Feb 07
Ubuntu on Acer Aspire 9500
After an evening of tinkering I’ve managed to get the Ubuntu 5.10 “Breezy Badger” LiveCD running on an Acer Aspire 9500.
The first problem was that the screen went blank just after the boot prompt. It seemed to get as far as loading the kernel and then it would just stop. This was resolved by typing live vga=771 noapic nolapic at the boot prompt instead of just pressing <enter> for the default behaviour.
The second problem I faced was that even though all the installation screens seemed to pass without issue I was finally left with a blank screen instead of the shiny Gnome desktop.
The solution was found in this post on the Suse forums. The advice given was to add these 2 extra “Options” to the “Device” section of xorg.conf:
Section "Device"
... # automatically generated stuff here
Option "CRT2Position" "clone"
Option "MonitorLayout" "LVDS,CRT"
EndSection
In order to add these settings I followed these steps:
- Swap to an alternative console by typing
Ctl+Alt+F1 - Become root. This can be done in Ubuntu by executing:
sudo -s. - Edit
/etc/X11/xorg.confand add the options shown above. - Restart GDM by swapping to run level 3 then back to runlevel 5.
root@ubuntu$ telinit 3 # ... wait for bit while runlevel changes then # press enter to get back to the prompt root@ubuntu$ telinit 5
- At this point if successful you should be taken to the Gnome desktop.
Not sure why this happened and and I’m not sure what these 2 options are. However I’m hoping the ATI knowledge base will shed some light on that.
The next task is to try to install the full Ubuntu distro to the hard disk.
May 12th, 2007 at 8:13 am
I tried to install Dapper on an Acer Aspire 9503EWSMi from the LiveCD.
The installation aborted when the X-Server was to be started.
I edit the xorg.conf as shown above and afterwards could start the X-Server but I got a blank screen. On the external Monitor all was OK.
Has somebody an idea how to switch on the internal display??
May 13th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Hi Peter
Are you able to get as far as the desktop running from the LiveCD or is this just happening once you’ve partially installed Ubuntu to your hard disk?
I can try to help you but you should know the best places for support with these types of things are firstly on https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu which is the official Ubuntu support site or on the Ubuntu Forum.
May 16th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Hi, munckfish,
thanks for your reply! The X-problem ocurs with the Live CD and also when installing from the Alternate CD. Meanwhile I looked arround in the english Ubuntu Forum and found a solution to my X-Problem.
The solution is: In addition to the standard Ubuntu installation you have to install the 915 resolution package manually. This packages changes temporaly the Bios for the display of my Acer Aspire 9503EWSMi. After this change the automatic generated xorg.conf could be used unchanged.
May 16th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Ok Peter, glad you got it sorted.