Lately I was searching for mobile notebook that I could use for remote work. I checked f ThinkPad series but they were huge bricks that have nothing in common with ‘mobile’ word. Then I saw ASUS Zenbook that I didn’t take into account before and it was exactly what I was searching for.
Configuration of Skylake based notebook right now is not straightforward - there are still glitches and small bugs that are waiting to be fixed. I want to sum up what I’ve done after installation. I started with fresh Ubuntu 16.04 to get Debian based distro with possibly latest kernel and patches.
Some SSD tweaks
Change mount options for filesystems on SSD from:
/dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
to:
/dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root / ext4 discard,noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
And move /tmp to RAM with this additional line in /etc/fstab:
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0
Now add deadline scheduler for root disk - edit /etc/rc.local and add this line before exit 0:
echo deadline > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler
echo 1 > /sys/block/sda/queue/iosched/fifo_batch
I have configured swap but I don’t want to use it too much and setting low swappines sysctl option will help. Run this as root:
echo "vm.swappiness = 1" > /etc/sysctl.conf.d/90-swappines.conf
sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.conf.d/90-swappines.conf
Power usage tweaks
I’ve installed laptop-mode-tools to achieve lower power usage on battery. So:
apt-get install -y laptop-mode-tools
By default it’s cutting hard CPU performance on battery (half performance, no turbo) so I fixed this by changing /etc/laptop-mode/conf.d/intel_pstate.conf section On battery:
#On battery
BATT_INTEL_PSTATE_PERF_MIN_PCT=0 # Minimum performance, in percent
BATT_INTEL_PSTATE_PERF_MAX_PCT=100 # Maximum performance, in percent
BATT_INTEL_PSTATE_NO_TURBO=0 # Disable "Turbo Boost"?
Laptop mode tools won’t start automatically so we may integrate them with pm-utils (that are already installed on Ubuntu) to get it running when needed. We have to create new config file:
sudo touch /etc/pm/sleep.d/10-laptop-mode-tools
sudo chmod a+x /etc/pm/sleep.d/10-laptop-mode-tools
with content like this:
case $1 in
hibernate)
/etc/init.d/laptop-mode stop
;;
suspend)
/etc/init.d/laptop-mode stop
;;
thaw)d
/etc/init.d/laptop-mode start
;;
resume)
/etc/init.d/laptop-mode start
;;
*)
echo Something is not right.
;;
esac
Now I will enable ALPM for SATA in AHCI mode optimizations:
echo SATA_ALPM_ENABLE=true | sudo tee /etc/pm/config.d/sata_alpm
And some kernel parameters in /etc/default/grub:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="pcie_aspm=force drm.vblankoffdelay=1 i915.semaphores=1"
and update-grub with:
update-grub
You may use powertop to nail power heavy processes. There is also powerstat to benchmark power usage through time - I have:
sudo pm-powersave true
powerstat
......
Summary:
System: 4.49 Watts on average with standard deviation 0.46
It’s really nice. I should be able to run about 8~9h! Sweet!
