Acer Aspire V15 Nitro Linux install notes
Contents
Experiments
This page keeps track of what I've been doing on getting my laptop to work. It's not an installation guide.
Dual-boot problems
After messing around a bit, I just decided that it just wasn't worth the effort and I went with a Linux-only install. This has the added advantage of freeing up some more disk-space (256Gb is not *that* much).
See here: Acer Aspire VN7-591G USB boot + SSD question
Just a heads up. I found that this laptop (in UEFI mode) is one that will only boot EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi. You can install a Linux EFI img and change the boot order with something like 'efibootmgr' and it will switch the boot order back to Windows first on reboot. You can hit F-12 at boot and then select your Linux image but that's a pain. I ended up copying Window's bootmgfw.efi to EFI/Microsoft/bootmgfw.efi and installing rEFInd as bootmgfw.efi as described here.
I made a backup of the Windows restore partition to a USB flash drive that I'll keep aside just in case. (using the Acer restore utility)
Device info
#lspci -q -nn 00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor DRAM Controller [8086:0c04] (rev 06) 00:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor PCI Express x16 Controller [8086:0c01] (rev 06) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:0416] (rev 06) 00:03.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio Controller [8086:0c0c] (rev 06) 00:14.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI [8086:8c31] (rev 05) 00:16.0 Communication controller [0780]: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 [8086:8c3a] (rev 04) 00:1a.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI #2 [8086:8c2d] (rev 05) 00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset High Definition Audio Controller [8086:8c20] (rev 05) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #3 [8086:8c14] (rev d5) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #4 [8086:8c16] (rev d5) 00:1d.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI #1 [8086:8c26] (rev 05) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation HM86 Express LPC Controller [8086:8c49] (rev 05) 00:1f.2 SATA controller [0106]: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family 6-port SATA Controller 1 [AHCI mode] [8086:8c03] (rev 05) 00:1f.3 SMBus [0c05]: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller [8086:8c22] (rev 05) 01:00.0 3D controller [0302]: NVIDIA Corporation GM107M [GeForce GTX 860M] [10de:1392] (rev a2) 07:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Qualcomm Atheros Killer N1525 Wireless-AC [168c:003e] (rev 20) 08:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller [10ec:8168] (rev 0c)
Linux Installation
Mint 17.1
It's time to try out a new Linux distribution. I always tend to end up with Debian, my last excursion being Ubuntu until they started with their Unity BS. For now, I'll install Linux Mint. If I don't like it, I can always change.
Booting from USB
I just downloaded the iso and copied the file to the stick:
dd bs=4M if=linuxmint-17.1-kde-64bit-rc.iso of=/dev/sdX
Then I changed the Boot options on the portable (F2 at boot time) to Legacy mode. Guided install - full disk. Bye bye, windows.
Touchpad
See: touch-pad not detected on Acer Aspire VN7-591g
This is a bit annoying: in the live session, you can't click on the install icon. This is circumvented by pressing the context menu key on the keyboard, press 'n' to select "Run...", then start typing "install" and the installation program should be in the suggestion list.
After upgrading to kernel 3.16 the Touchpad works, but right-clicking is not recognized. I'll look into this further (information is provided in the link above), but meanwhile in the KDE settings I selected a two-finger click to be interpreted as a right-click.
Network
Wifi not recognized?
SSD wear prevention
- Added noatime to /etc/fstab root partition options
UUID=70829450-5b80-414a-8a8d-e7c58c2512c3 / ext4 noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
NVidia
WIP.
- NVidia drivers in Mint 17.1 do not support the 860M
- There is now some support for dual gfx cards, through bumblebee.
Some of the fiddling so far ( Most of the time I have no clue what I'm doing ;-) ):
apt-get install linux-headers-3.16.0-28 apt-get install linux-headers-3.16.0-28-generic cd /home/hans/Downloads/ chmod 755 NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-346.22.run ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-346.22.run /etc/init.d/mdm stop apt-get install bumblebee-nvidia apt-cache show primus apt-get install bumblebee-nvidia primus /etc/init.d/mdm start /etc/init.d/mdm stop ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-346.22.run nvidia-xconfig /etc/init.d/mdm start vi /etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.nvidia vi /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf updatedb locate nvidia vi /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf /etc/init.d/mdm start
Trying to undo the changes:
./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-346.22.run --uninstall apt-get remove --purge bumblebee-nvidia primus apt-get autoremove
Next, trying xorg-edgers ppa
add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa apt-get update apt-get install nvidia-346 nvidia-settings
(it removed nvidia-304 which was installed too, apparently). After a reboot, I ran glxinfo to check if the NVIDIA driver was being used, but no. Then I read I needed to do an upgrade.
apt-get upgrade apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia primus
After installing bumblebee, I can use both cards.
glxinfo optirun glxinfo
The first command shows an Intel graphics card is being used, the second command shows that the NVIDIA card is used.
