Microclient plans

Just a quick update. I have been using my Microclient with Xubuntu 7.10 as my main computer at home. I did some fairly intensive GIMP image editing the other day, no problems!

I’m still looking to use the MicroClient as something along the lines of a media box (mainly for music). I’m looking for a very cut down distro to use to just play MP3s etc.

New Forum – Google Groups!

Just to let everyone know, Nicolas has moved the forum to a Google Groups setting. The address is below.

http://groups.google.com/group/microclient

Enjoy

Plans for the MicroClient Sr.

I have had my MicroClient Sr. running Xubuntu 7.10 for about a month now. I have swapped the Compact Flash install for a 2.5″ 80Gb HD install instead. This made boot times a bit faster and also stopped me worrying about read/write limits on the CF card.

The MicroClient runs OK as an every day desktop PC but has a few issues that have caused me to have a re-think as to how I might use it.

1. Graphics performance isn’t great. I can’t watch videos on the internet (Youtube etc.) as they are jerky/choppy. This is all down to the linux rivers for the Unichrome II CX700M chipset.

2. Multitasking isn’t really possible. I can’t listen to MP3’s and surf the net. If i click a link in  my browser, the music cuts out as the processor does the necessary to load the new page.

In light of these (and some other) issues I am considering using my MicroClient Sr. as a stand-alone MP3 player connected to my TV. Does anyone know of a cut down Linux distribution that is simply an MP3 player?

MicroClient Sr. – Sorting out the video driver

As I mentioned in my post on installing Xubuntu on the MicroClient, the default video driver that Xubuntu goes for is VESA. While this  at least works, screen re-drawing and animation can be painfully slow when the CPU is under heavy load.

The video chipset is the VIA CX700M, specifically the “3157″ integrated video processor. The best open source driver for this is from the OpenChrome project, but the release included with Xubuntu 7.10 is too old to include the driver for the specific chip in the MicroClient Sr. This means that I have to build the driver from source.

This can be done quite easily by following these instructions from the Ubuntu community documentation on OpenChrome. The steps required are outlined below.

• Make sure you have all necessary packages (subversion autoconf automake1.9 libtool).
• Grab the source code from the OpenChrome project.
• Run a script to automatically configure the code.
• MAKE and then MAKE INSTALL the driver.
• Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf to change the device driver from VESA to openchrome.
• Restart the X server by logging out of Xubuntu and then pressing CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE at the login prompt.

This worked fine for me and I now have a fully working X server/desktop with much smoother/better graphics action. Changing from VESA to openchrome drivers can improve frame rate by as much as 100%.

Now, the next thing to do is to install my printer which unfortunately requires the latest version of gutenprint…

MicroClient Sr. – Kernel Dump

As requested by pbunnun in the comments here is a kernel dump via dmesg from my MicroClient Sr. Hope this is of some use to someone out there.

