I was surprised, especially on Ubuntu, how easy it was to setup.

My netbook runs Arch, so I installed it on that and my Dell 1545 running Ubuntu 9.04.

Hardware

In Ubuntu the firmware was added to linux-restricted-modules 2.6.24, so it’s picked up straight away.  Under Arch the firmware is missing but there’s a copy here which needs to be put in /lib/firmware before plugging in.  Once plugged in checking dmesg shows the device is recognised, don’t worry about the error message:

dvb-usb: found a 'WideView WT-220U PenType Receiver (based on ZL353)' in warm state.
dvb-usb: will use the device's hardware PID filter (table count: 15).
DVB: registering new adapter (WideView WT-220U PenType Receiver (based on ZL353))
DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (WideView USB DVB-T)...
input: IR-receiver inside an USB DVB receiver as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb1/1-3/input/input11
dvb-usb: schedule remote query interval to 300 msecs.
dvb-usb: WideView WT-220U PenType Receiver (based on ZL353) successfully initialized and connected.
dvb-usb: recv bulk message failed: -110

Notice that the IR receiver is also initialised, more on that later.

Software

I’m using VLC but need a couple of other utilities too:

sudo apt-get install dvb-apps dvb-utils vlc for Ubuntu.

sudo pacman -S linuxtv-dvb-apps vlc for Arch.

Now scan for channels.  You need to know your transmitter, which you can find out from Ofcom (in the UK) and replace “Sudbury” with it:

scan /usr/share/dvb/dvb-t/uk-Sudbury -o zap|tee /home/dougie/channel-list.conf

Opening this file in VLC will now give you TV playback:

vlc /home/$USER/channel-list.conf

Create a launcher and you’re done.  Well unless you want to use the remote of course.

Remote

It’s relatively straight forward in Ubuntu, install lirc:

sudo apt-get install lirc

When the menu appears, choose Freecom DVB-T USB Stick and click OK.  Next select None and click OK.  Lastly choose /dev/input/by-path/pci-2-3-event-ir and click OK.

I had to transpose the VOL_DOWN / CH_DOWN and VOL_UP / CH_UP in /usr/share/lirc/remotes/freecom/lircd.conf.freeconf, your mileage may vary as there appears to be two remote layouts.

Now if you run irw in a terminal and press the buttons on the remote, you should see output like:

0000000080010071 00 MUTE Freecom_DVB-T_USB


Now we’re nearly there, just need to tell applications (in this case VLC) what to do.  This is done by editing ~/.lircrc.

Configuration is not particularly well documented but centres around ~/.lircrc.  Each button has a configuration block, starting with begin and ending with end.  You need to stipulate the program to receive (in our case VLC), the button (which we know from irw) and what it does in the receiving program.  For example, assigning the volume up button to increase the volume in VLC.

begin
prog = vlc
button = VOL_UP
config = key-vol-up
repeat = 1
end


Open VLC and click Tools -> Preferences, then under “Show settings” click “Advanced”.  Under “Interfaces/Control Interfaces” tick “Infrared remote control interface”.  Click “Save” to close.

VLC Infrared Option

Sadly, I couldn’t get it to work on Arch.  The remote is recognised without lirc, detecting some of the keypresses – power, mute, volume and the numbers but checking sendkey and xev shows there is no keycode generated.

With lirc, irw doesn’t see input and yet the /etc/input/event does.  I’m reasonably sure that a module is overriding lirc and tried removing the obvious but to no avail.

After spending the better part of a day farting about with it, I realise that on a small screen the chances of me needing a remote negate the effort.  Bugs me that I haven’t got it though, so I guess I’ll revist it when I’ve more time.

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3. Install Arch Linux on an Aspire One

If you intend to use an SD card as a home partition you need to know two things – suspend to ram will not work with the stock kernel (it will with one of the Aspire One kernels) and you must not use ext2 for it – XFS seems much more stable.

The version of dhcpcd on the current Arch install image seems to have a bug – it will not initiate a DHCP request on the Aspire One. I got round this is by installing from the USB Core Image and then download the current dhcpcd (4.0.7-1) to a USB stick and used:

pacman -U dhcpcd-4.0.7-1-i686.pkg.tar.gz

Then rebooted. It required me to manually drop then raise the interface and call the daemon.

Update: I redid another machine on the weekend and had to edit /etc/rc.conf to add the interface before rebooting:

eth0="dhcp"
interfaces=(etho)

The upgrade in klibc has also caused me to have to do a:

pacman -Syu --force

/etc/rc.conf needs a couple of tweaks for timezone, input and modules – not to mention network but I’ll leave that for now. Here is my modified one:

# /etc/rc.conf - Main Configuration for Arch Linux#

# -----------------------------------------------------------------------
# LOCALIZATION
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------

LOCALE="en_GB.utf8"
HARDWARECLOCK="localtime"
USEDIRECTISA="no"
TIMEZONE="Europe/London"
KEYMAP="uk"
CONSOLEFONT=
CONSOLEMAP=
USECOLOR="yes"

# -----------------------------------------------------------------------
# HARDWARE
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------

MOD_AUTOLOAD="yes"
MODULES=(!memstick !snd-pcsp acpi_cpufreq r8169 pciehp ath5k uvcvideo)