Sources
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/3ia8ta/review_of_ubuntu_on_asus_ux305fa/
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PowerManagement/ReducedPower#Using_less_power_with_laptop-mode-tools
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/PowerManagementALPM
Disable touchpad when writing
It’s crazy annoying when you tap touchpad during writing text and lose focus on editor window. There is solution for that, it’s even installed by default on Ubuntu and it’s called: syndaemon. It’s started by default like this:
syndaemon -i 1.0 -t -K -R
1 second feels too small for me. I will adjust it to 2s. There is no easy way to do this. I created script to run on login:
#!/bin/bash
killall syndaemon
syndaemon -d -i 2.0 -t -K -R
Now better 🙂
VD-PAU
I installed vdpauinfo tool to see if it’s working:
apt-get install -y vdpauinfo
It wasn’t:
vdpauinfo
display: :0 screen: 0
Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_va_gl.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Error creating VDPAU device: 1
I checked this library and couldn’t find it - it wasn’t installed. Easy fix:
apt-get install -y libvdpau-va-gl1
Check again:
vdpauinfo
display: :0 screen: 0
libva info: VA-API version 0.39.0
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_0_39
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
API version: 1
Information string: OpenGL/VAAPI/libswscale backend for VDPAU
Video surface:
name width height types
-------------------------------------------
420 1920 1080 NV12 YV12 UYVY YUYV Y8U8V8A8 V8U8Y8A8
422 1920 1080 NV12 YV12 UYVY YUYV Y8U8V8A8 V8U8Y8A8
444 1920 1080 NV12 YV12 UYVY YUYV Y8U8V8A8 V8U8Y8A8
Decoder capabilities:
name level macbs width height
----------------------------------------------------
MPEG1 --- not supported ---
MPEG2_SIMPLE --- not supported ---
MPEG2_MAIN --- not supported ---
H264_BASELINE 51 16384 2048 2048
H264_MAIN 51 16384 2048 2048
H264_HIGH 51 16384 2048 2048
VC1_SIMPLE --- not supported ---
VC1_MAIN --- not supported ---
VC1_ADVANCED --- not supported ---
MPEG4_PART2_SP --- not supported ---
MPEG4_PART2_ASP --- not supported ---
DIVX4_QMOBILE --- not supported ---
DIVX4_MOBILE --- not supported ---
DIVX4_HOME_THEATER --- not supported ---
DIVX4_HD_1080P --- not supported ---
DIVX5_QMOBILE --- not supported ---
DIVX5_MOBILE --- not supported ---
DIVX5_HOME_THEATER --- not supported ---
DIVX5_HD_1080P --- not supported ---
H264_CONSTRAINED_BASELINE 51 16384 2048 2048
H264_EXTENDED --- not supported ---
H264_PROGRESSIVE_HIGH --- not supported ---
H264_CONSTRAINED_HIGH --- not supported ---
H264_HIGH_444_PREDICTIVE --- not supported ---
HEVC_MAIN --- not supported ---
HEVC_MAIN_10 --- not supported ---
HEVC_MAIN_STILL --- not supported ---
HEVC_MAIN_12 --- not supported ---
HEVC_MAIN_444 --- not supported ---
Output surface:
name width height nat types
----------------------------------------------------
B8G8R8A8 8192 8192 y
R8G8B8A8 8192 8192 y
R10G10B10A2 8192 8192 y
B10G10R10A2 8192 8192 y
A8 8192 8192 y
Bitmap surface:
name width height
------------------------------
B8G8R8A8 8192 8192
R8G8B8A8 8192 8192
R10G10B10A2 8192 8192
B10G10R10A2 8192 8192
A8 8192 8192
Video mixer:
feature name sup
------------------------------------
DEINTERLACE_TEMPORAL -
DEINTERLACE_TEMPORAL_SPATIAL -
INVERSE_TELECINE -
NOISE_REDUCTION -
SHARPNESS -
LUMA_KEY -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L1 -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L2 -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L3 -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L4 -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L5 -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L6 -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L7 -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L8 -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L9 -
parameter name sup min max
-----------------------------------------------------
VIDEO_SURFACE_WIDTH -
VIDEO_SURFACE_HEIGHT -
CHROMA_TYPE -
LAYERS -
attribute name sup min max
-----------------------------------------------------
BACKGROUND_COLOR -
CSC_MATRIX -
NOISE_REDUCTION_LEVEL -
SHARPNESS_LEVEL -
LUMA_KEY_MIN_LUMA -
LUMA_KEY_MAX_LUMA -
Looks better now… But not impressive, there’s only H264 support.
I’ve tried it in VLC but it was crashing from time to time the whole VLC (leaving it running in background). Time to test VA-API 🙂
VA-API
Like earlier I have to install one tool to see what we have: vainfo
apt-get install -y vainfo
Checking what we have on system:
vainfo
libva info: VA-API version 0.39.0
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_0_39
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 0.39 (libva 1.7.0)
vainfo: Driver version: Intel i965 driver for Intel(R) Skylake - 1.7.0
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
VAProfileMPEG2Simple : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileMPEG2Simple : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileMPEG2Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileMPEG2Main : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileH264MultiviewHigh : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264MultiviewHigh : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileH264StereoHigh : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264StereoHigh : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileVC1Simple : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVC1Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVC1Advanced : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileNone : VAEntrypointVideoProc
VAProfileJPEGBaseline : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileJPEGBaseline : VAEntrypointEncPicture
VAProfileVP8Version0_3 : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVP8Version0_3 : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileHEVCMain : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileHEVCMain : VAEntrypointEncSlice
It requires package i965-va-driver to work but on my system it was installed (probably during VDPAU installation as dependency).