[ 0.000000] Linux version 2.6.22-14-generic (buildd@terranova) (gcc version 4.1.3 20070929 (prerelease) (Ubuntu 4.1.2-16ubuntu2)) #1 SMP Tue Feb 12 07:42:25 UTC 2008 (Ubuntu 2.6.22-14.52-generic)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000000e0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000001bfc0000 (usable)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 000000001bfc0000 - 000000001bfce000 (ACPI data)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 000000001bfce000 - 000000001c000000 (ACPI NVS)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000fec00000 - 00000000fec01000 (reserved)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000fee00000 - 00000000fee01000 (reserved)
[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 00000000fff80000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
[ 0.000000] 0MB HIGHMEM available.
[ 0.000000] 447MB LOWMEM available.
[ 0.000000] found SMP MP-table at 000ff780
[ 0.000000] Entering add_active_range(0, 0, 114624) 0 entries of 256 used
[ 0.000000] Zone PFN ranges:
[ 0.000000] DMA 0 -> 4096
[ 0.000000] Normal 4096 -> 114624
[ 0.000000] HighMem 114624 -> 114624
[ 0.000000] early_node_map[1] active PFN ranges
[ 0.000000] 0: 0 -> 114624
[ 0.000000] On node 0 totalpages: 114624
[ 0.000000] DMA zone: 32 pages used for memmap
[ 0.000000] DMA zone: 0 pages reserved
[ 0.000000] DMA zone: 4064 pages, LIFO batch:0
[ 0.000000] Normal zone: 863 pages used for memmap
[ 0.000000] Normal zone: 109665 pages, LIFO batch:31
[ 0.000000] HighMem zone: 0 pages used for memmap
[ 0.000000] DMI present.
[ 0.000000] ACPI: RSDP signature @ 0xC00F9200 checksum 0
[ 0.000000] ACPI: RSDP 000F9200, 0014 (r0 ACPIAM)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: RSDT 1BFC0000, 0038 (r1 011008 RSDT1145 20080110 MSFT 97)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: FACP 1BFC0200, 0084 (r2 011008 FACP1145 20080110 MSFT 97)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: DSDT 1BFC0430, 3B00 (r1 1ADMY 1ADMY000 0 INTL 20051117)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: FACS 1BFCE000, 0040
[ 0.000000] ACPI: APIC 1BFC0390, 0054 (r1 011008 APIC1145 20080110 MSFT 97)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: MCFG 1BFC03F0, 003C (r1 011008 OEMMCFG 20080110 MSFT 97)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: OEMB 1BFCE040, 0071 (r1 011008 OEMB1145 20080110 MSFT 97)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: HPET 1BFC3F30, 0038 (r1 011008 VIA HPET 20080110 MSFT 97)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: PM-Timer IO Port: 0x808
[ 0.000000] ACPI: Local APIC address 0xfee00000
[ 0.000000] ACPI: LAPIC (acpi_id[0x01] lapic_id[0x00] enabled)
[ 0.000000] Processor #0 6:13 APIC version 20
[ 0.000000] ACPI: IOAPIC (id[0x01] address[0xfec00000] gsi_base[0])
[ 0.000000] IOAPIC[0]: apic_id 1, version 3, address 0xfec00000, GSI 0-23
[ 0.000000] ACPI: INT_SRC_OVR (bus 0 bus_irq 0 global_irq 2 dfl dfl)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: INT_SRC_OVR (bus 0 bus_irq 9 global_irq 9 low level)
[ 0.000000] ACPI: IRQ0 used by override.
[ 0.000000] ACPI: IRQ2 used by override.
[ 0.000000] ACPI: IRQ9 used by override.
[ 0.000000] Enabling APIC mode: Flat. Using 1 I/O APICs
[ 0.000000] ACPI: HPET id: 0x11068201 base: 0xfed00000
[ 0.000000] Using ACPI (MADT) for SMP configuration information
[ 0.000000] Allocating PCI resources starting at 20000000 (gap: 1c000000:e2c00000)
[ 0.000000] Built 1 zonelists. Total pages: 113729
[ 0.000000] Kernel command line: root=UUID=bd4a8b2d-0255-4ede-b912-eb915516c048 ro quiet splash
[ 0.000000] mapped APIC to ffffd000 (fee00000)
[ 0.000000] mapped IOAPIC to ffffc000 (fec00000)
[ 0.000000] Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
[ 0.000000] Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
[ 0.000000] Initializing CPU#0
[ 0.000000] PID hash table entries: 2048 (order: 11, 8192 bytes)
[ 0.000000] Detected 498.738 MHz processor.
