Installing Mandriva Linux on a ThinkPad T20

Mandriva 2007

Mandriva One 2007 Gnome Live/Install CD

This CD boots fine to the desktop. It defaults to using ACPI for power management.

Trying Fn-F4 to suspend on this CD or selecting "Suspend" from the battery icon resulted in an error like

"INIT PANIC: segmentation violation at 0x804e21d! sleeping for 30 sec."

APM can be activated instead by pressing F1 with the CD boots, and then entering these boot options:

live noacpi acpi=off apm=on

Booting this way, Fn-F4 put the computer in standby, but does not suspend. Selecting "Suspend" from the battery icon caused the laptop to suspend, but immediately resumed.

Running the command "apm --suspend" as root does cause a successful suspend/resume cycle to happen, but sound no longer works after resuming.

A complete install from the Mandriva One 2007 CD has not been completed yet.

Mandriva 2006

Basic Installation

The basic install of Mandriva Linux 2006 works smoothly on a ThinkPad T20. Read on for things that need tweaking.

DVD Notes

With appropriate software installed, the combination of Mandriva and the T20 plays DVDS fine. However, the frame rate will be noticeably reduced if the DVD is hotswapped in place of a battery, or if the laptop is suspended and resumed. This DMA-related phenomenon is explained more on the UltraBay page in the Hotswapping section.

Upgrading from 2005 LE to 2006

Although the installer ran without incident, look out for several issues to address:

• Several things quit working until I switched to the 2.6.11 kernel that was installed. Notably, sound didn't work and the trackpointer didn't work. You can use drakboot to change the default corner, or command line jockeys can edit /etc/lilo.conf

• The DVD drive could not be located. It was being sought at /mnt/cdrom but really existed at /mnt/cdrom2. Rebooting seemed to fix this.

• My Orinico wireless card quit working. It was being recognized at "eth0" now instead of "eth1". Copying my settings from the eth1 configuration to the eth0 configuration fixed that.

• Using the TrackPoint in combination with the middle mouse button as a scroll wheel quit working. I got it working by using this bit in my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.

Section "InputDevice"
   Identifier "Mouse1"
   Driver "mouse"
   Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
   Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"
   Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
   Option "XAxisMapping" "4 5"
   Option "YAxisMapping" "6 7"
   Option "EmulateWheel" "true"
   Option "EmulateWheelButton" "2"
EndSection

If you haven't editted this file before, select "Run" from the start menu and then run a text editor (such as "kate") as root. Be sure to create an extra copy of the file before you change it in case there is a problem! To make the changes take effect you'll need to restart X. Rebooting is one way to do that, or you could hold Control-Alt-Backspace to restart the X server.

• The "Suspend" option had disappeared from the KLaptop menu. It was necessary to go into the "Configure KLaptop" dialog and re-setup the "helper applications".

• Selecting "ondemand" as a Performance Profile seems to have no effect, through KLaptop or on the command line. It would be nice to solve this for better life.

• While suspending worked great with Mandriva LE, trying to suspend with APM, now resulted in a reboot upon resuming. What finally worked me was:
  • Upgraded to 2.6.12 kernel (not sure if this mattered)
  • Make sure acpi and acpid are installed and apmd is not
  • Use the built-in suspend key to suspend (Fn-F4). (Using KLaptop instead resulted in no sound upon resume).

• My USB card reader quit working. My fix was to make sure the USB service was started at boot time, and to explicitly load the USB mass storage module at boot time.
  • # ln -s /etc/init.d/usb /etc/rc5.d/S50usb
  • Edit /etc/sysconfig/usb and set STORAGE=yes

Getting the modem to work

The modem is not accessible through one of the default serial interfaces. It can, however, be queried through /dev/tty13.

For further information, see Installing_Ltmodem_driver_for_Mandriva.

Support for the Thinkpad buttons with Kmilo

Kmilo is software that provides on screen feedback and some extra configuration when using the Thinkpad-specific buttons such as the volume and brightness keys. It is provided by Mandriva as part of KDE 3.5 bundle for Mandriva 2006. The package name is 'libkmilo1'. It works after installing that package and rebooting. Now when visting settings:/Peripherals/ you'll see a new icon for "IBM Thinkpad", with a few option to configure it.

Mandriva 2005 LE

Suspend/Resume

Mandriva controls suspend/resume preferences through the file /etc/sysconfig/suspend. It is a well-commented text file. Here are two options I set that seemed to help make sound continue working after a suspend on the T20:

RESTORE_SOUND="yes"
SOUND_MODULES="sb uart401 sound soundcore maestro cs4281 snd-cs46xx"

I'm not sure if all the sound modules in this list are necessary. I added snd-cs46xx to the list because I knew it was the one I was using.

From the Mandrake Control Center, I configured one specific Thinkpad-specific option for the sound driver. I entered the "Hardware" area and then selected the sound card and clicked "Configure Module". One of the options is labeled simply "thinkpad". I set it to "1".

Screen Locking after Suspend

My screen always came back locked after I suspended, and I couldn't figure out how to turn that off at first. That preference is also in /etc/sysconfig/suspend and is named LOCK_XFREE.

I set it to "no", but can still lock the screen if I want by using the Klaptop "Lock & Suspend..." option

External Sources

• Michael Reinsch's notes about Mandriva on a Thinkpad T20
• How to Install a Mandrake 8.0 on a IBM Thinkpad T20
• This guide is listed at the TuxMobil Linux laptop and notebook installation survey (IBM/Lenovo).