Installing Ubuntu 10.10 on a ThinkPad X201
Contents
What do we want to do here?
ThinkPad X201 comes with a preinstalled Windows7 system and a hidden Lenovo Recovery partition. My goal is to delete all the partitions and install a clean Ubuntu 10.10 64bit distro. The drive is a 160 GB SSD and I prefer to not reserve and waste any space for the Windows system. Hence my desire to get rid of it completely without the option of dual boot. Still, I would like to have the initial system installation backed up in case I want to sell it later. If you dont want to backup the Lenovo partitions, or you want dual boot, then go directly to Installation. Bottom line: everything works, except the hibernation, which, as always, is kernel dependant.
Hardware specifications
My ThinkPad X201 has the following specifications:
| Processor | Intel CoreI7-620M (2.66GHZ4MBL3) |
| System | Geniune Widows7 Home Premium 64 |
| Screen | 12.1 WXGA LED 2X2 UCIIAW/C+WBU
(built-in camera, microphone, antenna, bluetooth) |
| Memory | 8GB PC3-8500 DDR3 1067S SDRAM 2 DIMM |
| Video Card | Intel HD video |
| Keyboard | KEYBOARD US ENGLISH |
| TouchPad | TrackPad/FingerReader+TouchPad |
| Hard Drive | Intel 160GB SSD SERATA |
| Modem | 5-1 Media Card Reader + Modem |
| Battery | ThinkPad X200 S 9 Cell LI-ION Battery |
| Bluetooth | Bluetooth with antenna |
| Wireless | Intel Centrino Ultimate N 6300 agn |
Backup of the original Lenovo installed software
1. Make a bootable Ubuntu USB with the Startup Disk Creator
2. Plug the Ubuntu 10.10 USB. Restart the computer and at the very beginning use the F12 key to enter the device boot up selection menu. Choose the USB stick. Then select “Try Ubuntu”. This will load the linux system without any changes to your original system. (At this step everything worked out of the box already - keys, wirelles, bluetooth, etc...)
2. Get PartImage: Once Ubuntu 10.10 is loaded and an internet connection is established, we need ParImage. Since PartImage is not in the Ubuntu 10.10 64bit repos, get it from here (it is for 10.04 but works on 10.10 too) http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1358546&page=2, or simply get it and compile it on your own from http://partimage.org. If there is no internet connection, you will have to get PartImage from somewhere else and use a regular USB to deliver it to loaded trial Ubuntu 10.10. (Of course, one could use the linux built-in “dd” from command line, instead of PartImage, to back up the separate partitions, e.g. something like >dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/media/some-external-USB-device-here/sda1.img bs=4M.)
3. Back up the original Lenovo installation
We need to back up the separate partitions and also the partition table and the master boot record. (Personally, I did everything using sudo.)
- System, Lenovo, and Windows7 partitions
One can see the names of the existing preinstalled partitions with the Ubuntu built-in Partition Manager (System/Administration/Partition Manager). In this particular case they are:
/dev/sda1/ ntfs SYSTEM_DRV
/dev/sda2/ ntfs Windows7_OS
/dev/sda3/ ntfs Lenovo_Recovery
I also had 1.84 MB unallocated but did not back that up.
Back up the partitions with PartImage (start it by typing in terminal >partimage). It is pretty straightforward, fast, and easy thing to do. The partitions were backed on an external WDPassport drive which was mounted at /media/WDPassport120/ via a regular USB port. The good thing about PartImage is that it backs up only the used space, which can be compressed (default options in ParImage).
- Master Boot Record (MBR) and partition tables
The images of the partitions are more or less useless in case the master boot record is changed/damaged and respectively the partition tables are changed.
- First, we will save the MBR with the linux DD tool. In terminal:
>cd /media/some-external-USB-device-folder
>dd if=/dev/sda of=backup-sda.mbr count=1 bs=512
It will produce a very small, but very important file: 512 bytes of data. For more information see here http://www.partimage.org/Partimage-manual_Backup-partition-table
- Now, we will save the partition tables. In terminal:
>sfdisk -d /dev/sda > backup-sda.sf
sfdisk is a tool provided with the linux package.
Disclaimer: I have not tried to recover the original Lenovo partition installation from the backed partitions described above.
Install Ubuntu 10.10
Install Ubuntu 10.10 from a bootable USB - straight forward and easy without any glitches.