[ 14.632449] Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
[ 14.633054] Dentry cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
[ 14.634487] Inode-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
[ 14.691768] Memory: 443020k/458496k available (2015k kernel code, 14916k reserved, 915k data, 364k init, 0k highmem)
[ 14.691835] virtual kernel memory layout:
[ 14.691843] fixmap : 0xfff4d000 - 0xfffff000 ( 712 kB)
[ 14.691853] pkmap : 0xff800000 - 0xffc00000 (4096 kB)
[ 14.691863] vmalloc : 0xdc800000 - 0xff7fe000 ( 559 MB)
[ 14.691873] lowmem : 0xc0000000 - 0xdbfc0000 ( 447 MB)
[ 14.691883] .init : 0xc03e3000 - 0xc043e000 ( 364 kB)
[ 14.691892] .data : 0xc02f7e86 - 0xc03dce84 ( 915 kB)
[ 14.691902] .text : 0xc0100000 - 0xc02f7e86 (2015 kB)
[ 14.691925] Checking if this processor honours the WP bit even in supervisor mode... Ok.
[ 14.692124] SLUB: Genslabs=22, HWalign=64, Order=0-1, MinObjects=4, CPUs=1, Nodes=1
[ 14.692585] HPET counter not counting. HPET disabled
[ 14.772638] Calibrating delay using timer specific routine.. 998.66 BogoMIPS (lpj=1997338)
[ 14.772732] Security Framework v1.0.0 initialized
[ 14.772757] SELinux: Disabled at boot.
[ 14.772853] Mount-cache hash table entries: 512
[ 14.773269] CPU: After generic identify, caps: a7c9bbff 00100000 00000000 00000000 00004181 00000000 00000000
[ 14.773319] CPU: L1 I Cache: 64K (64 bytes/line), D cache 64K (64 bytes/line)
[ 14.773337] CPU: L2 Cache: 128K (64 bytes/line)
[ 14.773350] CPU: After all inits, caps: 27c9bbff 00100000 00000000 00000000 00004181 0000ffcc 00000000
[ 14.773396] Compat vDSO mapped to ffffe000.
[ 14.773444] Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
[ 14.789219] SMP alternatives: switching to UP code
[ 14.790244] Freeing SMP alternatives: 11k freed
[ 14.791699] Early unpacking initramfs... done
[ 16.955091] ACPI: Core revision 20070126
[ 16.955370] ACPI: Looking for DSDT in initramfs... error, file /DSDT.aml not found.
[ 16.966443] CPU0: Centaur VIA Eden Processor 500MHz stepping 00
[ 16.966542] Total of 1 processors activated (998.66 BogoMIPS).
[ 16.966752] ENABLING IO-APIC IRQs
[ 16.967069] ..TIMER: vector=0x31 apic1=0 pin1=2 apic2=-1 pin2=-1
[ 17.112785] Brought up 1 CPUs
[ 17.113217] Booting paravirtualized kernel on bare hardware
[ 17.113397] Time: 7:57:28 Date: 02/04/108
[ 17.113483] NET: Registered protocol family 16
[ 17.113786] EISA bus registered
[ 17.113819] ACPI: bus type pci registered
[ 17.114345] PCI: PCI BIOS revision 3.00 entry at 0xf0031, last bus=2
[ 17.114361] PCI: Using configuration type 1
[ 17.114373] Setting up standard PCI resources
[ 17.140276] ACPI: EC: Look up EC in DSDT
[ 17.165329] ACPI: Interpreter enabled
[ 17.165346] ACPI: (supports S0 S1 S3 S4 S5)
[ 17.165436] ACPI: Using IOAPIC for interrupt routing
[ 17.166311] Error attaching device data
[ 17.197448] ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (0000:00)
[ 17.197500] PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
[ 17.199187] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [_SB_.PCI0._PRT]
[ 17.200087] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [_SB_.PCI0.P0P1._PRT]
[ 17.200588] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [_SB_.PCI0.P0P2._PRT]
[ 17.243723] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 *10 11 12 14 15)
[ 17.244341] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKB] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 10 *11 12 14 15)
[ 17.244966] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKC] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 10 11 12 14 15) *0, disabled.
[ 17.245577] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKD] (IRQs 3 4 *5 6 7 10 11 12 14 15)
[ 17.246181] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKE] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 10 11 12 14 15) *0, disabled.
[ 17.246790] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKF] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 10 11 12 14 15) *0, disabled.