It was working almost fine… In VLC on my machine VA-API on X11 was drawing through all desktops. VA-API DRM was working better… But crashed my X11 server after few minutes of watching ;/
OpenCL
You may thing: for what the hell you need OpenCL on such tiny machine? I doesn’t care - I want it 🙂
First install clinfo package:
apt-get install -y clinfo
And run it:
clinfo
Number of platforms 0
Not too much 😀
For Intel GPU/CPU OpenCL support we will need beignet package:
apt-get install -y beignet
clinfo
Number of platforms 1
Platform Name Intel Gen OCL Driver
Platform Vendor Intel
Platform Version OpenCL 1.2 beignet 1.1.1
Platform Profile FULL_PROFILE
Platform Extensions cl_khr_global_int32_base_atomics cl_khr_global_int32_extended_atomics cl_khr_local_int32_base_atomics cl_khr_local_int32_extended_atomics cl_khr_byte_addressable_store cl_khr_spir cl_khr_icd
Platform Extensions function suffix Intel
Platform Name Intel Gen OCL Driver
Number of devices 1
Device Name Intel(R) HD Graphics Skylake ULX GT2
Device Vendor Intel
Device Vendor ID 0x8086
Device Version OpenCL 1.2 beignet 1.1.1
Driver Version 1.1.1
Device OpenCL C Version OpenCL C 1.2 beignet 1.1.1
Device Type GPU
Device Profile FULL_PROFILE
Max compute units 24
Max clock frequency 1000MHz
Device Partition (core)
Max number of sub-devices 1
Supported partition types None, None, None
Max work item dimensions 3
Max work item sizes 512x512x512
Max work group size 512
Preferred work group size multiple 16
Preferred / native vector sizes
char 16 / 8
short 8 / 8
int 4 / 4
long 2 / 2
half 0 / 8 (cl_khr_fp16)
float 4 / 4
double 0 / 2 (n/a)
Half-precision Floating-point support (cl_khr_fp16)
Denormals No
Infinity and NANs Yes
Round to nearest Yes
Round to zero No
Round to infinity No
IEEE754-2008 fused multiply-add No
Support is emulated in software No
Correctly-rounded divide and sqrt operations No
Single-precision Floating-point support (core)
Denormals No
Infinity and NANs Yes
Round to nearest Yes
Round to zero No
Round to infinity No
IEEE754-2008 fused multiply-add No
Support is emulated in software No
Correctly-rounded divide and sqrt operations No
Double-precision Floating-point support (n/a)
Address bits 32, Little-Endian
Global memory size 2147483648 (2GiB)
Error Correction support No
Max memory allocation 1073741824 (1024MiB)
Unified memory for Host and Device Yes
Minimum alignment for any data type 128 bytes
Alignment of base address 1024 bits (128 bytes)
Global Memory cache type Read/Write
Global Memory cache size 8192
Global Memory cache line 64 bytes
Image support Yes
Max number of samplers per kernel 16
Max size for 1D images from buffer 65536 pixels
Max 1D or 2D image array size 2048 images
Max 2D image size 8192x8192 pixels
Max 3D image size 8192x8192x2048 pixels
Max number of read image args 128
Max number of write image args 8
Local memory type Global
Local memory size 65536 (64KiB)
Max constant buffer size 134217728 (128MiB)
Max number of constant args 8
Max size of kernel argument 1024
Queue properties
Out-of-order execution No
Profiling Yes
Prefer user sync for interop Yes
Profiling timer resolution 80ns
Execution capabilities
Run OpenCL kernels Yes
Run native kernels Yes
SPIR versions
printf() buffer size 1048576 (1024KiB)
Built-in kernels __cl_copy_region_align4;__cl_copy_region_align16;__cl_cpy_region_unalign_same_offset;__cl_copy_region_unalign_dst_offset;__cl_copy_region_unalign_src_offset;__cl_copy_buffer_rect;__cl_copy_image_1d_to_1d;__cl_copy_image_2d_to_2d;__cl_copy_image_3d_to_2d;__cl_copy_image_2d_to_3d;__cl_copy_image_3d_to_3d;__cl_copy_image_2d_to_buffer;__cl_copy_image_3d_to_buffer;__cl_copy_buffer_to_image_2d;__cl_copy_buffer_to_image_3d;__cl_fill_region_unalign;__cl_fill_region_align2;__cl_fill_region_align4;__cl_fill_region_align8_2;__cl_fill_region_align8_4;__cl_fill_region_align8_8;__cl_fill_region_align8_16;__cl_fill_region_align128;__cl_fill_image_1d;__cl_fill_image_1d_array;__cl_fill_image_2d;__cl_fill_image_2d_array;__cl_fill_image_3d;
