Asus Tuf A17 Laptop - Ryzen 7 4800H - almost everything works

[Stevo]

I think most, if not all, the MX tools could work on Devuan XFCE, except for the ones that install custom themes only in our repo and some Popular App choices that are also only going to work from the MX repos. There have been reports of MX Snapshot working to make an installable custom respin ISO on normal Debian--that's a killer app.

[JayM]

Has MX Snapshot ever been packaged as an appimage the way MX LUM has?

[PhilSalkie]

Turns out the 5.7 kernel _is_ patched to see the second I2C bus, but that doesn't seem to have the Aura hardware on it either.
Next I'll reach out to the Faustus folks and see what may be found there - currently that module doesn't see anything it's interested in on this machine when it tries to load.

One interesting thing I've noticed is that the USB controllers seem to appear and disappear at will - it doesn't always boot up with all 3 USB ports available, and sometimes the camera's not there at boot time. I have an old script which unbinds and rebinds all the XHCI devices - that re-enabled the camera once, but not every time. I'll be playing around with that some more to see if I can make any sense out of why the USB's being odd.

Here's what "lusub" looks like when everything's where it should be:

Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 005 Device 002: ID 13d3:3548 IMC Networks <That's the Bluetooth radio>
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 13d3:56a2 IMC Networks <That's the web camera>
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub


And right now it looks like this:



Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 13d3:3548 IMC Networks
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

So, no web-camera, and the bluetooth radio moved to a different bus, probably because one of the controllers didn't wake up right. Time to hunt for kernel parameters, I guess...

[SwampRabbit]

One interesting thing I've noticed is that the USB controllers seem to appear and disappear at will - it doesn't always boot up with all 3 USB ports available, and sometimes the camera's not there at boot time. I have an old script which unbinds and rebinds all the XHCI devices - that re-enabled the camera once, but not every time. I'll be playing around with that some more to see if I can make any sense out of why the USB's being odd.

Can you look in the bios for any of those sometimes pesky legacy USB backward compatibility options?

If this system has fast boot you could try to turn that off, or on if it’s off now.

Does this system have an option for IOMMU? There have been some flaky implementations of that at initial release of some systems.

Silly question but any potential beta BIOS options for this? ASUS was really good with me on my Prime Pros with beta BIOS for testing.

[PhilSalkie]

Only USB option is enable/disable storage devices.

Had Fast Boot on, which I thought I'd had off, but turned it back off again, no change.

Tried iommu=pt, that made things really weird.

I can check with ASUS, they may have something in the beta BIOS department. Not like I use the camera much.

In other news - there's a fork of Faustus that makes the RGB LEDs controllable! It's here:

https://github.com/rublag/faustus

and I modified the original post to point to it and give some details.

[SwampRabbit]

In other news - there's a fork of Faustus that makes the RGB LEDs controllable! It's here:

https://github.com/rublag/faustus

and I modified the original post to point to it and give some details.

Thank you for sharing that, I'll look into it when time permits.

[PhilSalkie]

An update on how things are going with the Tuf A17 - after using this laptop as my daily driver for two years, I legit wore the keyboard out. I'd managed to wipe the lettering off most of the home row, which didn't bother me - what made me do something about it was when the up and down arrow keys went flaky - it turns out I'd literally worn the silicone rubber domes out - when I removed the keycaps to see what was up, the domes with the conductive rubber contact points came out, too, and ya can't just glue silicone back together.

