Hello! I have a MeeGoPad T02. It's a nifty little sort of generic version of the "Intel Compute Stick".

Everything works on it with a default x64 install of Mint 18.1 "Serena", *EXCEPT* WiFi/Bluetooth and audio. I would like to get those working (well, OK, I don't care about BT)... I think I need a custom kernel for that. Unfortunately, I haven't the skillset to build one, and my local Linux-guru friend (who is usually more helpful in matters such as this) is too busy running the local tech shop to assist.

WiFi/BT is through a Realtek RTL8723BS chipset, and audio is via Realtek's ALC5640 codec chip.

Could someone compile me a kernel, *any* kernel, that will make those two things work for me? I can provide whatever information is needed to assist -- just ask. I'm also open to alternative solutions... just don't ask me to do anything super complicated; I'm a user, not a dev, and I know it... I usually muck up complicated things.

Also -- yes, I am aware of the instructions and scripts at https://plus.google.com/+IanMORRISON/posts/UNWdwRMqy3j -- neither of the scripts at that link work for me. They step through their thing, sure -- but at the other end, I still have no internal WiFi and no audio.

why do you think you need a custom kernel for that?
if a generic distro runs on it, i'd start investigating this as a generic wifi/bluetooth/audio problem.
maybe investigate linuxmint forums to start, and ubuntu forums after that?

1 members found this post helpful.

At the least, I need some drivers. Can't find those, can't find... squat, really, except for that link I posted with the scripts that didn't work. I wrote Linuxium (who created the page at the link with the scripts that didn't work) and I've not heard back, so they're probably ignoring me.

I guess I figured, since the drivers usually come with the kernel and are specific to it, that I needed a kernel too. Maybe not? I'm wide open here.

I will note that I've compiled *a* driver before. It was a graphics driver, and the compilation procedure was all of three steps once a few prerequisites were met. If I'm given very clear explain-like-I'm-five-and-stupid directions, I can generally coax the lump of granite on top of my neck through that sort of thing -- although if I encounter errors, I generally don't know enough to figure them out on my own... and MAKE has a very cryptic method of reporting trouble. Just bear in mind, when telling me how to do something, that I'm a hardware kinda guy. Programming is a foreign language to me... one that I don't speak very well. I speak programming like I speak German. I know fewer than ten words of German -- and roughly half of them are food items that are commonly found here in America despite their origins.

Hi
No, Linux isn't monolithic - as long as you have on your PC the source files that were used to compile the kernel that you're using (even if you did not actually use them to really compile the kernel that you're using) you can download & compile & use any other modules/drivers (that you will compile) against your kernel.

Found the following:
- RTL8723BS: https://github.com/hadess/rtl8723bs
- ALC5640: http://anzwix.com/a/Linux%20Kernel/A...640CODECDriver

Both seem to be pretty old and therefore already integrated into the mainstream kernel of Linux => this would mean that in theory you wouldn't actually have to do anything and that everything should be working out of the box... .

What's the output of your "uname -a" and "lspci -k"?

I should probably mention at this point that, in trying to make the scripts at that link (see bottom of first post in thread) -- I had to downgrade the kernel from 4.4 to 3.16, because that's what those scripts and the packages they fetch were made for, at least according to the directions. (I had previously tried a pair of 4.10 kernels, with similar non-success.) Kernels were installed and removed using the update manager's kernel swap utility.

TBH at this point I'd be at least mildly interested in doing a complete reinstall, just for the sake of having a clean start.

I'll be back in a few minutes or so with the outputs of those commands.

Hehe, well, if you downgraded everything then don't bother executing those commands as they won't be useful (drivers probably weren't integrated in the 3.x-series of the kernel).
I didn't understand: what was the driver/push/reason to downgrade from kernel 4.x to 3.x?

(EDIT: btw., "uname -a" is supposed to tell us the kernel version that you're using and the HW-architecture on which it's running, while "lspci -k" will create a list of all HW-devices and the drivers/modules that are being used by the OS to talk to them)

Well, here's the outputs anyways --> http://i.imgur.com/BStEg3m.png

If you look at my first post, you'll see at the end of it, I mention a link to some scripts. The directions for those scripts, which you'll see if you follow the link, say at the end that a 3.16 kernel is required for them to work. Apparently that's not the only thing required for them to work, since they, well, didn't.

I'm happy to put the system back to the original stock kernel (I remember which one it is) and/or do a full reinstall for a fresh start, if either one would be useful or helpful.

I also noticed that the GitHub link specifies that that driver made its way into the 4.12.x kernel -- I do not have access to a kernel that new through Mint's Update Manager's kernel swap utility... I'm honestly not sure why the other patch is either missing from or doesn't work with my install. You'd think after four years...

that google plus article is for ubuntu 14.04; yours is linux mint 18, which is based on 16.04.
please see for yourself:
https://linuxmint.com/download_all.php
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

please let's go back to zero, and just assume that you have a fairly normal computer with an intel atom processor, and you just installed mint on it, and wifi doesn't work (one problem at a time; when wifi is solved, we'll go to bluetooth etc.).
what would you do?
go to linuxmint forums and look for threads with "18 intel atom wifi wireless doesn't work", which I did for you here.
now it's your turn; see what you come up with, we'll continue.

1 members found this post helpful.

First, a small public service announcement. Please do not send your guests on wild goose chases to other forums! If I wanted to spend multiple hours fruitlessly trawling the Linux Mint forums or somewhere similar, I would do so before posting here. I'm here because I want my computer to work, and that goal is directly antithetical to fishing expeditions such as those suggested most recently.

