Linux on the X220

So, did you upgrade anything? Also, define idle... without WiFi and at 50% brightness my W520 idles at 12W. Fedora 15 beta with integrated only graphics.

Sounds like you are running the old (non-tabbed) version of powertop. The current one has a different interface with toggles instead of occasional recommendations.

 

No problem. I only mentioned what I was doing tangentially in my first post, if I mentioned it at all.

And I honestly didn't notice any rudeness.

The FreeBSD install is going to be interesting... I'm still not sure how to get what I want on a USB stick to start the process. (If I went with the standard release that wouldn't be a problem.) I will say that, according to my reading of the relevant pages, FreeBSD should support all the hardware. No issues there. The patches I want are to get v28 of ZFS in the base install; I want the de-dupe support from the start. Then I'm planning on doing something complicated: A ZFS-only install (which means I have to do all partitioning and formatting myself to start, as the installer doesn't support that yet), with the mSATA drive operating as both a cache drive and a ZIL log drive. Compression, de-dupe, and all reads and writes are funneled through the SSD transparently. It'll be fun.

---

Anyway, I just tried Fedora, starting from the Live CD. You have to stop the boot at the 'booting in X seconds' screen, and select 'basic graphics', otherwise you'll get a black screen instead of a login. This also means it doesn't guess the screen size correctly. More on that in a moment.

WiFi was detected and worked, although I got a couple notes about it crashing. (Note my upgrade here again.) The ethernet port didn't. I actually found the source for the driver (e1000e), built and installed it. Which worked fine until I hit 'install updates' and it replaced the kernel... (Since I still had the source, I just rebuilt and restarted.)

The fingerprint reader was recognized by default. It only can be used for your user password, not the root or the password safe's password, as far as I saw.

Touchpad was recognized as a touchpad, like just about everywhere else. GPointing was in the repository.

But back to the display resolution again... Even after install and the updates it still was stuck not recognizing the actual size of the display. Some web searches turned up some suggestions, but they mostly hinged on 'system-config-display', which has been removed in the current version of Fedora, with no apparent replacement. Trying to generate an X11 conf file threw an error. I'm sure eventually you could solve this problem, but it's going to take a while. In the meantime the laptop is usable, but the screen feels very small.

I also tried Sugar on a Stick, since I actually owned an OLPC at one point in the past. Again, you have to boot in basic graphics mode, and the screen resolution is wrong, but it's not as noticeable. No wired ethernet, and no hint of the fingerprint reader.

 

Currently the issue is with the intel graphics driver. There is work being done on that so us FreeBSD guys can run our OS on newer intel laptops. If one wants they can use the vesa drivers in the interim.

More info here:

FreeBSD Foundation: FreeBSD Foundation Announces New Project

Like DStaal I plan on running Funtoo for now and switching to or duel booting FreeBSD down line.

I hadn't thought about the mSATA drive to be used for l2arc or zil. I'm interested in your results DStaal.

This is my first post on this forum. I am a new owner of the x220 and I love it. My main objective for owning the laptop is for software development and general hacking around.

Do you guys program? If so what languages?

 

We're talking about a year of daily system use here. I would be hard pressed to say what I did *not* upgrade in that time . In any case, five kernel releases (starting with 2.4.34), six versions of the X server, five versions of the intel display driver, five versions of mesa, two versions of KDE... Shall I keep going?

Wifi on with power saving. BT off. HDD with 60sec spin down. Screen brightness 7. X running with Firefox (no flash websites or some such) and a few terminal windows.

Yeah, I've tried the new one (1.97, I think) at some point. It didn't give any new insight, and consequently no improvement.

Look, Volker, I'm not trying to bash Linux here. I run it on my machines probably more than 99% of the time. I like it. However, I recognize that, like everything else, it has some shortcomings, one of which is that power management is currently not up to the level of Windows, and that in fact it's been like this for a while. So if a potential laptop buyer asks in a forum if they can expect the same battery life under Linux as under Windows, I believe that the only fair answer right now is "no", even if it pains me to say that.

 

So far you haven't given us any information about what you are currently using.

Most likely there is a device that is running all the time at full throttle. Thinkpads are generally good hardware but there are a few optional choices like the Gobi WWan or the non-intel Wifi that are problematic. You can generally track these down by tracking the generated IRQs.

