Acer Aspire One D250 FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE

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PSY0NIC

Ever look for a page dedicated to a laptop that's not a tutorial and just gives you a do this, this and this and in 10 minutes you have a working laptop? Well, since I'm not a great tech writer, that's what I'm gonna give everyone. It's taken me weeks of research on hundreds of sites to get this thing working and being new to FreeBSD but not to *NIX I found my experience almost discouraging working with BSD especially since I could have just taken the easy way out and had almost everything working OTB with another *NIX flavor. So to prevent the new comers to FreeBSD from shying away from the OS before they even get started I'll just give you the changes you need to add to your configs and what files you need to modify to get you a fully running laptop. I hope at least a few will find this useful and save them the aggrivation and sleepless nights I went through. Thanks reddawg for all your help as well.


(Text after a # are comments and can be omitted from your configs)

Card Readers
Add the following lines to /boot/loader.conf:

Code: 
sdhci_load="YES" #SD Card Reader 
mmcsd_load="YES" #SD Card Reader 
mmc_load="YES" #SD Card Reader

Sound
Add
Code: 
snd_hda_load="YES"
to /boot/loader.conf

Networking
Internal NIC (Atheros AR813)
Driver obtained from http://people.freebsd.org/~yongari/
and modified by reddawg. Source attached

WLAN AR5006 working out of the box.

/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf:
Code: 
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant 
ctrl_interface_group=wheel 

network={ 
ssid="SSID_NAME_HERE" 
proto=WPA 
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK 
pairwise=CCMP TKIP 
scan_ssid=1 
psk"PASSWORD_HERE" 
}

MISC
Annoying as F*** beep on tab completion. To turn off add:
Code: 
hw.syscons.bell=0
to /etc/sysctl.conf

rc.conf
Code: 
linux_enable="YES" 
ifconfig_alc0="DHCP"

/boot/loader.conf
Code: 
cpuctl_load="YES" #CPU Throttling 
coretemp_load="YES" #Thermal Monitoring 
snd_hda_load="YES" #Sound 
linprocfs_load="YES" #Linux proc 
linsysfs_load="YES" #Linux sysfs 
sdhci_load="YES" #SD Card Reader 
mmcsd_load="YES" #SD Card Reader 
mmc_load="YES" #SD Card Reader 
wlan_scan_ap_load="YES" #Wireless 
wlan_scan_sta_load="YES" #Wireless 
if_alc_load="YES" #Internal LAN module 
ubtbcmfw_load="YES #Firmware loader for Broadcom Bluetooth 
ng_ubt_load="YES" #Bluetooth driver

/etc/sysctl.conf
Code: 
hw.syscons.bell=0 #Turns off annoying as f*** beep on tab 
dev.ath.0.ledpin=3 #Wireless LED 
dev.ath.0.softled=1 #Wireless LED

*Sleep & suspend are not working.

Here is a good review of everything on this model. Will provide dev dumps later.

http://www.geekwithlaptop.com/the-acer-aspire-one-d250-netbook-arrives
 

Attachments

I have an acer aspire one d150, and I kept track of some of the things I did to set it up - can be found here. I have probably changed how some things are set up since then, and I don't use banshee any more.
 
I have this same model, wondering a few things...
I'm considering throwing fBSD on it, but before I do:

1) Despite the OP saying sleep/suspend doesn't work, can anyone shed some light on hacking it into working?
2) do the screen brightness keys work?
3) What about webcam?
4) External video?

Thanks.
 
Update for 8.0-RELEASE

As it's been almost a year, I thought I'd update this overview for FreeBSD 8.

So, to run FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE on the Acer Aspire One D250 (anyone feel free to fill in the blanks):
  • 3D Acceleration:
    Reportedly works, not tested myself.
  • Audio:
    No change: simply use snd_hda(4) and off you go.
    The speaker output isn't great, but at least the muting/unmuting of the speakers when plugging in/out headphones works as it's supposed to.
  • Annoying terminal beep:
    Appears to be gone. I can't even get the system to beep on purpose, so apparently it's no longer necessary to put
    Code: 
    hw.syscons.bell=0
    in /etc/sysctl.conf.
  • TV out:
    Not tested yet. But if somebody can give me a pointer as to how this works in general, I'll go get a cable and try it.
  • Webcam:
    The camera is recognized by ugen(4) but I haven't yet bothered actually testing it.
  • Card reader:
    No change: just use sdhci(4), mmcsd(4) and mmc(4) and you're ready to go.
  • Touchpad:
    Works out of the box (the multi-gesture stuff probably doesn't, but I don't use it anyway). If you're like me and actually want to disable the touchpad, you need to set up X without HAL/DBUS (see http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=7956 if necessary) and NOT run moused(8) either. Note that although the touchpad is recognized as a PS/2 mouse, simply compiling a kernel without psm(4) is not enough to disable it.
  • Internal NIC:
    Now works out of the box: if_alc() is the driver you need.
  • Wireless LAN:
    Still works as described, except the LED doesn't seem to work anymore.
    Also, the connection gets dropped after a while (usually several hours) and cannot be re-established except by rebooting (! :q x( ). But that's probably just a problem at my end.
  • Power management:
    # shutdown -p works, suspend/resume are under investigation.
  • Fn keys:
    On the top row, only Num Lock and Scroll Lock seem to work.
    The numeric keys all work (without having to hold down Fn) when Num Lock is active. When Num Lock is not active, the operator keys (*,/,+,-) work when holding down Fn, but the digit keys don't.
    Home, End and the screen brightness keys work, the speaker volume keys don't.
 
I have installed a 9-CURRENT (kernel SVN r214444). My Acer Aspire One D250 was shipped with an unsupported BroadCom Wifi card (only NDIS makes it useable) and as well I can not get the internal mic recording with snd_hda(4), only the mic of the headset jack works. Any ideas are welcome. Thanks

Matthias
 
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