ASUS 1201N: CPU fan, suspend, et-all.

[gilboa]

Hello all,

I just bought a brand new ASUS 1201N netbook.
I have 3 issues with this machine (At-least under Fedora 12/x86_64):
A. The wireless is unstable under Linux. (Knew it in advanced, most likely it'll get better as RT releases new drivers.)
B. The machine tends to run hot, -very- hot (65c-70c), to the point of losing the BIOS configuration when I reboot (!!!).
C. I can only suspend once. I mean, fist suspend works just fine. When I try to suspend again, suspend fails and the temperature sky-rocket. If I fail to shutdown the machine on the spot, it over-heats to dies.

A couple of questions:
A. Anyone else seeing any of this? Which BIOS version are you using (I'm on 0318)?
B. lm_sensors only sees the CPU and GPU cores. In the phoronix review, I saw that the Phoronix test suite (at least in the review) was capable of monitoring the CPU fan speed. Which sensor drivers are you using?
(In Fedora its in /etc/sysconfig/lm_sensors, also visible using lsmod)

Thanks,
- Gilboa

[itman]

I'm about gettin a 1201N for myself. And fedora (x86_64) will be my OS of choice. So I'm very interested in the outcome of this troubles...

By the way: Did you ask the fedora-forum for assistance?

cheers

itman

[gilboa]

I doubt that this is a Linux only issue.
We bought four laptops for our company, two of them are being used under Win7 and two under F12, and we're seeing a large portion of these problems (mostly crash after suspend) under Win7 as well.

We've returned one netbook to the local ASUS rep, and we currently waiting for their response.

In short, for now, I'd stay away from this netbook. At least for now.

- Gilboa

[pappgabor]

Hello all,

I just bought a brand new ASUS 1201N netbook.
I have 3 issues with this machine (At-least under Fedora 12/x86_64):
A. The wireless is unstable under Linux. (Knew it in advanced, most likely it'll get better as RT releases new drivers.)
B. The machine tends to run hot, -very- hot (65c-70c), to the point of losing the BIOS configuration when I reboot (!!!).
C. I can only suspend once. I mean, fist suspend works just fine. When I try to suspend again, suspend fails and the temperature sky-rocket. If I fail to shutdown the machine on the spot, it over-heats to dies.

A couple of questions:
A. Anyone else seeing any of this? Which BIOS version are you using (I'm on 0318)?
B. lm_sensors only sees the CPU and GPU cores. In the phoronix review, I saw that the Phoronix test suite (at least in the review) was capable of monitoring the CPU fan speed. Which sensor drivers are you using?
(In Fedora its in /etc/sysconfig/lm_sensors, also visible using lsmod)

Thanks,
- Gilboa

Hi Gilboa,

I do not have any solutions for your problems. However, I can confirm the things that you stated.

I replaced the wireless card with an Intel 5100. It has two antennas, so you have to connect the wire to the first port, but after that you will not have any problems with this. Of course, you have to break the warranty seal to do this.

The overheating issue has not happen to me so far, but the suspend problem has. I am running Ubuntu 9.10 (64). After the first suspend everything seems to work fine, but after the second one the fan does not turn back on. This causes the overheat and the emergency shutdown. I am using the same BIOS as you do, but I experienced the same problem with a previous version as well (do not remember which one tho).

So, my idea is to try the 32bit version. I do not have high hopes but I will give it a try and see. I will let you know how that goes.

Gabor

[gilboa]

Good luck (Update us if it works...)

[pappgabor]

Good luck (Update us if it works...)

I replaced my Ubuntu 9.10 (64) installation with Ubuntu 9.10 (32), and I am still experiencing the exact same behavior. If I try to suspend without installing the proprietary Nvidia driver, the system hangs. With the proprietary driver installed, after the first attempt everything seems to work, but the second attempt is unsuccessful and the fan turns of. This is shortly followed by a poweroff because of the overheating.

Gabor

[pappgabor]

opensuse is perfect

Hi,

After not having any success with Ubuntu, I installed OpenSuse. This is the first time I have tried it, and I went for the 64bit version with Gnome. Everything works fine. I performed multiple suspends and hibernates without any problems. So, the issue is clearly distro related and not hardware.

Hope this helps,
Gabor

[gilboa]

With the nVidia binary driver? Which version? (Or else, which driver did you use?)
Which kernel version?

[pappgabor]

With the nVidia binary driver? Which version? (Or else, which driver did you use?)
Which kernel version?

uname -a

Linux linux-agqc 2.6.31.5-0.1-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT 2009-10-26 15:49:03 +0100 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I used the proprietary video driver. Without that the suspend did not work. I have not tried hibernate. However, with the Nvidia driver, everything is just fine. I have version 190.53 installed. This version is the one that comes with OpenSuse. Ubuntu came with version 185, but I replaced that with the version 190 and that did not help either. So, I hardly doubt it will be the video driver.

Gabor

[gilboa]

Thanks for the update.
I plan to reinstall the machine once I have some time.
I'll initially use the Nouveau driver and report bugs to Fedora.
Hopefully they'll find the switch needed to get the laptop to suspend reliably.

I do wonder, do you still experience the random power off problem?

- Gilboa