Ubuntu 9.04 on an Asus G50vt-X5 driver questions

ok, i hope that here at the NBR team there is atleast one other person out there who's bought the G50Vt and has but ubuntu on it. If not then i guess this post is a complete waste of my time. With that said i will now pose my issue/question.

Has anyone got any of the special features to work on ubuntu? First and foremost the little touching buttons area. So i can turn off the light around the touchpad and such things as that. Secondly the Direct console area. Has anyone figured otu how to get any of these to work on linux mainly ubuntu?

If no one has then well Ubuntu will be just like windows 7 except more stable, easier to use, and free of the hassle that all Windows users have to deal with.

 

The special buttons don't work. The OLED display (what you call Direct console) can be used quite easily. See the bottom of this page: http://monalisa.cern.ch/blog/2008/09/16/ubuntu-on-asus-g50v/

To turn off the light around the touchpad, run this command:

Code:

sudo echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:touchpad/brightness

I filled in a bunch of details on the linlap wiki entry, so you might want to check that out.

 

macarthur@:/home$ sudo echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:touchpad/brightness
bash: /sys/class/leds/asus::touchpad/brightness: Permission denied

erm what?
and the OLED display i can't get to work atm. :/

 

You need to turn off the touchpad light as the root user... that is why you're getting permission denied. Either that or you aren't using the asus_laptop module, to find out run:

Code:

lsmod | grep asus_laptop

OLED works perfectly, make sure you read the readme... you may have to:

Code:

modprobe -r usbhid
modprobe asus_oled
modprobe usbhid

and then run Start.sh

 

macarthur@:~$ lsmod | grep asus_laptop
asus_laptop 27740 0
led_class 13064 2 iwlcore,asus_laptop

Is the output i get and when i try to do the code that you have suggested i get a fatal error.

 

It works perfectly for me, try reading the Ubuntu guide that I linked to earlier and make sure to read the readmes for the OLED stuff. I also put a bunch of details on the linlap wiki, most of that stuff should be pretty self-explanitory. Best of luck!

 

ok once more i tried this and this supposedly "self explanatory" can't be for me. Normally i can follow instructions very well i did exactly as it said and i get this. Maybe i should post this on the ubuntu forums :/

Code:

macarthur@Insanity:~/Desktop$ d asus_oled-0.04
bash: d: command not found
macarthur@Insanity:~/Desktop$ cd asus_oled-0.04
macarthur@Insanity:~/Desktop/asus_oled-0.04$ ls
asus_oled.c      asus_oled.o   linux.txt       Module.symvers  tux_r.txt
asus_oled.ko     COPYING       Makefile        qt              tux.txt
asus_oled.mod.c  linux_fr.txt  Module.markers  README          zig.txt
asus_oled.mod.o  linux_f.txt   modules.order   tux_r2.txt
macarthur@Insanity:~/Desktop/asus_oled-0.04$ make
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.28-11-generic/build SUBDIRS=/home/macarthur/Desktop/asus_oled-0.04 modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.28-11-generic'
  Building modules, stage 2.
  MODPOST 1 modules
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.28-11-generic'
#
#
# To compile Qt3 utility for easy device control and image conversion,
# enter qt/ subdirectory and run: qmake && make
#
#
macarthur@Insanity:~/Desktop/asus_oled-0.04$ su
Password:
su: Authentication failure
macarthur@Insanity:~/Desktop/asus_oled-0.04$ su
Password:
su: Authentication failure
macarthur@Insanity:~/Desktop/asus_oled-0.04$ su
Password:
su: Authentication failure
macarthur@Insanity:~/Desktop/asus_oled-0.04$ sudo make install
[sudo] password for macarthur:
install -d /lib/modules/2.6.28-11-generic/extra/
install -m 644 -c asus_oled.ko /lib/modules/2.6.28-11-generic/extra/
depmod -a
macarthur@Insanity:~/Desktop/asus_oled-0.04$ mobprobe asus_oled
bash: mobprobe: command not found

 

You're almost there!!

It's modprobe, you just misspelled it.

 

Code:

macarthur@Insanity:~/Desktop$ cd asus_oled-0.04
macarthur@Insanity:~/Desktop/asus_oled-0.04$ macarthur@Insanity:~$ modprobe -r usbhid
bash: macarthur@Insanity:~$: command not found
macarthur@Insanity:~/Desktop/asus_oled-0.04$ FATAL: Error removing usbhid (/lib/modules/2.6.28-11-generic/kernel/drivers/hid/usbhid/usbhid.ko): Operation not permitted
bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('

Ok this is what i get with modprobe commands i'm not going to try the next one b/c it currently doesn't work with me as so far.

 

You need to do it as root, so put sudo before the command. That's why you're getting operation not permitted. Anyways the reason to do that is usbhid conflicts with asus_oled, so the idea is to remove usbhid before loading asus_oled and then reload usbhid. Then you run the Start.sh script. This should do it:

Code:

sudo modprobe -r usbhid
sudo modprobe asus_oled
sudo modprobe usbhid

 

ok i got the whole thing installed but now i can't seem to still turn off my touchpad's brightness. Also what's up with these random things here is there anyway to easily configure it to say like RAM used: etc. etc?

same error as before witht he touchpad brightness.

edit:also i was going to try the lapsus system but apparently i need to be using the KDE enviroment? So that means i'm going to have to change my desktop envirment from gnome to kde to have my touchbutton features?

 

There isn't a graphical interface that I know of to customize the display, but you can easily change it, this is from the README:

I'm not sure what the problem is with your touchpad brightness as long as you have asus_laptop loaded. If you run this command, it should return 1:

Code:

cat /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:touchpad/brightness

If that returns an error there isn't a LED class for the touchpad, so in other words the file doesn't exist. The asus_laptop module manages these LEDs so you might try rebuilding it if that's the case. Again the command to disable the touchpad light is:

Code:

sudo echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:touchpad/brightness

 

cat /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:touchpad/brightness
0

so i should rebuild the source and then do a reinstall?

also is there anyway t omake this thing autostart?

 

Not sure why the touchpad brightness won't change, when I have it set to 0 it turns off for me. Maybe it is a problem with the asus_laptop module on your installation.

Yes you can make a startup script which contains all of the commands needed to get it running automatically.

Edit: For example, type Alt+F2 and type

Code:

gksudo gedit /etc/init.d/asus_oled

and paste this in:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
modprobe -r usbhid
modprobe asus_oled
modprobe usbhid
/path/to/asusg50oled/start.sh

Replace that last line with the full path to the start.sh script. Click save. Now open up a Terminal window and make it executable:

Code:

sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/asus_oled

Then run this command to install it as a startup script:

Code:

sudo update-rc.d asus_oled start 99 2 .

It should run on startup now... you can test it by running:

Code:

sudo /etc/init.d/asus_oled

 

A few points:

1. utils/install.sh should make the daemon start at boot time

2. start.sh does rmmod/modprobe if necessary. Newer kernels (like in 9.04) don't require this hack any more.

3. After I've upgraded to 9.04 myself, I have a weird problem that I couldn't track. The daemon is correctly started at boot time but after KDE login it is killed (?!?). So for now I've made a link to it in the KDE StartUp folder...

I'm afraid that 9.04 brings more trouble than it solves, apart from the small OLED daemon issue the laptop doesn't suspend correctly, the KDE interface hangs when I try to unmount a USB device, it doesn't power off correctly 50% of the time and so on, the interface is much slower and so on. If you haven't upgraded yet I'd suggest to wait a bit longer.

 

Uhg. My bad. This should do it:

Code:

sudo sh -c "echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:touchpad/brightness"