FatDog64-812 on Chromebook

[stemsee]

Just briefly relating my installation of fatdog on Acer 714 Chromebook.

This Acer 714 i3 is all aluminium, slim, long battery life, touchscreen, backlit keyboard, lightweight laptop, with fullhd screen.

Firstly I installed the firmware from Mrchromebox while runnig chromeos which is installed on the mmcblk internal device. Basically you put the device into developer mode, following mrchromebox guides. Then using the main underlying terminal, not the emulated one, you download a script which installs the firmware updater through a menu. After rebooting you can select a boot device. There are two options for firmware, one is the full efi firmware which replaces chromeos and requires unlocking hardwre protection. Or using the cutdown firmware which is kind of temporary but allows dual booting with chromeos. Which is what I have, and it's fine.

I dual boot with linux using syslinux installed via cli to the first partition which is fat32 of a usb-c ssd. I now know that syslinux can be installed to linux partitions also, which i will try at some point. I like the simple syslinux.conf way of organising boot options, in my case I have three different custom kernels for fatdog, plus fossadog and fossapup distros frugally installed on the ssd.

The kernel I am presently using is 5.2.21-rt which I compiled in sukk on the chromebook in fatdog. I also have available 5.13.3 and 5.16.2.

So in the beginning I didn't have sound working. hdmi was available but I never tried it. I had to update UCM, and blacklist snd_hda_intel to get the internal audio working. To date I only have the internal speakers working, not the headphone socket or mic. But that maybe a matter of getting the settings right on the kblda7219max intel skylake soundcard.

The webcam works perfectly and is great. Backlit keyboard worked with sending level directly to /sys/leds/* with a yad script. Screen backlight is the same. Volume also. Wifi worked from the get go. Booting from usb-c and usb 3 is fine. I can run a portable fullhd display from one of the two usb-c sockets, but I have not yet heard sound when selecting hdmi 1, 2 or 3 through the speakers of the ext. display.

Last night I had another go at touchscreen. After boot running dmesg i see elan_i2c touchpad, and raydium_i2c devices. The raydium is the touchscreen which works on chromeos of course but didn't on linux. It seem to not get power during boot. After lots of research and trial and error, including recompiling kernels and stealing firmware from chromeos, searching endless forums and trying out various solutions, I finally got it working, and all I needed to do was blacklist elants_i2c, which was my own solution after thinking there are too many possible modules loaded for one device. Running google-chrome browser, which handles touch directly I have pinch to zoom and right click menu. In openbox I cannot force the wacom driver to be adopted so there is no two finger right click, but two finger operation is there as I can keep one finger controlling cursor, and also touch the menu which opens without cursor moving. So maybe another windowmanager will be ok. Otherwise I will try to implement Tazoc's long press for right-click from Lighthouse64.

There is a problem with suspend when closing the lid it simply reboots. But I will figure that out eventually.

So, I highly recommend this budget friendly premium feel Acer 714. Long battery life, stable wifi and bluetooth, excellent camera, thin side bezels, and superb backlit keyboard, incredbile glass multi-touchpad with three buttons.

stemsee

[jamesbond]

Interesting. But for A$1670 it's not cheap (source: https://au.pcmag.com/netbooks/63543/acer-chromebook-714). I can get better machines at that price.

[stemsee]

Acer 714 cost me 300 british pounds. I bought it off of eBay and it was sent from Germany, so I knew it would be perfect, nearly new in fact. I have seen them go for as little as 220. Mine is core i3 813OU and no fingerprint reader, 4gb ram and 64gb eMMC. I think it is an earlier version.

The better option is the 713, but it may be difficult to get the most recent ones, as it gets updated yearly. 715 is also nice.

[bigpup]

May want to look at this topic:
viewtopic.php?t=431

Any info you can post in this topic to help others.
Thank you!

[stemsee]

I used the usb-boot-gpt.img which I DDed onto the internal emmc of my Acer 714 Chromebook. Replacing Chromeos, it boots fine.

[stemsee]

Interesting. But for A$1670 it's not cheap (source: https://au.pcmag.com/netbooks/63543/acer-chromebook-714). I can get better machines at that price.

