CrunchBang Linux Eee PC Howto

The installation instructions on this page relate to the standard version of CrunchBang Linux. If you intend to install CrunchBang 8.10, you may wish to install CrunchEee instead — this is an Eee-PC–specific version of CrunchBang 8.10. See the CrunchEee installation guide for more information. There are at the moment no plans to create a 9.04 version.

Part of the information on this page was produced by Fabian A. Scherschel, and came from http://lamerk.org/resources/crunchbang-on-the-eee. That link is now dead, unfortunately.

• Download the latest CrunchBang .iso
• Download and install the latest stable version of Unetbootin
• Mount a big enough USB drive (1 GB is plenty), formatted as FAT.
• Use Unetbootin to copy the .iso file to the drive (choose “Ubuntu” in the OS options and select the corresponding version to the CrunchBang version you are using)

• Insert the USB device into your Eee PC and press ESC immediately after pressing the Power On button, select the USB device in the boot option screen that comes up
• Install CrunchBang from the live environment as usual, with these exceptions (if you prefer):
  • Do not create a swap partition to prevent unnecessary wear and tear on the SSD drive (downside: disables hibernation)
  • I formatted the whole internal SSD (16 GB) as one partition and mounted that as /
  • And I also formatted an external 16 GB SD card as another partition and mounted that as /home
  • On the 901 It is best to put root on the 4GB disk (along with the efi partition- see below) and home on the 16GB internal card.
  • Note: if you want to enable the boot booster option (faster booting) then preserve or make the small EFI partition at the begining or the end of the disk you use for root. In the 901 this is the 4GB card.

• Install the eeepc-lean kernel from array.org following these instructions to enable full hardware support. Note: with #! 9.04 you should not need to use the special kernel from array as the latest generic kernel has incorporated all the necessary fixes.

• Go into System → Services/Daemons and uncheck the computer activity logger checkboxes
• Follow these instructions to mount the various tmp and log folders to RAM
• In Firefox, go to about:config, search for “cache” and set both online and offline cache options to 0

The following instructions are for installing Crunchbang Lite.

Getting wired networking to work on the Eee 1005HA with CrunchBang Lite 9.04 consists of four steps: - Gather the files and packages you will need - Install the packages: they are needed for make to work - Use the now-working make to build and install the Atheros ethernet driver

CrunchBang Linux uses the 2.6.28 kernel by default: neither wireless nor wired Internet works out of the box. So, we must gather the files we need in advance. When installing Crunchbang, make sure that you have a USB key on hand with the following files on it:

• For wired networking, the latest Linux driver (AR81 Family) from Atheros. The name should take the form AR81Family-linux-v#.#.#.#.tar.gz.
• To build the driver, the following packages in .deb form. (Choose i386 in the Download section, and then click a mirror of your choice.)
  1. linux-libc-dev
  2. libc6-dev
  3. binutils
  4. patch
  5. dpkg-dev
  7. gcc-4.3
  8. gcc
  9. libstdc++6-4.3-dev
  10. g++-4.3
  11. g++_4.3 (Note the underscore.)

Got your files? Good. Now go and install CrunchBang, and then come back.

In your new Crunchbang installation, copy the files above to a temporary directory — say ~/tmp. cd to that directory, and install packages 1–8 above as follows:

sudo dpkg -i linux-libc-dev_2.6.28-18.59_i386.deb
...
sudo dpkg -i gcc_4.3.3-1ubuntu1_i386.deb

Next come libstdc++6-4.3-dev and g++-4.3; regrettably, these both claim to depend on the other, so they both insist that you install the other one first. We break this deadlock by first forcing g++-4.3 to ignore its dependencies, then installing libstdc++6-4.3-dev, and then re-installing g++-4.3. (Note: g++-4.3, not g++_4.3. Dash, not underscore.)

sudo dpkg -i --force-depends g++-4.3_4.3.3-5ubuntu4_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i libstdc-4.3-dev_4.3.3-5ubuntu4_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i g++-4.3_4.3.3-5ubuntu4_i386.deb

Proceed by installing the two remaining packages: first g++_4.3, then build-essential.

Unpack the tar.gz file containing the driver into its own directory:

mkdir atheros-tmp
mv AR81Family-linux-*.tar.gz atheros-tmp/
cd atheros-tmp
tar -xvvf AR81Family-linux-*.tar.gz

Then cd into the src directory, and do the make, sudo make install dance:

cd src
make
sudo make install

This last command will generate an error something like this:

Cannot write to /var/cache/man/cat7/atl1e.7.gz in catman mode

Ignore it. Reboot, and you'll find: ethernet now works. (Some HOWTOs out there speak of editing /etc/modules, adding a line describing your device. This should not be necessary.)

The following sequence of commands may work — in other words, I got my wireless working, but I forgot exactly what I did. If you have a more reliable set of steps, please do write them here. <code> apt-get install linux-generic apt-get install linux-backports-modules-jaunty <code />

lxrandr and grandr both seem problematic. Install the arandr package and use that.