If your X-series thinkpad uses 12W idle then there is something not right. Did you file a bug? Most users get reasonable battery life.

 

I'm sorry, but I disagree with that assessment.

Yes, in some cases, with very new hardware, the drivers won't support power management as well as Windows. But that's not really the case with any of the ThinkPads that I've seen.

What I will say is that the out-of-the-box power management setup on most distributions is inferior to a lot of vendor preloads. That makes sense though: your average distro has to support a massive range of hardware, while a preload image is customized to a specific machine. Ten minutes of powertop and pm.d script fiddling though, and that difference is almost entirely gone, at least in most cases. Sometimes you'll need a different kernel config -- something that I will readily admit is not optimal -- but that's getting less and less common these days. To be fair, Windows isn't immune to this either: a clean Windows install without the Lenovo driver set will indeed be a lot less power-efficient.

That's just the way it is. Generic OS configurations may not fully exploit the features of all hardware. News at 11...

(As an aside, with regards to GPUs: I follow i915 driver development pretty closely, and while there are a few edge case power-related features that aren't supported/enabled by default, their effect is, AFAIK, minimal. FBC is a good example: it's disabled due to hardware quirks, but it only saves a fraction of a watt, and only under certain conditions. In some cases, it's difficult to say whether the closed-source Windows drivers have the same limitations.)

 

True. I simply don't want to flood this thread, which is supposed to be about x220, with my experiences with an older model (x201). But since you asked: it's currently kernel 2.6.38.4, xorg-server 1.9.5, xf86-video-intel 2.15.0, mesa 7.10.2, libdrm 2.4.25, kde 4.4.5 (I'm at work and writing this from memory, so it might be minimally off).

I don't have a WWan. I have Intel 1000 Wifi (with power saving on). You are right of course that *something* must be using that extra power under Linux. You speculate that it's a single rogue device. Fair enough, though I don't know what it could be. My speculation, instead, is that it's multiple smaller things adding up. Run Thinkpad Power Manager (or whatever it's called) under Windows and scroll through the dozens of options it has to tweak the CPU, GPU, fan... For half of them, I wouldn't know where a corresponding tweak is under Linux -- it probably doesn't exist. As an example, I've recently heard on this forum that to conserve power, x220 can selectively adjust LED backlight depending on what is being shown on the screen, and that this can be controlled by software. Where do I go about adjusting this feature under Linux?

Thanks for the hint, I haven't thought about that. You mean samping /proc/interrupts to identify a line rising rapidly? I'll check at home if it shows anything interesting. Wouldn't hardware interrupts show as wakeups in powertop, though?

As I said earlier, 12W is on the high end. It does go down to about 10-10.5W (which is still a world away from 6.5-7W under Windows).

Who exactly would I file this particular bug with, when it's so unclear which particular component is to blame? Also, see below.

Here's the point: I don't think this is true. A number of people at my work have Thinkpads and they get battery life either comparable to mine or (more often) worse. So that's my anecdotal evidence. Where does yours come from?

And you know, "reasonable" is in the eye of the beholder. I thought my battery life was reasonable (it gives me 4+ hours with the 6-cell -- some on this forum get more like 2.5-3), until I saw how much more Windows can squeeze out of it. So my speculation is that people simply have low expectations.

Let's have a quick poll on this thread from people running Linux on their shiny new x220ies. What is the power usage that Powertop reports for you on an idle system running on battery, with reasonable settings (say, wifi on, BT off, brightness at 50%, no flashy websites in the browser). If you feel like it, also include what Lenovo tools report under Windows.

 

Two side points:

1) Taking into account wakeups/s when comparing different machines seems reasonable.

2) Powertop's reported consumption -- OK, make that ACPI's reported consumption -- is not necessarily correct. (For that matter, how sure are we that the ThinkVantage tools report the right figures?)

 

I've been running Linux on a daily basis for 15+ years now, so I think I can say that I know my way around, but obviously, I don't know everything. So let's get specific: are you saying that you have [seen] an x201 or x220 that, according to Powertop, idles at under 8W in Linux? If so, I would *love* to know the details such as the kernel config file and any other quirks applied in user space.

