LinuxQuestions.org - Debian sid in acer aspire 6530G

HARDWARE

Code:

#lspci



00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 Host Bridge

00:02.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (ext gfx port 0)

00:05.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 1)

00:07.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 3)

00:09.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 4)

00:11.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 SATA Controller [AHCI mode]

00:12.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI0 Controller

00:12.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700 USB OHCI1 Controller

00:12.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB EHCI Controller

00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB OHCI0 Controller

00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700 USB OHCI1 Controller

00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 USB EHCI Controller

00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 3a)

00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 IDE Controller

00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)

00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB700/SB800 LPC host controller

00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge

00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h HyperTransport Configuration (rev 40)

00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Address Map

00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h DRAM Controller

00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Miscellaneous Control

00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Link Control

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Mobility Radeon HD 3650

01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc RV635 Audio device [Radeon HD 3600 Series]

08:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR928X Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)

09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Attansic Technology Corp. L1e Gigabit Ethernet Adapter (rev b0)

INITIAL STATE

1- Special acer recovery hidden partition ~10Gb
2- Windows Vista
3- Secondary vista drive [D:]
4- Special acer backup recovery hidden partition ~5,5Gb

INDEX

1- Backup acer recovery data.
2- Move the vista partition; resizing it and deleting the rest
3/4- Fix vista boot
4/3- Install debian
5- Install Atheros AR928X (acer Nplify wireless)
6- Install ATI radeon HD3650
7- Upgrade to sid

1- Backup acer recovery data

material:
Driver ext2 for windows
http://www.fs-driver.org/index.html

Install driver.
Assign letters to hidden partitions.
Right-click them and write in a safe place their exact sizes in bytes and their labels.
Backup their contents.

2- Repartition
Warning: You will be unable to boot vista after this step, untill you fix it's boot. You will need a windows vista installation disk to repair it (I fixed it with an US student-license vista installation disk despite I have the spanish commertial version).

If you want to be able to boot on vista after this step (having 10 absurd Gb partition), just DONT MOVE vista partition

material:
gparted liveCD http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

Reboot to BIOS and:
1- Disable the recovery system
2- Set first boot device to disk
3- Insert gparted LiveCD
4- Save and rebootd

Once gparted gets booted:

1-Delete all the partitions EXCEPTING vista's (the second one)
2-Move vista partition to the head of the disk
3-Resize it
4-Apply changes (it leasts more than an hour)

3/4- Fix vista boot

material:
Windows vista installation disk (no matter the language or the license type).

Follow instructions to recover an existing vista installation.

Reboot several times, selecting Windows vista on GRUB, untill scandisk gets booted (and lend it check the disk).

Once vista gets booted, defrag C:

4/3- Install Debian

material:
debian-testing-amd64-DVD-1.iso (squeeze)

Why squeeze, if we're supposed to be installing sid?
OK, this one is easy; sid will install kernel 2.6.29, where fglrx kernel module for the ATI Radeon will not compile.

Insert the disc and switch on the laptop.

Install according to what you need, most probably, installation will not detect your network interface (it didn't for me), neither eth or wlan.

Remember to create a swap partition, it should have 1Gb (It's useless to make it bigger).

After rebooting, do not start in normal mode (you'll only see a black screen when X cames up, and your laptop will freeze); use single-user instead

Extra step
This is a bit tricky, but will work to avoid X to start (and therefore froze your system):
Rename /usr/bin/kdm to /usr/bin/kdm2 (Remember to rename it again to it's original after succeeding with the next step)
- If any of you has any idea about how to do this properly, please, feel free to teach me :-) -

Doing this, you will have internet over Ethernet when you boot in normal mode (X will not start since it will not find kdm).

5- Atheros AR928X
material:
compat-wireless-old:
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Do...ldrequirements
http://wireless.kernel.org/download/...ss-old.tar.bz2

This wireless card uses ath9k driver. Correspondent module will be embedded in kernel 2.6.29, but with this one, you'll be unable to compile fglrx driver for ATI Radeon cards, so we will need to use kernel 2.6.26 with wireless-compat-old.

Code:

$cd ~

$wget http://wireless.kernel.org/download/compat-wireless-2.6/compat-wireless-old.tar.bz2

$tar xvf compat-wireless-old.tar.bz2

$cd compat-wireless-old

$make

$su

#make install

It is important to compile the package as user (compiling it as root will fail), on the other hand, you have to be root to successfully install the driver.

You'll be asked to load the appropriate module:

Code:

#modprobe ath9k

After this, wlan0 interface should be recognized with iwconfig, another interface called wmaster will also be shown (and not wireless capable(?)).

NOTE: There are some issues with the current network-manager version using 40 bits WEP ASCII keys, if this is your case, you should change your WEP or install wicd to manage your network.

6- ATI Radeon HD3650
material:
ati RadeonHD 3xxx series x86_64 driver:
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx
https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206...x86.x86_64.run

Code:

$cd ~

$wget https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/ati-driver-installer-9-3-x86.x86_64.run

$su

#aptitude install module-assistant -y

#m-a prepare

#sh ati-driver-installer-9-3-x86.x86_64

Little explanation:
m-a (module assistant) is a tool to compile and attach kernel modules; prepare option downloads all the stuff needed to compile a module for your current kernel (ati installer will automatically install the module if you prepared the system).

Remember to give kdm back it's original name

Code:

#mv /usr/bin/kdm2 /usr/bin/kdm