These are frequently selling for 125 british pounds on uk ebay. I just got an i5 8gb ram 128gb ssd, fingerprint sensor for 110 british pounds! And I have since seen others. Fatdog is the only distro I have so far used that has working touchscreen and sound as well as everything else. I will soon see how the fingerprint reader gets on or not.

stemsee

[bigpup]

People buy these ChromeBooks and find out that Chrome OS is not Windows OS.
When they find out that it is very restrictive on where you can get added software and other restrictions of Chrome OS.
It is usually too late to return them.
So only option is to try and sale it on E-Bay.

I got my ChromeBook as an open box item returned to the store.
It was priced almost half the original new item price.
I think all the person did was turn it on and decided no way am I going to use this thing with Chrome OS

[stemsee]

On my Acer touchscreen which uses raydium_i2c_ts driver I have two finger touch, but not twofinger = rightclick on the desktop or most programs except chrome and opera browsers, which handle touch directly providing gestures and rightclick actions. With openbox I can touch and hold a title bar of an open window and continuously move it around with cursor under finger, while simultaneously use another finger to touch the panel items, volume, open app title bars in activity monitor section, menu items with smooth up and down scrolling. The initial window is then moved into the background but continues, while the foreground item independently without cursor, functioning and remaining on top even if i remove my finger (the menu stays open with the other touched item moving according to the finger under the menu) and I can resume touch activity in the open menu. Yad tray notification works with one finger on screen, but not as a second touch point. I made a one line script xdotool click 3 and dragged the script to a new launcher section on the panel. So with one finger touching the desktop, cursor underneath, and another finger tap the script icon on the panel I get right click menu opening at cursor location. However touching the panel items first means you cannot touch another panel item or a desktop item with another finger.

So it seems that I have two active touch points. The first controls the cursor, while the second is a true touchpoint with no touchpoint graphic showing. So with openbox, the panels accept the second touchpoint as another mouse and tap to left click. Normally you would need custom x driver or server installed. What backend creates the panel in fatdog?

Any ideas how to exploit this further?

[stemsee]

Quick update .... I just got the inbuilt stereo microphones working with high quality, I also got the headset microphone working too. Just fiddling around with alsaamixer settings ... but alsactl store throws up an error! So I need to write a script with xdotool to throw the switches.

[stemsee]

And now I just got the headphones working, and fd volume control in tray is now setup to control 'Playback Digital'. Also wrote four yad slider widgets with mute for mics and headphone and master, using 'amixer set'. So on this Acer 714 core i5 'nami' chromebook everything is working with my 5.2.21-rt15 kernel. But I lost the kernel sources and even using the same config I have not been able to reproduce the same compile!!

[stemsee]

I can now close the lid, which turns screen brightness to 0, and everything still runs, music etc. Previously the laptop would reboot rudely!

I have also added boot arguments to enable suspend and resume! I'm going to test it soon ... !

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#!/bin/sh
ID=$(cat /proc/acpi/wakeup | grep LID | cut -f2,3 -d':')
echo "$ID" | tee /sys/bus/acpi/drivers/button/unbind

boot

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linux /vmlinuz add_efi_memmap boot=local noresume noswap i915.modeset=1 tpm_tis.force=1 tpm_tis.interrupts=0 nmi_watchdog=panic,lapic

EDIT: this boot argument didn'T work on my chromebook. In fact I am able to suspend, the problem is waking instead of rebooting.

[stemsee]

sound settings using amixer for mics and headphones and speakers, these are just the ones which are not already activated.

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh

 amixer set Headphone unmute 2>/dev/null 
 amixer set Mic unmute 2>/dev/null 
 amixer set 'Playback Digital' unmute 2>/dev/null
 amixer set 'Capture Digital' unmute 2>/dev/null
 amixer set Mixin unmute 2>/dev/null
 amixer set 'Mixer In Mic' unmute 2>/dev/null
 amixer set 'Mixer Out FilterL DACL' unmute 2>/dev/null
 amixer set 'Mixer Out FilterR DACR' unmute 2>/dev/null
 amixer set 'codec0_out mo media0_in mi' unmute 2>/dev/null
 amixer set 'codec1_out mo media0_in mi' unmute 2>/dev/null

 amixer set Headphone 80% 2>/dev/null
 amixer set Mic 80% 2>/dev/null
 amixer set 'Playback Digital' 80% 2>/dev/null
 amixer set 'Capture Digital' 80% 2>/dev/null
 amixer set Mixin 80% 2>/dev/null

[dr__Dan]

And now I just got the headphones working, and fd volume control in tray is now setup to control 'Playback Digital'. Also wrote four yad slider widgets with mute for mics and headphone and master, using 'amixer set'.

