Acerhk and Ubuntu update

I was looking through the stats today when I discovered that my most popular post is about acerhk and Ubuntu. I'm not surprised in many ways because it was the one thing that caused hell when I was first trying to install it on my laptop. Incidentally, that laptop is still running Ubuntu very nicely (although I'm about to retire it - it's getting a little old).

Anyway, I commented in the first post that I was hoping Ubuntu might one day have acerhk installed by default. Lo and behold this is the case now which significantly simplifies the steps we have to take to get the wireless working. We can skip all the stuff about module assistant and jump straight to configuration.

So skipping the first part of the installation, here's what actually needs doing (quoted from the old post):

---------

We'll need to:

• Ensure the module is loaded when Ubuntu boots.
• Tell the acerhk module to enable the wireless both when the laptop is turned on and when it is resumed.

The easiest way to have the module load when Ubuntu loads is to add it to /etc/modules:

sudo sh -c "echo acerhk >> /etc/modules"

Now we're going to make a little script for turning on the wireless. Open up the text editor at Applications > Accessories > Text Editor. Create your script as follows:

#!/bin/bash
echo 1 > /proc/driver/acerhk/wirelessled

Save it into a useful location with an appropriate name. I'm going to name it wifi and save it into my home directory.

Now ensure that the script is executable:

cd ~
chmod +x wifi

Then we need to copy the script to the two locations that will have it being executed on boot and resume.

sudo cp ~/wifi /etc/acpi/resume.d/
sudo cp ~/wifi /etc/init.d/

Finally, activate your startup script with the following command (assuming you are in the same directory as your script):

sudo update-rc.d /etc/init.d/wifi defaults

 Phew! We're done. Reboot the laptop and hopefully your wireless is working!

-----