ThinkPad X6 UltraBase

Lenovo UltraBase X6 The IBM UltraBase X6 is a portable dock for the 6-series ThinkPads providing extra ports as well as a bay for an optical drive and a set of stereo speakers. Containing a full featured Ultrabay Slim slot, it provides flexibility in drive choice as well as the option of a secondary battery for extended working time on the road. Features Passthrough ports: Gigabit Ethernet (RJ45) Modem (RJ11) VGA Microphone Headphone Additional ports: four USB ports (two on left side, two on back) Serial (DB9-M) Parallel (DB25-F) Ultrabay Slim Stereo speakers Kensington security hole Pros & Cons Positives: Expansion capability, portable Negatives: Makes the ThinkPad quite thick Compatibility: X60, X60s, X61, X61s Warranty: 3 years

Ultrabay Slim

The Ultrabay Slim slot in this dock is full featured; it supports hot swapping with all Ultrabay Slim drives, including the following which have been tested by contributors to this site:

• Ultrabay Slim Multi-Burner III Drive

You can also feed it with the Ultrabay Slim Battery to extend the overall battery life time.

UltraBase X6 under Linux (older style)

The docking stations are (at least in openSUSE) supported by the Dockutils project. The dockutils are formed by a set of simple bash scripts that handle docking and undocking of the computer. When the user chooses to undock the laptop, it does some system calls and when properly configured, it could disconnect the optical drive in the Ultrabay or update the display resolution.

Overally, the UltraBase works pretty much the same way as under Windows, only it has more configuration possibilities. The user only needs to press the key on the dock to undock the PC. Docking is handled automatically.

The following code has been tested on OpenSUSE 10.3 (Linux 2.6.22) with ThinkPad X61 but should work on all dockable ThinkPads with a recent kernel and the required software installed.

Dockutils hook

In order to have the docking handled automatically, we need to create a hook in the Dockutils directory (/usr/lib/dockutils/). We will put our hook in the hooks/thinkpad subdirectory.

# cat /usr/lib/dockutils/hooks/thinkpad/70x61

#!/bin/bash
# dock/undock script for Thinkpad X61

export DISPLAY=:0

if [ "$1" = "dock" ]; then
        echo "X61 dock"
        # non-present dvd drive workaround, not required in newer distros
        /bin/rescan-scsi-bus.sh --hosts=1 --channels=0 --ids=0 --luns=0 --forceremove &

        # set external display resolution & dpi
        /usr/bin/xrandr --output VGA --auto
        /usr/bin/xrandr --screen 0 -s 1920x1200
        /usr/bin/xrandr --screen 0 --dpi 96x96

elif [ "$1" = "undock" ]; then
        echo "X61 undock"

        # turn external display off, internal on and set res
        /usr/bin/xrandr --screen 0 -s 1024x768
        /usr/bin/xrandr --output LVDS --auto
        /usr/bin/xrandr --output VGA --off
        /usr/bin/xrandr --screen 0 --dpi 96x96
fi

NOTE!

If you don't use external display, remove the /usr/bin/xrandr lines from the script

The # xhost +local:root command has to be in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/<script name> to get xrandr working from the root account.

ACPI event handlers

You can always run the Dockutils using # docker dock or # docker undock command, but this is not comfortable. We will use the ACPI subsystem to bind FnF8, FnF9 keys and blue button on the docking station to the Dockutils. This could be performed using the following code:

# cat /etc/acpi/events/dock

event=(ibm/dock GDCK 00000000 00000003|ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 00001008)
action=/usr/sbin/docker dock

and

# cat /etc/acpi/events/undock

event=(ibm/dock GDCK 00000003 00000001|ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 00001009)
action=/usr/sbin/docker undock

Now, you should be able to undock your PC using the keyboard keys and the dock button.

NOTE!

thinkpad_acpi and acpid must be installed and running for this to work

UltraBase X6 under Linux (newer style)

NOTE!

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Since in recent distributions (like openSuSE 11.1), there is no generated ACPI event for undocking the notebook (Alt+F9 still works the same), you need to use udev in order to be able detect the undocking event. You can use the same ACPI hook as in the "older style" docking setting but you need to put this code into your udev rules:

# cat /etc/udev/rules.d/10-docking.rules

ENV{EVENT}=="undock", KERNEL=="dock.0", SUBSYSTEM=="platform", RUN+="/usr/lib/dockutils/hooks/thinkpad/70x61 undock"
ENV{EVENT}=="dock", KERNEL=="dock.0", SUBSYSTEM=="platform", RUN+="/usr/lib/dockutils/hooks/thinkpad/70x61 dock"

After this change, the notebook will change it's resolution automatically after you remove it from the UltraBase.