[ 17.247398] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKG] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 10 11 12 14 15) *0, disabled.
[ 17.248006] ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKH] (IRQs 3 4 5 6 7 10 11 12 14 15) *0, disabled.
[ 17.248404] Linux Plug and Play Support v0.97 (c) Adam Belay
[ 17.248452] pnp: PnP ACPI init
[ 17.248506] ACPI: bus type pnp registered
[ 17.265102] pnp: PnP ACPI: found 11 devices
[ 17.265119] ACPI: ACPI bus type pnp unregistered
[ 17.265140] PnPBIOS: Disabled by ACPI PNP
[ 17.265349] PCI: Using ACPI for IRQ routing
[ 17.265368] PCI: If a device doesn't work, try "pci=routeirq". If it helps, post a report
[ 17.272944] NET: Registered protocol family 8
[ 17.272957] NET: Registered protocol family 20
[ 17.273240] pnp: 00:05: ioport range 0xa60-0xa61 has been reserved
[ 17.273261] pnp: 00:05: ioport range 0xa00-0xa0f has been reserved
[ 17.273280] pnp: 00:05: ioport range 0xa20-0xa2f has been reserved
[ 17.273299] pnp: 00:05: ioport range 0xa10-0xa1f has been reserved
[ 17.273318] pnp: 00:05: ioport range 0xa30-0xa3f has been reserved
[ 17.273337] pnp: 00:05: ioport range 0xa40-0xa4f has been reserved
[ 17.273357] pnp: 00:05: ioport range 0xa50-0xa5f has been reserved
[ 17.273405] pnp: 00:08: iomem range 0xfec00000-0xfec00fff could not be reserved
[ 17.273428] pnp: 00:08: iomem range 0xfee00000-0xfee00fff could not be reserved
[ 17.273460] pnp: 00:09: iomem range 0xe0000000-0xefffffff has been reserved
[ 17.273492] pnp: 00:0a: iomem range 0x0-0x9ffff could not be reserved
[ 17.273512] pnp: 00:0a: iomem range 0xc0000-0xcffff could not be reserved
[ 17.273533] pnp: 00:0a: iomem range 0xe0000-0xfffff could not be reserved
[ 17.273554] pnp: 00:0a: iomem range 0x100000-0x1bffffff could not be reserved
[ 17.276650] Time: tsc clocksource has been installed.
[ 17.304704] PCI: Bridge: 0000:00:01.0
[ 17.304715] IO window: disabled.
[ 17.304733] MEM window: fd000000-feafffff
[ 17.304751] PREFETCH window: c0000000-dfffffff
[ 17.304769] PCI: Bridge: 0000:00:13.0
[ 17.304779] IO window: disabled.
[ 17.304797] MEM window: feb00000-febfffff
[ 17.304810] PREFETCH window: disabled.
[ 17.304855] PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:01.0 to 64
[ 17.304879] PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:13.0 to 64
[ 17.304942] NET: Registered protocol family 2
[ 17.344799] IP route cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
[ 17.344998] TCP established hash table entries: 16384 (order: 5, 196608 bytes)
[ 17.345933] TCP bind hash table entries: 16384 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
[ 17.346549] TCP: Hash tables configured (established 16384 bind 16384)
[ 17.346565] TCP reno registered
[ 17.357271] checking if image is initramfs...<6>Switched to high resolution mode on CPU 0
[ 19.440601] it is
[ 21.628664] Freeing initrd memory: 7058k freed
[ 21.629666] audit: initializing netlink socket (disabled)
[ 21.629710] audit(1204617451.480:1): initialized
[ 21.639405] VFS: Disk quotas dquot_6.5.1
[ 21.639680] Dquot-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order 0, 4096 bytes)
[ 21.640095] io scheduler noop registered
[ 21.640108] io scheduler anticipatory registered
[ 21.640122] io scheduler deadline registered
[ 21.640238] io scheduler cfq registered (default)
[ 21.640297] PCI: VIA PCI bridge detected. Disabling DAC.
[ 21.640403] Boot video device is 0000:01:00.0
[ 21.640987] isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
[ 21.995492] isapnp: No Plug & Play device found
[ 22.138143] Real Time Clock Driver v1.12ac
[ 22.138704] hpet_acpi_add: no address or irqs in _CRS
[ 22.138783] Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision: 1.90 $ 4 ports, IRQ sharing enabled
[ 22.144159] RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 65536K size 1024 blocksize
[ 22.144717] input: Macintosh mouse button emulation as /class/input/input0
[ 22.145160] PNP: No PS/2 controller found. Probing ports directly.
