http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Installing_Gentoo_2007.0_on_a_ThinkPad_R61Installing Gentoo 2007.0 on a ThinkPad R61From ThinkWikiJump to: navigation, search Contents [] Model

Lenovo Thinkpad R61 7743-Y1B

General

This installation instruction describes the steps after a Gentoo 2007.0 base installation. Please read the gentoo handbook for installation instructions

Working:
  • Keyboard, UltraNav input (Touchpad and NavPoint)
  • Drives
  • X11 with nVidia including acceleration
  • Network, wireless network and bluetooth
  • Sound
  • Suspend to RAM
  • Suspend to Disk (Hibernate)
  • ThinkLight
  • PCMCIA
  • ACPI (Battery, CPU Frequency, Fan, Temperature, ...)
  • Fingerprint scanner (includes login and screen lock)
  • Fn Key combinations
  • Hot swapping of optical drive (UltraBay)
  • HDD Acceleration Meter (can be used as an input device)
  • Harddisk protection (kernel patched with this)
Not tested:
  • Firewire (should work as it is recognized, no devices for testing)
  • Express Card Slot (should work, no devices for testing)
  • Docking Station (should work according to several sources, no devices for testing)
Graphics: NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M

To install and configure the nVidia driver, just emerge nvidia-driver. Tested with nvidia-driver-100.14.19 up to 169.12, everything works fine, games run smooth.

Framebuffer works fine with vga=869 which will set the resolution to 1440x900. hwinfo --framebufer displays all supported resolutions.

The brightness can be changed with newer nvidia drivers (>=169.04) Does not work with older drivers, only known workaround is to either use vesa / nv driver or to change the brightness on a vt.

Using 169.12 or newer is recommended, as brightness control works there and some powermizer issues, which caused bad perfomance in applications like compiz-fusion, had been fixed.


Performance of the card depends heavy on powermizer and some nvidia settings.

I recommend you read my Xorg.conf, put the following settings in an autostart

nvidia-settings -a InitialPixmapPlacement=1 -a GlyphCache=1 &

and use this script:

while true; do

powerstate=`cat /proc/acpi/ac_adapter/AC/state | awk '{print $2}'`

if [ $powerstate = "on-line" ]; then
nvidia-settings -q all > /dev/null
fi
sleep 25;
done

which forces powermizer to stay on level 2 while your thinkpad is on AC power, not battery. (You can remove the if to keep it on level 2 even on battery, but this consume more power)

Sound: AD1984

Did not work with older Versions of ALSA driver, works fine with ALSA 1.0.15 and should work with ALSA 1.0.14 as well. The in-kernel ALSA works since 2.6.23.

The mute button is hardwired and works, the volume up and volume down buttons work as well but you need to configure them first. You can use xmodmap to bind a key to them and then either bind a amixer command to them, or set them as hotkeys in your mixer application (kmix, gnome-mixer, ...) Please note that some mixer applications take the wrong mixer (the microphone) as the default, so you have to change the default / primary mixer in order to use things like kmilo.

Note: After muting you have to press a volume up or down button to unmute, and the mute status is not displayed in any mixer application.


Note for Kernel 2.6.24: Due to changes in thinkpad acpi the mute button does not longer work out of the box, but it does generate a key event. So you have to bind it to a script which mutes the headphone and speaker via amixer toggle <mixer>. This is a known problem to the thinkpad-acpi developers and probably will be resolved in the near future.

I recommend using alsa-drivers 1.0.16, as there is a new master mixer, which has mute capabilities to mute headphones and speaker. So you can either bind the key in a mixer application or you only have to use one amixer command.

Network: Intel E1000 NIC, IPW4965abgn WNIC, Bluetooth

The integrated e1000 LAN NIC works out of the box.

For wireless you have to unmask and emerge the iwlwifi package with the ipw4965 USEFlag enabled.

Don't forget that the interface (wlan0) has to be set as up (ifconfig wlan0 up) before scanning and associating works.

Bluetooth works out of the box with blueZ. You can disable / enable bluetooth via proc, with a script similar to this one:


#!/bin/sh
bluetooth=`head -n 1 /proc/acpi/ibm/bluetooth | awk '{print $2}'`
case "$bluetooth" in
disabled)
echo "enable" > /proc/acpi/ibm/bluetooth
;;
enabled)
echo "disable" > /proc/acpi/ibm/bluetooth
;;
esac
exit 0

or directly with the proc interface. This script helps you to bind it to the Fn+F5 key combination.

Note that the hardware killswitch on the front works as well, but disables both bluetooth and WLAN

If you desperately want the wireless LED to work you can use this patch for a 2.6.24 kernel. Make sure to enable LED Triggers and LED groups in your kernel configuration, then there is a new option in the iwlwifi submenu. Works here, however, it doesn't blink on activity as it would with windows.

Ports: PCMCIA, USB, IEEE 1394 Firewire

PCMCIA port works out of the box, tested with an audigy pcmcia. I have no express slot cards available for testing.

The left hand usb ports generate an IRQ nobody cared error from time to time, Try to boot with irqpoll in your kernel line as suggested.

A BIOS Update might help as well, it is recommended to use the ThinkVantage Software Updater for windows for a BIOS Update. The error disappeared here and USB works fine.

Firewire is untested but should work, as the port is recognized and the module loaded.

Drives

The optical drive and hard drive work out of the box, with AHCI disabled or enabled in the BIOS.

If you run a dualboot system with windows <= 5.1 (XP) you probably want to disable AHCI anyway, at least until you have installed the ahci driver for Windows.

Input TouchPad

Works out of the box here, with scrolling. Have a look at my Xorg.conf section at the end

Can be disabled via synclient when using the synaptics driver, a possible solution is this script:


#!/bin/sh
touchpad=`synclient -l | grep TouchpadOff | awk '{print $3}'`
case "$touchpad" in
1)
synclient TouchpadOff=0;
echo "Touchpad Enabled" | osd_cat -d 1 -c cyan --font="-*-times-bold-r-*--34-240-*-*-p-*-*-*" -A center -p bottom
;;
0)
synclient TouchpadOff=1;
echo "Touchpad Disabled" | osd_cat -d 1 -c cyan --font="-*-times-bold-r-*--34-240-*-*-p-*-*-*" -A center -p bottom
;;
esac
exit 0

which needs xosd to display the current state. You can make it excecutable and map it to the fn+f8 button.

Trackpoint

Works out of the box as well, with no scrolling however. Can be configured via xorg.conf, I prefer using the middle button as mouse3.

Keyboard

Works out of the box, most of the Fn Keys work.

Hardwired: Mute, Thinklight, Brightness

Generates a keycode and can be configured: Volume Down, Volume Up, Fn+F2, Fn+F3, Fn+F4, Fn+F5, Fn+F7, Fn+F8, Fn+Arrows

Does not generate a key event: Fn+F9, Fn+F12, Fn+Space Those keys do produce an acpi event, so you can modifiy your acpi configuration to bind them to commands.

It is also possible to translate the acpi events to keyevents, have a look at the following configuration file:

My example default.sh file for the missing keys is here and there is a good, more complete howto here: Gentoo Wiki

Try whether echo "0xffffffff" > /proc/acpi/ibm/hotkey enables additional fn+fx keys to produce a key event instead of only an acpi event. Take a look at the ibm-acpi section as well to do this on module load.