Installing Ubuntu 5.10 on a ThinkPad R50e

This page aims to illustrate issues and (hopefully) solutions encountered while installing Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger) on a Levono ThinkPad R50e. As usual, caveat emptor. Also, don't forget to create backup CDs for your IBM Rescue and Recovery partition (see Ordering Recovery CDs).

The configuration of the ThinkPad used is as following:

 Levono ThinkPad R50e 1834-A67 (a Taiwan-specific model?)
   Intel Celeron M 360 (Dothan 1.4GHz)
   Intel 855GM Chipset
   14' XGA (1024x768) TFT
   Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Mini-PCI Adapter
   DVD±RW Writer (Not removable)
   Windows XP Home

This page is still under construction.

Installation

Installing the OS was fairly straight forward. I put in the Ubuntu install disc and pressed F12 to bring up the booting device menu. At the partitioning menu I chose to let Ubuntu resize the existing NTFS partition and create partitions it needed automatically. Everything went well and I was able to boot into both Windows XP Home and the Rescue and Recovery partition from GRUB without any extra effort. It should be noted, however, that I did this on a brand new machine. So if you had made changes to your MBR or partitioning table, you might get different results.

Networking

The Ethernet interface works right after installation as expected (eth1). The Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Mini-PCI Adapter was detected (eth0), but probably only works with open networks (I didn't have one to test). As my wireless network (Apple Airport Express) uses WPA/WPA2, I went straight on to make ipw2200 work with wpa_supplicant. This turned out to be quite a complicated task since most articles on enabling WPA on ipw2200 in Ubuntu are written for earlier versions of Ubuntu.

I do not use the built-in modem, so I didn't bother testing it. However, it was suggested here that Conexant's driver works.

Power Management

Some webpages have instructions on how to enable SpeedStep support for Celeron M. But according to Intel, none of the Celeron M processor (at least the new ones) support it. I tried loading p4_clockmod and cpufreq_userspace, and only the latter worked. I suppose it might be useful if you want to manually adjust the speed of your CPU. Or, if your CPU supports SpeedStep (e.g. Pentium M), see here for instructions on how to make it work.

The fan seems to work fine as indicated here.

Standby, Sleep and Hibernation

Standby Hitting Fn+F3 blanks the screen and turns the backlight off. It is supposed to lock the screen, but sometimes it doesn't work; I haven't been able to figure out what causes this. No additional changes are necessary.

Sleep To make sleeping work, the following changes are needed:

Open a terminal and enter this command:

  sudo gedit /etc/default/acpi-support

And uncomment "ACPI_SLEEP=true" (by removing the # character in front of it)

Then enter this command in terminal:

  sudo cp /etc/acpi/sleep.sh /etc/acpi/sleep.sh_backup
  sudo gedit /etc/acpi/sleep.sh

Replace the line "echo -n $ACPI_SLEEP_MODE >/sys/power/state" with 
(take from Problem with display remaining black after resume):
  
  # change to console 1
  FGCONSOLE=`fgconsole`
  chvt 6

  # safe video state
  cat /proc/bus/pci/00/02.0 > /tmp/video_state

  # sync filesystem
  sync

  # sync hardware clock with system time
  hwclock --systohc

  # go to sleep
  echo -n 3 > /proc/acpi/sleep

  # waking up
  # restore system clock
  hwclock --hctosys

  # restore video state
  cat /tmp/video_state > /proc/bus/pci/00/02.0

  # change back to X
  chvt $FGCONSOLE

  # clean up behind us
  rm /tmp/video_state

Press Fn to wake up. Screen locking works consistently, unlike standby.

Hibernation Hibernation works straight out of the box. Press Fn+F12 or choose Hibernation from the logout menu to hibernate.

Display and external monitor

The built-in Intel Extreme Graphics 2 works just fine with the built-in display. You can use i855crt (proceed with caution) to make the TFT and external monitor/projector mirror each other, but I found that much less useful than screen spanning. I'm still working on this. Please contribute if you have a solution.

TrackPoint and other peripherals

Volume buttons.

Various Tweaks

Refer to Installing Ubuntu 5.04 on a ThinkPad T43 (1875) for the following tweaks:

 *  Don't slow down boot-up by synchronizing with network time
 *  Don't slow down boot-up when no Ethernet cable is attached
      Note: If you have ipw2200 configured with wpa_supplicant, you should leave HOTPLUG_INTERFACES="" 
      in /etc/default/ifplugd as it is. Otherwise it produces an annoying error message during booting. 
      Also, ipw2200+wpa_supplicant takes a long time to initiate, so there's still a wait during booting, 
      and I haven't found a way around it yet (besides plugging in an Ethernet cable). 

References

Installing Ubuntu Breezy Badger (5.10) on ThinkPad R50e (German) Ubuntu Linux 5.10 Breezy Badger on an IBM ThinkPad T42