UMID SE
work in progress 24 DEC 2011
Introduction
This guide assumes that you are experienced in installing Archlinux. If you are not experienced, please read this guide in parallel with the Beginners' Guide or the Official Installation Guide. No assumptions are made on your desired environment (DE/WM).
Boot the archlinux installer from the USB medium and log in as root
.
Installing Archlinux
Set up a wireless connection
Since you don't have any ethernet, you'll need to manually configure your network before starting the setup. Here, we assume that the wlan is not encrypted:
ip link set wlan0 up iwconfig wlan0 essid "your_wlan_essid" dhcpcd wlan0
If your wlan is encrypted, follow the instructions in the Beginner's Guide. If it's not encrypted but requires to login at a captive portal, you can use elinks
to enter your credentials.
Partition the SSD
You'll also need to manually format the SSD before using the installer. Use GPT as described in the SSD Article. This ensures that your partitions are properly aligned. Install and run it:
pacman -S gptfdisk gdisk /dev/sda
Type o
to clear out the partition table and then create at least 3 partitions by typing n
and answering the questions (type ?
or m
for help). You need at least a 2MiB Partition at the beginning for the boot loader as well as a bit more than 1GiB of swap space to be able to use hibernation. Your partition table should look something like this in the end (for example using 8GiB for /
and the rest for /home
:
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name 1 2048 6143 2.0 MiB EF02 BIOS boot partition 2 6144 2463743 1.2 GiB 8200 Linux swap 3 2463744 19240959 8.0 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem 4 19240960 61865950 20.3 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem
Type w
to write the partition table.
Run the installer
Progress through the installer as usual, but mind these things:
- When configuring the hard drive, select to configure the mountpoints manually and choose the mountpoints accordingly. Regarding filesystems, you can select
ext2
for the BIOS boot partition. For the root and any other regular partitionsext4
is a good choice. - You absolutely have to select
wireless-tools
from core to be installed in order to be able to connect to the wlan in your freshly installed system. You may also want to select netcfg. - When editing the config files, edit /etc/fstab and add the
noatime,nodiratime,discard
options to your ext4 partitions. Also removenetwork
from theDAEMONS
array in/etc/rc.conf
. - Skip the bootloader installation, exit the installer and do not reboot!
Manually install the bootloader
Prepare the environment:
cp /etc/resolv.conf /tmp/install/etc/resolv.conf modprobe dm-mod mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev mount -t proc /proc /mnt/proc/ mount -t sysfs /sys /mnt/sys/
Chroot into your fresh installation:
chroot /mnt bash
Install grub2:
pacman-db-upgrade pacman -Syy rm -rf /boot/grub pacman -S grub2-bios grub_bios-install --boot-directory=/boot --no-floppy --recheck --debug /dev/sda grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Now you're ready to reboot!
Configure the fresh system
Configure CPU scaling and thermal monitoring
The UMID SE can get quite hot because of the relatively powerful CPU and lack of air flow. This happens especially when charging the batteries. Keep an eye on the thermals at all times. Refer to dzen for an example on how to do this efficiently. Install cpufrequtils and lm_sensors:
pacman -S cpufrequtils lm_sensors
Edit the governor line in /etc/conf.d/cpufreq
selecting the ondemand
governor. No other options are required.
governor="ondemand"
Run sensors-detect and hit enter
answering YES to all questions.
sensors-detect
In /etc/rc.conf
add acpi_cpufreq
to the MODULES
array and @cpufreq
to the DAEMONS array:
MODULES=(acpi_cpufreq) DAEMONS=(syslog-ng @crond @cpufreq @sensors)
Reboot to apply the changes. As a quick way of checking what's going on you can run something like this:
watch -n 0.5 "cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep MHz; sensors"
Install the graphics drivers
After a reboot into your new system, install the drivers required for the poulsbo chipset. There are several drivers and they're all terrible. The probably best option at the time of writing is the pbs_gfx driver used with fbdev. The performance (for playing videos for example) will nevertheless be awful but it works well for regular work. Install it as follows:
Add psb_gfx
to MODULES
in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
and rebuild the kernel initramfs:
mkinitcpio -p linux
Install the fbdev driver:
xf86-video-fbdev
You should now be able to install and run X.
Install all your usual stuff
Install Xorg and whatever DE/WM you want to use. Launch X.
Configure touch screen and optical mouse
TODO
Configure all special keys
Create a file /lib/udev/keymaps/umid-se
containing:
0xEE battery # Fn+Q 0xDF sleep # Fn+W 0xD5 switchvideomode # Fn+E 0xF0 record # Fn+R 0xF6 camera # Fn+T 0xF9 brightnessdown # Fn+A 0xF8 brightnessup # Fn+S 0xA0 mute # Fn+D 0xAE volumedown # Fn+F 0xB0 volumeup # Fn+G 0xFC wlan # Fn+J
Edit /lib/udev/rules.d/95-keymap.rules
adding this after
:
ENV{DMI_VENDOR}=="UMiDCorp", ATTR{[dmi/id]product_name}=="M-BOOK", RUN+="keymap $name umid-se"
The above vendor and product IDs can be found under /sys/class/dmi/id/
. Reboot to apply the changes.
Configure suspend and hibernation
TODO