tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2445397573372647382011-12-30T09:23:25.370-08:00This week, I decided to reinstall my EeePC 4G from scratch. So I have started this blog to record all the customizations and hacks I will be doing on my EeePC.albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.comBlogger331100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-9356113809768907452009-11-15T03:15:00.000-08:002009-11-15T03:58:32.478-08:00

Last weekend, after I completed the installation of win2k, I found that I can not connect to the Internet. This is kind of strange because the same EeePC, with the same LAN cable, can connect to my router with automatic settings. I checked in Device Manager that the LAN card driver was properly installed and win2k is reporting that it is running without problem.This weekend, my sister came to

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-91123190106980635292009-11-14T06:35:00.000-08:002009-11-14T07:40:53.933-08:00

Recently I have bought a PDA phone HTC Hero which is running the Google Android platform 1.5. Although this system is Linux based, I found that there is no root access and is lacking some basic commands to hack the system in a teminal. After googling for a day, I found that I need to install the Android SDK to flash and downgrade the ROM to get root access. And one of the system requirements to

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-65038475978268537532009-11-08T04:03:00.000-08:002009-11-08T05:09:40.321-08:00

After waiting for more than 2 years, finally I got win2k installed to my EeePC 4G this weekend.This has been a long story. Since I bought my EeePC 4G in Oct 2007, I have been thinking about dual boot Windows and Linux in my EeePC. But due to the limitation of disk space with the 4GB SSD, the idea was to boot either one of them from USB.Initially, I wanted to boot win2k from USB because I expect

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-42523591477106939872009-10-18T07:10:00.000-07:002009-10-18T08:46:54.526-07:00

After waiting for almost 3 months, I have finally received the 16 GB Asus Phison SSD my brother had promised to send me (together with a 1GB DDRII RAM). These are the remains after my brother had upgraded the 16 GB SSD of his 901 to a 64 GB Patriot SSD, and RAM to 2 GB.I have been reading in the EeeUser Forum that default Xandros of EeePC 4G is not compatible with a 2nd SSD. But out of my

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-76260349050065062622009-07-27T08:07:00.000-07:002009-07-27T08:38:23.236-07:00

Many people have complained about this problem that after applying the printer update from Asus, File Manager will close automatically when you right click a file or directory to view its properties.I have also experienced this problem on the EeePC Linux I have installed to my desktop since I updated it from 701 4G to version 1.6. I have not paid much attention to it before but due to certain

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-56650808721434215442009-07-13T06:28:00.000-07:002009-07-13T07:52:21.632-07:00

From time to time, I will receive emails with *.docx attachment which is only supported by openoffice3 but not the openoffice 2.x that comes pre-installed in EeePC. So there is the need for me to upgrade to openoffice3.Upgrading to openoffice.org3 requires an extra 381MB disk space because by nature of the union filesystem, files of the factory installed version are in the read-only partition

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-83566170735060600082009-07-04T19:35:00.000-07:002009-08-15T23:39:40.976-07:00

(Cont'd from Uninstall Program from the Read-only Partition - 1st test)Yesterday, I have completed the backup and restore scripts and run a 2nd test uninstalling programs from an again newly restored EeePC Linux 900. This time, after I installed some extra programs (for test purpose only to put something into sda2), I only uninstalled the factory installed openoffice.org packages from the read

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-45567439032897598232009-07-03T04:14:00.000-07:002009-08-15T23:45:38.862-07:00

Yesterday, I have started my 1st (and successful) test run of uninstalling programs from the read-only partition of EeePC Linux as a continuation of my Restore from USB to minimal EeePC Linux approach.I have done this test with a 900 iso restored from USB. For testing purpose, I upgraded a few programs with "Add/Remove Software" so as to create something in the USER partition (sda2). Then I

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-36652780725203079742009-06-24T21:37:00.000-07:002009-08-16T00:01:08.192-07:00

(cont'd from: Part V: Yet another test with 1.6 French iso)My Last Tests with 900 and 1000H isoIn the past 2 weeks, I have been testing out the different scenarios, including with the 1000H iso and 900 iso. Now, all known bugs have been fixed and all conditions tested and verified working.I have also broken down the "extra.sh" script into separate scripts (extra*.sh) for each extra job. This

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-56024994499409284202009-06-18T06:57:00.000-07:002009-08-16T00:03:22.145-07:00

(cont'd from Part IV: 2nd Test restoring to minimal with 1.6.1 701 en iso)One more test again tonight, with the 1.6 French iso. The approach is basically the same. Only difference is I need to modify the "extra.sh" script to automatically change the line "DefaultLanguage=fr_FR" to "DefaultLanguage=en_US", and also edit /etc/apt/sources. list to change the line with "fr-channel" to "en". Here is

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-39338340791958514762009-06-15T07:08:00.000-07:002009-06-16T09:04:48.941-07:00

With the success of my approach to restoring EeePC Linux from USB to a minimal system, in the coming few days, I am expecting to run more tests on different iso versions I have on hand, and probably removing and re-installing different sets of packages.To speed up the re-installation process, I think it is better to download all the packages for the EeePC Linux version 1.6 I am working on from

