Samsung N150 - ArchWiki

# Samsung N150

This article describes the installation and configuration of 64-bit Arch Linux on the Samsung N150 netbook. Based on the output from dmidecode, this material might also be useful for the N210, N220 and NB30 models.

## Hardware overview

The Samsung N150 netbook is equipped with the Intel Atom N450 ("Pineview") CPU with integrated Intel GMA 3100 GPU and "Pine Trail" chipset. Unlike the prior single-core Intel Atom N2xx and Z series processors, the N450 supports the x86_64 instruction set. Although DMI information suggests the motherboard will accept up to 8 GiB RAM, the integrated memory controller in the Atom N450 can address a maximum of 2 GiB. Since the hardware is limited to a 32-bit address space, the primary benefit to running the 64-bit version of Arch on this system is to take advantage of AUR packages built on more powerful 64-bit systems belonging to the same owner.

Shipping versions of the N150 (as of early March 2010) include the "starter" edition of a proprietary operating system and therefore include only 1 GiB RAM in the form of a single DDR2 667 MhZ SODIMM, which is user-replaceable. Per the DMI information, the unit contains two mini PCI express slots, one of which is populated by the included Atheros AR9285 wireless card. Other versions of this model are apparently available with an integrated 3G WAN adapter installed in the other slot.

External connectivity provided on the system includes 3 USB 2.0 ports, a single VGA port, 10/100 Ethernet (Marvell 88E8040 PCI-E), headphone/microphone jacks, and an integrated card reader (SD/SDHC/MMC). An integrated VGA-resolution webcam is connected to the internal USB controller.

## Installation

Since netbooks lack optical drives, the preferred installation mechanism is via a USB flash drive. Upon first boot into the 2009.08 installation media, the system will reboot after CPU initialization. Subsequent reboots using the same kernel will not exhibit this behavior, although booting into a later installed kernel may reboot the first time.

This article assumes the entire hard disk will be used for Arch, eliminating the manufacturer-supplied software (including the recovery partitions). It is not entirely clear which partitions are required for the recovery software to function properly: retention of the only first partition, of unknown type, is not sufficient. If a recovery mechanism for the factory-supplied software is desired, a set of recovery DVDs should be created using an external DVD burner prior to installing Arch.

Upon the first installation, cfdisk will exit with an error due to the existing partition layout extending beyond the end of the disk (using Linux default geometries). The solution is to run fdisk and create a new, empty partition table.

Warning: This operation will destroy the current hard disk partitions, effectively causing all data on the hard disk to be lost.

    fdisk /dev/sda << EOF
    o
    w
    EOF

After initializing the drive with an empty partition table, cfdisk will work properly in the Arch installer.

## Device configuration

### Ethernet (wired)

The Marvell 88E8040 wired 10/100 Ethernet adapter works out of the box with the default kernel. By installing networkmanager and delaying network initialization until after the GUI is displayed, the boot process can be expedited.

### Wireless networking

The Samsung N150 is sold with two different wireless cards: the Atheros AR9285 and the Realtek 8192E.

Note: the Samsung N150-Plus model can also be equipped with a Broadcom BCM4313 WiFi card.

#### Atheros AR9285

This wireless adapter also works out of the box, including full WPA2-PSK support via NetworkManager. Power to the transmitter can be toggled if the rfkill package is installed, if the following script is installed in /usr/local/sbin/rftoggle

    #!/bin/sh

    blocked=$(rfkill list wlan | grep "Soft blocked: yes")

    if [ -z "$blocked" ]; then
            rfkill block wlan
    else
            rfkill unblock wlan
    fi

Also, this is the script that can do same function and more:

    #!/bin/sh

    case "$1" in
    toggle)
            $0 &> /dev/null
            case "$2" in
            on)
                    if [ $? -eq 1 ]; then
                            rfkill unblock wifi
                            $0 &> /dev/null
                            if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
                                    echo "Wi-Fi toggled on"
                            else
                                    echo "Can't toggle Wi-Fi on"
                                    exit 2
                            fi
                    else
                            echo "Wi-Fi already toggled on"
                    fi
            ;;
            off)
                    if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
                            rfkill block wifi
                            $0 &> /dev/null
                            if [ $? -eq 1 ]; then
                                    echo "Wi-Fi toggled off"
                            else
                                    echo "Can't toggle Wi-Fi off"
                                    exit 3
                            fi
                    else
                            echo "Wi-Fi already toggled off"
                    fi
            ;;
            *)
                    if [ $? -eq 1 ]; then
                            $0 toggle on
                    else
                            $0 toggle off
                    fi
            ;;
        esac
    ;;
    *)
        rfkill list wifi | grep ': yes' &> /dev/null
        if [ $? -eq 1 ]; then
                echo "Wi-Fi is on"
        else
                echo "Wi-Fi is off"
                exit 1
        fi
    ;;
    esac

#### Realtek 8192E

The RTL8192E driver is in the Arch kernel, but firmware is required. It is in the linux-firmware package.

