I’m still busy setting up my Thinkpad R61i. In many ways, this thing is more of a pain than the ancient Toshiba it replaces. That’s part coincidence, and part “I-really-want-to-do-this-right” and part “I-really-want-maximum-power-save-and-avoid-risking-hardware-damage”.
One of the few bits of hardware that didn’t take hours of setup was the fingerprint reader. I lucked out and got a working UPEK TouchStrip, vendor ID 0483:2016. It works for console logins and su to root. fprint is awesome!
I’m using stable amd64 mostly, except where I need the latest ~arch packages for hardware functionality. I used a stage3 tarball from Daniel. So nice to have an up-to-date stage.
The capacious-yet-quiet hard disk came preloaded with Vista Home Premium. Ugh. I used a Sidux LiveCD to shrink it and shove it off to a corner. Why did I use Sidux? Because they seemed to be the only distro whose LiveCD offered a 2.6.24 kernel, which meant….wireless installation! Wrong. Lies. They use .23, no iwl3945 drivers anywhere. I had to get out my ridiculously short ethernet cable. Bother.
On the Gentoo side, I ended up going with ext3 for / and ext2 for /boot. This is most unlike me, as I’m normally a ReiserFS man. I figure 1) it’s possible that if something does go wrong, it may be easier to recover with ext3. 2) I can try out ext4 later. 3) Fewer packages to emerge; e2fprogs is already part of the system set. As far as usage goes … ext3 is perceptibly slower for certain operations, but it also feels much faster when mounting.
The whole configuration process is still ongoing, with a few major problems:
1. Masked and unstable drivers for X. Still only xorg-x11 installed; no Xfce4 yet. At least I have working hardware acceleration with the X3100 chip, using xorg-server 1.4 and mesa 7.0.2.
2. Wireless. Day and a half to get it mostly working. At boot, it seems to associate with my WPA access point, but then goes inactive immediately. Unfortunately, it seems to take the service with it, so things like netmount and ntp-client don’t start. Now, the device is actually associated and has retrieved its IP address. But it’s an unresolved headache as to why it does all this but still doesn’t consider the service “started”. This is with kernel 2.6.24, in-kernel iwl3945 modules, as well as crypto modules. Once Xfce is running, I plan to undo most of my networking config files and just use NetworkManager or some other tool to do everything. I hate having to manually edit conf.d/net just to change from my home network to public access points in libraries, coffee shops, etc.
3. uvesafb. Day and a half to figure out. Apparently I needed a weird/unintuitive setting or two in my kernel config. Works now at native resolution, 1280×800.
4. hdaps. Apparently my harddrive isn’t supported? It’s possible the folks at IBM refurbished the laptop with a non-stock drive.
5. thinkpad_acpi. Not all buttons are working yet, specifically screen brightness. That’s despite following the basic instructions at ThinkWiki on kernel module parameters. I haven’t really delved into it yet, though. At least the thinklight works.
6. Touchpad & trackpoint. I figured out just an hour ago why the trackpoint wasn’t working. Though the protocol was set to “IMPS/2″, I had to change the driver to “mouse”. So now both work in X. Will post config later. My hope is that the middle button works properly once I get Xfce and Firefox installed.
That’s it for now. I haven’t done much else besides get the bare necessities working for the console environment.
My goals are as follows, in no particular order:
1. Complete desktop installation & configuration.
2. Setup low-latency/realtime system and applications for music recording and editing.
3. Configure system to draw as little power as possible, regardless of activity. I really want at least 3 hours out of my existing battery, even though I’ll also be buying an UltraBay battery.
- setup laptop mode for just about everything, including hard drive, CPU, wifi card, soundcard, bluetooth, screen, optical drive, reduce interrupts, etc. I’m really nervous about hard drive settings in particular, as we all know what happens to it under too-frequent spindowns.
4. Figure out how to turn off the darned green LED light by the optical drive. It’s killing me.
5. Did I mention power efficiency?
6. Get the rest of thinkpad_acpi and all the nifty hotkeys working. I want hotkeys that work, unlike my Toshiba’s nonworking keys.
7. Setup Gentoo development environment, GPG stuff, etc.
8. ???
9. Profit.
I’ll post more in the coming days, and (if I still have the strength) I’ll write up some installation notes and configuration information, probably in my devspace or on ThinkWiki. Not much info out there on the R61 series.
How about rejecting the Vista EULA and claiming the refund?
http://www.fsfe.org/en/fellows/refund
I hate having to manually edit conf.d/net just to change from my home network to public access points in libraries, coffee shops, etc.