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-85195181247746468552009-06-13T22:53:00.000-07:002009-08-16T00:05:36.594-07:00

(cont'd from Part III: Re-installing Removed Packages ...)My next test that follows is to build a minimal EeePC Linux system on my 4G with a 701 en-US 1.6.1.5-a4 iso.Prepare the System Recovery USB DiskWith the downloaded iso, first I burn it into a DVD, then run BootTool to create the System Recovery USB disk. But the operation was not successful, "P701L.gz" and "user_start.dat" cannot be

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-62747467437223322992009-06-13T18:06:00.000-07:002009-08-16T00:06:55.983-07:00

(cont'd from Part II: Success - Restoring my EeePC from USB to a Minimal System)After you have restored from USB to a minimal system with my my restore script package restore-minimal-701-4G.tgz, you can re-install packages you want with synaptic package manager.I have tried to write a script to re-install them all in one stroke but found that it is not so simple because the original factory

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-41911801109421527192009-06-13T03:08:00.000-07:002009-08-16T00:08:03.142-07:00

(cont'd from Part I: My 1st Trial)After struggling for two weeks with failures after failures, I have finally worked it out. It turned out that simply by moving the files from sda1 to sda2 and back is enough to defragment the filesystem. But depending on the packages you removed and where the files are originally located, the resulted disk fragmentation may vary and it need some trial and error

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-56151259057680399072009-06-04T16:02:00.000-07:002009-06-05T16:05:35.736-07:00

Last night, after restoring my EeePC to the recently downloaded 1.6 iso, I suddenly remembered that my recently written scripts are still in the USER partition (sda2). So I tried to rescue the scripts, and here is what I did (though not successful this time).There is a free file recovery utility for the Ext2FS/Ext3FS file system called R-Linux which runs in Microsoft Windows. I use to use this to

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-2873190805888180532009-06-03T04:51:00.000-07:002009-06-04T05:01:45.233-07:00

Last night, I have downloaded another EeePC Linux 1.6 iso (English version for 701) to try out and as usual I need to first create an Asus EeePC System Recovery USB disk. For me, this procedure is very simple but I don't know why many people have problem doing this. So I take this opportunity to generate some screenshots of the steps to serve as a guidance for others.My EeePC 4G come with 1 no.

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-77224462125839808732009-06-01T05:29:00.000-07:002009-06-28T08:09:05.047-07:00

The Story - How it beginsRecently there have been discussion in the EeeUser Forum about a slimmed down version of EeePC Linux or a barebone system. Many people like the F9 restore feature, but want to get rid of some programs they never use.I don't know how many people are interested in this, but after reading the posts, I am thinking it shouldn't be difficult based on the Boot Xandros from USB

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-72762713325948522382009-05-31T01:44:00.000-07:002009-06-07T00:46:42.294-07:00

A few days ago, I read in the EeeUser Forum someone saying fluidsynth plays MIDI better than timidity on his EeePC. As I have reported in this thread, timidity is the way I used to play MIDI in my EeePC. Now that I have installed a fresh new 1.6.1 verson EeePC Linux to my 4G, I would like to try out something new. So I take this opportunity to test on installing fluidsynth to play MIDI.Setting up

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-2338246607199297152009-05-27T21:11:00.000-07:002009-08-15T23:18:08.849-07:00

A few weeks ago, there was a discussion in this thread of the EeeUser Forum on restoring an EeePC from the Recovery DVD image but without union filesystem. At that time, I had modified my Boot Xandros from USB for Dummies nounionfs script for this but I had no time to test it.Today, since it is public holiday in Hong Kong and I don't need to work, I have finally tested this out and

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-91118905603011887892009-05-11T06:02:00.000-07:002009-05-11T06:46:55.745-07:00

I used to be a guitar player and I use Guitar Pro 5 in my Windows desktop for writing and playing guitar tablatures. So I have a collection of gp5 files.Today, I found a thread in EeeUser Forum on using tuxguitar in EeePC. So I think it should be worthwhile to try installing tuxguitar on my EeePC Linux (desktop version) and have access to my gp5 files.I found that installation is very easy and

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-27116917106235380682009-05-02T20:13:00.000-07:002009-05-02T22:50:11.700-07:00

So I decided to restore my EeePC to the original 701 version today.I have been doing backup and restore of the whole SSD of my EeePC booting from Pupeee, which is a customized version of Puppy Linux for the EeePC that has everything (except webcam) set up already by default. You only need to download the puppy-eee.iso, burn into a CD, then transfer the system to an USB stick, and boot up - no

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-52564581910088526042009-05-01T21:49:00.000-07:002009-05-01T22:49:00.324-07:00

Today I continue to work on how to auto shutdown my EeePC.One possibility is to use the "Task Scheduler" of kde (Advanced Desktop), but this only allows you to specify a time delay (in seconds), and only 1 command to be executed.Please note that you have to run the fastshutdown script as root, i.e. add sudo before the command.In the Easy Mode simple desktop of my EeePC 4G with icewm start menu

