Debian GNU/Linux on Asus M5N and S5N laptops

The M5N (aka M5200N) is a 3.4lb, 1"-thick Centrino subnotebook from Asus. The S5N (aka S5200N) is a one-spindle version of the M5N, weighing 3lb, with an external USB DVD/CDRW as a bundled accessory. Asus sells the S5Ne as a single-configuration, 1 GHz, all-white version of the S5N. The M5N and S5N are sold through resellers, sometimes with other names (e.g., the Chembook 2250 and Chembook 2150). The information here should apply to rebranded M5N and S5N laptops also.

This page is about how to install Debian GNU/Linux on your M5N, S5N, or similar laptop. If you're looking for a review, here is my mostly positive opinion of my M5N.

Update: the M5N is now available with a Dothan CPU, and may also ship with an Intel 2200 802.11g wireless chipset. I don't have a new M5N to play with, so I'm including three third-party reports, below.

Update, Jan 2006: fan control and suspend-to-RAM are finally working! Many thanks to Bill Farrow, who told me how. Details below.

Software

• Linux kernel 2.6.14.5 (kernel config, modprobe.conf)
  • software suspend 2
  • ipw2100 0.46.3 (Debian experimental source package)

• X.Org 6.9.0 (xorg.conf file)
  • XFree86 Synaptics driver 0.14.4 (Debian package)

• acpid (config files for /etc/acpi)

Working

• Graphics (Intel i855GM, PCI 8086:3582). Works fine with XFree86 4.3.0.1 using the i810 driver. Initially it locked up starting X, but adding
  Option "DisplayInfo" "FALSE" to the Device section in XF86Config-4 solved it. XV support works fine. The kernel AGP and DRM support work fine. The i830 AGP+DRM+DRI driver handles 3D well enough to run Quake3 at a playable speed. You have to configure X to use more than the default amount of RAM to get DRI support. By default it uses 8 MB. To get 3D and page-flipping, configure at least 16 MB.

    Section "Device"
          Identifier      "Generic Video Card"
          Driver          "i810"
          VideoRam        16384
          Option  "DisplayInfo" "FALSE"
    EndSection
  

  I also have a VESA VGA framebuffer working so that I can run Bootsplash. Silent mode (i.e., a progress bar instead of boot and shutdown messages) doesn't really work under Debian yet. But verbose mode works fine.

• Network (RealTek 8139, PCI 10ec:8139)). Works fine with the 8139too driver.

• Sound (Intel ICH4 AC'97, PCI 8086:24c5). Works fine with ALSA intel8x0 driver.

• Touchpad (Synaptics PS/2). The normal X mouse driver works with no extra tweaking, but if you want taps, drags, and scrolling, you'll need the Synaptics XFree86 driver. If you're running Debian, just install the xfree86-driver-synaptics package and configure your XF86Config-4 according to the instructions in /usr/share/doc/xfree86-driver-synaptics/README.Debian. I tweaked the configuration to disable horizontal and vertical scrolling and to decrease pointer sensitivity:

    Section "InputDevice"
      Driver        "synaptics"
      Identifier    "touchpad"
      Option        "Device"        "/dev/psaux"
      Option        "Protocol"      "auto-dev"
      Option        "LeftEdge"      "1900"
      Option        "RightEdge"     "5600"
      Option        "TopEdge"       "1800"
      Option        "BottomEdge"    "4300"
      Option        "FingerLow"     "25"
      Option        "FingerHigh"    "30"
      Option        "MaxTapTime"    "180"
      Option        "MaxTapMove"    "220"
      Option        "VertScrollDelta" "100000"
      Option        "HorizScrollDelta" "100000"
      Option        "MinSpeed"      "0.01"
      Option        "MaxSpeed"      "0.10"
      Option        "AccelFactor" "0.0007"
    EndSection
  

  Initially, my mouse did not work under kernel 2.6.2 and up. This was an IRQ sharing problem. Make sure you enable "Local APIC support on uniprocessors" and "IO-APIC support on uniprocessors" in your kernel config.

• DVD/CDRW (Matshita UJDA755). The CDRW works with cdrecord in ATAPI mode, and the DVD works with Mplayer.

• USB (Intel UHCI and EHCI, PCI 8086:24c2, 8086:24c4, 8086:24c7, and 8086:24cd). Works out of the box, including USB 2.0 Hi-Speed support.

