Acer Aspire V3-571

This is a report of my experience with installing and running Linux on the Acer Aspire V3-571.

This page is just for discussing using Linux on the Acer Aspire V3-571. For a general discussion about this laptop you can visit the Acer Aspire V3-571 page on LapWik.

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For full specifications see the Acer Aspire V3-571 specifications page.

These are the specifictions from the original template. I have not modified them, but I have included the exact specifications of my machine in the Summary section.

1. I cannot connect to WiFi if bluetooth is enabled.
2. Initially, the computer did not wake up after a suspend to RAM. Later, I discovered that the problem is probably caused by the 'acer_wmi' kernel module. Blacklisting it solved the problem.

Here comes a summary of the configuration of my Acer Aspire V3-571.

Here is the output of lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor DRAM Controller (rev 09)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller (rev 09)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI Host Controller (rev 04)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev c4)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev c4)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation HM77 Express Chipset LPC Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 7 Series Chipset Family 6-port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 04)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM57785 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe (rev 10)
02:00.1 SD Host controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM57765 Memory Card Reader (rev 10)
02:00.2 System peripheral: Broadcom Corporation Device 16be (rev 10)
02:00.3 System peripheral: Broadcom Corporation Device 16bf (rev 10)
03:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9462 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)

The Acer came with Windows 8 preinstalled.

I first made a backup of the recovery partition on a 32GB USB stick, as recommended by the Acer User manuel.

This laptop is equipped with UEFI instead of BIOS. I have changed 3 things in the UEFI.

1. I have set a supervisor password (section “Security”). Without that it seemed impossible to disable 'Secure boot'.
2. I have disabled 'Secure boot' (section “Boot”).
3. I have enabled the boot menu such that it can be invoked with F12 at boot (section “Main”).

To enter the UEFI settings, press F2 just after power on or reboot.

I did not want to let the Fedora installer repartition the drive. So, I started the computer with the SystemRescueCD (see http://www.sysresccd.org/).

Then I have used GParted to repartition the disk like so:

The partitions 1 through 5 where originally on the disk. The windows partition (partition 4) used the entire space up to partition 5, which is a recovery partition.

I have shrunk the Windows partition (/dev/sda4) from over 400 GiB to 100 GiB.

Remark that I did not move any partition. In particular I have left partition 5 at the end of the disk.

I did not mount the Windows partiton (/dev/sda4) in Fedora, but I have created a separate partition (/dev/sda6) to exchange data between the Windows and Linux system.

Then I have rebooted with the Fedora 18 netinstall disk and started the installation.

The Fedora 18 installer is very different from the earlier Fedoras. I did not like the new partitioning tool, but I managed to let it use the partitions I had prepared before. Remark especially that it is necessary to set the mount point '/boot/efi' to the EFI System Partition (/dev/sda2 in this case).

Intitially, I had 2 problems:

1. After a suspend to RAM the system did not wake up again;
2. I could not connect to WiFi when bluetooth was enabled.

I could solve the first problem by blacklisting the acer_wmi kernel module. To do so I have written a small text file no-acer-wmi.conf in /etc/modprobe.d with the following contents:

blacklist acer_wmi

Suspend/resume to/from disk now also works with Fedora 18, but I have had some problems, that I do not fully understand. Maybe they stem from the fact that I have also installed Arch Linux (my favourite Linux distribution) as a third operating system. At any rate, when I tried to resume Fedora 18 after a suspend to disk, Arch Linux booted, instead of Fedora 18. I don't know how suspend/resume is supposed to work in a multi-boot UEFI environment. I could get it to work by adding a boot entry for Fedora 18 in the GRUB2 of Arch Linux. I have also appended the boot parameter resume=/dev/sda7 where /dev/sda7 is the swap paratition.

From Arch Linux suspend/resume to/from disk does not work yet.

In this context, it is interesting to note that both Fedora 18 and Arch Linux boot and shutdown so quickly, that it is almost not worth while to try to use suspend/resume to/from disk.

Connecting to WiFi while bluetooth is enabled is still a problem.

I can confirm the note of jordicoma on 2012-12-19 about the brightness setting of the LCD screen, but again, it seems that the 'acer_wmi' kernel module was part of the problem. After blacklisting kernel module acer_wmi, I only had to append the boot parameter acpi_osi=Linux. So I have appended acpi_osi=Linux to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX in /etc/default/grub and I have run

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg

to append this boot parameter permanently. The keys 'Fn + Left arrow' and 'Fn + Right arrow' now control the brightness of the LCD screen, but the brightness setting returns to its default after a reboot.