Very good point. I have looked into it some time ago by letting the machine run for a longer time (10-30 minutes) and sampling the reported percentage of battery remaining. What I found was that the current power use reported by *both* Powertop under Linux and ThinkVantage under Windows were off by some 15-20%, at least on my x201. So when Powertop reports 10W idle, it's actually more like 12W, and when ThinkVantage reports 6.5-7W, it's closer to 8W. Of course, the percentage of battery remaining could also be off, but these adjusted values are consistent with the nominal battery capacity and the experienced battery life. So yes, there is an error in the reported current power use values, but it is systematic, so valid comparisons between two such measurements can still be made.

 

Generally under /sys, e.g. /sys/devices/system/cpu/sched_mc_power_savings

All LCD screens do that to lower the black levels in black regions. I don't think it can be controlled by software, AFAIK the LVDS interface provides no finegrained control over the backlight.

 

What distros are you guys running?

 

Not my experience. No problem booting the Fedora Beta 15 RC2 x86-64 Live CD (Gnome). The Fedora 14 Live CD does not have a recent enough kernel.

I have also booted successfully the Mageia Beta Live CD (KDE) and the Mandriva 2011 Live DVD (KDE).

The Fedora and Mageia Intel WiFi drivers (for 6205) worked fine. Mandriva does not have these drivers on the Live DVD, but they are available from the non-free repository for download.

I prefer KDE for disabling the TouchPad and using the TrackPoint only. Don't much care yet for the latest version of Gnome in Fedora. Gnome was great in Fedora 14.

Just my 2¢ worth.

 

I'm not sure if I agree with you on this.

I've seen powertop on my T410 and T420 report consumptions of more than 115W (no, I didn't omit a decimal point.) That kinda shakes my faith in its accuracy even when the numbers do look more reasonable.

 

Yeah, I should mention that I actually saw that around once I started trying to get Fedora to work: Only the latest kernel has graphics drivers for the latest Intel integrated graphics. You also need it (or the driver's code for a separate install) for the integrated Ethernet port.

My FreeBSD install may be delayed a while: My mSATA drive has yet to arrive (even though it was supposed to have shipped last week...) and my trial installs have so far stalled out during bootup. I've decided to break down and get a USB DVD drive to try using the full installer.

 

Has anyone tried installing Linux on an mSata drive? I tried installing OpenSuse and received the message that the partitioning on my MyDigitalSSD drive was not readable.

I also tried Ubuntu and it couldn’t see my drive either.

I’d be interested to know if anyone with the Intel 310 or Renice drive was able to install Linux. I’d like to know if it’s just my generic MyDigitalSSD drive that doesn’t work, or all mSata drives.

If someone with either of those drives has the time, could you please download the OpenSuse x64 DVD iso and just start the installation see if you get any error messages about the drive?

Thanks

 

Hi guys,

Can we start at the very beginning regarding how to get the fan to stop spinning at 3500 for no good reason on the x220?

I've done due dilligence in reading up on this, but I can't tell at this point in time what I need to do. It would be faster if some humble ninja could produce some detailed instructions, from the beginning, to tell us how to tame the fan.

Is thinkpad_acpi part of ubuntu 11.04 now? Do I need to download it? Isn't this file part of the newest kernels, etc?

Thinkfan, tpfancontrol, or something else? How to get the settings to stick upon a reboot?

Thanks!

 

Installing Funtoo now. compile! compile! compile!

 

pufftissue:

First, thinkpad_acpi is a module which I am nearly 100% sure is built into the kernel used by Ubuntu. If it is running, then the folder /proc/acpi/ibm will exist.

To say " I've done due dilligence in reading up on this " is not accurate. This information is extremely available. Thinkwiki is your friend as is the search feature. I found this for you (using search, believe it or not):

http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/575569-linux-x220-3.html#post7460759

To add to this, you should add thinkfan to your daemon array if you wish for it to start up on boot (if Ubuntu does not already do this; honestly I have no idea as I do not use Ubuntu).

Furthermore, the resource thinkwiki has several pages, not excluding

Fan control scripts - ThinkWiki

Honestly you cannot remain this much of a leech! You need to search and read for maybe two minutes.

 

I identified where 2W of power are going on my x201 under Linux compared to Windows.