• Wireless (Intel PRO2100B, PCI 8086:1043). Works using Intel's driver (Debian experimental source package here). It depends on hostap (Debian package: hostap-source). You'll have to build both from source, and you'll have to put the proprietary firmware in /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware.
  hostap

    apt-get install hostap-source
    cd /usr/src
    tar xvzf hostap-source.tar.gz
    cd modules/hostap-source
    ./debian/rules binary-modules KSRC=/usr/src/linux
    dpkg -i /usr/src/hostap-modules-version.deb
  

  ipw2100

    unzip firmware-version.zip
    mv ipw2100-1.1.fw /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware
    module-assistant a-i ipw2100
    modprobe ipw2100
  

  You might want to set ipw2100.ko to load automatically as eth1. Just add an alias to any file in /etc/modprobe.d:

    alias eth1 ipw2100
  

  Remember to run update-modules. Then add eth1 to your /etc/network/interfaces file:

    auto lo eth0 eth1
    ...
    iface eth1 inet dhcp
          pre-up /sbin/iwconfig eth1 essid <name-of-network>
  

  If you use several different networks and your wireless card supports ESSID scanning (the Intel PRO 2100B does), you can use my essid-pick script to choose from a prioritized list.

    iface eth1 inet dhcp
          pre-up /usr/sbin/essid-pick eth1 <network1> <network2> ...
  

• PCMCIA/CardBus (Ricoh, PCI 1180:0476). Works fine with the default Yenta CardBus driver.

• IDE/ATAPI (Intel, PCI 8086:24ca). To enable DMA, use the Intel PIIX support.

• Modem (Intel AC'97, PCI 8086:24c6). The Linuxant HSF driver works long enough to connect to Earthlink. The free version of the driver is limited to 14.4K. It seems to hang up after about a minute, though I cannot tell if this is the driver's fault, or Earthlink's. There's an Intel 8x0 modem driver in the kernel (in with the ALSA PCI sound drivers) now that seems to recognize the modem, but it never finds a dialtone.

• ACPI. ACPI works well enough to display battery status, detect special buttons (the power button, lid switch, vol up/down, among others), and shut down cleanly. S3 sleep (suspend to RAM) now works perfectly, as of kernel 2.6.14. Remember to reset your clock (call hwclock) and fan settings when waking back up.

• Fan control. Load the i2c-i801 and lm85 kernel modules, and set new "trip points" to make the fan less aggressive. Here's how to make the fan come on at 55°C and go off at 50°C:

    cd '/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1f.3/i2c-0/0-002e'
    echo 50000 > temp1_auto_temp_off
    echo 55000 > temp1_auto_temp_min
  

  Note that on kernels 2.6.17 to 2.6.19, fan control only works if ACPI sleep states are disabled. Starting with 2.6.20, fan control should work again. Those of you with kernels between 2.6.17 and 2.6.19 should probably just upgrade.

• Pentium-M SpeedStep. Works fine with the cpufreq driver. I'm using the "ondemand" scaling governor in the kernel to control the speed and gnome-cpufreq-applet to display the current speed.

Not working

• RICOH card reader. This device identifies itself as a CardBus bridge, which Linux recognizes, but when I insert a memory stick, the PCMCIA driver logs two messages:

    Apr 12 02:38:02 positron cardmgr[355]: unsupported card in socket 0
    Apr 12 02:38:02 positron cardmgr[355]:   product info: "RICOH", "Bay2Controller"
  

  This reader is apparently undocumented hardware. One Samsung Q20 (aka Dell X300) user contacted Ricoh and was told that there was no public documentation.

Not tested

• Firewire (Ricoh, PCI 1180:0552).

Sebastian Henschel from Xtops.DE wrote in with this report:

you could make an addendum for the latest M5200N (sold in germany, at least), ASUS now ships that model in a Dothan-based setup:

• you need an updated speedstep-centrino driver (should be in 2.6.8).
• the wireless was unfortunately replaced by the ipw2200 (802.11g) chip which does not work with ndiswrapper 0.9 or driverloader 2.02. i did not even dare to try the free driver from Intel which failed for me last week when working on a Toshiba Tecra S1 (as the others failed, too).
• did not notice any changes when looking at chipset and graphics.

Cezary Czaplewski got the Intel 2200B wireless chipset and Dothan SpeedStep in the updated M5N to work:

I have a new M5N with ipw2200 (802.11g) wireless and it does work with both ndiswrapper 0.9 and linuxant driverloader 1.73.

On Fedora 2 I had to increase the kernel stack size to 16k, CONFIG_4KSTACKS (which is the default in Fedora Core 2) gives kernel with only 4k stack and it is not enough for Intel Centrino PRO/Wireless 2200BG windows driver. I am using 16K kernel sources from http://www.linuxant.com/driverloader/wlan/full/downloads-fc2-kernel-i686.php

I have not tried 8K stack kernel yet.

I have updated speedstep-centrino driver for Dothan 1.7 Ghz myself (diff attached), as even kernel 2.6.8.1 has no support for Dothan's speedstep.

Nicola Di Nisio reports that the new M5N works well with SuSE 9.2 but not SuSE 9.1. The ipw2200 (802.11b/g wireless), suspend-to-disk, the touchpad, and ACPI all work fine. The SD-card slot and suspend-to-RAM still do not work.