Linux on the X220

This worked for me when the grub2 procedure failed

X220, Ubuntu 11.10, Corsair Flash Voyager 8GB

You'll loose everything on your USB-drive so beware

 

You just made my day! If you drop by Lisbon I'll tour you around. Great tip.

 

I just got an X220, and I'm running Debian Sid on it. It's running off an intel 310m 40GB msata, and I have the intel 6205 wifi card.

Everything is great except for the clickpad. Out of the box the only way to right click is to hold one finger on the touchpad and then click either of the integrated buttons. Click and drag does not work either.

I took this modified patch and made a small change to make it work for Debian Sid: https://bugs.launchpad.net/xserver-xorg-input-synaptics/+bug/582809/comments/275

Here is my modified version: 200_clickpad_support.patch

I then used the directions from here to create a patched .deb, using my own version of the patch above instead of the SuSE tarball:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/X220#Touchpad

After this, right-click works fine, and it is possible to minimize the amount of freakout from the bottom edge of the trackpad using two new synaptics variables, TouchButtonArea and TouchButtonSticky

I set the touchbutton area to the smallest possible (which makes it just above the line) and the pressure the maximum (so that touches in this area do not move the cursor):

Code:

synclient TouchButtonArea=1
synclient TouchButtonSticky=1000

Two finger scrolling and click-and-drag seem to be mutually exclusive. There needs to be more work done to get this clickpad working 100% correctly... bug report here:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38303

My 3.1 kernel config: http://www.mediafire.com/?2e3uq4004pk6pn8

The mute button LED works with the following config option, but it doesn't always seem to sync correctly with the actual status:

Code:

CONFIG_THINKPAD_ACPI_UNSAFE_LEDS=y

Update:
Power consumption and thinkfan settings

 

FWIW, I had this same problem when I used ALSA and thinkpad_acpi. I removed ALSA, removed thinkpad_acpi, upgraded to OSS4, set up an ACPI script to respond to the "button/mute" ACPI event, and now the mute button now works flawlessly with no synchronization issues.

 

I'm only talking about the LED, is that what you mean? The button itself works fine.

 

Yes.

Mute worked just fine when I used ALSA -- but thinkpad_acpi seemed to interfere with the light working. I removed thinkpad_acpi when I migrated to OSS4 (since it required ALSA support in my kernel), and viola!

 

Is expresscard hotplugging/pciehp working for anyone? Not so much here on both 3.0 and 3.1-rc with bios 1.22

Sort of a letdown... I use a lot of cards and having to reboot (while it only takes 20 seconds) is a bother.

edit: nevermind, I'm a doofus - just needed to modprobe acpiphp

 

Hi,

nobody has any suggestion for the incredible low volume of the internal speakers ? Even in Win 7 the volume is low, but not so much as in linux ..

 

The speakers are actually incredibly loud for me using pulseaudio's gain on linux. They can almost break up... maybe you need to check your mixer?

 

I've tried to set up the mixer, but when I set gain a bit higher than flat, speakers becomes noisy in a boring way .. (and this not happens in win, so probably it's not an hardware problem)

 

@paulmcfonty

What distro are you using, what are you using to play audio, and what type of file are you trying to play?

 

I picked up an X220 a couple of weeks ago and thought I would make a note here of my experience in case anyone else is searching for the same answers I was.

It is running Ubuntu 11.10 and everything works except the mic mute button. It isn't just the LED, it does not mute the mic when you press it.

My model has no camera (I have to take it places where they are banned) and it also has no fingerprint reader so I can't comment on these.

I installed a Crucial M4 256 GB SSD and it is running fine. I had to remove the spacer to change the hight from 9.5mm to 7mm but it was easy to do (phillips screw head) and I had some shorter screws to replace them with. I put insulation tape in the lid of the SSD to ensure the components don't touch the metal lid.

I also struggled to find any information on running a Dell U2410 Monitor with it, I received one today and it is working fine out of the box.

Hope this post is helpful to someone.

