Easy Acer C720 Ubuntu 14.04 12
If you have an Acer C720 – GREAT! These are amazing systems. But some of the hardware support out-of-the-box from Linux isn’t perfect. What if running 1 little script can fix that?
Verified to work with Ubuntu 14.04 x64 on a C720.
Steps
- Grab this script
- Run it on the Ubuntu install on the chromebook (and keep it somewhere close)
- Ensure the /etc/modules contains:
chromeos_laptop
i2c-designware-core
i2c-designware-pci
i2c-designware-platform - Reboot; login
- To get select/paste working, I manually run this after GUI logins:
synclient AreaRightEdge=850 &
synclient AreaLeftEdge=50 &
synclient TapButton1=1 &
synclient TapButton2=3 &
synclient TapButton3=2 &
synclient FingerHigh=10 &
synclient FingerLow=10 &
After this, the touchpad is working.
I looked over the script – seems safe enough and should work regardless of the kernel, as far as I can tell. After every dist-upgrade that installs a new kernel, the script will probably be needed again to rebuild the kernel modules.
Thanks to everyone who made this easy!
If you want/need more tweaks, this article goes into more detail.
If you’ve forgotten what you did to get your C720 setup – here’s a short, setup, article.
Does it fully work? suspend resume? audio/mic? Just trying to get an idea of how complete the support is with 14.04
Fully? I don’t know. It does what I need.
Closing the lid, suspends. I only press the power button when I want it to turn off quickly (or when I meant to push the DELETE key – idiot designers should be shot!!!!). I’ve never gotten the power button to work as I’d like. Many other key mappings are contained in the openbox.xml/lxde.xml file … there is a link above for that stuff.
Audio works – has always.
The webcam and mic worked under 13.10, if that matters. Haven’t tried them under 14.04. Put some tape over the webcam for security concerns.
I don’t run Unity. I did install compiz for about 10 minutes a few weeks ago – it worked. Don’t really like “cheese” in my UIs.
If you are looking for a video editing device, this is NOT it. If you are looking for something to playback movies, run XBMC to display streamed content, the C720 could work.
The WiFi works too, but since I don’t really use wifi, it might not be great support. I dunno. Wired GigE is much preferred over wifi-anything here.
The script works for C720, how about C720P? It has a touchscreen currently not set up. Any advice? Many thanks.
Sorry Bao, no idea about that model.
Thank you for putting this together so nicely. Now I can do small dev projects with ubuntu on my C720.
I’ve worked all the issues with the c720: suspend, touchpad with the chromeOS mouse driver, graphics drivers, etc … You can find a standard ubuntu image with these fixes here: https://www.distroshare.com/distros/get/12/ . There are two others for the acer c720 on that site as well (xubuntu, and lubuntu).
The touchpad will work when you update the kernel to the version 3.17.
Hi,
running the script, everything runs through- but /etc/modules doesn’t get updated.
Looking back through, this pops up at the end the script running:
“cp: cannot stat ‘drivers/i2c/busses/i2c-designware-*.ko’: No such file or directory”.
Any ideas of how to actually update /etc/modules?
Hi,
Running the script, /etc/modules isn’t getting updated.
This pops up at the end of the script’s printing to terminal:
“scripts/Makefile.build:257: recipe for target ‘drivers/i2c/busses/i2c-designware-pcidrv.o’ failed
make1: * [drivers/i2c/busses/i2c-designware-pcidrv.o] Error 1
Makefile:1345: recipe for target ‘_module_drivers/i2c/busses’ failed
make: * module_drivers/i2c/busses] Error 2
mv: cannot stat ’/lib/modules/3.16.0-25-generic/kernel/drivers/platform/chrome/chromeoslaptop.ko’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/lib/modules/3.16.0-25-generic/kernel/drivers/i2c/busses/i2c-designware-core.ko’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/lib/modules/3.16.0-25-generic/kernel/drivers/i2c/busses/i2c-designware-pci.ko’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/lib/modules/3.16.0-25-generic/kernel/drivers/i2c/busses/i2c-designware-platform.ko’: No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat ‘drivers/i2c/busses/i2c-designware-*.ko’: No such file or directory”
Sorry if that was too much for a comment.
Al – why not just edit the file?
Of course, having the kernel modules built would be very important too. I’d enable all the details in the script to see where stuff fails – the -x option will do that.
First thing I noticed is:
drivers/platform/chrome/chromeos_laptop.c:412:9: error: ‘acer_c720’ undeclared here (not in a function)
CBDD(acerc720),
^
Are there updated files for this or modifications I need to make the script?
Otherwise, a few lines like this popped up:
“patching file drivers/i2c/busses/i2c-designware-pcidrv.c
Hunk #1 FAILED at 54.
Hunk #2 succeeded at 187 with fuzz 2 (offset 55 lines).
Hunk #3 FAILED at 335.”
“patching file drivers/i2c/busses/i2c-designware-pcidrv.c
Hunk #1 succeeded at 237 with fuzz 2 (offset 8 lines).
Hunk #2 FAILED at 287.
1 out of 2 hunks FAILED — saving rejects to file drivers/i2c/busses/i2c-designware-pcidrv.c.rej”
“patching file drivers/platform/chrome/chromeos_laptop.c
Hunk #1 FAILED at 53.
Hunk #2 FAILED at 233.
2 out of 2 hunks FAILED — saving rejects to file drivers/platform/chrome/chromeos_laptop.c.rej”
“patching file drivers/platform/chrome/chromeos_laptop.c
Hunk #1 FAILED at 378.
Hunk #2 succeeded at 398 (offset
37 lines).saving rejects to file drivers/platform/chrome/chromeos_laptop.c.rej”1 out of 2 hunks FAILED -
“patching file drivers/platform/chrome/chromeos_laptop.c
Hunk #1 FAILED at 385.
Hunk #2 succeeded at 405 (offset
44 lines).saving rejects to file drivers/platform/chrome/chromeos_laptop.c.rej”1 out of 2 hunks FAILED -
Sometimes audio doesn’t work after resuming.
The fix for me was to add this line:
To the resume|thaw section (after the echo parts) of the /etc/pm/sleep.d/05_sound script.
Hope this helps someone.