Yes – it has been a while between posts! My kogan netbook has been serving the purpose it was intended for, meaning I haven’t come across anything I have felt I need to share in this blog. Upgrading ubuntu along the way has been happy and cheery with no issues, so no need to blog…

But there have been three or four comments over the months regarding the touchpad not working with newer versions of ubuntu. Whilst ubuntu 9.10 came with grub 2 by default, upgrading from 9.04 (grub 1.5) to 9.10 and then up to 10.04 meant grub stayed at 1.5, so even though I am running 10.04, I am still on grub 1.5, and the “i8042_nomux” fix seems to still work.

When 9.10 was released, Tom provided this blog with a solution for making the kogan netbook’s touchpad work in 9.10. I had figured this would work for 10.04 too, so to be sure, I think its time to upgrade my kogan netbook to 10.04, just to make sure the touchpad still works.

Upgrading to grub 2 is straight forward using apt-get:

sudo apt-get install grub2

During the upgrade I was asked if i wanted to chainload grub 2 from my existing grub legacy setup. It was highly recommended, so I went with it. It also asked me if I wanted to keep the “i8042_nomux” parameter, which I also agreed to do – I want my touchpad!

Grub 2 was installed, and after a reboot all was still well with the touchpad. However, because I agreed to chainload grub 2, grub 1.5 is still installed on my Master Boot Record (MBR) – not grub 2. This can be easily rectified with the following command:

sudo upgrade-from-grub-legacy

During this grub upgrade, I was asked if I wanted to keep my locally modified version of /etc/default/grub, and figuring this was modified for the “i8042_nomux” parameter, I agreed. I then had to choose where to install grub too, and I chose /dev/sda.

After a quick reboot, using grub 2 to boot, my touchpad still worked. success!! I now know that under ubuntu 10.04 with grub2, the touchpad on the kogan netbook works.

Now to help the people who can’t get the touchpad working. Short of doing a fresh install with 10.04 on my machine to try and replicate the issue (I don’t have the time, sorry), I thought I would try and work out what makes the touchpad work under grub 2.

Based on Tom’s info, i checked out my grub config:

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

And it looks like:

# If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update
# /boot/grub/grub.cfg.

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true
GRUB_TIMEOUT=3
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="i8042.nomux"

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only)
#GRUB_TERMINAL=console

# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo'
#GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480

# Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true

# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_RECOVERY="true"

# Uncomment to get a beep at grub start
#GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1"

I believe the important part is this line:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="i8042.nomux"

So I decided to comment the line out by adding a “#” to the front, run “sudo update-grub” to update my grub config and rebooted. When ubuntu came back, my touchpad was fixed in the center of the screen – stuck and broken. Reversing what I had just done (remove the “#”, run “sudo update-grub”, reboot) and the touchpad was back in motion.

If your kogan agora’s touchpad is not working, I have the following advice to offer. Edit your grub config:

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

and type the following line – I say type because if you copy and paste, the wrong quotes may be used:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="i8042.nomux"

If there any other occurences of i8042.nomux remove them (just i8042.nomux) and then update your grub config:

sudo update-grub

Now reboot, and fingers crossed your touchpad will dance with your finger. If this fails, please comment below with your specifics (i.e fresh ubuntu 10.04 install, upgraded from grub 1.5, upgraded from 9.10, etc) and I will try and help.

sudo update-manager -d

This will kick off the update manager, and provide you with a single button to upgrade to version 9.10. After 30 minutes or so, you should be rebooting into a new kernel, and the new ubuntu.

The usual suspects that needed attention in the past (read: the touchpad and wireless networking) were both still working, and had obviously remained configured from the previous version.

Whilst I say “working”, the wireless adapter is connecting to my home wireless access point however the signal is still low and not picking up neighbouring APs.

There has been some improvements though. The physical wifi button is no longer a “glorified light switch“, as it was so well put by Andrew. Pressing the button results in the card shutting off.

The second welcome surprise is the return of “resume from suspend”. After changing the wifi card recently myself and others discovered the netbook would not resume from suspend. This now appears to have resolved itself.

The netbook remix interface is looking much fresher, as you can see in the screenshots attached below.

The only qualm I have so far with karmic and the netbook remix itself is that I cannot seem to locate the shutdown icon in the menus or interface. This may be because I upgraded from 9.04, but as it is beta I will wait and see, and use the physical netbook power button to bring up the shutdown options.

Another note to add – GRUB2 and EXT4, whilst being the new defaults in ubuntu 9.10, are not automatically upgraded:

ext4 by default

The new “ext4″ filesystem is used by default for new installations with Ubuntu 9.10 Beta; of course, other filesystems are still available via the manual partitioner. Existing filesystems will not be upgraded.

GRUB 2 by default

GRUB 2 is the default boot loader for new installations with Ubuntu 9.10 Beta, replacing the previous GRUB “Legacy” boot loader. Existing systems will not be upgraded to GRUB 2 at this time, as automatically reinstalling the boot loader is an inherently risky operation.