Links
- NVIDIA (Arch docs)
- NVidia Optimus (Arch docs)
- Bumblebee troubleshooting
- Bumblebee on ubuntu
- NVidia drivers on Ubuntu/Mint
- Ubuntu 14.04: Hybrid Graphics
- Installing and Configuring Bumblebee on Optimus-designed laptops
GnuRadio
Installation
Quite easy using pybombs.
apt-get install git git clone git://github.com/pybombs/pybombs cd pybombs ./pybombs install gnuradio
Installing OpenCL
Fosphor requires OpenCL. Following the install instructions:
apt-get install cmake xorg-dev libglu1-mesa-dev
If you execute the next step, it will install the 331 version of the driver. Therefore, I explicitely added the nvidia-opencl-icd-346 package first
apt-get install nvidia-opencl-icd-346
If I then try the next step I get an error:
apt-get install nvidia-opencl-dev opencl-headers Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation:
The following packages have unmet dependencies: nvidia-opencl-dev : Depends: nvidia-libopencl1 (>= 319.37) but it is not installable or nvidia-libopencl1-331 but it is not going to be installed or nvidia-libopencl1-331-updates but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
Again, it only considers version 331. Let's install v346 manually (I wonder why it uninstalls ocl-icd-libopencl1)
apt-get install nvidia-libopencl1-346 The following packages will be REMOVED: ocl-icd-libopencl1 The following NEW packages will be installed: nvidia-libopencl1-346 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 1 to remove and 3 not upgraded. Need to get 20,8 kB of archives. After this operation, 39,9 kB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
The problem persists. opencl-headers installs without problems
apt-get install opencl-headers
The only thing remaining is nvidia-opencl-dev. All the packages this metapackage depends on are already there, so it's rather useless, unless its presence is needed for other packages.
Installing Fosphor
Using pybombs, it fails:
./pybombs install gr-fosphor Settled on prefix: /usr/local Loading recipes ... Installing packages: * glfw3 * gr-fosphor PyBombs.sysutils - WARNING - deb_exists: could not find a downloadable version of libglfw3-dev Installing from source: glfw3 Cloning into 'glfw3'... remote: Counting objects: 14365, done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (34/34), done. remote: Total 14365 (delta 13), reused 0 (delta 0) Receiving objects: 100% (14365/14365), 7.15 MiB | 1.20 MiB/s, done. Resolving deltas: 100% (8966/8966), done. Checking connectivity... done. Configuring: (100%) [==========================================================] Building: (100%) [==========================================================] Installing: (100%) [===========================================================] installation ok via: src Installing from source: gr-fosphor Cloning into 'gr-fosphor'... remote: Counting objects: 775, done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (545/545), done. remote: Total 775 (delta 527), reused 298 (delta 200) Receiving objects: 100% (775/775), 357.35 KiB | 0 bytes/s, done. Resolving deltas: 100% (527/527), done. Checking connectivity... done. Configuring: (100%) [==========================================================] Configuration failed. Re-trying with higher verbosity. make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop. Build failed. See output above for error messages.
I don't get any wiser from that error message. Let's try installing it manually:
git clone git://git.osmocom.org/gr-fosphor cd gr-fosphor mkdir build cd build cmake .. (....) - Could NOT find OpenCL (missing: OPENCL_LIBRARIES) CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:104 (message): OpenCL required to compile gr-fosphor
After this, I added the following line to pybombs/recipes/gr-fosphor.lwr:
var config_opt = " -DOPENCL_LIBRARY=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libOpenCL.so.1 "
and I can install fosphor with pybombs.
Then I installed gr-osmosdr and python-opengl
./pybombs install gr-osmosdr apt-get install python-opengl
But osmocom_fft is still complaining
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libOpenCL.so.1 optirun osmocom_fft -F linux; GNU C++ version 4.8.2; Boost_105400; UHD_003.008.001-42-g8c87a524 gr-osmosdr v0.1.4-8-g46bb1ad1 (0.1.5git) gnuradio 3.7.6git-276-gc67281b6 built-in source types: file osmosdr fcd rtl rtl_tcp uhd hackrf bladerf rfspace -- Operating over USB 3. -- Initialize CODEC control... -- Initialize Radio control... -- Performing register loopback test... pass -- Performing CODEC loopback test... pass -- Asking for clock rate 32.000000 MHz... -- Actually got clock rate 32.000000 MHz. -- Performing timer loopback test... pass -- Setting master clock rate selection to 'automatic'. -- Using subdev spec 'A:A'. [!] CL Error (-1001, /home/hans/source/pybombs/src/gr-fosphor/lib/fosphor/cl.c:275): Unable to fetch platform IDs [!] No suitable OpenCL device found