I bought this notebook because:
Here is the output of hwinfo --short. Note that the reported Mobile Disk, Flash Disk and the AnyCom ECO Card do not come with this laptop.
It was shiped together with
The laptop has a plastic case, but nice looking. Stupid stickers like Centrino or ATI sticker can be removed with help of a hair-dryer. Take care not to damage the plastic case if you use a knife.
On full load (e.g. compilation) the fan will switch on and is clearly audible. CD drive can be louder. Spin down the drive with eject -x 10, if you only want to read documents on CD.
To get 3D hardware acceleration you can download the ATI driver at SuSE or at the ATI driver download page. Note that it is not possible to suspend/resume the laptop if this driver is used.
To configure X with sax2 for dual head, you have to start sax2 and add an additional card of the same kind. Once 2 cards are set, you can configure 2 monitors and choose between traditonal dual head, xinerama, or just clone displays.
This example XF86Config for dual head was configured for an additional monitor (VESA 1024x768@75Hz) and traditonal dual head with 2 servers. To use it with Xinerama, start X with startx -- -xf86config XF86Config.dualhead +xinerama.
The only way to use the internal winmodem seems to be to use Linuxants commercial HSF driver. But you can use it with a free licence with 14K and without fax support. For full 56K support it costs 15 US$.
If you have a custom compilied kernel, you can download the generic RPM package with source. Unzip it, if it comes as a zipped file. You can install it as root with
rpm -i hsfmodem-7.18.00.02full-1.i386.rpm. I had to reboot to get the device file.
Start yast2 modem module and add a new modem with the device file reported by
hsfconfig --info. In my case it was
/dev/ttySHSF0.
The HSF modules seem to slow down the supend process a lot. I decided to add them to
POWERSAVE_UNLOAD_MODULES_BEFORE_SUSPENDin
/etc/sysconfig/powersave/common. This helps and suspend becomes as fast as before.
It is not detected by yast2. This is strange because in older Suse distributions it was detected and wvdial also detects it. So I had to install it manually. The card itself is detected and linked to /dev/ttyS0. So you can easily add this in yast2.
First it worked well. Now it does not anymore. I do not know what I could have done. The symptoms are:
It dials like it should and connects with the provider (I tried some). Than pppd sends a few times
pppd[0]: sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1 ]
and dies with exit code 16
pppd[0]: Hangup (SIGHUP)
pppd[0]: Modem hangup
pppd[0]: Connection terminated.
Status is: disconnected
pppd[0] died: A modem hung up the phone (exit code 16)
This seems to be an old problem with Suse/Linux and nobody seems to know a solution. The support database has 2 suggestions:
1. Lower the serial port speed.
Even with 9600, the problem stays.
2. remove the boot parameter "desktop".
Does not help either.
It does not matter if I use kinternet or wvdial directly.
Eventually I found a way to use the ECO II in a very uncomfortable way. I can dial the ISP with minicom and start pppd manually afterwards. To disconnect I kill the pppd process.
So, the problem seems to be wvdial.
For Bios versions prior to 0214a the battery status can not be read by default. But with this kernel patch provided by Herman Sheremetyev the battery status can also be read with lower bios versions. (see notes about kernel compilation).
Afterwards status can be shown with powersave -b or cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state.
The KDE battery monitor does not show up on my laptop. But this seems to be a KDE problem. As an alternative I use akpi. It also gives you a battery monitor in the KDE panel.
Change in /etc/powersave.conf to POWERSAVED_DISABLE_USER_SUSPEND=no
agp modules are said to cause problems. With lsmod I saw intel-agp. Put it into /etc/hotplug/blacklist. But this means it will not load anymore. For me this seems to be no problem.
First attempt failed. Module "tg3" seems to make problems. Add it in /etc/sysconfig/powersave to POWERSAVE_UNLOAD_MODULES_BEFORE_SUSPEND.
Than powersave --suspend should work.