[ 22.145648] serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60,0x64 irq 1
[ 22.145689] serio: i8042 AUX port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12
[ 22.146310] mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
[ 22.146698] EISA: Probing bus 0 at eisa.0
[ 22.146798] EISA: Detected 0 cards.
[ 22.147354] TCP cubic registered
[ 22.147416] NET: Registered protocol family 1
[ 22.147529] Using IPI No-Shortcut mode
[ 22.148370] Magic number: 0:463:975
[ 22.148446] hash matches device ttyc2
[ 22.148979] hash matches device PNP0C0E:00
[ 22.149891] Freeing unused kernel memory: 364k freed
[ 24.401191] AppArmor: AppArmor initialized<5>audit(1204617454.480:2): type=1505 info="AppArmor initialized" pid=1114
[ 24.452078] fuse init (API version 7.8)
[ 24.474648] Failure registering capabilities with primary security module.
[ 28.327602] 8139too Fast Ethernet driver 0.9.28
[ 28.327752] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:08.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
[ 28.328260] eth0: RealTek RTL8139 at 0xdc83cc00, 44:4d:50:09:07:a7, IRQ 16
[ 28.328276] eth0: Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8100B/8139D'
[ 28.352254] 8139cp: 10/100 PCI Ethernet driver v1.3 (Mar 22, 2004)
[ 28.381402] SCSI subsystem initialized
[ 28.409940] libata version 2.21 loaded.
[ 28.440732] Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2
[ 28.440757] ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
[ 28.443445] VP_IDE: IDE controller at PCI slot 0000:00:0f.0
[ 28.443506] VP_IDE: chipset revision 0
[ 28.443520] VP_IDE: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
[ 28.443549] VP_IDE: VIA cx700 (rev 00) IDE UDMA133 controller on pci0000:00:0f.0
[ 28.443576] ide0: BM-DMA at 0xfc00-0xfc07, BIOS settings: hda:pio, hdb:pio
[ 28.443615] ide1: BM-DMA at 0xfc08-0xfc0f, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:pio
[ 28.443648] Probing IDE interface ide0...
[ 28.478086] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbfs
[ 28.478177] usbcore: registered new interface driver hub
[ 28.478264] usbcore: registered new device driver usb
[ 28.482759] USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver v3.0
[ 29.010872] Probing IDE interface ide1...
[ 29.426883] hdc: SanDisk SDCFH-4096, CFA DISK drive
[ 30.098885] ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
[ 30.101288] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:10.0[A] -> GSI 20 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
[ 30.101335] uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.0: UHCI Host Controller
[ 30.102575] uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
[ 30.102658] uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.0: irq 17, io base 0x0000ec00
[ 30.104580] usb usb1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 30.105267] hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found
[ 30.105301] hub 1-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
[ 30.135228] hdc: max request size: 128KiB
[ 30.135250] hdc: 8027712 sectors (4110 MB) w/1KiB Cache, CHS=7964/16/63, DMA
[ 30.135409] hdc: hdc1 hdc2
[ 30.207178] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:10.1[B] -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
[ 30.207224] uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.1: UHCI Host Controller
[ 30.207324] uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
[ 30.207388] uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.1: irq 18, io base 0x0000e480
[ 30.207837] usb usb2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 30.207963] hub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found
[ 30.207992] hub 2-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
[ 30.311471] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:10.4[D] -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 19
[ 30.311518] ehci_hcd 0000:00:10.4: EHCI Host Controller