I bought a new keyboard on ebay - that was a mistake, don't just buy the keyboard. What's not immediately obvious is that the keyboard doesn't just come out, like an HP laptop would. This keyboard is essentially integral to the top deck of the laptop, and there's no particular way to remove it without breaking dozens of plastic welds and figuring out some way to replace them. So, I bought a new top deck (check with whatever vendor you choose, Asus makes about 17 different models that all look the same), but changing that takes a couple hours of complete disassembly and reassembly of the unit - so meanwhile I've swapped over to a backup unit of the same type that I had on hand. That's where I did a clean install of MX-21 AHS, which basically had everything working out-of-the-box except the keyboard LEDs (fixed with Faustus, see above) and the user-controllable fan modes (which I don't have working, but don't particularly care about, the fan changes speeds by itself in its default mode, and I don't need to poke at it.) Ethernet came right up, and I'd already installed an Intel WiFi card as mentioned above - it's just a much better piece of hardware than the original unit that came with the laptop, a no-brainer of an upgrade, connections are solid as a rock, I never even think about it anymore. No issues with USB ports disappearing, I turned on Hibernate as described above and that works perfectly, camera never disappears, it's all just been super reliable with the 5.19.1 kernel.

I wound up using "setkeycodes b7 104" to change the PrtSc/SysRq key to PageUp (the usual mapping methods won't work because it's captured at a low level in the kernel), so between that and my existing old-style XModmap settings I changed the row of keys at top right from:

F11 F12 Delete/Insert Pause/Break PrtSc/SysRq Home/End

to:

Insert Delete Home End PageUp PageDown

Since I never use Pause/Break or PrtSc/SysRq, I found the HP-ordering of the keys in that area much more useful.


Lines I added to /etc/rc.local:

Code: Select all

setkeycodes b7 104

echo 'auto' > '/sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:01:00.0/power/control'
echo 'min_power' > '/sys/class/scsi_host/host0/link_power_management_policy'
echo 'min_power' > '/sys/class/scsi_host/host1/link_power_management_policy'
echo '1500' > '/proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs'

So that's the remapping of the SysReq key, plus some power control stuff that the powertop utility suggested.


I made a file called /usr/local/bin/k which sets up the keyboard for me:

Code: Select all

setxkbmap -layout dvorak
xmodmap /home/phil/.Xmodmap 
synclient AreaLeftEdge=1000
synclient AreaRightEdge=2200

That's called when I log in, and I can call it up manually if something I do makes the keyboard go weird. The calls to "synclient" change the trackpad's "starting point" so that the edge of my right hand touching the right side of the trackpad won't be interpreted as a mouse move - only gestures which start near the middle of the pad count as mouse moves. (I've also turned off all trackpad zoom and scroll in the settings, because leaving them on causes occasional weird zooms or scrolls because my big hands touch the edges of the trackpad while I'm typing.)



My .Xmodmap file:

Code: Select all

clear Lock
clear Control
clear Mod1

remove Control = Control_L
remove Lock = Caps_Lock
remove Mod1 = Alt_L

keysym Control_L = Alt_L
keysym Caps_Lock = Control_L
keysym Alt_L = Caps_Lock

add Lock = Caps_Lock
add Control = Control_L
add Mod1 = Alt_L

keysym Home = Page_Down
keysym Print = Page_Up
keysym Pause = End
keysym Delete = Home

keysym F12 = Delete Delete Delete Delete Delete Delete F12
keysym F11 = Insert Insert Insert Insert Insert Insert F11

So, getting this two-year old laptop play nice has become a pretty painless exercise with MX-21 AHS - even with my weird keyboard remapping and big hands that rest on the trackpad. This laptop has really exceeded my expectations - the non-replaceable keyboard's definitely a downvote on the unit, along with the cheezy WiFi card it comes with, but everything else about it has been a win.

[tequila]

Hi, to fan control,I have new ROG Strix G713QR AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX,
to check fan control mode I use:cat /sys/devices/platform/asus-nb-wmi/throttle_thermal_policy
set manual to Overboost:sudo echo 1 > /sys/devices/platform/asus-nb-wmi/throttle_thermal_policy
Normal=0,Silent=2,Overboost=1
I accidentally found when in /etc/tlp.conf is set:
PLATFORM_PROFILE_ON_AC=performance
PLATFORM_PROFILE_ON_BAT=performance
the fans go constantly Overboost mode.

against overheating I use a script on the notebooks:https://github.com/Sepero/temp-throttle
I hope it will be useful for somebody
sorry, I'm using a DeepL translator