Installing Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (8.10) on an X301

Please improve on this preliminary effort.

Overview

Undoubtedly, this post will age quickly as 8.10 nears final release. Some sections requiring quirks are clearly marked

Ethernet

The current 8.10 beta doesn't ship with the e1000e driver as of the time of publishing the kernel still contained a bug which could brick the card. Updating the kernel helps - THIS IS ALREADY FIXED UPSTREAM - so any later release than the beta will most probably work.

Wireless

The Ubuntu 8.10 Kernel (2.6.27) ships with support for the IWL5100 (iwlagn driver)

Fan

Untested for specific behaviour. I heard them spinning faster while compiling, not sure if they ever spin down.

Power Mgmt

Seems to work fine. The gnome power manager reports ~3h30 which sounds about right. The [Fn] + [F3] combination even causes the applet to pop up info :)

Display

Works fine OOB

Suspend and Hibernate

Closing the lid puts the machine to sleep, i often managed to resume from ram but i also got frozen (mouse moveable but switching to console doesn't work, screen remains black except for the pointer (i have a black screensaver)) - caution here - The [Installing_Debian_(stable)_on_an_X300#Suspend_.26_Hibernate] article suggests removing the e1000e module which i haven't tried but may help.

Sound

Works out of the box on the generic kernel, i've run into some trouble with my custom kernel - feel free to report on what i'm missing. alsamixer reports the Conexant chip being used so i've selected that one in the snd-hda-intel driver (selecting them all didn't help either)

i haven't extensively tested this feature untested remain:

• usage with a sound server (esd)
• microphone
• headphone

Camera

untested, driver module loads fine

External Displays

untested:

• displayport
• vga

Compiz / 3D Acceleration

Works OOB, requires p

Boot time

Approximately 15sec from cold boot to gdm 15sec for GNOME to finish all loading (need to tweak that)

Fingerprint Reader

Doesn't currently work as it's an AthenTec and not a Thompson chip.

Minimalistic installation instructions

The system you are installing when following these instructions will be a good starting point if you want a clean ubuntu system without all the bloat (which you may of course add yourself). For a simple installation just download and install the desktop version of ubuntu 8.10 (beta)

Boot from the Ubuntu Server AMD64 Disc (32bit also works, but what a waste) select Install Ubuntu Server

Choose language and country Select Keyboard layout

Don't worry about network interface right now.. (only ubuntu 8.10 Beta) choose your hostname then username and password change your proxy settings

At the software selection select:

• OpenSSH server

might want Samba Server

wait for the install to complete (5 min)

Reboot without the CD

login to you new system and switch to root

sudo -s

if you're using the beta and your network, download a newer kernel (amd64) from (this will require a second machine or other OS if you have)

http://packages.ubuntu.com/intrepid/linux-image-2.6.27-7-generic

copy it to usb stick

on the X301 mount usb stick with

mkdir /mnt/usb && mount /dev/sdb /mnt/usb

install kernel with

dpkg -i /mnt/usb/linux-image-2.6.27-7-generic_2.6.27-7.12_amd64.deb
umount /mnt/usb
reboot

if networking still doesn't work (try with ping google.com) edit the interfaces

nano /etc/network/interfaces

and add the line

iface eth0 inet dhcp

use [CTRL]+[X], [Y] to save and quite and start the interface

ifup eth0

it should now be ok...

now let's loose some fat:

apt-get remove --purge linux-image-server linux-image-2.6.27-4-server

apt-get remove --purge apparmor update-motd landscape-common installation-report \
libapparmor* libgpm2 memtest86+ ppp pppconfig pppoeconf reiserfsprogs \
strace tasksel tasksel-data ubuntu-minimal ubuntu-serverguide

rm -rf /var/log/landscape

and update the system with the newest upstream package catalog:

apt-get update

install sound:

apt-get install alsa

..and X

apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-input-mouse xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

gdm:

apt-get install gnome-session gdm

and the network manager:

apt-get install network-manager-gnome

now upgrade the base system with:

apt-get dist-upgrade

if you added the line to fix networking, it is now time to remove it again from /etc/network/interfaces as NetworkManager will do that for us

reboot the machine

reboot

gdm should now appear and you may log in to X/Gnome

start synaptic from the gnome menu, you might want to add additional filters like

• Installed: check only "Installed"
• Upgradable: check only "Upgradable" (shows also upgradable packages which aren't upgraded to a new upstream version (i.e. only featuring ubuntu-specific patches)
• Residual Config: "Residual config"
• Orphaned: check only "Orphaned" (install deborphan package to use this)
• Autoremove: check only "Automatic removable"

if you know you'll need one of the following packages, don't delete it or just reinstall it later on.. they should all be safe to delete (at least my system still works)

select the "Installed" filter and remove (right click, then mark for complete removal):

