Installing Slackware 12.1 on a ThinkPad T30

Installation of Slackware 12.0 on a ThinkPad T30 (2366-81U).

Features

• Intel Mobile Pentium 4-M 1.8GHz CPU
• ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 video controller with 16MB
  • 14.1" TFT display with 1024x768 resolution (XGA)
• 1024MB PC2700 memory
• 60GB 7200RPM HDD
• AD1881A AC'97 Audio controller
• UltraBay with:
  • DVD-ROM
• Integrated Intel 10/100 Ethernet
• UltraNav touchpad on select models
• Hard disk drive shock absorber (on underside)

In addition to the above, I have installed

• Airlink+ AWL3036 PCMCIA card

Summary

What works out of the box

• Onboard display (1024x768)
• TrackPoint (except center button)
  • TrackPad may work, but I can't stand them so I disabled in the BIOS.
• NTFS volume mounting

What needs to be fixed post-install

• Wireless
• Suspend, Sleep, and other FN+ keys
• Sensors/Fan recognition

Not tested

• Modem
• DVD / CD-R
• What else?
• 10/100 Ethernet (I use this for wireless only)
• Docking Station (I have one, but I'm not currently using it and haven't checked yet)

Details

Install with Windows

A good friend of mine provided me with a 60GB drive that had the original IBM Restore partition still available. He even shrunk it down to half for me so that I could dual-boot without having to resize using GParted or something similar.

Once I'd completed the setup of Windows (for the wife), I began the install of Slackware 12.0 on the second partition.

I performed a standard install, selecting all packages, and allowing the setup to configure lilo for me. Slackware found the windows partition and asked for a mount point for fstab, as well as recognizing it in lilo and adding a boot entry for it.

Once the installation was completed, a simple reboot brought up the lilo boot menu, and I chose my new Slackware installation.

System Updates

I downloaded the latest kernel from kernel.org and installed it. Performed a custom compile of the kernel to remove unwanted/unnecessary features, and to add in those that were missing. As a matter of personal preference, I also compiled everything directly instead of using them as modules, the only exception being the ndiswrapper module.

Here's my 2.6.24.5 configuration for T30 (2366-81U)

What needs to be fixed post-install

Wireless

Under Windows I downloaded ndiswrapper and saved the source file somewhere I'd remember. I then rebooted into linux and copied the file over and compiled it.

After compiling it I ran:

# ndiswrapper -i Mrv8000c.inf (the driver for the Airlink+ card)

and then:

# ndiswrapper -m

which installed it as a module into /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper

I then modified /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf by uncommenting:

IFNAME[4]="wlan0" USE_DHCP[4]="yes"

There are some other settings for wireless encryption, but I think that's beyond the scope of this how-to.

Suspend, Sleep, and other FN+ keys

• FnF4
• FnF12
• FnHome / FnEnd Correct adjustment of brightness.
• FnPgUp Correct activation of ThinkLight.

Sensors/Fan

This model comes with several temperature sensors which I was able to compile support for into the kernel. Once restarted, GKrellM was able to see the sensors, as well as the fan speed.

xorg.conf

The default xorg.conf worked fine, but it was using the vesa driver which would not allow mplayer to play full-screen. changing:

Driver "vesa" to Driver "radeon" worked great.