Installing Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) on a ThinkPad T61

Comprehensive review (including graphics fix): http://www.eastwoodzhao.com/ubuntu-904-jaunty-jackalope-on-thinkpad-t61/

Items that work out of the box

Intel Video: 2D and 3D acceleration quite messed up, see section below

Nvidia Video: 2D and 3D acceleration works

Wireless: Intel cards tested. Arethros wireless card works, but unstable. See below for instructions on how to revert back to madwifi drivers.

Network Card: Intel 10/100/1000 tested

Wireless switch: Tested.

Webcam: Works out of the box

Headphones: Works out of the box

Microphone: Just needs to be activated.

Keyboard Shortcuts: Most of them work out of the box, including the ThinkVantage button, although it is unassigned, see section below

Fingerprint Reader: some packages, i.e. thinkfinger-tools, installed by default, otherwise same fix as with 8.10 required.

Items that need (some) tweaking to obtain full functionality

Emulate Wheel (Middle-click scrolling)

Michael Vogt described how to get middle-click scrolling to work again in Intrepid. Xorg.conf is not used to configure mice and keyboards anymore, but evdev is. This makes the configuration of middle-click scrolling a little bit different than previous versions of Ubuntu. In terminal:

$ sudo gedit /etc/hal/fdi/policy/mouse-wheel.fdi

Past and save the following code, which will give vertical wheel emulation only:

<match key="info.product" string="TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint">
 <merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheel" type="string">true</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheelButton" type="string">2</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.ZAxsisMapping" type="string">4 5</merge>
 <merge key="input.x11_options.Emulate3Buttons" type="string">true</merge>
</match>

There is another method to get horizontal scrolling as well, but I don't think it worked for me.

Enabling touchpad on/off key (fn-f8)

The procedure shown here for T500 also works for T61.

Enabling Active Protection System

for this part I mainly followed [1] , which seems to work on T61 7664-1FG running ubuntu 9.04 (64bit 2.6.28-11-generic) most of what follows was copied directly from the above reference (I apologise BUT - I take no responsibility for any problems that may occur - I followed these instructions and it worked well for me. Unfortunately I cannot promise anything... do it at your own risk! Anyway - the worst that could happen is that you will have to buy a new laptop ;-)

Another thing worth noting - it seems you have to repeat all this after each kernel upgrade (anyone knows how to get this done atomatically?)

The original author urges corrections and offers help, therefore I will quote his original lines also here: " Please feel free to correct mistakes. If you have trouble, don't be shy and contact me with jabber: jango4@jabber.org "

Here is a Step by Step guidance How to protect the harddisk through APS with Kernel 2.6.28!

At first you have to delete existing kernel modules to make space for the new ones (Press ENTER after each line): (these did not exist for me originally)

sudo rm /lib/modules/$KVER/kernel/ubuntu/misc/thinkpad_ec.ko
sudo rm /lib/modules/$KVER/kernel/ubuntu/misc/tp_smapi.ko
sudo rm /lib/modules/$KVER/kernel/drivers/hwmon/hdaps.ko

Then download the newest packages:

You will need

• tp_smapi-0.4 from here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1212&package_id=171579
• gnome-hdaps-applet-20081204.tar.gz from here: http://www.zen24593.zen.co.uk/hdaps/

(in the original link there were explanations for hdapsd installation as well. I didn't follow them as the hdapsd package in the ppa repositories seems to work - ver 1:20090129-1ubuntu1~ppa3~jaunty1 )

Save this files and unpack them (following the original link I'll assume it was unpacked on the desktop).