If an external display is plugged in and enabled (xrandr --output VGA1 --auto), the laptop uses extra 2W. The problem is, that it keeps doing that even if the display is disabled (xrandr --output VGA1 --off) and unplugged. A restart of the X server does not remedy this. What does help, however, is a suspend (S3) and resume cycle.

Since I almost always boot my laptop docked and only unplug it later as needed, I would always see this 2W penalty. I only found it when I started playing with Ubuntu and Fedora booted from live USB keys on an unplugged laptop.

Anyway, the result is that I *am* in fact now able to get around 8W power consumption on my x201, with wifi on, brightness 7/15, and the disk off. Ubuntu 11.04 does about the same. Fedora 15 beta actually does a little better and I have seen 7.5W with it (I'll need to figure out what tweak is responsible...). That's still not quite the 6.5W I've seen with Windows, but it is a lot closer than before, and more measurements would be needed to see how much of a difference there actually is now.

A t61 I use at work exhibits the same behavior, so chances are, the same problem exists with x220, although it would be interesting if one of the owners could confirm it. I'll file a bug with Intel.

 

Ubuntu
I tried running the ubuntu 11.04 liveCD with unity, which worked fine. However, when I tried xubuntu 11.04 off a USB, the x220 would load the grub2 bootloader, let me select xubuntu, but doesn't actually boot anything. It just returns a blank screen. This might be because I was running the distro off the USB, I'm not too sure.
Arch
I've also successfully loaded the net-install Arch from a USB. However, upon running the setup I found out that it doesn't recognize the ethernet controller. (Running lspci gave me Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation Device[8086:1502] (rev 04), which is supported by the latest e1000e (should be incorporated into kernel). The net-install image for arch dates from 2010.05, so an outdated kernel might have been the issue. I haven't tried setting up wireless yet, but it might be possible. I might have to try the core install.
openSUSE
I also tried the GNOME3 openSUSE livecd (openSUSE 11.4). found on the GNOME3 website. It booted and loaded without a hitch, recognizing my wireless and ethernet. If it weren't for my distate of RPM I would've installed this, but I prefer to install Arch and go with a rolling release distro.

 

archlinux
Just finished installing archlinux on my x220. using xfce4 with Simple Login Manager. I had some problems at the start because the official archlinux iso contained an outdated kernel that did not recognize my NIC or the wireless adapter, but I got it fixed. I still can't get the x220 to boot from a USB flash drive, even though it can boot from USB external cd/dvd drives just fine. (totally unrelated to linux)

Just a heads up to all you people using thinkpad_acpi. It should no longer be used as of kernel 2.6.27, according to thinkwiki. use the standard acpi.
thinkpad-acpi
Using the standard acpi, calling acpi -t I only get 1 temperature sensor: Thermal 0. Mine's at 35C, so not too hot.

 

You misread that.

The warning applies only to the dock driver, not to the thinkpad_acpi module as a whole.

You can (and should!) still use thinkpad_acpi for everything except dock/bay support.

 

you're right...this is what happens when I stay up all night.
at least i got fingerprint-gui to work now

 

Did you check the boot order in the BIOS? Thinkpads make a distinction between USB CD/DVD, USB FDD, and USB HDD, and I think the last one (which is what USB keys are considered to be) is normally behind the SATA hard drive in the boot sequence, at least on my x201.

 

Has anyone with an X220T tried running Linux on it?

 

Good job debugging this. There is a closely related possibility, the TV output. Even though there may not be a connector (not sure about x201), the chip has the internal circuitry and its often an issue. Try xrandr --output TV --off. Can be permanently disabled in the xorg.conf

 

xrandr doesn't find any TV (or TV1) output, so that can't be it. Anyway, I filed bug #37394. Would be nice if they fixed it soon, though frankly, I'm not overly optimistic. To a casual observer, the pace of fixing some critical bugs on Intel hardware has been glacial (like fullscreen flash with compositing crashing the X server -- reported five months ago and still not fixed).

 

Ubuntu Natty is one hell of a buggy release.

I can't get it to work (Classic / no effect) with external monitor and laptop display turned off. Every single time I try to do that through System-> Preferences -> Monitor, the entire system will just freeze up.

