Wednesday, March 4, 2015

TUTORIAL: Installing Linux mint on Laptop Acer aspire e3 112 (pre-installed windows 8.1 bing ) with dual boot with uefi and secure boot.


 After spending lot of time to figure out the exit of this maze of installing linux mint on the new small laptop, I am sharing my journey, and how I succeeded to have, a full dual boot working, and all problem fixed in  Linux ( bluetooth, connecting bluetooth speaker, brightness short-cut button...).
Hope it will help to save some time.

0/ Preliminaries.

Download an iso image of the linux mint, and use lili live creator (windows
software to create a  live bootable usb pen drive).

1/ First problem :

Be able to boot from the usb key with a live usb version of linux mint

 First trick:

 Put your key in the right usb port:  I put my key in the usb2 port not the usb 3 port (the one
with blue color inside)

Second trick:

You have to configure a bit the bios/Uefi of your new laptop to make your simple task easy
and...possible.

1.1 Configure the bios.

1.1.a/ First You have to go to the bios/Uefi.


U can go by pressing F2 key just after u press the on button (when
you see the Acer logo).
BUT for me it was not as simple for the first time. I had to pass by windows, you search "bios" in
charm windows bar, you click on parameter the bios, and advanced parameter, and Uefi parameter, it
will restart windows and bring you to the Uefi/bios world.
Remark: After I did the modification bellow  I
use the F2 key to avoid to go thru windows world to enter find the door of Bios/Uefi world.

1.1.b/ Some modification to do inside the Uefi/bios world

step.1.
Set a supervisor/admin password in the security tab. (without it u cannot do the
modification u have to do.

Step.2.
Enable the F12 boot option, in order to choose where you want to boot (ie usb key) when you gonna press F12 on Acer logo after you switch on your computer.

Step.3.

Disable the secure boot button ( not disable the Uefi mode just above). This is to to be able
to boot from a usb key, I think. (but I remember I did my second installation with this secure boot
enable, and seems to work too...).

Step.4
save and u can get out, and shut down.

1.2 Enter in the Boot menu


step.1.
start and press the F12 key, then u should see a boot menu with the choice
between windows and usb key. If not go back to step 4 of previous section and disable/enable secure
boot, by restart and pressing F2 to enter in the Bios, or check and change the usb port where you
put your key.

Step.2.
Choose Usb and boot on it

First problem sloved !

2/ 2nd problem:

Be able to install linux with a Uefi bootable part.


Step 1.
You are running linux from the usb key.
Install linux by the normal procedure, by clicking on install linux on the usb live version desktop.

Step 2.
after few step you arrive to the partition step.

First trick:

Choose do the partition manually, and look for a partition between 200 mo to 600 mo,formatted FAT32
me it was 320 mo, created by windows on the system call EFI. Click
"Change" and check if it's set to EFI Boot (or /boot/efi), do
not change the size and the formatting, and important remember the partition name!
For me the partition name was sda2 and i did not need change the anything, I just checked on
the property if it's EFI boot.

Second trick:

Now this is the second trick, that i missed the first installation :
At the the bottom of the window look at the "Device for boot loader installation", it should be the
EFI System Partition, that I asked you to remember earlier. Select the one in the drop-down box.
As I said this the EFI, a partition between 200 mo to 600 mo,formatted FAT32. For me I had to
select and choose the /dev/sda2.

Step 3
Click install and complete the installation.

Congratulation, now linux is installed!
So you reboot and u.... don't see linux, dual boot and you arrive on windows directly. This will
lead to the last problem and trick to solve it.

3/ Third and last problem:

Be able to see grub and dual boot to chose between linux and windows when u start you laptop.

So here we are, we reboot,we don't see linux, no grub and dual boot and we land on windows world
directly...
We hit the F12 key during the start to enter in the boot option and we have only windows boot
proposed..
So we restart and hit F2 key to enter in bios/Uefi world and check the different option for booting
and eventually changer the order and put grub first... but nothing no ubuntu, linux grub and co in
the different options...
After spending ages to several forum who proposed guru tricks, I begun to understand the problem
and solved it in very simple way.

Step.1

The Ultimate trick:

Under security you have something saying "boot part or source that u trust" you go there and you will see ubuntu, you click there and
you will see 3 efi bootable partition, one is grub, one is mok, one is shim. You select shim and say yes to add it in the secure trustable boot list.
Actually you only choose shim, because shim will call grub, and mok is for this secure boot stuff.

step.2
you save and close and restart.

step.3
You hit F12 and you should see two choice : the Shim bootable partition choice and windows boot.
Cool !

Step 4.
Restart and hit F2, go to boot tab and you should see the shim partition and put at the first place
to arrive there directly.

Step 5.
You can put it back the secure boot too (enable), for me it was enable which the installation.

Step 6.
save and exit , restart and here you are, you boot directly on grub and can choose between linux
and windows. you finish to instal linux mint with dual boot with windows.

4/ Repair and solve small problems in linux mint 17.1

4.1/ Enable the brightness buttons shortcut (fn key + left and right arrow).