Open a Terminal in the tp_smapi directory in order to attempt kernel modules loading:

sudo make load HDAPS=1 FORCE_IO=1

If there is written "drivers successfully loaded", you can type this for installation:

sudo make install HDAPS=1 FORCE_IO=1

To laod this modules on startup you have to write them into the /etc/modules file:

sudo gedit /etc/modules

Append this to the file:

thinkpad_ec	
tp_smapi
hdaps

Edit /etc/modprobe.d/local.conf (for me it did not exist before)

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/local.conf

Adding the following lines:

# enable thinkpad_ec
options thinkpad_ec force_io=1

# option to correctly set tilting through hdaps sensor
options hdaps invert=1

Now you can check if the modules are loaded yet. Do so with

lsmod | grep hdaps

if not perform:

sudo modprobe -a thinkpad_ec tp_smapi hdaps

Then install this packages:

sudo apt-get install hdaps-utils hdapsd

Afterwards you can test hdaps-gl (with typing hdaps-gl in terminal) which shows the position of your Laptop.

If hdapsd is not working you can compile it from source as found in [2]

To test it, you can type this into your terminal:

sudo hdapsd -d sda -s 15 -a -v -y 

If you suddenly move your laptop the output will change! (stop it with pressing Str + C)

The last step is, to copy an overworked initiation-script over the existing one.

The first line will download it, the second will set rights and the third one copies it to the right position. (Press ENTER after each!)

wget http://www.unet.univie.ac.at/~a0604095/hdapsd
sudo chmod 733 hdapsd
sudo cp hdapsd /etc/init.d/

Now you can start hdapsd with typing

sudo /etc/init.d/hdapsd start

After a reboot everything should start automatically and work correctly! You can change the sensitivity value and other things in this file: "/etc/default/hdapsd". To see the effects you have to type "sudo /etc/init.d/hdapsd restart" to restart hdapsd!

To install the gnome-panel-applet type this lines into the terminal:

sudo apt-get install libpanel-applet2-dev
cd Desktop/gnome-hdaps-applet-20081204
gcc $(pkg-config --cflags --libs libpanelapplet-2.0) -o gnome-hdaps-applet gnome-hdaps-applet.c
sudo cp gnome-hdaps-applet /usr/bin/
sudo mkdir /usr/share/pixmaps/gnome-hdaps-applet/
sudo cp *.png /usr/share/pixmaps/gnome-hdaps-applet/
sudo cp GNOME_HDAPS_StatusApplet.server /usr/lib/bonobo/servers/

Fixing Atheros Ath5K Stability Issues

If you're having issues with the built-in ath5k wireless driver, try installing Jaunty backports.

$ sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-jaunty

This will take you back to madwifi (ath_pci) a la Intrepid (and ath5k will be blacklisted). Since installing the backports, stability issues related to ath5k and AR5212 wireless card have disappeared. Speed is also back to acceptable, instead of quite sluggish (slow SSH/SFTP, slow DNS lookups, etc).

Alternate Atheros "madwifi" driver was additionally enabled under System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers

Note: you many need to power off your laptop after performing these steps. Sometimes the hardware gets very confused, AP scanning will stop working, etc.

Intel Graphics

There have been significant regressions with many intel graphics chip in 9.04 Jaunty. There is an active Ubuntu Forums thread discussing the problem.

To significantly improve performance, install the latest 2.6.30-rc kernel and headers from http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/ . The thread was written when the rc2 version was the latest, but the rc2 kernel disables screen brightness shurtcut keys. The rc4 kernel has fixed that.

Add the xorg-edgers PPA, as per the thread.

Ammend your xorg.conf file to include the following:

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"Configured Video Device"
	Option		"AccelMethod"		"uxa"
	Option		"AddARGBVisuals" 	"True"
	Option		"AddARGBGLXVisuals"     "True"
	EndSection

and fix the MTRR issue.

The script fixmtrr.sh should read:

echo "Before:"
echo "-------"
cat /proc/mtrr
echo "base=e0000000 size=0x10000000 type=write-combining" >| /proc/mtrr

echo ""
echo "After:"
echo "------"
cat /proc/mtrr

Compiz

The Intel graphics chip has been blacklisted upstream by Compiz. To ignore the blacklist, download and run the script Compiz-Check available here.