Here's the only trick I know to make it happen :
1 - Boot up without external monitor attached.
2 - Once you're logged in, connect external monitor
3 - "xrandr" -- to see all video ports
4 - "xrandr --output VGA1 --primary" -- to make external monitor primary
5 - "xrandr --output LVDS1 --off" -- to turn off laptop display*

* at this step, your external display might go blank. don't panic, just hit ctrl-alt-f2 to switch to terminal, then ctrl-alt-f7 to switch back to X and you'll get your desktop back.

 

do you guys use the console? how do I setup grub2 to set console font size. killing my eyes.

 

@nomad9:

Thanks for the advice. I managed my external monitor settings with a launcher that is doing this:

#!/bin/sh
xrandr --output DP1 --off --output DP2 --off --output DP3 --off --output HDMI1 --off --output HDMI3 --off --output LVDS1 --off --output VGA1 --off --output HDMI2 --primary --mode 1920x1080 --pos 0x0 --rotate normal
unity --replace

I have to start this script whenever my external monitor is plugged in.

Maybe this will help anyone.

 

For some reason, I still can't get the external monitor to work reliably under Ubuntu Natty. If a permanent fix for this isn't released soon, looks like I'll have to "upgrade" it to 10.04LTS.

Anyway, after weeks of trial and error, I finally found a sweet spot for thinkfan settings for x220. The key is to maintain the temp within ~50c range and maintain fan speed at 2000rpm or lower. (2000+ rpm, and the fan starts to annoy me.)

It can only stay at 2000rpm under normal usage, however. If you open flash-laden website, or watch YouTube, or do some heavy lifting (3VMs running concurrently), the fan will need to gear up to maintain the CPU temp.

You can always increase temperature threshold for 2000+ rpm, but under constant load 2000rpm fan cannot keep up with the generated heat and temperature will spike up pretty quick.

Next steps ::
- Re-apply thermal paste. Properly applied thermal paste could reduce the temp 5-10c under no load.
- If the consensus is that replacing the fan fixes noise problem. I might be ordering a replacement assembly or send it back to Lenovo for a replacement under warranty.

In the meantime, here's my thinkfan settings ::

Code:

sensor /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/temp1_input
#fan off
(0, 0,  45)
#fan ~2000 rpm max
(1, 42, 55)
#fan ~3000 rpm
(2, 48, 59)
#fan ~3500 rpm, anything from 3 and above is too loud under quiet environment.
(3, 55, 63)
(4, 56, 65)
(5, 59, 66)
(7, 63, 32767)

 

Actually, that might not be an option. As far as I know, none of the mainstream 2010 distros had a full support for SandyBridge. Unless that support was added in 2011 through kernel and X updates, 11.04 might be your only choice.

For what it's worth, on my x201i with i3 the fan is *always* on, at 2000rpm, and it does ramp up to at least 3500 when CPU is in use. The difference is, however, that in x201 that fan spinning at 2000rpm is pretty much inaudible.

A colleague of mine got an x220i (a pre-built model from the store). I had a look at it and while the fan in his unit did appear to run more eagerly than in my x201i, it certainly didn't produce any annoying high-pitched sounds.

 

Thanks for pointing that out. It reminds me why I opted to install the just-released 11.04 in the first place. With the direction Canonical is heading, looks like I'm hosed and have to start using other distro.

X220/Linux/i7 fan is always running at 3500rpm minimum. 2000rpm is pretty much inaudible & no high-pitch noise as well.

Thanks for the info. I don't have time to go through all x220-related posts, but I have an impression that this problem *might* be limited to x220 /w i7. From maintenance manual, x220 has 2 types of fan assembly with one being for ULV. --- While i3 is not exactly ULV, but I suspect that it's using different type of fan because of lower TDP.

 

I've been away from this forum for a while. I've been using the X220 very heavily over the past few weeks on a web development gig, running Ubuntu Natty. Typically running SpringSource (a modded Eclipse), vim, Chrome/Chromium, Firefox 4.0, MySQL, Gimp, terminal... often all at once. The machine grinded to a halt on the stock 2 gigs of RAM (thanks to Eclipse and the Java stack), but it's very happy after upgrading to 8 gigs.

Unfortunately it's not been as stable as I'd like -- I've run into a lot of random crashes; in some cases I can recover to a login screen after an Alt-PrtSc-K, but most of the time only a hard restart (via power button) will work. This has happened twice when unplugging the DisplayPort cable; other times it happened at random while working. Sometimes the mouse cursor just freezes up, while a couple of times I've experienced a sudden terminal text dump on the laptop screen.

