View source for Installing Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) on a ThinkPad X220


[[User:Jdthood|I]] installed Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Natty Narwhal) on a ThinkPad {{X220}}, model 42902GW.

Update: In October 2012 I upgraded to 12.10. Update: In May 2013 I upgraded to 13.04. This resulted in hangs on reboot. These were eliminated when I installed the latest kernel from the raring-proposed repo. See also Updates below.

This is the same machine on which I [[Installing Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) on a ThinkPad X220|previously]] installed Ubuntu 11.04.
For this LTS release I decided to do a clean install rather than an upgrade from 11.10.

With every release of Ubuntu, more and more aspects of the system work correctly without any manual intervention.
Here is a summary of what I nevertheless had to do to get the machine back to the way I like it.

* Associate my bluetooth HIDs

* Adjust display layout
** Problem: With some layouts the machine hangs!  Will look into this.

* Adjust touchpad
** Switch to two-finger scrolling
** Disable mouse clicks

* Install compizconfig-settings-manager and run ccsm:
** Assign the Resize Windows function to Alt-Button3 which is easier than the default, Alt-Button2. Update: The upgrade to Ubuntu 12.10 reverted this setting to the default, so I had to set it again.

* Enable terminal bell:
** Run <tt>gconf-editor</tt> and use it to change desktop | gnome | peripherals | keyboard | bell_mode from "<tt>off</tt>" to "<tt>on</tt>". Update: This is not necessary or possible in Ubuntu 13.10.
** Add "<tt>pactl upload-sample /usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/glass.ogg bell.ogg</tt>" to <tt>~/.xprofile</tt>
** To maximize bell volume, add "<tt>[ "$DISPLAY" ] && xset b 100</tt>" to <tt>~/.bashrc</tt>

* Install tp-smapi module
** Install the <tt>tp-smapi-dkms</tt> package
** Add "<tt>tp-smapi</tt>" to <tt>/etc/modules</tt>

* Install HDAPS stuff:
** Add "<tt>hdaps</tt>" to <tt>/etc/modules</tt>
<pre>
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linrunner/thinkpad-extras
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install hdaps-utils
sudo modprobe hdaps
hdaps-gl
</pre>

* In /etc/sudoers.d/local add "<tt>Defaults timestamp_timeout=0</tt>"
(Without this, every program I run after executing any command with <tt>sudo</tt> also effectively has full root privileges.  This is ungood.  If I want to run a sequence of commands as root without having to authenticate every time I'll just do "<tt>sudo su</tt>" to start a root shell!)

* Enable fingerprint reader as I described [[How to enable integrated fingerprint reader with fprint|here]].

For Ubuntus prior to 12.10 add the "fingerprint" PPA as follows.
<pre>
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fingerprint/fprint
</pre>

For all Ubuntus...
<pre>
sudo apt-get install libpam-fprintd fprintd
fprintd-enroll
sudo vi /etc/pam.d/lightdm
</pre>

* Set up hotkeys (zoom and micmute) as I describe below

* Disable Unity automaximization
** Install and run <tt>gconf-editor</tt> and set <tt>apps|compiz-1|plugins|grid|screen0|options|top_edge_action</tt> to 0 (originally 10).
** Install and run <tt>ccsm</tt> (compizconfig settings manager) and select the Grid plugin. On the Edges tab, disable each action by changing the value to "None".

* Move documents, pictures and other personal files from old to new home directory

* Set desktop background image

* Change format of the date and time displayed on the menu bar to include full date and time with seconds: "<b>2014 Mar 07 Fri 13:45:03</b>" [[File:Jdthood-custom-datetime-indicator-format.png]]
<pre>
gsettings set com.canonical.indicator.datetime custom-time-format "'%Y %b %d %a %H:%M:%S'"
gsettings set com.canonical.indicator.datetime time-format "'custom'"
</pre>

* Set up Empathy accounts, etc.

=== Fix for [https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11227 hotkey shortcomings] ===
Earlier workaround: [[Installing Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) on a ThinkPad X220#Fix for hotkey shortcomings]]

By default the "zoom" (Fn-Space) and "microphone-mute" (button next to the ThinkVantage button) hotkeys do nothing.

'''Zoom''': The <tt>thinkpad-acpi</tt> module, kernel and <tt>udev</tt> map the zoom key's ACPI event (<tt>ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 00001014</tt>) to input event <tt>KEY_ZOOM</tt> whose numerical value, 372, is greater than 255, the highest key-event code that X can handle.

'''Micmute''': The <tt>thinkpad-acpi</tt> module and kernel generate an ACPI event (<tt>ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 0000101b</tt>) for the microphone mute button but in releases earlier than precise this is not mapped to anything; in precise it is mapped to 256 which is also greater than 255, the highest that X can handle. Bug reported [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/udev/+bug/408903 here].

The fault lies with X which can't handle key codes above 255.  But as discussed, e.g., [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg-server/+bug/313514 here], it may be a long time before this gets fixed in X.

In Precise updates as of October 2013 a workaround has been implemented for micmute: this key is now treated as if it were F20.
This will [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/udev/+bug/408903 supposedly] be fixed for Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy) too.

When I get this working I will update this page.

[[Category: Ubuntu 12.04]] [[Category: Ubuntu 12.10]] [[Category: Ubuntu 13.04]]