Linux on a Toshiba NB200

7 Replies

Thanks to Ultim8Fury, Leesa and Nick255 for the following.

Presumably as it’s a fairly new model, after setting up linux (Ubuntu Netbook Remix in this case) on a Toshiba NB200 I ran into a few little problems.  Most of the smaller ones were solved/mitigated by Ultim8Fury’s excellent Setup Guide here.  However if, like me, you had windows off and linux on faster than ** then you may have run into the ‘enabling wifi’ problem.

The drivers suggested by Ultim8Fury cannot turn the card on and windows XP will not reinstall without some very advanced ‘slipstreaming’ technique due to a lack of drivers for the RAID interface.  So if you forgot to enable wireless before removing XP and do not own a copy of Vista (presumably this may work, I don’t actually know) how do you enable the card?

It was Leesa’s explaination of how to enable bluetooth and Nick255’s adaptation of it that provided the answer.

Originally Posted by Leesa
Bluetooth is working with omnibook module:

  1. Get sources from http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/362618/om…1217-1_all.deb
  2. Make sure Bluetooth is enabled in Windows
  3. sudo apt-get install module-assistant build-essential
  4. sudo m-a a-i omnibook-source
  5. Try it: sudo modprobe omnibook ectype=14
  6. Make it autoload:
  • sudo nano /etc/modules
  • Put “omnibook” at the latest line
  • sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/omnibook.conf:

options omnibook ectype=14 userset=0 lcd=0 display=0 blank=0 battery=0 ac=0 bluetooth=1

Works fine for my NB200, even enabling/disabling bluetooth via /proc/omnibook/bluetooth
You should use ectype=12 instead of ectype=14. That way you can enable or disable wifi without needing to boot Windows. Unfortunately, the hotkeys don’t work, so you have to manually echo either 1 or 0 to /proc/omnibook/wifi (or if you prefer, just disable it in the bios when you want to be sure it is disabled).
To summarise (in Ubuntu):
  1. Download http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/362618/om…1217-1_all.deb
  2. Install the omnibook-source .deb file, module-assistant and build-essential.
  3. Run module-assistant on the omnibook-source package.
  4. Load the module with ectype=12.
  5. Turn the Wifi on and off with /proc/omnibook/wifi

As root:

# This will install any dependencies not already on the system:
apt-get install bzip2 debhelper dpatch kernel-package make module-assistant build-essential
mkdir /tmp/omnibook
cd /tmp/omnibook
wget http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/362618/omnibook-source_2.20070211%2Bsvn20071217-1_all.deb
dpkg -i omnibook-source_2.20070211+svn20071217-1_all.deb
m-a a-i omnibook-source
modprobe omnibook ectype=12
echo 1 > /proc/omnibook/wifi

If this works as advertised, go ahead and add “omnibook” to the end of /etc/modules and “options omnibook ectype=12” to /etc/modprobe.d/omnibook.conf.

To disable the wireless adapter just use the command “echo 0 > /proc/omnibook/wifi”. To enable it, replace the “0” with “1”.

7 thoughts on “Linux on a Toshiba NB200”

  1. Greg Tourte

    The omnibook kernel module is hosted on sourceforge at https://sourceforge.net/projects/omnibook/. Unfortunately, it seems that the project owner has abandoned the project. However it is still being maintained but the only way to get the latest version is via SVN.

    The current maintainer (Julien Valroff) has an unofficial debian repository where he puts packages of SVN snapshots for ubuntu/debian at http://packages.kirya.net/ (look in the “unstable” repo)

    Regarding the hot keys, there is undoubtedly a way of mapping them via ACPI, it is just a question of finding the keycodes if one really wants to.

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  2. Giridhar

    Hello, it works perfectly for me, but i have to do it every time when i switch on my laptop, if i save the conf files that above commands will not work, i dont know why ?

    and one more thing, when i connect my cell phone through the bluetooth, i can send data from laptop to cell phone but not from cell phone to laptop, it shows a locak symbol, how to remove that lock symbol,

    please write more about this issues,

    thanks

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  3. Carlo Comanducci

    I have a toshiba nb200-10j, ubuntu jaunty. Wireless does not show or work.
    I followed this steps:

    apt-get install bzip2 debhelper dpatch kernel-package make module-assistant build-essential
    mkdir /tmp/omnibook
    cd /tmp/omnibook
    wget http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/362618/omnibook-source_2.20070211%2Bsvn20071217-1_all.deb
    dpkg -i omnibook-source_2.20070211+svn20071217-1_all.deb
    m-a a-i omnibook-source
    modprobe omnibook ectype=12
    echo 1 > /proc/omnibook/wifi

    but the last command (echo 1 etc…) gives me this:

    bash: /proc/omnibook/wifi: No such file or directory

    What shall I do? Thank you…

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  7. Paul Dallas

    Worked straight away on my Omnibook NB200-10Z, running Ubuntu 9.10 (karmic) with kernel 2.6.31-20 (generic). I did things a little differently:

    1. Install the following packages using Synaptic:
    – bzip2
    – debhelper
    – dpatch
    – kernel-package
    – make
    – module-assistant
    – build-essential

    2. Download and double-click on omnibook-source_2.20070211+svn20090714b-3_all.deb, to install the package.

    3. Open a terminal, su as root, and run
    m-a a-i omnibook-source

    4. UKOLN Dev Linux on a Toshiba NB200.html recommends the following are done:
    modprobe omnibook ectype=12
    echo 1 > /proc/omnibook/wifi
    However, it doesn’t work. I have skipped this step.

    5. As root, add the word “omnibook” to the end of /etc/modules

    6. As root, create file /etc/modprobe.d/omnibook.conf, with the contents “options omnibook ectype=14”.

    7. Reboot.

    8. I installed the following (how useful these are is debateable):
    – bluez-gnome
    – blueman

    Note that one has to go to the “systems” tab on the desktop, and then open the “Bluetooth” application.
    For some reason it is not possible to send files. However, browse device and then copy and paste files at will.

    Needless to say, a million “thank you”s!!

    Dr. P. D.

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