If you configure wpa_supplicant to connect to all these access points, it will automatically choose which one to use, which is great, since you don’t have to change a thing and it will work. It’s even nicer that clicking through NetworkManager.
Hey d00d, can you post some config about uvesafb? I have i915 with ThinkPad Z60m and never managed to make it work without nasty hack with helper program.
“5. thinkpad_acpi. Not all buttons are working yet, specifically screen brightness. That’s despite following the basic instructions at ThinkWiki on kernel module parameters. I haven’t really delved into it yet, though. At least the thinklight works.”
I had the same problem. If I fiddled with the proc device though, I could get it to change. But it wouldn’t ever return to the original brightness. You should be able to print out our ACPI DSDT stuff and send it upstream and have the dev look at it.
“I figure 1) it’s possible that if something does go wrong, it may be easier to recover with ext3. 2) I can try out ext4 later. 3) Fewer packages to emerge; e2fprogs is already part of the system set. As far as usage goes … ext3 is perceptibly slower for certain operations, but it also feels much faster when mounting.”
Bad idea… I did that on a recent install as well for the exact same reasons, and regretted it immensely soon after.
@bmichaelson:
Not an option. I talked to the IBM sales rep before I bought it. It’s sold as-is.
@Ivor:
Yes, in my next post or two.
@Steve:
Yeah, putzing around with /proc is just a sad, sad thing to have to do. It’s like . . . are we really still stuck in 1991?!
Regarding ext3 choice, why did you regret it immensely? Because it’s slower than ReiserFS for Portage ops? It’s not like I can convert my partitions to ReiserFS. Or if I can, I haven’t seen that option in gParted, and I’d be scared to run it, anyway!
“…Once Xfce is running, I plan to undo most of my networking config files and just use NetworkManager or some other tool to do everything. I hate having to manually edit conf.d/net just to change from my home network to public access points in libraries, coffee shops, etc.”
Too bad services does not work with NetworkManager currently. This mostly becouse scripts (like ntp-date and the alike) does not know when NetworkManager has set up a network, so they try to connect before that (and as the deps are setted sometimes even before NetworkManager has started). Someone should really incorporate a way for NetworkManager-Dispatch to communicate these sort of things to Baselayout/OpenRC so it does not start services until a connection is ready.
From the Vista EULA:
“By using the software, you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the
software. Instead, return it to the retailer for a refund or credit. If you cannot obtain a refund there, contact Microsoft or the Microsoft affiliate serving your country for information about Microsoft
Hi,
you may want to check the linux-thinkpad mailing list archives of the last months. There were quite some messages about hotkeys and brightness issues.
@bmichaelsen:
Mine doesn’t qualify, as it’s a preloaded OEM product. No included media. And IBM already said they don’t make any changes to their recertified machines; they’re sold as-is.
I don’t really plan to fight it, anyway. I wouldn’t get very much back, and if I really want to, I could use Vista to play RCT3D or Worms. Those are the only two games I can’t get to work in Wine.
@Jens:
Thanks for the tip; will do.
Concerning the brightness issuses: does it work in the console (non X). I often find that hotkeys work in console but not in X, and often due to driver issuses…
Though i must say that some of my hotkeys does not work either, like eject, trackpoint/touchpad and switch screen output. They do not register with xev.
The network kinda works for me too. Though i use iwlwifi and kernel 2.6.23. wpa_supplicants handles my wireless ok, though it sometimes has problems with unencrypted networks. My wpa-encrypted network at home works great.
@Andreas:
No, the keys don’t work in the console. However, I emerged xbacklight, and I can run that from an xterm and it actually works in X. That’s without video.ko loaded, though.
I searched the ibm-acpi list, and it turns out the hotkeys are a known issue with recent Lenovo Thinkpads. I’ll have to setup keybinds or something like that in order to get ‘em to do anything while in X. Maybe bind xbacklight commands to each key. Going through /proc is another option that can sometimes work in console too, but users can’t touch /proc.
I solved my networking issues — I needed an additional crypto module, and I had to adjust /etc/conf.d/rc to not plug the net.wlan0 service, and I had a typo in /etc/conf.d/net that required a negative 10 second dhcpcd timeout. Oops.
Howdy Cowboy’s
i Have Bought The R61i Myself 2 Weeks ago , Downgraded it,configured it , & it’s working Pecfectly… Just as it meant to work !
Keep Up Thoes Conversations Alive !! as they help Many Others to Solve Computing Problems
Best Regards
Vertigo173