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-9079849248370151222009-04-28T05:33:00.000-07:002009-05-28T21:12:34.699-07:00

I have recently purchased an Asus My Cinema-U3100 Mini USB DVB-T Digital TV Tuner and I spent the last few days testing how to record TV programs with it. Although it is 100% EeePC compatible, the supplied driver asus-dmbth-20080528.tar.bz2 is only for watching TV, but not for recording.To install this driver and the Digital TV (DVBT) program, follow the instructions in the readme.txt, copy the

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-27782497160688594152009-04-19T05:34:00.000-07:002009-04-19T07:44:35.474-07:00

In the past 2 weeks, I have been looking into the possibility to upgrade my 4G to EeePC Linux version 1.6 which is now factory default in all new EeePCs. First I tested this out in the EeePC Linux version 1.0 I have installed to my desktop (with unionfs removed) and found that I need around 300-400 MB disk space to do the upgrade. At that attempt, I ended up filling my 4 GB partition full and had

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-44802278012729432412009-04-01T06:49:00.000-07:002009-04-01T07:26:00.066-07:00

Like many Linux distributions, the default media player of the EeePC does not come with a software library for accessing and unscrambling DVDs encrypted with the Content Scramble System (CSS) due to fears of running afoul of DMCA-style laws. But you can easily install libdvdcss which is a simple library designed for accessing DVDs like a block device without having to bother about the

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-35264581198955982962009-03-31T05:45:00.000-07:002009-09-11T21:01:54.967-07:00

After installing "firefox-upgrade" from Asus update the day before, I have been trying to re-install vlc, but in vain. Even trying to compile from source, there are so many unmet dependencies that I finally decided it does not worth the effort.And besides vlc, we already know that this libc upgrade with "firefox-upgrade" is also causing problem with installation of build-essential (although a

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com46tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-40485654269368030532009-03-29T05:34:00.000-07:002009-03-29T08:33:49.234-07:00

With the release of flashplayer 10, many EeePC users complain that they cannot watch video from youtube.com. The reason is because flashplayer 10 for Linux require a libc version of 2.4 but EeePC comes with version 2.3.6.For new models that run EeePC Linux version 1.6, Asus has provided a "firefox-upgrade" package that upgrades the libc version to 2.7-13 and install firefox3 and flashplayer 10.

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-3659671361165436942009-03-27T22:45:00.000-07:002009-03-28T00:23:27.690-07:00

I am using the English version of EeePC Linux on my 4G, but I need to browse Traditional Chinese websites very often. And since some websites (e.g. HSBC e-banking and the Hong Kong Jockey Club) only support IE (Internet Explorer), I have to install IEs4Linux for these websites.It is very easy to install IEs4Linux but very difficult to customize the installation, especially because MSIE is

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-15936711013930275142009-03-26T06:11:00.000-07:002009-08-15T23:33:02.826-07:00

Asus has recently provided a VGA Utility (vga-utility) for EeePC 701 models which allows a virtual desktop of 1024x768 with panning. This is especially useful to users of EeePC 4G with the small 7" screen which only supports 800x480 screen resolution.This utility is now available as update from "Add/Remove Software" for 701 models, but in fact it will work for all EeePC models (and perhaps all

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-35340833824986630062009-03-25T05:53:00.001-07:002009-08-15T23:22:47.391-07:00

These 2 days, I have been testing on mounting the union filesystem (aufs) with both partitions sda1 and sda2 as read/write to install, upgrade and remove programs with my EeePC 4G.What I want is to uninstall Open Office 2 from sda1 and install updates from Asus without wasting the precious disk space of my 4 GB SSD. With the read/write initramfs image I have modified, both sda1 and sda2 are

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-52952651438012422502009-03-22T06:14:00.000-07:002009-06-07T00:49:56.175-07:00

Now that I have my EeePC restored and unionfs converted to aufs, the first thing to do is of course setting up network and do some updates. For this, I need to set up apt repositories. I've done this many times already for different EeePC models. Here is the /etc/apt/sources.list file for my EeePC 4G:##Asus updatedeb http://update.eeepc.asus.com/p701 p701 maindeb http://update.eeepc.asus.com/p701

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-5436155420883798122009-03-21T00:58:00.000-07:002009-06-05T17:18:15.130-07:00

Restoring from USB, what I want to do extra this time is to convert unionfs into aufs (another union filesystem) because aufs is known to be more stable, less buggy than unionfs, and has already become the standard in later EeePC models. Since I am not sure if aufs is compatible with unionfs, I decided to restore from USB and do it from the very beginning.To convert unionfs to aufs, what I need

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244539757337264738.post-83047415966107336782009-03-21T00:12:00.001-07:002009-08-16T00:10:45.933-07:00

This week, I decided to reinstall my EeePC from scratch. So I have started this blog to keep a record of what I will be doing and post all the steps here how I am going to customize my EeePC to perfection.Currently I have another copy of default Xandros booting from USB, so I will take my time to do this re-installation. And in the following days, I will experiment on some new hacks customizing

albkwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00405610117953239049noreply@blogger.com0