[ 30.311628] ehci_hcd 0000:00:10.4: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3
[ 30.311748] ehci_hcd 0000:00:10.4: debug port 1
[ 30.311789] ehci_hcd 0000:00:10.4: irq 19, io mem 0xfcfff800
[ 30.311814] ehci_hcd 0000:00:10.4: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00, driver 10 Dec 2004
[ 30.312205] usb usb3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 30.312330] hub 3-0:1.0: USB hub found
[ 30.312360] hub 3-0:1.0: 4 ports detected
[ 30.728131] Attempting manual resume
[ 30.728150] swsusp: Resume From Partition 22:2
[ 30.728163] PM: Checking swsusp image.
[ 30.729142] PM: Resume from disk failed.
[ 30.813296] kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
[ 30.813341] EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
[ 31.454567] usb 1-1: new low speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2
[ 31.632108] usb 1-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 31.874441] usb 2-1: new low speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2
[ 32.049773] usb 2-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 46.690317] Linux agpgart interface v0.102 (c) Dave Jones
[ 46.763255] agpgart: Detected VIA CX700 chipset
[ 46.776469] agpgart: AGP aperture is 128M @ 0xf0000000
[ 52.761396] input: PC Speaker as /class/input/input1
[ 52.774413] pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
[ 52.784319] shpchp: Standard Hot Plug PCI Controller Driver version: 0.4
[ 56.633817] usbcore: registered new interface driver hiddev
[ 56.652696] input: NOVATEK USB Keyboard as /class/input/input2
[ 56.652869] input: USB HID v1.10 Keyboard [NOVATEK USB Keyboard] on usb-0000:00:10.0-1
[ 56.759220] input: NOVATEK USB Keyboard as /class/input/input3
[ 56.759627] input,hiddev96: USB HID v1.10 Device [NOVATEK USB Keyboard] on usb-0000:00:10.0-1
[ 56.868470] input: Logitech USB Receiver as /class/input/input4
[ 56.868755] input: USB HID v1.11 Mouse [Logitech USB Receiver] on usb-0000:00:10.1-1
[ 56.868823] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbhid
[ 56.868845] /build/buildd/linux-source-2.6.22-2.6.22/drivers/hid/usbhid/hid-core.c: v2.6:USB HID core driver
[ 56.876843] usbcore: registered new interface driver xpad
[ 56.876869] /build/buildd/linux-source-2.6.22-2.6.22/drivers/input/joystick/xpad.c: driver for Xbox controllers v0.1.6
[ 57.769172] usbcore: registered new interface driver lmpcm_usb
[ 57.769200] /build/buildd/linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.22-2.6.22/debian/build/build-generic/misc/lmpcm_usb.c: v0.5.5:USB Logitech MediaPlay Cordless Mouse driver
[ 59.565102] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:01.0[A] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 20
[ 59.565187] PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:02:01.0 to 64
[ 61.236809] lp: driver loaded but no devices found
[ 61.373326] Adding 586364k swap on /dev/hdc2. Priority:-1 extents:1 across:586364k
[ 61.679413] EXT3 FS on hdc1, internal journal
[ 65.571532] No dock devices found.
[ 65.921547] input: Power Button (FF) as /class/input/input5
[ 65.922553] ACPI: Power Button (FF) [PWRF]
[ 65.953544] input: Sleep Button (CM) as /class/input/input6
[ 65.954573] ACPI: Sleep Button (CM) [SLPB]
[ 65.969548] input: Power Button (CM) as /class/input/input7
[ 65.970656] ACPI: Power Button (CM) [PWRB]
[ 74.969766] ppdev: user-space parallel port driver
[ 75.919913] eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x41E1
[ 76.197107] audit(1204617506.720:3): type=1503 operation="inode_permission" requested_mask="a" denied_mask="a" name="/dev/tty" pid=4505 profile="/usr/sbin/cupsd"
[ 76.418875] apm: BIOS version 1.2 Flags 0x03 (Driver version 1.16ac)
[ 76.418900] apm: overridden by ACPI.
[ 77.993203] Failure registering capabilities with primary security module.
[ 85.547184] NET: Registered protocol family 17
[ 125.836990] NET: Registered protocol family 10
[ 125.837795] lo: Disabled Privacy Extensions
[ 136.387193] eth0: no IPv6 routers present

