WebCam on Asus N20A notebooks

Well, I gave this built-in webcam a try today. `Cheese’ does show the image, but it’s upside-down.

A quick lsusb shows
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 064e:a116 Suyin Corp.
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 005 Device 002: ID 147e:1000
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

It’s obviously 064e:a116, so I googled it, and this turns out:

This camera module is known to be mounted upside-down in some notebooks. There is currently no documented way to rotate the image at the device level. If you don’t mind holding your computer upside-down, the camera should work fine.

WELL, if I hold my notebook upside-down, my LCD will also be upside-down, so the video I see will still be upside-down, no ?

Portege 2000 and Ubuntu 8.10

8.10 Release Notes

BAD

Now I have to use this to do presentation:

john@john-laptop:/etc/acpi$ cat videobtn.sh
#!/bin/sh
test -f /usr/share/acpi-support/key-constants || exit 0
. /usr/share/acpi-support/key-constants
acpi_fakekey $KEY_VIDEOOUT
CRT=/proc/acpi/video/VGA/CRT/state
LCD=/proc/acpi/video/VGA/LCD/state
if grep "state:.*0x0d" $CRT 1>/dev/null 2>&1
then
echo 0x80000001 > $CRT
# echo 0x80000001 > $LCD
else
echo 0x80000000 > $CRT
echo 0x80000001 > $LCD
fi

Intel onboard graphic chip + compiz

it’s a really bad combination. not so long ago the driver changed default from XAA to EXA, thus my fonts disappeared. after the last update, now compiz just keeps telling me it cannot load cpp plugin and fails to start.

guess the compiz guys put this chip(8086:2992) in their blacklist for a reason. damn, I really need compiz!

fonts disappeared part II

It turns out the default AccelMethod of xdriver “intel” has been changed to EXA, and it’s a known issue that EXA does not work with compiz. So I force the AccelMethod to “XAA” and compiz works again now.

fonts disappeared

I’m using debian testing (lenny) and after the latest update my xserver no longer display fonts. This is not totally true because I can still see the fonts on gdm, but after logging in, no fonts whatsoever. It turns out the i810 Xorg driver is messed up and I have to set NoAccel to true to avoid it.

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Intel Corporation 82Q963/Q965 Integrated Graphics Controller"
        Driver          "i810"
        BusID           "PCI:0:2:0"
        Option          "NoAccel"       "true"
#       Option          "AccelMethod"           "EXA"
        Option          "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps"
EndSection

BTW I can use compiz without NoAccel before if I delete the device id from the blacklist in compiz start up script.

Compiz-fusion, ATI Radeon 9100 and Debian

Repository:
Visit http://shame.tuxfamily.org/repo/
I use debian testing (lenny), compiz unstable repo. You need compiz-gnome (or compiz-kde). You might need compiz-manager if you want to make compiz your default window manager.

Related settings in xorg.conf:

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R200 QM [Radeon 9100]"
        Driver          "ati"
        BusID           "PCI:1:0:0"
        Option          "EnablePageFlip"  # may disable this.
        Option          "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps"
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
        Option          "Composite"             "Enable"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
        group   "video"
        mode    0660
EndSection

Ctrl-alt-backspace to restart X. Execute fusion-icon, switch to compiz. If it works, you may make it the default window manager:

1. gconf-editor: /desktop/gnome/applications/window_manager/default , modify value to: /usr/bin/compiz-manager
2. sudo vim /usr/bin/gnome-wm, near the end of the file, modify:

       openbox)
         OPT1=--sm-client-id
         OPT2=$SMID
         CURRENT=openbox
         ;;
       *)
         OPT1=--sm-client-id
         OPT2=$SMID
         ;;
     esac
   fi

3. Modify /usr/bin/compiz-manager, change COMPIZ_NAME from “compiz” to “compiz.real”

Toshiba Portege 2000 and Debian

I wrote several posts about the Linux support on Toshiba Protege 2000.[1][2][3][4] Actually I’m still using this elegant laptop to write this article now. It turns out Ubuntu has done quite a impressive work to support laptops. After I installed Debian to replace Ubuntu, the function keys stopped working because no ACPI events will be generated by key pressing. I traced acpid, hal and toshiba-acpi module in kernel space trying to solve this, and finally I found out Ubuntu patched toshiba-acpi in their kernel to support Toshiba specific hotkeys. So, right now I’m putting the patch into my Debian kernel source and re-building it. We will see if it works later.

* Update:
The patch works.  Now my debian system could support every hotkey on Protege 2000.