HOWTO: Ubuntu on IBM Thinkpad T42

0.1

This How-To describes the steps necessary to fine tune and tweak the default Ubuntu
installation on an IBM Thinkpad T42.

Table of contents
1 Intended Audience............................................................................................................. 2
2 Purpose...............................................................................................................................2
3 Prerequisites....................................................................................................................... 2
4 Steps................................................................................................................................... 2
4.1 Kernel............................................................................................................................ 2
4.2 Sleep/Hibernate............................................................................................................. 2
4.3 KDE fonts......................................................................................................................3
4.4 Thinkpad Buttons.......................................................................................................... 3
4.5 Video............................................................................................................................. 4
5 System Information............................................................................................................5
6 Frequently Asked Questions.............................................................................................. 5
6.1 1 Suspend to RAM doesn't work for me. What should I do?........................................ 6
7 Tips.................................................................................................................................... 6
8 References..........................................................................................................................6
9 Feedback............................................................................................................................ 6

Copyright © 2005 Diwaker Gupta. All rights reserved.

 HOWTO: Ubuntu on IBM Thinkpad T42

1. Intended Audience
Users who have or wish to install Ubuntu on their IBM Thinkpad T42s with all the bells and
whistles (suspend to ram, suspend to disk etc)

2. Purpose
Ubuntu is a great distribution, and I am a big fan of Debian as well. Although the default
Ubuntu installation work out of the box for almost everything, to get the perfect system, you
still need to do some bit of tweaking! This How-To aims to cover those tweaks.

3. Prerequisites
• An IBM Thinkpad T-42 (duh)
• Familiarity with Linux in general and Ubuntu/Debian in particular

4. Steps

4.1. Kernel
The default Ubuntu installation will stick in a Linux-2.6.10-x-386 kernel (x = 5 for
me), which is just fine. But you probably want to use a kernel optimized for your processor --
the performance benefits mignt not be observable, but it will allow you to make use of some
architectural enhancements. So first off, go ahead and do that:

sudo apt-get install linux-686

4.2. Sleep/Hibernate
This is the first distro I've come across that supports both suspend-to-ram and
suspend-to-disk out of the box! Yay!! Suspend to ram is disabled by default though. To
enable it, open up /etc/default/acpi-support and make sure that this is
uncommented:

ACPI_SLEEP=true

Suspend to ram is activated by pressing Fn + F4 and resumed by the same key

combination. Suspend to disk is activated by pressing Fn + F12 and resumed by pressing
the power button. You can always suspend to ram/disk by calling the appropriate script
directly (/etc/acpi/sleep.sh or /etc/acpi/hibernate.sh).

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HOWTO: Ubuntu on IBM Thinkpad T42

4.3. KDE fonts

If you're a KDE fan (like yours truly!), you would want to install Kubuntu on top of your
Ubuntu installation. You can do this by doing:

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

Kubuntu is just as slick as Ubuntu, it just uses KDE as your default environment instead of
GNOME. However, my default Kubuntu setup showed up with really ugly fonts. Apparently
this is a common problem (look in the forums/google), but fortunately, the its not a big
problem and is easily solved.
Ideally Ubuntu/Kubuntu fonts should look identical. The only difference is that GNOME
allows applications to render fonts at the DPI that is different than that of the X server. KDE
seems to be lacking this functionality right now. So you have to instruct the X server to run at
the DPI you want your wants to be rendered at.
There are a couple of ways to do this, but for me, the easiest was this: create a file called
.Xresources in your home directory (~/.Xresources), and add the following line to
it:

Xft.dpi:96

Thats it! Log out, restart X server (Ctrl + Alt + Backspace) and log back in -- you
should see good fonts now.