Cheers,

Graham

The MicroClient Sr. CPU – VIA Eden ULV Processor

Just a quick post with a little in depth information about the CPU in the MicroClient Sr.

The CPU is made by VIA and is from the Eden ULV family. ULV stands for Ultra Low Voltage. The clock speed is 500MHz with a Front Side Bus (FSB) speed of 400MHz. Power consumption is extremely low at only 1W! The Level 2 (L2) cache is 128kb and the CPU also has support for SSE2 and the advanced SSE3 multimedia 3D instruction sets.

You can read more about it in detail here.

Installing Xubuntu 7.10 on the Norhtec MicroClient Sr.

So for the last couple of days I have been preparing and installing Xubuntu 7.10 on my MicroClient Sr.

I had a similar idea to Nicolas314 over on the forum in that I planned to install by using a USB key, because the MicroClient doesn’t have an optical drive. The basic idea of this process is that (using another computer) you make your USB key bootable by using SYSLINUX, and then copy the contents of the Xubuntu install CD to the USB key. The MicroClient then boots from the prepared USB key in the same way as the standard Live CD install. Once the desktop is reached the installation to Compact Flash/Hard Drive can proceed as usual.

My experience of this process went as follows (using my desktop PC running Ubuntu 7.04 and a 2Gb generic USB 2.0 key):

• I decided to follow the instructions on this process in the Ubuntu documentation – Installing Ubuntu from a Flash Drive.
• I tried to use the automatic preparation script (“Preparing the Flash Drive using isostick.sh”) but this failed to produce a bootable USB key, so I decided to try the manual method (“Preparing the Flash Drive manually”).
• I installed the syslinux and mtools packages as instructed and the ran syslinux on the USB key. A file called ldlinux.sys was created on the USB key.
• I then copied all of the files from the Xubuntu 7.10 Live CD to the USB key.
• All files from the directories “isolinux” and “install”were then copied to the USB key root directory, along with files “vmlinuz” and “initrd.gz” from the “casper” directory.
• I ignored the next step in the instructions because I couldn’t find the necessary directories to rename (“Move dapper to stable”).
• I then renamed the file “isolinux.cfg” to “syslinux.cfg”.This was then edited using gedit as described in the instructions.
• I then removed the USB key from my desktop PC and plugged it into the MicroClient Sr.
• If you are planning to install to a Compact Flash card (like me), you may need to go into the BIOS of the MicroClient and set the boot order. I think the way that the USB key is set-up by SYSLINUX means that it gets detected as a hard drive rather than as a removable drive. I think this also depends on the capacity of the USB key (big ones >1Gb? get detected as hard drives.
• Set the BIOS to boot first from the USB key and then restart. The usual Live CD boot process should now take place.
• Once the Xubuntu desktop is reached, start the install process, selecting the appropriate Compact Flash/Hard Drive for installation.
• When the installation finishes (takes about 30 minutes or so), restart the MicroClient, remove the USB key, set the boot order to be Compact Flash/Hard Drive first, and restart. The MicroClient will now boot into Xubuntu!

The next thing I did once Xubuntu was up and running was to install the updates from the repositories. There were 140Mb of updates to be added. The download was painless and fast (8Mbit ADSL) but the install of the updates was quite slow, taking about 45 minutes.

After a restart (kernel updates?), I decided to look at the video drivers. Xubuntu had decided to use the VESA generic drivers which meant that display and video were a little slow and messy. The MicroClient Sr. has the VIA CX700M video chipset. The drivers for this are Unichrome II (I think), so the open source version of these is the Openchrome project. According to the site, ubuntu has a package (xserver-xorg-video-openchrome) for these drivers which I installed.

This is where things went wrong.

While installing the openchrome package, apt said that it would remove 2 other packages (xserver-xorg-video-all and xserver-xorg-video-via I think…). I said OK. After apt had finished I went to the Display settings and changed the driver to the openchrome one. Bad move! I restarted and Xubuntu immediately said there was a problem, asking me to change the driver. I did so (back to VESA) but the desktop came up severely distorted. I tried rebooting into failsafe mode and removing the openchrom package but this didn’t make any difference. Eventually I elected to simply re-install Xubuntu from USB again!

I now have a functioning system again, using the VESA video drivers. A re-think on that particular part is required…

Using the Xubuntu desktop on the MicroClient is fine for most tasks like web browsing, word processing etc. I can imagine things might get a little slow if you try and multi-task while playing video or doing image editing, but other than that it is fine.

Will post more when I have explored some more…

First Photos of Norhtec MicroClient Sr.

Here are some photos of my MicroClient Sr. as I took it out of the box for the first time!


| View Show | Create Your Own

Cheers.

It’s Here!

I finally got my MicroClient yesterday! Woohoo!

My first impressions are that it is so much smaller than I imagined it would be. I have taken some pictures (that I will upload later). So far, all I have done is turn it on and have a poke around in the BIOS. I will probably have a more serious play tomorrow (Sunday), when I will try and install Xubuntu.

Cheers

MicroClient Forum

If you are like me, and are interested in or have purchased the Norhtec MicroClient then you may be interested in the MicroClient Fans discussion forum run by Nicolas314, as he suggests in this comment. Nicolas314 is part of a group of French MicroClient enthusiasts who have placed a bulk order with Norhtec.

I suggest that everyone who is interested in the MicroClient sign up to his forum so that we have the largest possible number of people to provide help and advice to each other. As I mentioned previously, I think a forum is the best way for people to communicate ideas and information about this sort of thing. I have placed links to the forum (and associated wiki) in the blogroll (right)

Also, I should be receiving my MicroClient today! A delivery attempt was made yesterday by DHL but I was not in at the time. Another delivery attempt is scheduled for today and I am waiting patiently…

Cheers