A comment in a previous blog entry on this site asks how to configure the touchpad in GRUB2. I am yet to investigate this, however is anyone has any info, please post below.

References

• http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/karmic/beta

I had some feedback from at least two readers who could not enable SHMConfig, and when they tried to use gsynaptics or syndaemon, they were met with the error “You have to set ‘SHMConfig’ ‘true’ in xorg.conf or XF86Config“. The instructions provided in the post to enable SHMConfig using the /etc/hal/fdi/policy/shmconfig.fdi method did not appear to be working.

After a lot of troubleshooting work with Travis, we were able to determine why this was occuring, and how to resolve it.

Firstly, and briefly, the why. The HAL daemon (hald) keeps a cache in /var/cache/hald/fdi-cache. For some reason, hald was using this cache file, and not picking up the newly created shmconfig.fdi file.

Now the important part – how to resolve it! This is easy, you just need to remove the cache:

sudo rm /var/cache/hald/fdi-cache

Provided you have created the shmconfig.fdi file as described in the gsynaptics post, reboot your machine, and you should be able to load gsynaptics and setup syndaemon without being told SHMConfig needs to be set to true. The fdi-cache file will be recreated when you reboot, and you shouldn’t have any more problems.

A big thanks to Travis for helping to troubleshoot this one!

Over the last few days I have been trying to USB boot different operation systems on my Kogan agora pro, such as UNR and the recently released ‘koganised’ gOS iso.

I have two USB drives of the same brand. One is 1GB, and the other 2GB. I found that I can only get the 1GB USB drive to boot – the 2GB drive fails with “boot error“. Other users have also reported this behaviour.

I believe this may be an issue with the FAT16/FAT32 file systems, however I have not investigated further.

If you are trying to USB boot your agora to install or even just try another operating system such as UNR, you may need to consider using a 1GB USB drive. If anyone has any more information, or if you have been able to boot with 2GB or larger USB drives, please post the details below.

I used unetbootin to create a bootable USB drive, and it booted to an Ubuntu/gOS boot menu fine. I didn’t want to overwrite my UNR install, so I chose to boot ‘live’ – i.e. run gOS from the USB drive, and not change my hard drive in any way.

The kogan spash screen appeared and eventually it booted to the ‘koganised’ gOS desktop, which only lasted a day the last time it was installed on my agora! What I didn’t have, semi-unexpectedly, was a functioning touchpad.

Unless the fixgOS2.bat or makeboot.bat files described in the manual do something other than copy the gOS iso to the USB drive and make it bootable (I couldn’t use the method described in the agora’s manual, as I do not have windows installed), than I don’t think the factory restore instructions will help you to easily restore the kogan to its original out-of-the-box self.

I would love to be proved wrong though, and would love it if someone could follow the instructions on page 36 of the manual, create a USB drive with the kogan gOS image boot live to gOS (this will not erase any data currently on your agora’s hard disk) and see if the touchpad works. Any takers? You may be the first to crack the touchpad mystery of the kogan agora!

Before going further, you should be aware that the medibuntu repository also contains packages that are not included in vanilla ubuntu for legal reasons. medibuntu.org (which you should read before continuing) states:

It is your legal responsibility to make sure that the software you are installing can be legally used in your country and for your intended purpose.

With that in mind, to add the medibuntu repository and keyring, and update your sources to include the medibuntu packages, in a terminal:

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/`lsb_release -cs`.list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list; sudo apt-get -q update; sudo apt-get --yes -q --allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring; sudo apt-get -q update

If you want to see what packages you can now install, open the “Synaptic Package Manager” from the Administration menu, click the “Origin” button, and then select from the three medibuntu repositories (free, multi-verse, non-free) in the left panel.

References: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Medibuntu

To do this, open a terminal and enter:

sudo gedit /etc/hal/fdi/policy/shmconfig.fdi

and in the file that opens, place the following text:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
  <device>
    <match key="input.x11_driver" string="synaptics">
      <merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">True</merge>
    </match>
  </device>
</deviceinfo>


Now you can install gsynaptics:

sudo apt-get install gsynaptics

The final step is to reboot, so that SHMConfig is enabled. Once rebooted, you will have a new item in your Preference menu, “Touchpad” (which is gsyanptics).

References: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SynapticsTouchpad

First, you need to add the skype repository to your software sources. From the Administration menu, select “Software Sources”. Click the “Third-Party Software” tab, and click “Add…”. Enter the following repository into the APT line:

deb http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/debian/ stable non-free

Click “Add Source”, and then close.

Now from a terminal, update your software sources:

sudo apt-get update

and then install skype:

sudo apt-get install skype

Skype should now be in your Internet menu. I had to adjust the “Sound Devices” in the options – see the screenshots below. Enjoy!

sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

Restart firefox if it is open, and you should be able to see flash content.