Note: For the meaning of acpi_osi=Linux, I quote the text from kernel-parameters.txt from the kernel documentation:

acpi_osi= [HW,ACPI] Modify list of supported OS interface strings
acpi_osi=“string1” # add string1 – only one string
acpi_osi=”!string2” # remove built-in string2
acpi_osi= # disable all strings


I have had some hair raising UEFI problems recently.

The Aspire V3-571 has UEFI InsydeH20.

After having installed Fedora 18, I also installed Arch Linux, as a third operating system.

Arch Linux does not have an automated installation. I followed the https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_Guide. In particular I installed the GRUB2 bootloader as follows:

grub-install –target=x86_64-efi –efi-directory=/boot/efi –bootloader-id=arch_grub –recheck

This also installed an UEFI boot option, as it should. So far, so good. I could boot all 3 operating systems: Fedora 18, Windows 8 and Arch linux. They all appeared in the boot menu which the UEFI InsydeH20 displays after pressing F12 at boot. I could also add boot entries for both Fedora and Windows in the GRUB menu of the Arch installation, such that I did not have to use the F12 button to boot Fedora or Windows.

The only “strange” thing I noticed was that “Fedora” was no longer shown in the “Boot” section of InsydeH20 which can be displayed by pressing F2 at boot. Only “Arch” and “Windows” were present.

Then I wanted to resinstall Fedora 18, with GNOME 3 instead of XFCE desktop which I had intially installed. I thought it would be a good idea to first clear the Fedora UEFI boot entry to force the Fedora installer to reinstall it, in the hope that it would then appear again in the “Boot” section of InsydeH20. To do so, I used the efibootmgr utility.

Calling

efibootmgr

displayed:

BootCurrent: 0003
Timeout: 2 seconds
BootOrder: 0003,0002,0001
Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager
Boot0002* Fedora
Boot0003* arch


Then calling:

efibootmgr –disk /dev/sda –part 2 –bootnum 0002 –delete-bootnum

and

efibootmgr

displayed:

BootCurrent: 0003
Timeout: 2 seconds
BootOrder: 0003,0002,0001
Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager
Boot0003* arch


So, the Fedora boot entry was deleted, but it was still in the BootOrder. Trying to change the BootOrder with

efibootmgr –disk /dev/sda –part 2 –bootorder 0003,0001

did not work, 0002 stayed in the BootOrder.

Then I did something more drastic, with drastic results. I called:

efibootmgr –delete-bootorder

Then, only 0001 (Windows) was still in the BootOrder and it turned out to be impossible to get 0003 (Arch) back into the BootOrder. Even deleting and reintroducing the Arch boot option:

efibootmgr –disk /dev/sda –part 2 –bootnum 0003 –delete-bootnum
efibootmgr –disk /dev/sda –part 2 –bootnum 0003 –loader \\EFI\\arch_grub\\grubx64.efi –label “arch”

did not work at all.

So, I was left with a computer that could only boot Windows. The efibootmgr could not help.

Then, fearing the worst, I reinstalled Fedora 18. The Fedora installer did at least restore the Fedora UEFI boot option. So, the F12 boot menu showed again Fedora 18 and Windows 8.

I could now also boot Arch by adding an entry for Arch in the Fedora GRUB2 menu, but I still wanted also Arch to appear in the UEFI boot options. efibootmgr did not help. Maybe, the grubinstall command that I had used when installing Arch (see above) could have worked, but I did not try that.

Instead I used the UEFI shell that is on the Arch linux installation CD. After booting into the UEFI shell, I issued this command:

bcfg boot add 3 fs0:\EFI\arch_grub\grubx64.efi “arch”

That worked. I verified it with:

bcfg boot dump -v

That showed that Arch was back in, but at the last place. I still wanted it to be first. So, I did:

bcfg boot mv 3 0

That also worked. I am happy again.

Invoking the boot menu with F12 at boot, shows the options Arch, Fedora, Windows in that order. But again, in the “Boot” section of the InsydeH20 utility that is displayed when pressing F2 at boot, only Arch and Windows are shown. Apparently, only 2 boot entries can be shown there and Windows is probably more or less hard coded there.

My conclusion is that the efibootmgr does not work well with InsydeH20 of the Acer Aspire V3-571. The Fedora installer, grub-install and the UEFI shell can manage the UEFI boot options, but I am very reluctant to do more experiments for fear of blocking the UEFI boot settings and making the computer unable to boot Linux.

Wim Herremans

Last update: 2013-03-27