#### Broadcom BCM4313 (Samsung N150-Plus)

Samsung N150-Plus has a newer Broadcom BCM4313 adapter with built-in bluetooth. As of kernel v2.6.37, this card works out of the box thanks to the open-source brcm80211 driver. However, on older kernels you'll need a proprietary driver (AUR: broadcom-wlAUR or if you want to compile manually: http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php). Bluetooth also works fine with either driver.

For more information: Broadcom wireless

### Graphics

The Intel GMA 3100 GPU, embedded in the Atom 450 CPU package, works out of the box with Kernel mode setting. Early KMS initialization seems to improve boot speed slightly and can be enabled by adding the following to the `MODULES` line in `/etc/mkinitcpio.conf`:

    MODULES="intel_agp i915"

Run `mkinitcpio -p linux` to make the configuration effective.

Unlike the prior Samsung N140 model, the N150 does not seem to suffer from display powersaving problems.

Once `Fn` keys are enabled (see below), `Fn+F4` will toggle between LCD only, extended, and cloned modes automatically whenever an external screen is connected to the VGA port.

#### Backlight

Like other Samsung laptops and netbooks, direct ACPI control of the backlight is not possible on the N150. You can fix brightness control issue by adding the following in `/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf`:

    Section "Device"
            Driver      "intel"
            Option      "Backlight"  "intel_backlight"
            Identifier "card0"
    EndSection

### Audio

Intel HD Audio works out of the box on this model, although the volume for the "speaker" mixer channel needs to be increased from zero. Install the alsa-utils package to acquire an init script for restoring the volume at boot time.

For N210 owners the internal microphone might not work out of the box. You have to run the following:

    # echo 0x19 0x90A70011 > /sys/class/sound/hwC0D0/user_pin_configs
    # echo 1 > /sys/class/sound/hwC0D0/reconfig

### Suspend to RAM (S3 sleep)

With Gnome 2.28 and the gnome-power-manager package installed, suspend-to-RAM works out of the box whenever the netbook lid is closed. The suspend process requires up to 30 seconds or so to take effect. Waking from S3 requires activating the power button under the default configuration. Waking upon opening the lid, or pressing a key, can be enabled in the BIOS.

With the realtek wireless card, wireless doesn't always come up again on suspend. Unloading and reloading the r8192e_pci module brings it back. This can also be configured automatically with Pm-utils.

From kernel 2.6.35 there is a regression that may prevent the system to comming back (experienced on N210 with 2.6.39) from suspend. The solution is, to create a file `/etc/pm/sleep.d/10cpu-disable` with the following content

    #!/bin/sh
    #
    # 10cpu-disable: turn of the second CPU before suspend.
    # fixes resume problem on 2.6.35-2.6.39... on Samsung Nxxx laptops.
    # bug: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21952

    case "$1" in
            hibernate|suspend)
                    echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online
            ;;
            thaw|resume)
                    echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online
            ;;
            *) exit $NA
            ;;
    esac

### Suspend to disk (hibernate)

Hibernate support with pm-utils does not work reliably. Upon resuming from hibernation, there are ELF header errors related to glibc, effectively preventing any new applications (including `shutdown`) from starting. Moreover, even if this problem can be resolved, the process of resuming from the swap partition (before the errors are observed) is slightly longer than a cold boot.

With the kernel 2.6.36 series, some samsung N series machines requires to add the parameter `intel_idle.max_cstate=0` to the kernel line for the hibernation/suspension to work correctly.

### Touchpad

The Synaptics touchpad works for single-finger operation with scrolling along the right edge out of the box. When `Fn+F10` is pressed, the BIOS automatically enables or disables the touchpad hardware. To receive notification of this event, it is useful to install the xosd package and configure a script to print a message whenever `Fn+F10` is pressed (see below for Fn key configuration). This script should be saved in `/usr/local/bin/report_touchpad`:

    #!/bin/bash

    FONT='-adobe-helvetica-bold-*-*-*-34-*-*-*-*-*-*-*'
    DELAY=1
    state=Unknown

    case "$1" in
            on)
                    state=Enabled
            ;;
            off)
                    state=Disabled
            ;;
            *)
                    echo "usage: $0 {on|off}"
                    exit 2
            ;;
    esac

    osd_cat -A center -p middle -f $FONT -d $DELAY << EOF
    Touchpad $state
    EOF

    exit 0

To enable tapping, the easiest solution is to install gpointing-device-settings. Although the literature shipping with the netbook claims multitouch support (for two-finger tap, two-finger scroll, etc.), it does not appear to work properly.

For n220 owners (these parameters haven't been tested on n150 but it migth work), these touchpad rules enable multitouch (/etc/hal/fdi/policy/11-x11-synaptics.fdi)

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
    <deviceinfo version="0.2">
            <device>
                    <match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.touchpad">
                            <merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">synaptics</merge>
                            <merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton1" type="string">1</merge>
                            <merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton2" type="string">2</merge>
                            <merge key="input.x11_options.TapButton3" type="string">3</merge>

                            <merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">true</merge>

                            <merge key="input.x11_options.VertEdgeScroll" type="string">false</merge>
                            <merge key="input.x11_options.PalmDetect" type="string">false</merge>

                            <merge key="input.x11_options.VerteScrollDelta" type="string">100</merge>

                            <merge key="input.x11_options.VertTwoFingerScroll" type="string">true</merge>
                            <merge key="input.x11_options.HorizTwoFingerScroll" type="string">true</merge>
                            <merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateTwoFingerMinZ" type="string">40</merge>
                            <merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateTwoFingerMinW" type="string">5</merge>

                    </match>
            </device>
    </deviceinfo>

## CPU frequency scaling

To improve power management to some degree, CPU frequency scaling can be enabled. This mechanism requires a few modules, like acpi-cpufreq, cpufreq-ondemand and cpufreq-powersave, to be loaded at boot time from `/etc/modules-load.d/` as described in Kernel modules.

