Installing Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) on a ThinkPad T61

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We'll I got it basically working, so far (will update as i get more thing working).


SATA Issues

At first, the Ubuntu Live CD would not start at all, this seems to be a problem with the SATA AHCI driver. I had to go into the BIOS and change the SATA driver from ACHI to compatibility (What is the difference? Am I loosing performance?).


NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M (Solved)

After initial issues like those explained above in the SATA Issues, I received the xorg error 'fatal error: no screens found'. I was able to boot into Safe Graphics Mode and run the installer, though I had to move both window manager bars to see enough of the install window to use it.

Alternatively, you can download the drivers via wget in a console. Take care to follow the instructions in the NVidia Forum and uninstall all the packages wit apt-get remove, as descirbed. Then run the nvidia installer.

Remember that, after you upgrade the kernel, you also have to re-install the drivers.

After installing the NVIDIA drivers, your laptop may not wake after suspend or hibernation. I followed these instructions to fix it Ubuntu Community Help.

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 (Chipset GM965) (Solved)

After that the CD seemed to boot but the screen was just garbage Picture. In order to get around that issue I had to go back and download the Alternate CD, which allows you to install in text only mode. From here, the text-only install went okay. Changing the VGA settings on the regular CD worked for me.

When I booted up after the installation, I was still getting the same garbage on the screen. To resolve this I edited my xorg.conf file as shown. I also had to install the latest kernel for Feisty, as the one off of the install disk did have have /dev/agpgart. And I could then use X11. There were still some issues however. The screen seemed somewhat fuzzy. This was a little more challenging of a fix... I found this mailing list posting, according to it, there was a small glitch in the driver. To fix it: 

apt-get source xserver-xorg-video-intel
cd xserver-xorg-video-intel-1.9.94/
vim src/i830_lvds.c
Goto line 230 and delete (PFIT_ENABLE | VERT_AUTSCALE ....);, replacing it with 0;  then quit vim
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -uc -b
cd ..
dpkg -i xserver-xorg-video-intel_1.9.94-lubuntu3_amd64.deb (wont be amd64 with a 32-bit install)

Now reboot your computer, and it should work. **NOTE: For some reason just restarting X didn't fix it, seems like you must reboot.** At this point you should have a nice, crisp display.

I am still working on aiglx and compiz (switching desktops on a cube doesnt seem to work, though I have some ideas...). There are some issues with OpenGL apps freezing Xorg as well, but the standard 2D desktop works flawlessly.

ThinkFinger

Ubuntu does not come with a package for thinkfinger. Downloading the most recent source and building it was simple enough: Download most recent version (0.3 at time of writing) 

tar xvzf thinkfinger-0.3.tar.gz
cd thinkfinger-0.3/
./configure --with-securedir=/lib/security --with-birdir=/etc/pam_thinkfinger
make -j5             (hey its dual core!)
sudo make install

Configuring it is easy as well, open /etc/pam.d/common-auth: 

auth sufficient pam_thinkfiger.so
auth required pam_unix.so try_first_pass nullok_secure

Now just run sudo tf-tool --add-user <username> and it will all be setup. (I found this somewhere on the web, I wish I could give a source but I'm afraid I cant find it, thank you Anonymous!).

HDAPS

This seems to be working fine now, I just follow the step on How_to_protect_the_harddisk_through_APS. Using hdaps-gl does the inverse of the accelerometer, though it's not really a big deal, the harddrive protection should still work.

WiFi

If you have Intel 4965AGN WiFi card, you have to use ndiswrapper OR use backported kernel from Ubuntu Gutsy (Anybody have howto?) and use following: http://kuscsik.blogspot.com/2007/06/how-to-install-intel-4965-wireless.html

If you have different card, you probably have to use madwifi, which works out of the box

Can you hear me now?.... What? (Solved!)

After upgrading to 1.0.14 I still had no sound, and this took about a week to solved (though it was so sadly obvious though). Just upgrading to alsa 1.0.14 will not be enough, there were a few patches released right after the release that fix the Thinkpad's. The reason I missed this was because it was the same day so the release of 1.0.14!

Anyway download the source code to the alsa-driver and apply these patches: (links to the revisions)

Please use CVS version of ALSA instead. All of these patches are commited.

After doing a make and make install reboot your computer (or rrmmod snd-hda-intel && modprobe snd-hda-intel). And run alsamixer (for me it only works as root atm). You will have to play with the settings a bit. Make sure the speaker option is not muted and leave the Internal Mic Boost at 0, other wise you will have a really loud microphone feedback sort of sound constantly.

I had to chmod -R 777 /dev/snd/ to get everything work for now. (THIS IS NOT THE CORRECT WAY TO DO IT, IT WILL NOT STAY BETWEEN REBOOTS!).

Audio playback should then work, audio capture (microphone) doesn't seem to work, but I am probably not going to try and fix it, I don't use the capture so I am not concerned with that at the moment.

Overall

I initially had some big problems getting this working, but now its working quite well. The wifi card worked at startup (uses madwifi) and I am happy because I don't seem to need any proprietary software to run this system.

Discussion

In case you missed it the discussion page (for questions/responses) is right here: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Talk:Installing_Ubuntu_7.04_%28Feisty_Fawn%29_on_a_ThinkPad_T61

References

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