I have to restart the following services after a suspend:
For using the special buttons and the LEDs you need to load the
asus_acpi module. If it is not compiled with the kernel,
you can configure the kernel with make
menuconfig, Power management options (ACPI,
APM), ACPI Support and set
ASUS/Medion Laptop Extras to M.
To load the module at boot time append asus_acpi to
MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT in
/etc/sysconfig/kernel.
Manfred Tremmel has a good description for SuSE 9.1/9.2 in German on his Asus M6842NW page.
I also tried an Acer USB2 memory stick and it works too.
The Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Driver for Linux (IPW2200) version 0.21 works with WEP-encryption.
It is not included in SuSE 9.1. I downloaded it, followed the instructions in the INSTALL file and it worked with WEP support and 54 MBit/sec. The preconditions of the kernel configuration were already fulfilled by the SuSE standard configuration.
It should support 802.1x EAP via xsupplicant, but I did not try this. WPA-PSK (pre-shared key) does not works. I made one unsuccessful attempt with wpa_supplicant version 0.2.3.
I was not able to configure the WLAN with yast2 but with yast (I don't understand the reason).
Start yast and choose Network Devices, Network Card.
Configure a new card. Choose Wireless as Device Type.
At Module Name insert ipw2200. If you use
ipw2200 <= 1.0.0 than you can insert at
Module Options the value ifname=wlan0.
The module option is needed, because otherwise ipw2200 would use
eth1 as interface name, but yast needs wlan0.
Do not choose your ethernet AND your wireless to come up both at boot time. Ethernet must be down, when the wlan ist started. Personally I choose both of them to start manually. (ifup wlan0, ifdown wlan0, same for eth0.)
Fill out the data of your wireless lan configuration. It is possible that you have to restart linux.
ifname
parameter anymore. So you have to skip the module option. Instead
you have to rename the configuration file after saving it with
yast.
First find out which interface name the module
choose. iwconfig should tell you this. Or reboot
and have a look at /var/log/boot.msg. In my case
it was eth0.
Now go to /etc/sysconfig/network and rename
ifcfg-wlan0 to ifcfg-eth0 (if the
interface name was eth0). After a reboot your wlan
should start as interface eth0.
Everytime you use yast for changes in the network configuration, you
first have to rename ifcfg-eth0 to
ifcfg-wlan0 again. Make the changes and rename it
to ifcfg-eth0.
You can use the template in /etc/init.d/skeleton and
modified it to your own need. Than save it at
/etc/init.d/wpa. Here is my boot
script for wpa. In addition you have to modify
/etc/init.d/network. Add wpa to
# Required-Start:. This tells insserv that wpa must
start before the network. Afterwards call insserv
to create the needed links in the runlevel directories.
Note: Often the dhcp server does not answer quick enough at boot time. Just wait a minute and you will find the network up.
It works with Linuxant Driverloader version 1.76. This is what Linuxant wrote to me:
please try with a fresh 2.6.7 kernel from www.kernel.org. You should also add this patch to this kernel :This works for me. Also WPA-PSK suppurt via wpa_supplicant version 0.2.3. But I had suspend problems with kernel 2.6.7. So I prefer the native IPW2200 driver with WEP.http://www.linuxant.com/linux-2.6.7-16kstacks.patchYou should compile this kernel with the following options disabled :You should enable the following options :
- CONFIG_4KSTACKS
- CONFIG_PREEMPT
- CONFIG_REGPARM
If you still experience crashes with this new release, it is possible that you will have to activate the stack workaround by adding the following line in your '/etc/modules.conf' file :
- CONFIG_16KSTACKS
- options driverloader stackworkaround=1
If you get kernel panic because of the reiserfs module, this might be the reason.
Somehow subfs is included in the binary package of the kernel, but not in the source package.
According to thread on www.linuxquestions.org you must have the package submount and km_submount installed if you want to use subfs. Follow the INSTALL file in /usr/src/kernel-modules/subfs on how to install this module.
Special thanks to Herman Sheremetyev, who seems to be the driving force for Linux on M6N laptops.