Device Available Yes
Compiler Available Yes
Linker Available Yes
Device Extensions cl_khr_global_int32_base_atomics cl_khr_global_int32_extended_atomics cl_khr_local_int32_base_atomics cl_khr_local_int32_extended_atomics cl_khr_byte_addressable_store cl_khr_fp16 cl_khr_spir cl_khr_icd
NULL platform behavior
clGetPlatformInfo(NULL, CL_PLATFORM_NAME, ...) Intel Gen OCL Driver
clGetDeviceIDs(NULL, CL_DEVICE_TYPE_ALL, ...) Success [Intel]
clCreateContext(NULL, ...) [default] Success [Intel]
clCreateContextFromType(NULL, CL_DEVICE_TYPE_CPU) No devices found in platform
clCreateContextFromType(NULL, CL_DEVICE_TYPE_GPU) Success (1)
Platform Name Intel Gen OCL Driver
Device Name Intel(R) HD Graphics Skylake ULX GT2
clCreateContextFromType(NULL, CL_DEVICE_TYPE_ACCELERATOR) No devices found in platform
clCreateContextFromType(NULL, CL_DEVICE_TYPE_CUSTOM) No devices found in platform
clCreateContextFromType(NULL, CL_DEVICE_TYPE_ALL) Success (1)
Platform Name Intel Gen OCL Driver
Device Name Intel(R) HD Graphics Skylake ULX GT2
ICD loader properties
ICD loader Name OpenCL ICD Loader
ICD loader Vendor OCL Icd free software
ICD loader Version 2.2.8
ICD loader Profile OpenCL 1.2
NOTE: your OpenCL library declares to support OpenCL 1.2,
but it seems to support up to OpenCL 2.1 too.
Sources
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GPGPU#Intel
Suspend/Hibernate on lid close
Default configuration of Ubuntu 16.04 was that after I close lid screen was blocked and LCD disabled. But system was still working normally - I strongly prefer to hibernate in such case and use no battery at all.
I achieved that with systemd-logind. Edit /etc/systemd/logind.conf and uncomment line with HandleLidSwitch:
[Login]
HandleLidSwitch=suspend
HandleLidSwitchDocked=ignore
Now restart systemd-logind service with:
systemctl restart systemd-logind.service
Problem with function keys
Function keys were mostly working but not always like I expected. For example when I disable touchpad - it’s not disabled 🙂
I found that module asus-nb-wmi is responssible for that and it’s still buggy. So I disabled it at all with:
echo "blacklist asus-nb-wmi" > /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-ux305.conf
Volume UP/DOWN/MUTE are still working fine - that’s enough for me. Rest could be configured with some keyboard shortcuts - more info here .
TODO/Issues
I still face some bugs:
I could see occasional flickering from time to time. Rather after running notebook for some time than overheating/overloading it. This may be driver issue or maybe SNA acceleration method - I have to experiment a little to get this solved.
Looks like disablingVirtualization support andVT-d in BIOS helped. It’s not final solution but for now I don’t need it… A lot 😉Tapping sometimes behave strange, for ex. tap to click stops to work and I have to use touchpad buttons for that. I think this may be related to syndaemon configuration because it started after I tuned it.
It was that. My hack for syndaemon broke touchpad. I will play with this a little more later.I like to use copy by selection and paste by middle click on my desktop - I’m addicted to this option but it’s not working on my laptop. I’m not sure if this will be convenient enough on touchpad to use.
To right click just tap with two fingers, to middle click (third button) tap with three fingers. Copy/paste is again easy like before.
If you found errors in my text of know better solutions for described problems, please let me know in comments.