Once I closed it and put in the sleeve to take home, assuming it had gone to sleep. When I took it out, it was burning hot, and crashed to boot -- apparently something had stuck burning the CPU and heating up the case way beyond normal operating temps.

I'd be interested to hear if others have similar experience with Ubuntu, or know of some ways to make it more stable.

 

Thanks for the heads up akavlie.
Im planning to install linux mint 11 on mine, will let you know my experiences. Im hoping that mint is more stable, given they have gone to Unity or Gnome 3.

 

Let me guess... you're running either the Centrino 1000 card or the 6205.

 

I'm on the 6205. Are there known issues with the Linux driver?
I thought all the Intel stuff had good driver support.

 

wow. install gkrellm and follow your temp. Every now an then there is a xrun which will ping the cpu hard on my machine when in kde. I usually leave X and return an it's gone. If it's unkillable I just reboot because I'm to lazy to really investigate.

core temp on the i7 is 100c. I have compiled Funtoo over itself a couple times and have no issues. At idle the box is around 35c and eventually will hit it's equilibrium at around 45c. when compiling it will easily shoot up to 60c - 90c and occasionally hit the tjunction and throttle.

I want to add I also don't have the same problem as others do with the fan. Though I hear it when on idle here and there I really don't notice it or find it distracting in any way.

 

There are some firmware issues on recent cards. There seems to be some bizarre bug on some of the recent 2.6.35+ kernels in combination with the latest microcode.

Honestly, your best bet is to report it to your distro, as they'll be better equipped to deal with debugging/patching the specific kernel version that they use.

I know that with stock 2.6.38.x, the 1000 N will cause hard locks when used with anything but the latest experimental microcode.

 

I'm never sure how to report an issue like this. OK great, the machine crashed... that's not very helpful for those who need to investigate and fix the issue. What sort of info do they need about the crash? And how can I confirm that the wifi driver was the cause?

 

You can get the microcode here:

Intel® Wireless WiFi Link drivers for Linux*

cp the file iwlwifi-6000g2a-5.ucode to your /lib/firmware directory

relevant kernel config:

Code:

CONFIG_FW_LOADER=y
CONFIG_FIRMWARE_IN_KERNEL=y
CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE="iwlwifi-6000g2a-5.ucode"
CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE_DIR="/lib/firmware"

 

If you're using a Debian-based distro, reportbug will walk you through filing a report. Usually the owners of the appropriate package will let you know what they need.

Personally, I'd report it against the kernel package and go from there.

 

Using kernel 2.6.28 wasn't particularly stable on my W520. I am using a 2.6.39 kernel now and its rock solid (with i915.semaphores=1 on the kernel command line, only needed if you have frequent i915_hangcheck warnings in /var/log/messages)

 

I'm wondering if anyone else is having this problem: When my finger is on the trackpad the cursor shakes slightly back and forth. I was thinking this might be related to the click and drag problem.

I like trackpads better than the trackpoint so I'd like to try and fix this.

 

noticed another problem: volume is low on Ubuntu and windows7 as well.

 

- Yes, I do have that problem with touchpad. I just disabled it because it's pretty unreliable anyway. (Prone to accidental clicks, etc)

- My volume is normal. No problem at all.

 

Close -- turns out that Ubuntu has a separate package for this, ubuntu-bug:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

 

Ah. NIH strikes again, eh?

Kidding aside, thanks for the correction. Since I only really run Ubuntu on test boxes from time to time I tend to report bugs via Launchpad directly, so I didn't realize they didn't offer reportbug.

 

Another annoying problem that I think is Ubuntu (Natty Narwhal) related.. Wireless keeps dropping every couple of minutes and re-connecting (slowly). Very annoying.

It seems as if I'm running Realtek wireless driver rtl8192ce version 2.6. According to realtek's website, 2.6 is for Kernal 2.6.34 and earlier. Isn't Narwhal based off a later kernal?

Realtek

If the wrong driver is the problem does anyone know a good how-to to update drivers or compile/use manually in Narwhal?

Thanks!

 

Did you enable power saving option for wireless adaptor? I have intel 6205 and my wifi becomes unreliable when I do that.