*ahem*

Linuxium (finally) got back to me, and I followed his advice... I downloaded an ISO of Mint 18.1 to the target system (the MeeGoPad) along with his 'isorespin.sh' 'linuxium-install-rtl8723bs.sh' and 'linuxium-install-UCM-files.sh' scripts. I then attempted to run the isorespin.sh script twice, each time discovering I needed to install an additional package -- 'squashfs-tools' and 'xorriso' were the missing parts. Having installed them, I ran the following command...

./isorespin.sh -u -a "linuxium-install-rtl8723bs.sh linuxium-install-UCM-files.sh" -i linuxmint-18.1-xfce-64bit.iso

...which produced a Mint 18.1 ISO with a 4.11x kernel, supposed WiFi support (this turned out not to work) and audio support (which did work). The two secondary scripts (linuxium-install-*.sh) are responsible for the additional hardware support, as I understand it. I will refer you and others to Linuxium's website (http://linuxiumcomau.blogspot.com.au/) for further information on his scripts.

I transferred the ISO over to my Win7 system (which I use primarily for a graphics program whose corporate creator unfortuantely does not approve of Linux) and installed it to a 64gb MicroSDXC card using Rufus -- and being sure to set the partitioning to GPT, since the UEFI on the MeeGoPad will not boot from an MBR-partitioned drive! -- only to discover that the MeeGoPad was a wee bit old for the SDXC card. Out came my flash media reader...

I booted the Mint disk, finally, and was able to demonstrate that audio worked, at least (I can live without WiFi -- the antenna they use is laughable anyways. It's a piece of foil and two spring contacts! ...I know, because I added an externally-powered fan, and was looking around inside while I had the opportunity.)

However, I soon found another hurdle. The MeeGoPad is a 64-bit machine with 32-bit UEFI, which is, as it turns out, a very good configuration if what you want to do is crash a Linux Mint installer midway through its duty.

Hours of experimentation and reinstallation later, I found a dirty trick which sort of worked. I downloaded grub-efi-ia32-bin_2.02~beta2-36ubuntu3_amd64.deb for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS from pkgs.org, and rather than install it directly (which the system didn't want to do, and had proved fruitless already anyways), I extracted the files that went into /usr/share/grub and into /usr/share/lintian/overrides, and manually put them in place.

This at least let the installer finish 'successfully' -- but I now have a brain-damaged GRUB2 install and I'm really not sure what to do about it. I can't seem to get the blasted thing to boot from GRUB's command line -- I've gotten juuuuust good enough, using a rEFInd boot drive to start it up, to get to an initramfs (I suspect I'm doing something wrong there though), but running init manually from that, results in a kernel panic.

If I could boot the system successfully, I could run 'update-grub' and I'd be completely fine. But I can't get the thing to boot properly because of the need to fix GRUB. Chicken and egg...

Maybe someone here knows what I need to do to fix that 'little' problem?

...I find it quite hard to believe that nobody present here knows GRUB2 well enough to help me...

...well, *I'm* still here... /le sigh

Are you guys really that oversensitive?

Well, in my case I'm having a hard time understanding what's going on.
You said "I booted the Mint disk, finally, and was able to demonstrate that audio worked" but the rest is contradictory indicating that you aren't actually able to boot?

Were you able to install vanilla Mint on the ComputeStick and make it boot standalone and if not where did you get stuck?

Apologies for the confusion.

The live disk was/is bootable and audio works on it.

The installation to the system's internal memory (eMMC -- sort of an SSD, but electrically the interface is that of an SD card) completely succeeded as far as I can tell; certainly the installer thinks it did everything right. However, the GRUB portion of the install is at least a little addled (no doubt due to my meddling) and so it won't boot. I do get a GRUB shell, though, within which I can chain enough gobbledegook together to get Mint to at least start booting, but it doesn't fully boot -- it drops to an initramfs shell and running 'exec init' from that shell results in a kernel panic.

I should maybe mention that I did not "erase disk and install Linux Mint" -- the 32gb eMMC 'SSD' is partitioned with the first ~128MB as an EFI boot partition and with the remainder as ext4 and the filesystem root ("/"). I did not install a swap partition because I don't believe in swap on solid state media... those chips have a maximum number of reads and writes, and wear leveling algorithms can only do so much...

that's not confusion if you ask me.
but nevermind.

generally speaking, you have a nice informal way of describing your problems, but this does not help. what we need is commands, their output etc.

so you did install succesfully?
and can boot?
and still can't get audio, bluetooth and wifi to work?
is the machine connected to the internet at all? if not, that will add additional challenges for you because you have to get the packages to be installed offline and move them to the stick.

please open a terminal and enter
and post the output here, between code tags.

Confusion referred to something else with a different member.

I believe I installed mostly successfully. I cannot boot. I can "almost boot". I get a GRUB prompt from which I can chain together (with the help of the Internet) enough commands to get to Mint's initramfs shell. From there I can only induce a kernel panic. I suspect I am doing something wrong at the GRUB prompt.

If you read through the entirety of the longer of my previous posts, the one immediately after your last post, you will get a quite clear idea of what I have done, as I've explained it more-or-less the way you ask me to, in that post.

I should mention something IRL that is relevant here -- I have errands to run today. I will not be able to do anything on the MeeGoPad until 3-4pm this afternoon, Eastern US time, when I get back.