 915resolution package and then sudo make install

  • Create /etc/init.d/rc.local with the following content:

      /usr/sbin/915resolution 58 1280 768

Then do::

  sudo update-rc.d rc.local start 80 S .
  • Reboot again and you should get 1280x768 resolution

  • To get wireless working take down eth0 hard-wired ethernet if you have it running using the Network system admin tool then add this to above-created rc.local:

    /sbin/modprobe ipw2200

    Also to auto-start wireless at startup add this to /etc/init.d/rc.local:

    /sbin/ipup eth1

    (I was unable to get the Network control panel to cause eth1 to auto-start but your mileage/luck may vary)

    Note that /sbin/iwlist scan only works if run as root. Otherwise, it reports only the active or previously seen networks, which can be confusing (I wish it would just fail entirely).

  • To set up sound you will need to compile a newer version of ALSA and drivers from sources. These can be obtained from the ALSA website. I installed version 1.1.10rc2 of alsa-driver, alsa-lib, alsa-oss, and alsa-utils on my system. For alsa driver I had to first install the linux-source and linux-headers packages, then unpack the kernel sources from the tar archive in /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.12.tar.bz and then:

    ./configure --with-oss=yes --with-cards=hda-intel --with-kernel=/usr/src/linux-source-2.6.12
make
sudo make install

    For alsa-lib, alsa-oss, and alsa-utils I just did this in each:

    ./configure
make
sudo make install

    Next run sudo alsaconf to set up the sound/driver configuration and then reboot your machine.

    Finally, run alsamixer to turn up the mixer volume on Front, Surround, Center, LFE, Line, and CD channels -- move with the arrow keys right/left and use up/down to change the volume and press m to un-mute the channels. I found I needed to turn them all the way to the top to get a reasonable volume on my machine since the speakers are small. Press Esc to exit alsamixer and you should be all set.

  • Once the ALSA drive has been installed, hotplug works again. To re-enable it, go to /etc/init.d and sudo chmod +x hotplug and same for hotplug-network. Thanks to Sai Krishna Satyanarayana for pointing this out to me!

  • To better configure the Synaptics touch pad, I installed qsynaptic with the Synaptic package manager. Then go into /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add the following to the InputDevice section for the Synaptics Touchpad:

    Option          "SHMConfig"             "on"

    Then run qsynaptics to configure the touch pad -- I changed to circular scrolling with right edge because I found this reduced unwanted scrolling and also turned on the delay in the Smart Tapping part of the Tapping section.

  • Suspend to RAM works under KDE but I was unable to get any of the other power management options working under Gnome desktop, which is the default in Ubuntu 5.10 (so you need to install the kde package and all its dependencies). Another user (Sai Krishna Satyanarayana) emailed to say that installing the power-manager package caused the Suspend option to be added to the Gnome logout list, but this didn't work for me for some reason.

    For now, I'm using KDE and have configured the KLaptop (bottom right in tray) to allow only Suspend and not Stand By or Hibernate.

  • Having switched to KDE, I got an annoying flashing screen periodically that says "Display Changed LCD on/off". This is a bug in the Asus ACPI driver, which doesn't know about this laptop yet.

    One non-optimal way to work around this is to disable kmilo, which is a daemon run by kded to support the special keys on the keyboard (browser launch, etc). While these keys worked under Gnome, they do not work under KDE so I just disabled kmilo for now. This is done by editing /usr/share/services/kded/kmilod.desktop and changing it so the following lines are set to false:

    X-KDE-Kded-autoload=false
X-KDE-Kded-load-on-demand=false

    You need to restart KDE after making this change.

    Thanks to Mark Eaton who provided some additional info on this issue, including the correct/complete fix (which I have not yet tried):

    "This is a bug in the asus acpi driver. It doesn't know about your laptop and you will see that your syslog is filling up with these messages as well. I get the same problem with my W2 and it is fairly easy to fix and recompile the asus acpi driver, you just need to add a new entry for your machine which doesn't have the screen method."

  • Getting the cordless mouse working was as simple as installing batteries (top of case slides back where the little hard-to-see grippers are located), plugging in the USB receiver, turning on the mouse and pressing "connect" on the bottom of the mouse.

  • CDs play without any problem assuming alsamixer has been used to unmute the sound channels. I seem to have to do this each time I log in -- something I still need to fix.

    Playing a CDs also works with the laptop off (using the special buttons at left) The laptop acts like a CD player independent of OS.

  • Under KDE, I was able to plug in my digital camera and navigate to the images using Konqueror's "storage media" link, which goes to the URL media:/

Notes for Unresolved Problems

The laptop is now generally functional, with some missing features (most notably suspend/resume and probably also use of USB devices). I've made some notes below. See also some of the other Z63A entries on linux-on-laptops.com for additional information that may help, and please send me any fixes that I can incorporate here!

  • I have not yet figured out why I need to run alsamixer to un-mute the audio channels every time I log in -- somehow it must be possible to save these in un-muted state. On the other hand, this lets me avoid playing sounds unexpectedly during meetings...
  • Stand By (semi-powered down state) and Hibernate (suspend to disk) are not working for me. Suspend (suspend to RAM) does work for me in KDE as noted above. Stand By seems to fail (it flashes screen and then goes back to running normally sans various services that seem to break from this). Hibernate does work and shuts down the machine but on restart it fails to restore and ends up rebooting normally after Ctrl-Alt-Del or holding down the power button for 3+ seconds.
  • So far DVDs do not work for me tho I haven't more than tried them. Update: It may be that having reenabled hotplug that this will work now. I can't test it at the moment.
  • Things I have not tried at all: External monitor, PCMCIA, memory stick, TV out, and modem.

I will update this document as I get more of the above working. Again, please send me updates if you get some of these things working on Ubuntu or Debian. Thanks!

Other Notes

  • Developers or anyone wanting to compile anything from source (such as the sound driver) will need to add various development packages with Synaptic Package Manager -- gcc (several versions available), g++, and a slew of others were needed in my development work so far but I didn't keep track of the list (sorry). Unfortunately, it's not that easy to simply install all common development tools as far as I could tell. Seems Ubuntu could make this easier.

  • After the ALSA driver is installed and hotplug can be run again, the CD seems to work fine for data at least. However, before that point I was unable to get the the CD drive to work at all without first adding the CD device to /dev as follows:

    cd /dev; mknod scd0 b 11 0; ln -s scd0 sr0

    Then I could mount CDs using mount /media/cdrom

  • With asus-acpi module loaded (which was the case by default for me), you can toggle the state of the WLAN LED (rightmost light by your left hand) with:

    sudo echo 0 > /proc/acpi/asus/wled
sudo echo 1 > /proc/acpi/asus/wled

    The first turns it off and the second turns it on. This could be useful for custom software (such as a new mail indicator). I believe my WLAN driver turns it on when activating the interface but doesn't flash it for activity.