The Acer TravelMate B113 works quite well with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, but does need a little of post installation configuration. Please install all the updates available to Ubuntu on your first run!.

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For further discussion and to seek help, see here in the Ubuntu Forums.

Acer TravelMate B113 and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

This page aims to describe the steps needed to fully enable all features of the Acer TravelMate B113.

Overview

Anything not mentioned here should work out of the box.

IconsPage/ok.png (works out-of-the-box) IconsPage/ok.png IconsPage/info.png (works, with remarks) IconsPage/warning.png (needs manual work) IconsPage/dont.png (won't currently work (completely)) IconsPage/question.png (not yet documented)

BIOS Update

Not yet done.

Basic Installation Instructions

Not yet done

Keyboard functions (Brightness,volume,...)

Not all function keys work out of the box, changing brightness needs an additional kernel parameter:

acpi_brightness=vendor

For now, changing brightness works, but is extremely slow. This needs to be investigated further.

Touchpad

Pointer motion works fine out of the box.

However, it needs manual work to get the right click function to work:

Create a a new folder and a new file:

sudo mkdir /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ && sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/51-clickpad.conf

Paste this into your new file:

Section "InputClass
Identifier "Default clickpad buttons"
MatchDriver "synaptics"
Option "SoftButtonAreas" "50% 0 82% 0 0 0 0 0"

EndSection

Due to a bug within Unity, we need to pass manual switches to syndaemon:

Execute this in a terminal once and never enable the setting System Settings > Mouse & Touchpad > Touchpad > Disable touchpad while typing again:

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.touchpad disable-while-typing false

Add a new entry to your startup programs, on Unity desktop it can be done this way: Run System Settings > Startup Applications > Add and add

syndaemon -i 1.7 -d -t -K

You might want to edit the value -i 1.7, as it defines how long tapping would be disabled after stopping typing in seconds.

Needs a reboot to take effect.

Microphone

Internal mic

Works fine.

External mic

Combo jack (headphones output + mic input). Type the following code in a terminal window and hit 'Enter':

echo options snd-hda-intel model=laptop-dmic | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

Reboot the notebook (or restart alsa) to activate the option.

Fan control

Not yet done.

Sensors (temps & fans)

Not yet done.

Power saving optimizations

Kernel parameters to use

Enabling ASPM saves a meaningful amount of power when idle according to powerstat. It's recommended. The pcie_aspm=force parameter is however required because the BIOS gives Ubuntu wrong information. Therefore, add the following to the file /etc/default/grub, after the text quiet splash but within the same quotes:

pcie_aspm=force

There are a couple of optional kernel parameters which save some power and have not shown any problems, but are not enabled by default. Instead of the above, you may also use the following:

quiet splash pcie_aspm=force i915.i915_enable_fbc=1 drm.vblankoffdelay=1 i915.semaphores=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1 acpi_backlight=vendor

You may also disable NMI Watchdog (this is for kernel hackers), it's a suggestion of powertop. Just apply this to kernel parameters:

nmi_watchdog=0

After editing /etc/default/grub, don't forget to run the command

sudo update-grub

Enable power management

As powertop is also suggesting to enable power management on all PCI devices, this script will do so:

Create /etc/udev/rules.d/10-runtime-pm.rules:

SUBSYSTEM!="pci", GOTO="power_runtime_rules_end"
ACTION!="add", GOTO="power_runtime_rules_end"

KERNEL=="????:??:??.?"
PROGRAM="/bin/sleep 0.1"

ATTR{power/control}=="*", ATTR{power/control}="auto"

LABEL="power_runtime_rules_end"

ALPM

Enabling ALPM may save a meaningful amount of power when idle according to powerstat.

Read more and also the warnings on page ALPM.

Bugs and issues

Not yet solved

Brightness keys are not recognized by default and /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/ is not showing any differences when changing brightness whithin Unity menus.

Changing values in /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/ does have effects instead!

fixed upstream in kernel v3.16 by this commit so it's up to Ubuntu's kernel team to include it in upgrades.

Solved

None yet.


CategoryKernel

AcerTravelMateB113 (last edited 2014-07-29 13:17:14 by 109)