What works out of the box
Hardware
| Processor | Yes - showing 4 CPUs |
| Screen | Yes |
| camera | Yes |
| microphone | Yes |
| Sound | Yes |
| Bluetooth | Yes |
| Memory | Yes |
| Video Card | Yes |
| Keyboard | Yes |
| TouchPad | Yes |
| TouchPad keys | |
| TrackPad | Yes |
| FingerReader | Yes (requires installation of extra packages - see below) |
| Hard Drive | Yes |
| Modem | |
| Card Reader | |
| Battery | Yes |
| Wireless | Yes |
Fingerprint Reader
There are apparently two ways to activate the Fingerprint Reader with 1) ThinkFinger (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ThinkFinger from Synaptic) and 2) Fprint from here https://launchpad.net/~fingerprint/+archive/fprint (fprint is also in Synaptic but something is missing). Long story short (kinda):
Quick installation guide
1. You should be running Ubuntu 10.04, 10.10, 11.04, or any derivative thereof. Packages for Ubuntu 9.10 are also available, but you won't be able to avoid one minor annoyance (see known issue 2 below).
2. You need to have a supported fingerprint reader. See the list at http://reactivated.net/fprint/wiki/Supported_devices. You may ignore columns Vendor and Product, only look at USB Vendor ID and USB Product ID. You can find out your reader's IDs with the lsusb command, the sixth column of which has the form of xxxx:yyyy, where xxxx is the Vendor ID and yyyy the Product ID. Another supported device, not listed at the above website, is 147e:1000.
3. Add this PPA to your sources:
>sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fingerprint/fprint
>sudo apt-get update
>sudo apt-get upgrade
3. Install fprint-demo (the version from standard Ubuntu archive is obsolete).
>sudo apt-get install libfprint0 fprint-demo
4. Go to Applications > Accessories > fprint project demo and check that you can enroll and verify your fingerprints and that your reader is indeed supported.
5. Install libpam-fprintd (not to be confused with libpam-fprint, the final “d” is crucial).
>sudo apt-get install libpam-fprintd
Note: If you have experimented with fingerprint authentication before and have changed your /etc/pam.d/common-auth, you may be presented with a screen asking whether you want to override those changes. Select Yes. Under very special circumstances, you may get an error saying
pam-auth-update: Local modifications to /etc/pam.d/common-*, not updating.
pam-auth-update: Run pam-auth-update --force to override.
In this case, run “sudo pam-auth-update --force”, exactly as suggested, and enable the fprintd profile manually. Leave the standard system profiles (Unix, Keyring and ConsoleKit) enabled as well.
6. Go to System > Preferences > About Me and in the top-right corner set up your fingerprint authentication. Alternatively, you can use command fprintd-enroll if you prefer CLI.
7. If you are running Lucid or newer, install gksu-polkit.
>sudo apt-get install gksu-polkit (my note - I didn’t need to install this)
8. Test it: Lock and unlock screen, log out and back in, try sudo in terminal. Don't try to launch Synaptic (or a similar graphical application requiring unrestricted root privileges) yet, see issue 2 below first.
Function keys
| Key | Yes/No | Comments |
| ThinkVantage key | Yes | Works at start-up. No particular use after the system is loaded |
| Dedicated Windows key | :) | |
| Dedicated Sound Keys | Yes | volume up/down/mute |
| Dedicated pop-up menu key | Yes | Yes |
| Dedicated browser next-page key | Yes | Yes |
| Dedicated browser previous-page key | Yes | Yes |
| Fn + F2 | Yes | lock screen |
| Fn + F3 | Yes | power information |
| Fn + F4 | Yes | sleep |
| Fn + F5 | Yes | power off/on wireless and bluetooth |
| Fn + F7 | ||
| Fn + F8 | Yes | disable/enable touchpad |
| Fn + F9 | ||
| Fn + F12 | No | hibernation |
| Fn + SysRq | Yes | |
| Fn + NmLk | Yes | numlock |
| Fn + Break | ||
| Fn + Home | Yes | brightness up |
| Fn + End | Yes | brightness down |
| Fn + PgUp | Yes | screen night light on/off |
| Fn + Space | ||
| Fn + Arrow keys |
Hibernation, Sleep, etc ...
| Fn + F4 = Sleep | Yes |
| Close lid = Sleep | Yes |
| Hibernate from PowerOff menu | No |
| Suspend from PowerOff menu | Yes |