Run the command below in terminal to know what video card is used for the backlight/brightness, if
it s intel card ( the case for me)

ls /sys/class/backlight/

If yes then:
Open a terminal and create the following configuration file, if it does not exist:

sudo touch /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf

Now we need to edit this file. You can use any editor be it a terminal one or graphical.

sudo kate /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf

Add the following lines to this file:

    Section "Device"
            Identifier  "card0"
            Driver      "intel"
            Option      "Backlight"  "intel_backlight"
            BusID       "PCI:0:2:0"
    EndSection

Save it. Log out and log in back.
The brightness control should be working through function keys.

4.2/Bluetooth seems to be there but doesn't recognize any device and cannot be seen by others...

Step 1. 
check my kernel version.
Code: uname -r

mine is :
Linux Aspire-E3-112 3.13.0-37-generic

Step 2.
if it doesn't say 3.13.0-39, update kernel to 3.13.0-39 using Linux Mint's Update Manager program,
click refresh when it opens, then View and Linux kernels, maximize window so you can see everything,
click install under 3.13.0-39.

After reboot download the 2 files at :
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/h2zlj79hs6ao6di/AAD2UfYf27zhMUVQYj39HQNwa?dl=0

It should be a new folder in /home/ Downloads
Use the file manager to open the downloads folder then right click inside the folder and select
'open in terminal' in this folder and then

Make a backup of the existing two files in case.

Code:
    sudo mv /lib/modules/3.13.0-39-generic/kernel/drivers/bluetooth/ath3k.ko
/lib/modules/3.13.0-39-generic/kernel/drivers/bluetooth/ath3k.ko.bak


Code:
    sudo mv /lib/modules/3.13.0-39-generic/kernel/drivers/bluetooth/btusb.ko
/lib/modules/3.13.0-39-generic/kernel/drivers/bluetooth/btusb.ko.bak


and copy the 2 downloaded files:
Code:
    sudo cp btusb.ko /lib/modules/3.13.0-39-generic/kernel/drivers/bluetooth/btusb.ko


Code:
    sudo cp ath3k.ko /lib/modules/3.13.0-39-generic/kernel/drivers/bluetooth/ath3k.ko

and update it
   
Code:
    sudo apt-get install linux-firmware

Step 3.   
Reboot computer.

Step 4.
For some reason ath3k didn't load on it own so

Code:
    sudo modprobe ath3k


Let's check if it is working now:

Code:
    hcitool dev

Put another device in visible(discoverable) and run the next command

Code:
    hcitool scan

Should work.

Step 5. 
Now the last thing is to make permanent when you reboot you computer.
Open a terminal and write:

sudo kate /etc/modules

to open the file modules and edit it.

Add ath3k to the end of the list.

Now bluetooth should continues to work after rebooting.... (me was not the case so let's go to step 5 bis)

Step 5-bis. 
If step 5 didn't work, you would have to do this  last step.

 Open the rc.local files with an editor:

sudo kate /etc/rc.local

and add before the exit 0 this 2 lines
sleep 20
modprobe ath3k
 
In order to have :

sleep 20
modprobe ath3k
exit 0

Save it and reboot.

4.3 bonus, connect bluetooth speaker.

I loose some time on but there was almost nothing to do to make it work...

For the bluetooth speaker, connect them on bluetooth and use Pulse audio volume control ( check in software, it was already install) ,instead of the basic volume control. 
Everything worked very smooth with Pulse audio control.


Pheeew, it 's finished ! Enjoy this nice small laptop with a nice linux on it. :-) Hope it will help you.


5/ Update comments

July'15.
 I found it quite slow, I tried to optimized as much I can but there is still very slow..
Even a windows 8 (freshly installed) run faster...
Opening some app, firefox, or anything require some patience some time.

If somebody has a solution or some ideas thanks to put it in the comments bellow !

 

References:

For intallation dual boot:
Several post in several different that i don't remenber, but the tutorial which help me the most is by gold-finger:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=163126

For Brightness:
s
olution founded here: http://itsfoss.com/fix-brightness-ubuntu-1310/

For bluetooth:
Post by JeremyB on Tue Dec 02, 2014 7:30 pm on
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=183916

Files built by jeremyB
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=183644#p951951
found at :
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/h2zlj79hs6ao6di/AAD2UfYf27zhMUVQYj39HQNwa?dl=0

Post by JeremyB on Sat Feb 21, 2015 6:52 pm
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=190118&p=985586 

Creative Commons License
quantum nomad by ioul is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

5 comments:

  1. Hi, dude. Last week i have installed the Linux Mint 17.1 XFCE on the Acer E3-111. I have the same problems with the dw_dmac and touchpad. The dw_dmac problem is solved at the time, but the second stays. I read this topic about the same issue http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2234900&page=7 and, i think, i found the reason for that. I belive it's a temperature of the device. The netbook hasn't fans and go hot very quickly at, for example, playing games. I have controlled the temperature with internal sensors and her releation to the cursor behavior. The cursor began to jump at the 65 degrees and higher of acpi's.
    So, i wrote it to you, because i'm too lazy to register on this forums. And you can tell my suspect to another members, when you wish. Best regards and have a nice day. Anonymous fom RF.

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