noapic is like a new laptop

Every now and then I search for new information on my Travelmate 4101WLMI laptop in case someone has had more luck getting all the components to work. I found a note on the German Ubuntu site suggesting that I boot with noapic (in /boot/grub/menu.1st) instead of pci=noacpi (which is itself better than acpi=off). I was so pleased to get working sound and built-in wired and wireless networking. It’s like a new laptop. This suggests that the boot hang is caused by APIC (clock advanced interrupts system) rather than ACPI (power management).
So, I still don’t have

  • the battery status in the GNOME panel. Apparently Acer Travelmate’s tend to have the wrong DSDT in the bios. I tried doing the recompile-the-DSDT thing without success. But it bothers me that the bios seems just fine for Windows. Apparently Windows uses the Smart Battery interface instead and the GNOME applet needs to support that. I clicked on the “upstream request” link in Ubuntu’s (awkward) Malone bug-tracker. I’m not sure if it did anything.
  • the widescreen display resolution.

But I can live with that more or less.

13 thoughts on “noapic is like a new laptop

  1. The APIC is the Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (a more sophisticated mechanism for handling interrupts), not the clock.

  2. In the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf,
    In the Section “Screen”,
    In the SubSection Display,
    Add “1280×800” to any Modes line you have

  3. glandium, please read the bug report – specifically about the scrolling. 1280×800 is the _only_ resolution I have listed in Modes line for all Display SubSections.

  4. As I commented in your bug, support for this should be added to HAL, not battstat. Nowadays battstat will try to get all power management information from HAL to save having to implement the multitude of backends in battstat itself.

    You may have to do one of those nasty VESA hacks to load the 1280×800 modeline into your video bios. That is not uncommon for Intel cards (were we don’t know how random modechips work) with whacky modes.

  5. I expect many people get APIC and ACPI confused – it doesn’t help that they use the same set of chars in the acronym :) a dyslexic may have a hell of a time here.

  6. well about the screen resolution trouble, try adding lower values with 915resolution.
    2 friends of mine have a 1400×1050 screen it never goed to that resolution, but we are able to get it to 1400×1023. This still misses 27 pixels of resolution but it is way better then 1024×768 ;)

  7. Arjan, thanks for the tip, but I’ve just tried several resolutions with 915resolution and all I ever seem to achieve (by using anything more than 1024×768) is varying amounts of extra scrollable screen area. But this really is a 1280×800 screen, as reported by Windows.

  8. Please file an Ubuntu bug with the output of ‘sudo dmidecode’; it may eventually be possible to blacklist APIC interrupt routing on your laptop.

  9. Josh, there’s more than one model of TravelMate 4101WLMi. That one has an ATI video card. My one has an intel i915 card.

  10. well, I have an Acer Extensa 6601 laptop with an intel 915G chipset too.
    I’m using Ubuntu 5.10
    when I installed Ubuntu, the desktop resolution was set to 1024×768, and I couldn’t change it(though I had a wide screen).
    after a day of searching, installing 855resultion and so on, I found out that the monitor section in xorg.conf contains no HorizSync or VertRefresh lines, as soon as I added them(as outlined in this page https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FixVideoResolutionHowto#head-e2249d4bcb9fe0dea110f9b82ec7a40716221541 ), I got the 1280×800 resolution working.

  11. I’ve got a Hi-Grade Model 332 and I had a great deal of trouble with the NOAPIC option, but I googled and found most entries referred back to making amendments to /boot/grub/menu.lst. However, when I tried to do the same to 10.04 – ‘lucid’ – I found that menu.lst doesn’t exist in /boot/grub/. Could someone tell me what file I should look for?

    And what should I add to the file? noapic? no=apic?

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