# Scan for LVM volume groups at startup, required if you use LVM
USELVM="no"

# -----------------------------------------------------------------------
# NETWORKING
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------

HOSTNAME="aspireone"

# Interfaces are controlled by wicd
INTERFACES=(!eth0 !wlan0)

# Routes to start at boot-up (in this order)
gateway="default gw 192.168.0.1"
ROUTES=(!gateway)

# -----------------------------------------------------------------------
# DAEMONS
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------
DAEMONS=(hal fam syslog-ng !network @wicd @alsa)

Bringing me to the interesting issue of Xorg. I didn’t really like hotplug support – the initial Xorg install generated an xorg.xonf fine but of course the keyboard and mouse didn’t work because evdev wasn’t available. The need to manipulate slightly obscure text files from one folder to another is a step back for Linux I think.

So, now we need to:

pacman -S libgl xorg xf86-input-evdev xf86-video-intel xf86-input-synaptics

Before we can work with the damn X configuration. The beginners guide over at the Arch Wiki covers this well enough that I don’t need to regurgitate it but I will mention how to get the keyboard and mouse to work.

First, add hal to the daemons in /etc/rc.conf and then copy the hotplug files to a permanent location (otherwise upgrades will remove them):

cp /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10ovendor/10-keymap.fdi /etc/hal/fdi/policy/.

Then edit it, changing the “input.xkb.layout” key to the right one for you (in my case the UK is “gb”). Now restart hal:

/etc/rc.d/hal restart

And then get a default X config:

xorg -configure

Test it using:

X -config /root/xorg.conf.new

If all is well, then copy it to etc:

cp /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf

I’m going to install XFCE, but you can install other desktops just as easily – change “xfce” to “gnome”, “kde” or whatever:

pacman -S xfce4

73.99Mb’s later, XFCE is in place. You can use “startxfce” to run it or configure a login manager – I use SLIM:

pacman -S slim

I use inittab – you can use /etc/rc.conf and load slim as a daemon but I don’t care for that. So edit /etc/inittab, change:

id:3:initdefault:

To

id:5:initdefault:

You also need to set the login manager, so change:

x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/xdm -nodaemon

To:

x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/slim >& /dev/null

Before we can reboot however, we need to add the XFCE session to the system xinitrc (/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc) to point to XFCE otherwise we get a error message from Slim. Remove the relevant comment mark to enable (exec startxfce4).

There are also some keyboard tweaks we require, so I changed /etc/rc.local to include the WiFi switch and the function keys:

/usr/bin/setkeycodes e055 159
/usr/bin/setkeycodes e056 158
/usr/bin/setkeycodes e025 130
/usr/bin/setkeycodes e026 131
/usr/bin/setkeycodes e027 132
/usr/bin/setkeycodes e029 122
/usr/bin/setkeycodes e071 134
/usr/bin/setkeycodes e072 135

Next onto that perrenial favourite – wireless. The kernel update does the work here – just need to install a managment system. I prefer wicd, fewer dependencies and no reliance on QT:

sudo pacman -S wicd

Notice from my /etc/rc.conf that I’ve stopped the eth0 and wlan0 interfaces loading and added wicd to the daemon list. This refused to play without a reboot and remember when using wicd-client to configure that when it says it can’t do something without encryption it wants a password entered in the settings.

Power management was one good reason to reinstall. So lets put acpid on:

pacman -S acpid

Once installed, I added two events, one to suspend on shutting the lid and another to shutdown when the button is pressed:

/etc/acpi/events/lid

event=button/lid.*
action=/usr/sbin/pm-suspend

/etc/acpi/events/power

event=button/power.*
action=/sbin/poweroff

The wireless wont restart after suspend, so you need to add /etc/pm/config.d/modules:

SUSPEND_MODULES="ath5k"

OK so that’s the meat of it. I have also made some alterations to system files specific to the A110, such as fstab, menu.lst and inittab.

Now, I like the filters to improve the display of fonts, so download the tarballs from AUR – libxft-lcd, cairo-lcd and fontconfig-lcd. Uninstall libxft and cairo then build and install.

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1. Watch TV with VLC and a Freecom DVB-T Stick

This is true of any DocBook – dblatex is in the Ubuntu repositories and can transform DocBook in to many formats, the default being PDF.

Usually it is as simple as:

dblatex filename.xml

To generate filename.pdf. Most errors are easy to rectify because dblatex calls other tools and you can step through some (such as pdflatex).

However if you get an error along the lines of:

Overfull @hbox (20.76302pt too wide)

Well that is a bit of a pain. The prescribed wisdom is that something (usually a ulink) is just really too long, such as one of those really long URLs. In the case of DocBook, more often than not it’s a table that it just cannot render – so keep them simple!

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Create a hard disk image:

dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/home/hda1.bin

Create a compressed disk image

dd if=/dev/hda1 | gzip > /home/hda1.bin.gz

Back up the MBR

dd if=/dev/hda of=/home/hda.boot.mbr bs=512 count=1

Restore MBR (from a Live CD)

dd if=/mnt/hda1/home/hda.boot.mbr of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1

Backup a drive to another drive

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb conv=noerror,sync bs=4k

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1. Watch TV with VLC and a Freecom DVB-T Stick