Acer Aspire ES1-111M
Contents
Hardware
- Processor: Intel Celeron N2840 @ 2.16 GHz
- Video: Intel Corporation Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display (rev 0e) - supports OpenGL 3.3 with MESA
- Audio: Intel Corporation Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series High Definition Audio Controller (rev 0e)
- Ethernet: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 0c)
- WiFi: Broadcom Corporation BCM43142 802.11b/g/n (rev 01)
- Storage: 32 GB eMMC flash memory at /dev/mmcblk0 - eMMC stands for embedded Multimedia Card it is like an internal SD card
Pre-Installation
While you still have MS Windows available, download the latest Firmware Update from the Acer website. The old firmware can only boot from the (black) USB 2.0 port. Also, should you ever want to go back to Windows 8.1 with Bing it's imperative to create a Windows recovery drive. A Windows 8.1 with Bing installation medium is only available to system manufacturers and you will have to either use this recovery drive or send the device back for repair if you wish to go back to the original state.
Should you need the Windows key for any reason, you can read it out via
hexdump -C /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM
but you will not be able to use it for anything else than this particular version of Windows.
Installation
To enter the EFI firmware setup, press F2 at the boot splash screen. You can also hold the SHIFT key in Windows while clicking on 'Reboot' and select to enter the EFI setup after reboot. In the setup, activate the F12 boot menu option. In order to disable 'Secure' Boot, you must set a supervisor password. After you disabled 'secure' boot, save the settings and reboot, then press F12 and select the USB drive with the Arch Linux setup files.
Follow the instructions of the installation guide. It is the most convenient to use Ethernet cable to access the internet, else you will need the proprietary wifi drivers (see following chapter) [are they included in the setup medium?]. The first partition should be an EFI system partition. Make sure that the initramfs and vmlinuz-linux files are on the EFI partition, and that it is mounted at /boot. There is now way to specify kernel boot parameters in this computer's EFI setup so you have to go with a boot loader. Simple way is to install gummiboot and create a boot entry:
/boot/loader/entries/archlinux.conf: title Arch Linux linux /vmlinuz-linux initrd /intel-ucode.img initrd /initramfs-linux.img options root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootwait
This assumes that your root is on the second partition (first partition is the EFI partition) and states rootwait because the integrated flash storage is not available instantly after kernel startup. When you are done with the Arch setup, reboot and press F2 to enter the EFI setup. Enable 'secure' boot again, then choose the option 'select an UEFI file as trusted for executing' and browse to the gummiboot/gummibootx64.efi file, then press ENTER. Now disable 'secure' boot again, put the gummiboot loader on top of the list in the boot priority menu, and remove the supervisor password. Save the settings and reboot into your fresh Arch system.
Post-Installation
Wireless
The Broadcom BCM43142 chipset is at this time not recognized by default. Installing the broadcom-wl package from the Arch User Repositories will make the device usable. More information can be found on the Broadcom Wireless page.
Preparing Installation
Install packages needed to make the driver package:
pacman -S base-devel linux-headers
Make sure you follow the next steps as a non-root user only! Create a dir to build the package in:
mkdir ~/builds cd ~/builds
Download or otherwise acquire the latest broadcom-wl tarball from its AUR page and extract it:
curl -L -O https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/br/broadcom-wl/broadcom-wl.tar.gz tar -xvf broadcom-wl.tar.gz
Change to the newly created dir and make the package:
cd broadcom-wl makepkg -s
Installing
The steps above created a .pkg.tar.xz file in the current dir, with a name equal or similar to broadcom-wl-6.30.223.248-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz. Install it as root, using:
pacman -U <filename>
Afterwards, load the module:
modprobe wl
Arch is now able to recognize the interface as wlp2s0, you can follow the wireless network configuration guide from here.
Issues
RPMB partition
The eMMC holds a Replay Protected Memory Block (RPMB) partition which results in a row of errors when the kernel tries to initialize it:
mmc0: Got data interrupt 0x00000002 even though no data operation was in progress. mmcblk0rpmb: error -110 transferring data, sector 8064, nr 8, cmd response 0x900, card status 0xb00 mmcblk0rpmb: timed out sending r/w cmd command, card status 0x400900 mmcblk0rpmb: timed out sending r/w cmd command, card status 0x400900 mmcblk0rpmb: timed out sending r/w cmd command, card status 0x400900 mmcblk0rpmb: timed out sending r/w cmd command, card status 0x400900 mmcblk0rpmb: timed out sending r/w cmd command, card status 0x400900 mmcblk0rpmb: timed out sending r/w cmd command, card status 0x400900 end_request: I/O error, dev mmcblk0rpmb, sector 8064 Buffer I/O error on device mmcblk0rpmb, logical block 1008
There is a patch, which allegedly fixes this problem. Yet this remains unconfirmed.
UEFI boot entry not shown at boot
A UEFI boot entry may not show up upon booting on this device. The solution is to copy your .efi
file to the location Windows uses. The process is shown in the following page: Boot loaders#UEFI boot loader does not show up in firmware menu