• alacarte
• app-install-data
• aptitude
• apt-xapian-index
• cupsys
• ed
• esound-clients
• gnome-user-guide
• gnome-utils
• libbeagle1
• libmbca0
• ltrace
• mobile-broadband-provider-info
• mtr-tiny
• netcat netcat-traditional
• oss-compat
• parted popularity-contest
• python-beagle python-debian
• python-gnupginterface
• python-openssl
• python-pyopenssl
• python-software-properties
• python-twisted-bin
• python-twisted-core
• python-xapian
• python-zopeinterface
• radeontool
• rsync
• tcpd
• tcpdump
• ufw
• unattended-upgrades
• update-manager-core
• vim-tiny
• xdg-user-dirs
• xserver-xorg-input-all
• xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse
• xserver-xorg-input-wacom

right now the system is pretty much stripped down and we can build up from here :)

some things i got from the missing-recommands tabs:

• acpid
• deborphan
• evince
• gnome-screensaver
• gnome-system-tools
• vim

once deborphan is installed: delete anything from the custom filter orphaned

what i also installed:

• evolution
• firefox
• mesa-utils (for glxgears)
• seahorse
• totem-gstreamer
• mozilla-plugin-gnash

what i still removed:

• gnome-pilot
• gnome-pilot-conduits

You may now want to install following packages:

• gnome-terminal
• gedit
• gcalctool
• cpufrequtils
• powertop
• system-config-printer-gnome (+ your printer driver)
• linux-firmware (or download the firmware yourself from linuxintelwireless.com, or extract iwlan-5000-1.ucode from that package and put it into /lib/firmware)
• libdvdcss from videolan.org/libdvdcss (read legal advices)

And remove those:

• libv4l-0
• libgtksourceview-common
• libgtksourceview1.0-0
• python-gnome2-desktop
• gnome-app-install

Compiling custom fast-boot-patched kernel

install these packages:

• libncurses5-dev
• git-core
• make

Get the kernel [X301_kernel_config|.config file] and put it inside the root of your kernel source. This will make a good start. Not that i did not include support for IPv6, firewall and PCMCIA so you'll need to add those if wanted.

What's NOT working:

• sound
• UUID-root partition

if you want to change the configuration:

make menuconfig

build the kernel:

make -j3

install kernel and modules:

make install
make modules_install

..adapt your /etc/grub/menu.lst file to boot the new kernel make sure to switch the root=UUID=.. for root=/dev/sda1 or you'll get a kernel panic when booting (can someone explain this to me why UUID won't work (because of not using an initrd?)) also remove the initrd line.

mine looks like this:

title           Ubuntu (development branch), kernel 2.6.27
root            (hd0,0)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27 root=/dev/sda1 usbcore.autosuspend=1 ro quiet
quiet

Compiling intel xorg drivers

With my shiny new kernel i wasn't able to start X as exa was failing.. so after some googling i recompiled the driver. - this will hopefully be fixed before the final release - (it is fixed in the 2.5.0 driver, ubuntu currently has 2.4.1)

While this will work perfectly fine with the light new kernel, the generic ubuntu kernel displays ugly artifacts in firefox and gnome-terminal. So i'd rather wait if you're considering using the generic kernel. You revert these changes by reinstalling xserver-xorg-video-intel and libdrm2 with

apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg-video-intel libdrm2 libdrm-dev

Install these packages from apt

• automake
• xutils-dev
• libtool
• xserver-xorg-dev
• xorg-dev
• pkg-config
• mesa-common-dev
• (libdrm-dev) - currently also has to be compiled from source because of incompatibilities with intel's 2.5.0 driver

libdrm

Get the source from git:

git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/mesa/drm drm
cd drm
./autogen
./configure --prefix=/usr

now edit the "libtool" file and comment out the line with "directory not ending" aswell as the line before it. (won't install to /usr otherwise, only /usr/local)

make -j3
sudo make install

xf86-video-intel

git clone git://git.freedesktop.org/git/xorg/driver/xf86-video-intel/ xf86-video-intel
cd xf86-video-intel
./autogen
./configure --prefix=/usr
make -j3
sudo make install

Other tweaks

Don't start the rsync daemon at boot-time:

sudo update-rc.d -f rsync remove

Power-saving settings: insert these lines into /etc/sysctl.conf

vm.dirty_writeback_centisecs=1500

If you have lots of RAM (4Gb):

vm.swappiness=0

with 2Gb i recommand a value of 40 instead of 0

Switch getty for mingetty

Credits

Article skeleton from the Ubuntu 8.10 on X200 article Article --Blk 20:09, 21 October 2008 (CEST)