That sounds handy. I don't have your situation, but something like that could be useful for me. Would you post one or more that I could examine? Thank you.

Dan

[stemsee]

camino=/root/.config/snapp ; track=/tmp/snapp ... for reference
line is the output of the yad scale.
use `amixer scontrols` to get your cards control labels....

Code: Select all

function volumefn {
card=$(amixer -D default scontrols | head -1 | cut -f2 -d"'") # defines default card
export card=$(echo -e \'$card\') # formats for amixer
export Vol=$(amixer -M get 'Playback Digital' | awk -v FS="[[%]" '/%/ {print $2}') # reads current setting
[[ -z "$Vol" ]] && export Vol=$(cat /root/.config/snapp/settings/volume) # if no setting found get user saved setting
amixer sset 'Playback Digital' ${Vol}% # set level so the slider is positioned correspondingly
yad --title="Master Volume" --mouse --geometry="400x50" \
--button="Mute":"amixer set 'Playback Digital' toggle" --on-top --window-icon="$camino/icons/speaker.png" --scale --print-partial \
--value="$Vol" | while read line; do amixer set 'Playback Digital' ${line}% ; sleep 0.01; echo "$line" > /root/.config/snapp/settings/volume; done & # yad gui with scale slider and mute 'toggle' button on/off off/on, user save setting etc
}; export -f volumefn

Code: Select all

function volmicfn {
card=$(amixer -D default scontrols | head -1 | cut -f2 -d"'")
export card=$(echo -e \'$card\')
export Vol=$(amixer -M get 'Capture Digital' | awk -v FS="[[%]" '/%/ {print $2}')
[[ -z "$Vol" ]] && export Vol=$(cat /root/.config/snapp/settings/Micvolume)
amixer sset 'Capture Digital' ${Vol}%
yad --title="Mics Volume" --mouse --geometry="400x50" \
--button="Mute":"amixer set 'Capture Digital' toggle" --on-top --window-icon="$camino/icons/speaker.png" --scale --print-partial \
--value="$Vol" | while read line; do amixer set 'Capture Digital' ${line}% ; sleep 0.01; echo "$line" > /root/.config/snapp/settings/Micvolume; done & 
}; export -f volmicfn

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function volheadphonesfn {
card=$(amixer -D default scontrols | head -1 | cut -f2 -d"'")
export card=$(echo -e \'$card\')
export Vol=$(amixer -M get Headphone | awk -v FS="[[%]" '/%/ {print $2}')
[[ -z "$Vol" ]] && export Vol=$(cat /root/.config/snapp/settings/headvolume)
amixer sset Headphone ${Vol}%
(
yad --title="Headphone Volume" --mouse --geometry="400x50" \
 --button="Mute":"bash -c 'amixer set Headphone toggle'" --on-top --window-icon="$camino/icons/speaker.png" --scale --print-partial \
--value="$Vol" | while read line; do amixer set 'Headphone' ${line}% ; sleep 0.01; echo "$line" > /root/.config/snapp/settings/headvolume; done ) & 
}; export -f volheadphonesfn

Code: Select all

function volheadmicfn {
card=$(amixer -D default scontrols | head -1 | cut -f2 -d"'")
export card=$(echo -e \'$card\')
export Vol=$(amixer -M get Mic | awk -v FS="[[%]" '/%/ {print $2}')
[[ -z "$Vol" ]] && export Vol=$(cat /root/.config/snapp/settings/hmicvolume)
amixer set Mic ${Vol}%
yad --title="Mic Volume" --mouse --geometry="400x50" \
--button="Mute":"bash -c 'amixer set Mic toggle'" --on-top --window-icon="$camino/icons/mic.png" --scale --print-partial \
--value="$Vol" | while read line; do amixer set 'Mic' ${line}% ; sleep 0.01; echo "$line" > /root/.config/snapp/settings/hmicvolume; done & 
}; export -f volheadmicfn