Installing Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn on a ThinkPad T60p

Installing Unbuntu Feisty Fawn

Except for the T60p hardware setup section, THIS IS A DRAFT WRITTEN FROM MEMORY which has not been carefully checked.

The long, but easy way

• Install earlier version of Ubuntu (6.06/6.10) and dist-upgrade. If you start from 6.06 you will have to upgrade to 6.10, and then upgrade to 7.04.

The fast way

Note: You can use Ubuntu 7.10 instead, in which the ATI issue is apparently fixed

• Be sure to have a *wired* network connection ready (wifi will not work yet)
• Download a ubuntu 7.04 feisty fawn image from ubuntu.com
• Boot from the CD, and wait ... the installation will break down when attempting to start the graphical part of the installation (X).

The problem is, that the ATI driver required for X is not working. Luckily it is already in the ubuntu repos, so we just install it temporarily (in RAM), so we can get on with the installation. When you have a console prompt (in Kubuntu, you will need to remove the "splash" boot option to get the prompt), do a:

 apt-get update
 apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx fglrx-control
 depmod -a 

then restart X with:

 /etc/init.d/gdm restart

for Kubuntu, use:

 /etc/init.d/kdm restart

With any luck X should launch, so you can click on the desktop icon and continue the installation.

If X doesn't launch, try changing the Driver in /etc/X11/xorg.conf from "vesa" to "fglrx", then restart X.

T60p hardware setup

Some cheaper T60p come with an Intel 3945 wireless card for 802.11a/b/g. This is supported out of the box in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) with no additional downloads. The following applies to more expensive models, for which wireless does not work out of the box.

• Wireless

Some t60p (8744C9U) use an Atheros network device with this signature "Atheros Communications, Inc. Unknown device 0024 (rev 01)". It will work---not perfectly---with any Madwifi driver version later than subversion revision 2360. This means that the madwifi included in early releases of Feisty Fawn will *NOT* work.

Here are detailed instructions on how to install the Thinkpad 11abgn a.k.a. Atheros AR5418 a.k.a. Atheros Communications, Inc. Unknown device 0024 (rev 01) a.k.a. Pciid 168C:0024 (rev 01) wireless card under Ubuntu Feisty on a Lenovo Thinkpad T60p 8744-C9U.

The following instructions are most likely applicable to many Thinkpads as well as many Core 2 Duo MacBooks.

Step 0) Kinda successful madwifi install prequel (for a fully functional wifi card install, go straight to Step 1).

The instructions found at

http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/2007/08/02/how-to-setup-wireless-on-a-macbook-using-madwifi-710-gutsy

modified so that you

wget http://snapshots.madwifi.org/madwifi-ng-current.tar.gz

instead of wget the madwifi which is indicated, make everything work fairly well except that the wireless on/off hotkey does not affect the wireless (only bluetooth) and the wireless light does not turn on. Not a big deal, although annoying.

For reference, here is my version of these painless---but somewhat lacking as far as the Thinkpad goes---instructions:

   sudo aptitude install build-essential

   wget http://snapshots.madwifi.org/madwifi-ng-current.tar.gz

   tar -zxvf madwifi-ng-current.tar.gz

   cd madwifi-ng-current 

   make

   sudo make install   (answer "r" when asked about previous modules)

Unfortunately the card only achieves between 12 Mb/s (after suspend to RAM, resuming after wired connection or turning it off) and 36 Mb/s (at boot, and then only if I am sitting close to my wireless hub).

The network also disconnects at random times, although it almost always immediately reconnects... at a lower speed.

This is not the performance I would expect---my old Thinkpad R51 running Gentoo reliably goes 54 Mb/s on the same network. Pretty good nonetheles given that the good madwifi folk are not getting all the help they could from Atheros.

In other words: Back to the Windows driver and wrapper.

