[Debian-eeepc-devel] Debian on the ASUS EeePC 1005PE

[Ansgar Burchardt]

Hi,

I got an ASUS EeePC 1005PE a few days ago and am trying to install
Debian testing on it.

There have been several problems so far:

1. My model has a different wireless card that listed on [1] that was
not yet supported by Debian's Linux kernel.  It seems to be the card
that is listed for the 1001P and 1005P.

There was a patch [2] to add support for this card.  I tried to backport
it the Debian's kernel (patch attached).  So far I can scan for wireless
networks, but I did not manage to set up hostap or ad-hoc mode to
connect to my other computer (I don't have an access point available
here).

[1] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC/Models
[2] http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15180

2. The Ethernet card disappeared completely.  It did no longer show up
in the output from lspci, nor was it accessible in Windows.  This
problem persisted over shutdowns as well.  Removing the battery and
disconnecting the power supply luckily made the card show up again.

A patch was available for this issue on a different EeePC model [3].
This one was not so easy to backport, so I just changed it to disable
hot-plug always (patch attached).  This solved this issue for me: the
Ethernet card does no longer disappear.

[3] http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14570

3. I still have problems connecting the EeePC to my DSL modem.
I can connect the EeePC to my other computer via Ethernet, but when I
connect it to the DSL modem it does not work correctly: I can see
incoming packages, but outgoing packages (DHCP, ARP requests) do not
seem to make it to the DSL modem: The activity indicator there does show
nothing in this case.  Windows has the same problem, but I think it
managed to get an IP address once (it usually does not, same as
Debian).

I think this last problem might be an issue with the cable, but it
prevents me to connect the EeePC to the Internet as I didn't manage to
connect both computer via wireless LAN either.  I am thus stuck with a
base system for now as I used a netinstall CD image.

Ideas how I can continue to investigate these problems are welcome :)

Regards,
Ansgar