Toggling between the performance, ondemand, and powersave governors can be accomplished via the following script, installed to `/usr/local/bin/cpufreq_toggle`

    #!/bin/bash

    current=$(cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor)
    future=unknown

    if [ "$current" == "performance" ]; then
            future="ondemand"
    elif [ "$current" == "ondemand" ]; then
            future="powersave"
    else
            future="performance"
    fi

    echo "$future" > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor
    echo "$future" > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/cpufreq/scaling_governor

    echo "$future"

For reporting the current governor choice via an on-screen display (useful if enabling the `Fn+F8` performance switching shortcut), the following wrapper script can be installed as `/usr/local/bin/cpufreq_toggle_osd`

    #!/bin/bash

    FONT='-adobe-helvetica-bold-*-*-*-34-*-*-*-*-*-*-*'
    DELAY=1

    state=$(sudo /usr/local/bin/cpufreq_toggle)
    message="CPU Performance State Unknown"

    if [ "$state" == "performance" ]; then
            message="Performance Mode"
    elif [ "$state" == "powersave" ]; then
            message="Low Power Mode"
    elif [ "$state" == "ondemand" ]; then
            message="Automatic Mode"
    fi

    osd_cat -A center -p middle -f $FONT -d $DELAY << EOF
    $message
    EOF

    exit 0

By default, the system will boot with CPU frequency scaling set to use the performance governor. To enable the ondemand governor at the end of the boot process, create a tmpfile:

    /etc/tmpfiles.d/cpu_scaling.conf

    w /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor - - - - ondemand
    w /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/cpufreq/scaling_governor - - - - ondemand

## Fn keys

Samsung Tools can be installed to quickly get the `Fn` key combinations work. It is available in AUR (samsung-toolsAUR).

This article or section is out of date.

Reason: rc.local (Discuss in Talk:Samsung N150#)

Several of the special `Fn` key combinations work out of the box with the N150, but most do not. Unusual scancodes are reported to the kernel, which does not know how to convert these codes to keycodes natively. Worse, many of the scancodes produce a key press event without a corresponding key release event. Appending the following lines to /etc/rc.local will enable all `Fn` keys and map them properly:

    setkeycodes e002 227   # Fn+F4 maps to switchvidmode
    setkeycodes e003 236   # Fn+F2 maps to battery
    setkeycodes e004 148   # Fn+F5 maps to prog1
    setkeycodes e006 238   # Fn+F9 maps to wlan
    setkeycodes e008 225   # Fn+Up maps to brightnessup
    setkeycodes e009 224   # Fn+Dn maps to brightnessdown
    setkeycodes e031 149   # Fn+F7 maps to prog2
    setkeycodes e033 202   # Fn+F8 maps to prog3
    setkeycodes e077 191   # Fn+F10 maps to F21 whenever the touchpad is enabled
    setkeycodes e079 192   # Fn+F10 maps to F22 whenever the touchpad is disabled

    # Ensure key release events occur for all except Fn+F7, which properly reports a key release for some reason
    echo 130,131,132,134,136,137,179,247,249 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio0/force_release

To enable hotkeys to change backlight, wireless, and system performance settings, it is necessary to give regular users certain permissions via the sudo command. Run `# visudo` and add the following to the Cmnd alias specifications:

    Cmnd_Alias NETBOOK_CMDS = /usr/local/bin/backlight, /usr/local/bin/rftoggle, /usr/local/bin/cpufreq_toggle

Then add the following to the bottom of the file:

    %users ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: NETBOOK_CMDS

Now custom keyboard shortcuts can be added to Gnome by means of the "Keyboard Shortcuts" preferences.

Name | Command | Key
--- | --- | ---
Touchpad disabled | /usr/local/bin/report_touchpad off | Press Fn+F10 while touchpad enabled
Touchpad enabled | /usr/local/bin/report_touchpad on | Press Fn+F10 while touchpad disabled
Toggle CPU frequency scaling | /usr/local/bin/cpufreq_toggle_osd | Fn+F8
Raise backlight | sudo /usr/local/bin/backlight up | Fn+Up arrow
Lower backlight | sudo /usr/local/bin/backlight down | Fn+Down arrow
Toggle wireless | sudo /usr/local/bin/rftoggle | Fn+F9
Toggle backlight | sudo /usr/local/bin/backlight toggle | Fn+F5

Category:

- Samsung

Hidden category:

- Pages or sections flagged with Template:Out of date