Step 1) We will adapt

http://www.edsupport.cc/mguhlin/archives/cat_ubuntu.htm

and the INSTALL file which comes with the ndiswrapper tar file, with some modifications.

Download the latest stable ndiswrapper tar.gz file from

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/

(As of 08/2007, it is version 1.47. You may be happy with the version which can be installed by Synaptic: issue ndiswrapper -v in the command line to find the version.)

Use Archive manager to uncompress and save to your Desktop.

The informative INSTALL file is found ~/Desktop/ndiswrapper*/INSTALL

Step 2) Remove previous installations of ndiswrapper by typing in the following at the command line (in a terminal):

    sudo aptitude remove --purge ndiswrapper-common ndiswrapper-utils

    sudo rm -R /etc/ndiswrapper

    sudo rm /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper 

Step 3) Use Synaptic or

    sudo aptitude install build-essential wine

to install build-essential and wine (if you don't have them already).

Step 4) (Re)compile ndiswrapper:

    cd ~/Desktop/ndiswrapper*

Read the message returned by the following command, and run it as often as necessary (for me, once was enough):

    sudo make uninstall

Then:

    make

    sudo make install

Step 5) Download the Lenovo driver compressed file 7iwc28ww.exe from

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-66449

Alternatively: To get the file, type this in your browser

http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles/7iwc28ww.exe

The file 7iwc28ww.exe should now appear on your Desktop (unless you've changed download defaults).

Step 6) Make a folder into which to put the many files which are in 7iwc28ww.exe by typing

    mkdir lenovo

on the command line.

Now, open 7iwc28ww.exe by right clicking on it. If Gnome does not know already to open an .exe with wine, tell it to use a custom application, and make it wine (or use cabextract).

An InstallShield Wizard will pop up. Push buttons in it:

next -> accept -> next -> change (the save location) to Desktop/lenovo -> next -> finish

Step 7) In the command line:

    cd ~/Desktop/lenovo/WINXP_2K/

(The following step may be unnecessary.)

    cp ../*.BIN .

    sudo ndiswrapper -i NET5416.INF

A bunch of "forcing parameter MapRegisters from 256 to 64" messages will appear. Not to worry (although some people change these back in conf files, I did not bother).

Check whether the install went through:

In the command line:

    ndiswrapper -l

You should get: "net5416 : driver installed device (168C:0024) present".

    sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

(In case you have a firegl ATI graphics card: this last modprobe does not break a good install.)

Step 8) Now, the wireless card works at top speed and reliably, and the wireless hotkey and the wireless light work, and suspend to RAM does not mess things up.

You may, however, find that the wireless does not kick in at boot, this may be that the /etc/modules, which lists additional modules to load at boots, specifies another wireless card driver.

This can be fixed as follows:

Edit the /etc/modules file as root, that is,

    sudo gedit /etc/modules

Comment out with a "#" the entry(ies) which you suspect have to do with wireless (in my case, it was ath_pci). For good measure, add ndiswrapper.

Now, if you want to boot into wired, hotkey the wireless off, and if you want to boot into wireless, hotkey the wireless on. You can also switch from one to the other with the hotkey. The wireless also recovers quickly from suspend to RAM (alternative: turn off the wireless prior to closing the lid, and restart it).

Sometimes, the wireless does not connect right away. Toggling the hotkey usually takes care of the problem.

• The fans are too noisy and can be throttled down by using the ACPI fan control script. Increase the min and max to 70, 100 on the GPU. This will lower the fan speed to <3000 for normal usage (XGL/Compiz fusion setup).
• You should install a 'generic' kernel i favor of the i386 to gain better performance of the dual core, and better suspend.
• Compiz fusion (previously compiz and beryl) will run smoothly of this hardware, using ATI's fglrx and XGL. Use trevinos repository http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=481314

NOTE July 2007 I tried the instructions for Compiz and to date was unable to get it working on the T60p, if anyone has some better instructions please update them here.

• You can tweak the 'fn' keys to work well too.