Installing Ubuntu on a ThinkPad X31

Preface

I installed hoary (Ubuntu "unstable") because of some specific needs. Netherless, this article should apply to Ubuntu 4.10 "The Warty Warthog" too.

Choosing between APM and ACPI

Right now there is a crucial feature not working with ACPI on linux (2.6.9): suspend to ram does not switch off the LCD backlight. Ubuntu ships with ACPI enabled, but without ACPI suspend-to-disk being configured. In effect suspend is not working out of the box.

Simply disableing ACPI at boottime activates APM which works fine with suspend to ram and suspend to disk.

APM based suspend to disk needs a save2disk.img hibernation file on FAT16. See below.

Installing without cdrom or floppy

Follow the instructions at UbuntuSupport: Netboot remarks

Disableing ACPI

To disable ACPI an activate APM boot your kernel with acpi=off

...describe how to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst...

Creating a APM hibernation file

Use tphdisk utility to create a save2disk.img file on a hidden FAT16 partition,