Tip
You might also want to check out my Linux Tips and Tricks article for some more useful tips on fonts in KDE

4.4. Thinkpad Buttons

If you're using KDE(Kubuntu), there's really not much you need to do. By default, the
ibm-acpi module should be loaded (check the output of lsmod) -- this will enable all of
the hotkeys and function buttons (including volume and brightness).
KDE has two nice features that make life good for Thinkpad users: the kmilo service that
will handle the volume/brightness keys (with a nice OSD for the same; and the IBM
Thinkpad kcontrol module which lets you bind programs to various Thinkpad keys (like the
Access IBM key). However, to make best use of both of these, we need to do some tweaking.
• First, create a new group called nvram:

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 HOWTO: Ubuntu on IBM Thinkpad T42

sudo addgroup nvram

• Then add yourself to this group:

sudo adduser [username] nvram

• Make sure that the nvram module gets loaded automatically on boot. Add nvram to
/etc/modules on a new line.
• Finally make sure that udev gives read/write permissions for the /dev/nvram device
to all members of the nvram group. Make sure your
/etc/udev/permissions.d/udev.permissions has the following lines:

misc/nvram:root:nvram:660
nvram:root:nvram:660

• Thats it! Next time you boot and log in, you should see nice OSD display when you press
the volume or brightness or thinkpad light keys. And you should be able to bind the
programs for the rest of the keys in the KDE control center.

4.5. Video
I use the open source radeon drivers. These drivers are fairly stable, work with both
suspend to ram and suspend to disk, but do not provide 3D acceleration support. If you really
need 3D acceleration, you can use the xorg-fglrx drivers or the proprietary fglrx
driver available from ATI's website. I don't use these so I won't spend time covering
installation and usage, but you can find some useful information in the references at the end
of the article.
The radeon driver works out of the box for most scenarios. However, I often had problems
when trying to use my laptop with a projector -- ideally I would like to clone the laptop's
display onto the projector, retain my laptop's resolute on the laptop LCD, and scale to the
appropriate resolution on the projector screen. For instance, 1400x1050 on the laptop LCD
and 1024x768 on the projector screen. I modified my /etc/X11/xorg.conf as follows:
(you can get more details by executing man radeon)

Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon Mobility 9600/9700
M10/M11 (RV350 NP)"
Driver "radeon"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "backingstore" "true"
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Option "MonitorLayout" "LVDS,CRT"

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HOWTO: Ubuntu on IBM Thinkpad T42

Option "MetaModes" "1400x1050-1024x768 1400x1050-1280x1024

1400x1050-1400x1050"
EndSection

Note:
The backingstore and RenderAccel options aren't required for the LCD/CRT to work. They help if you're trying to use
the X composite extensions (look in the tips section below)

5. System Information
$ lspci
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82855PM Processor to I/O
Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82855PM Processor to AGP
Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM
(ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM
(ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM
(ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
0000:00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB
2.0 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 81)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801DBM LPC Interface Controller
(rev 01)
0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801DBM (ICH4) Ultra ATA
Storage Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M)
SMBus Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM
(ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corp. 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M)
AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 01)
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350
[Mobility Radeon 9600 M10]
0000:02:00.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI4520 PC card Cardbus
Controller (rev 01)
0000:02:00.1 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI4520 PC card Cardbus
Controller (rev 01)
0000:02:01.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82540EP Gigabit Ethernet
Controller (Mobile) (rev 03)
0000:02:02.0 Network controller: Intel Corp. PRO/Wireless 2200BG (rev
05)

6. Frequently Asked Questions

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 HOWTO: Ubuntu on IBM Thinkpad T42

6.1. 1 Suspend to RAM doesn't work for me. What should I do?
I'm not sure if this will fix your problem, but you might try appending the following
parameters to your kernel entry in /etc/boot/menu.lst:
pci=noacpi acpi_sleep=s3_bios

7. Tips
• Like I mentioned before, you can find some useful tips and tricks here
• Here are some (K)Ubuntu repositories you might find useful:

# KDE 3.4.2
deb http://kubuntu.org/hoary-kde342 hoary-updates main
# KOffice 1.4.1
deb http://kubuntu.org/hoary-koffice141 hoary-updates main
# Misc packages (qcomicbook, kftpgrabber, klibido, krename etc)
deb http://dinton.no-ip.org/ kubuntu main

• If you liked this article, you might also find this article useful
• I usually add short tips and tricks to my blog

Note:
TuxMobil - Linux on Laptops, Notebooks, PDAs and Mobile Phones
. This HowTo is also listed at TuxMobil - Linux on laptops, notebooks, PDAs, mobile phones.

8. References
• Ubuntu Linux on the IBM ThinkPad T42
• Ubuntu
• Ubuntu Forums
• Unofficial Ubuntu Starter Guide
• Unofficial Kubuntu FAQ

9. Feedback
Help me improve this HowTo! Leave your suggestions/feedback

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Copyright © 2005 Diwaker Gupta. All rights reserved.