Installing Ubuntu 6.10 on a ThinkPad X40

This document describes the process of installing and configuring the release version of Ubuntu Edgy Eft on a Lenovo ThinkPad X40.

Success Chart

Item		Working
Installation	Network Installation	Unknown
	USB Installation	Yes (CD)
Display	Laptop Screen	Yes
	CRT / Projector	Yes
Power Management	Software Suspend (hibernate)	Yes
	Suspend to Memory (ACPI sleep)	Yes
Audio		Yes
Wireless	802.11b/g	Yes
	Bluetooth	Unknown
Harddisk Active Protection		Unknown

ATTENTION!

This is a page in progress. I used this page as a template, so any section that looks the same means I haven't updated it yet. The chart above is accurate.

Pre-Installation Notes

Wireless Support

Wireless seems to be supported flawlessly in terms of drivers, though I'm not sure how well the built-in Network Manager works. I use the iwconfig command to manage my wireless, as I have a need to create pseudo-"profiles", and in this document I will describe this alternative process.

Terminology Used

For those of you new to Linux, I'll try to detail a few terms I use with little explanation:

• Xorg configuration -- the display configuration file, residing in /etc/X11/xorg.conf
• Execute a command -- press Alt-F2, then type gnome-terminal into the prompt and press enter -- this is a terminal into which you input said commands

Installation Notes

Booting With NetBOOT

To boot over NetBOOT I fisrt went into the BIOS and change the boot settings so that PXE was first on the list. Then I set my desktop to be a DHCP server (dhcp3-server) and configured it using this site Ubuntu_PXE_Install and installed tftpd-hpa

Then I downloaded the Dapper netboot archive (I tried the testing edgy but it would not run on my X41 as of 9/9/06)

Then I assigned my desktop a static IP in the range I set my DHCP server up for and plugged my laptop into it with a cross over cable and rebooted.

The X41 received an IP and then connected to lftp and the same screen as the Ubuntu netboot CD has came up and I followed the instructions.

Once it was intstalled and up-to-date I ran (leave in all quotes, they are important)

sudo aptitiude update && sudo aptitude upgrade gksudo "update-manager -c -d"

To upgrade to edgy eft

Post-Installation Notes

Configuring Xorg

TrackPoint

Like in all ThinkPad Xorg configurations, add the following under the "Configured Mouse" device to enable TrackPoint scrolling:

Option          "EmulateWheel"          "true"
Option          "EmulateWheelButton"    "2"

Wacom Stylus

First install the wacom drivers with the following command:

sudo apt-get install wacom-kernel-source xserver-xorg-input-wacom wacom-tools

After doing this, I strongly suggest that you reboot your computer; however, if you're one of those people whose uptime is on the order of four years, I'm sure you'll figure out an alternative that I won't be describing here.

Next step is to check to see if /dev/wacom exists. A 'ls -al /dev | grep wacom' should do the trick quite nicely. If it does exist, add the following to your Xorg configuration.

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver        "wacom"
  Identifier    "stylus"
  Option        "Device"        "/dev/wacom"
  Option        "Type"          "stylus"
  Option        "ForceDevice"   "ISDV4"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver        "wacom"
  Identifier    "eraser"
  Option        "Device"        "/dev/wacom"
  Option        "Type"          "eraser"
  Option        "ForceDevice"   "ISDV4"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver        "wacom"
  Identifier    "cursor"
  Option        "Device"        "/dev/wacom"
  Option        "Type"          "cursor"
  Option        "ForceDevice"   "ISDV4"
EndSection

And under the ServerLayout section add:

       InputDevice     "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
       InputDevice     "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
       InputDevice     "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"

Some people seem to have slightly different configurations (potentially due to model differences). At any rate, if you're looking to find what serial device your stylus is, a simple 'dmesg | grep ttyS' should do the trick. Be sure to append to this article if the procedure varies from model to model.

Suspend Fix

Every suspend/resume cycle drops the wacom, so create the file /etc/acpi/resume.d/20-setserial.sh and add the following (modify settings for your device if necessary):

 #!/bin/bash
 /bin/setserial /dev/ttyS0 port 0x0200 irq 5 autoconfig

Then, go ahead and run a:

sudo chmod +x /etc/acpi/resume.d/20-setserial.sh

You should be all set to resume with stylus support.

ACPI Swivel Events

When you swivel your tablet's LCD down or up your computer triggers what's called an ACPI event. This is an event similar to pushing the power or sleep buttons -- it's telling the OS about something that's going on with the hardware.

In Linux, ACPI event handling is bundled into a nice neat little package. First, to make sure you can hear the ACPI event when it happens, run the command 'acpi_listen'. The command line will hang there until it picks up on an ACPI event that's occuring, and then it will dump it to the screen. After running acpi_listen, while it's hanging there, swivel your screen down, and then back up. You should get a result similar to this:

$ acpi_listen
ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 00005009
ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 0000500a

The first HKEY entry is your swivel-down-event identifier and the second is your swivel up. If your values differ from those displayed here, be sure to use your values instead.

Next, what we do is create new ACPI handler entries for the specified events, which we operate on in /etc/acpi/.

The /etc/acpi/ folder generally contains shell files to be executed when events occur. Since there's no shell files to handle swivel events yet, we're gonna go ahead and create some. Yeah, that'd be great.

I don't know what all the rave is about these so called "text editors". I do all my "text editing" from the command line. Actually, I'd just rather not confuse newbies by teaching them vi in this article. Therefore, run the following commands:

sudo cat <<EOF > /etc/acpi/x41tsdown.sh
#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/xrandr -o right
/usr/bin/xsetwacom set stylus rotate 1
/usr/bin/xvkbd&
EOF

sudo cat << EOF > /etc/acpi/x41tsup.sh
#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/xrandr -o normal
/usr/bin/xsetwacom set stylus rotate 0
killall xvkbd
EOF

sudo chown root.root /etc/acpi/x41tsdown.sh
sudo chmod 755 /etc/acpi/x41tsdown.sh
sudo chown root.root /etc/acpi/x41tsup.sh
sudo chmod 755 /etc/acpi/x41tsup.sh

If you'd like to edit these scripts with your favorite text editor (which, I realize, is most likely ed), it's fairly obvious that they're located in /etc/acpi/ as x41tsdown.sh and x41tsup.sh. These commands make the shell scripts that handle the events... once we register the events. Let's do that now.

sudo cat <<EOF > /etc/acpi/events/x41t-swivel-down
# /etc/acpi/events/x41t-swivel-down
# called when tablet head swivels down
event=ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 00005009
action=/etc/acpi/x41tsdown.sh
EOF

sudo cat <<EOF > /etc/acpi/events/x41t-swivel-up
# /etc/acpi/events/x41t-swivel-up
# called when tablet head swivels up
event=ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 0000500a
action=/etc/acpi/x41tsup.sh
EOF

Now, awaken your inner ACPI daemon with the following commands:

sudo /etc/init.d/acpid force-reload 
sudo /etc/init.d/acpid restart

And swivel down your LCD to make sure it works.

To be continued...

External Sources

• This guide is listed at the TuxMobil Linux laptop and notebook installation survey (IBM/Lenovo) and the Linux on Tablet PCs and webpads survey.

--Akao 12:37, 11 November 2006 (CET)