webbookblog

This only works on Hardy Heron 8.04 kernel version 2.26.19 if you have upgraded beyond that, i.e. if your webbook is currently up-to-date then the download on this page will not do anything useful and you will need to restore the backup of your xorg.conf to get it working again.

So now you know how to unbreak your webbook graphics, lets have a go at installing and using the via drivers.
First download this file Elonex Via Drivers.
This contains the binary drivers patched for the webbook and compiled against kernel 2.26.19 which is the current kernel at the time of writing this. When the next kernel upgrade happens there is a reasonable chance you will boot to a black screen. If that happens go to the recovery console and copy back your xorg.conf for the openchrome drivers.
So having downloaded the file start up a terminal window. I am assuming that you downloaded the file to the desktop (the default place if you just clicked on the link in Firefox), if you put it somewhere else then you may have to adjust the commands accordingly.

cd Desktop
ls
tar -zxvf elonexviadrivers.tar.gz
cd ElonexViaDrivers
sudo ./vinstall

so step by step
cd Desktop changes the current directory to the Desktop directory where you downloaded the file
ls lists the content of the current directory, it will show you everything on your desktop. I put this in just to confirm you are in the right place and to help you forget the dir dos command:-)
tar -zxvf elonexviadrivers.tar.gz
this one is a bit more complex the zxvf bit is 4 commands or flags we are passing to the tar program. z means uncompress the file using gzip (that is the .gz part of the filename). x means extract the files from the archive. v means verbose, so it will tell you what it is doing as it extracts them. f means the next parameter is the filename to work on.
cd ElonexViaDrivers
the extracted archive created a new folder on your desktop, we now change directory into that folder
sudo ./vinstall
sudo means run the next command as the super user. The single . means “the current directory” just as .. means the parent directory. cd . does nothing cd .. goes up a directory. ./vinstall means run the vinstall script that is located in the current directory. Now if you are familiar with the workings of other popular operating systems you may be a bit puzzled by this, why can’t you just type vinstall because you are in the right directory? Well this is a security feature, the current directory is not on the search path for applications to execute, you have to be explicit. Imagine if there was a script called “ls” in a directory, you go into that directory and use ls to list the contents but instead of doing that you just ran a script that does who knows what!
You can have a look at the contents of the vinstall script if you like. Just type
gedit vinstall
and the editor will open up so you can see what it does. It is always good practice to have a look at scripts before you run them. It is a great way to learn, and you can check that it is doing what you expect it to do.
So now you should have the via drivers installed, if you restart you will find the login window a bit stretched (not quite sure how to fix that yet) and you can log on to your desktop. Some things might be a bit smoother, but nothing dramatic is visible. For that we need Part 3 – Enabling Compiz, which I will crack on with right now . . .

Please shout if the instructions don’t work, there might be some typos in there

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 at 9:24 pm and is filed under Compiz, Geeky, Howto. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.