System Hardware:
Processor: Intel Core i5-2520M @ 2.50GHz (4 Cores)
Motherboard: LENOVO 4291FN3
Chipset: Intel 2nd Generation Core Family
Memory: 8192MB
Disk: 256GB M4-CT256M4SSD2
Graphics: Intel 2nd Generation Core Family IGP
Audio: Conexant CX20590
Monitor: DELL U2410
Network: Intel 82579LM Gigabit Connection + Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205

Software:
OS: Ubuntu 11.10
Kernel: 3.0.0-12-generic (x86_64)
Desktop: GNOME Shell 3.2.0
Display Server: X Server 1.10.4
Display Driver: intel 2.15.901
OpenGL: 2.1 Mesa 7.11
Compiler: GCC 4.6.1
File-System: ext4
Screen Resolution: 1920x1200

*UPDATE* I found something that is not working, sound over display port. Pretty gutted about this but it seems that it is being worked on. I tried kernel 3.1 too and still nothing, I guess I will just have to wait for that one.

 

I tried ubuntu (Natty), openSUSE, beforefinally deciding on Arch. I just followed the arch noob install guide and everything pretty much went off without a hitch except for the intel wireless drivers that I had to grab off the intel website (the iso had a super old version of the kernel at the time). Besides that, the only real problem was getting the finger print reader to work. probably the biggest annoyance ever. many people recommended thinkpad_acpi, although i thought my system ran fine without it. Battery life is noticeably shorter in linux than in windows.
another problem i noticed was that if I connect to a certain type of wireless connection (wireless n at 40 Mhz), I somehow crash the AP/router. =_= not really sure what's going on, but probably overloading the router somehow.
oh well....

my plan is to buy a msata/ssd during black friday and do a complete reinstall using UEFI and grub2 as the bootloader.

 

I installed arch with Xfce (along with Fedora 15 Gnome and Mageia 1 KDE on other partitions on the same hard drive).

Got sound and my network printers (Canon and Brother) working. Able to mount other partitions as a regular user. Use SLiM display manager for login. Figured out how to choose console from SLiM when logging in as root. Got the mute, raise volume, and lower volume hardware buttons working.

Can't get tpb OSD working! The problem appears to be xosd (one of the dependencies of tpb). I can't get xosd to work at all (so far) in Xfce.

Anyone get tpb on screen display working on their X220?

 

Strange, onscreen display for thinkpad buttons worked fine when I tried Arch on it, I used gnome3 rather than Xfce though, on screen display also working under ubuntu 11.10 fine.

Arch seemed to work pretty well for me.

 

There is an onscreen display for the display brightness (only), but that was there before I installed tpb. What I really want it for is the volume control & mute buttons.

 

Any of you tried google-earth on the x220? In mine it flickrs alot, I wonder if there is any problem with google-earth and sandy bridge graphic card. I'm using debian, kernel 3.0.1

best

 

Debian stable? If so, yeah, the xorg stack in squeeze was released *way* before the GPU was released, and as such it doesn't handle vblank correctly.

 

unstable...

root@serodio:/home/rreis# dpkg -l | grep xorg
ii xorg-sgml-doctools 1:1.8-2 Common tools for building X.Org SGML documentation
ii xserver-xorg 1:7.6+9 X.Org X server
ii xserver-xorg-core 2:1.11.1.902-1 Xorg X server - core server
ii xserver-xorg-input-all 1:7.6+9 X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
ii xserver-xorg-input-evdev 1:2.6.0-2+b2 X.Org X server -- evdev input driver
ii xserver-xorg-input-synaptics 1.4.1-1+b1 Synaptics TouchPad driver for X.Org server
ii xserver-xorg-input-wacom 0.10.10+20110203-1+b2 X.Org X server -- Wacom input driver
ii xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.16.0-1 X.Org X server -- Intel i8xx, i9xx display driver

 

kyriu, I also run debian sid x86-64 on an X220, and I have no flicker problems with google earth on either Debian's 3.0 kernel or my own 3.1 build that I normally use. I could get the viewable area to go black momentarily a couple of times while it seemed to load textures, but nothing I would call flicker. There is a noticeable amount of tearing in some circumstances, however.

 

Weird. I've pulled in the Xorg stack + drm stack from testing, and it solved almost all the issues I've had with vsync. (I say almost because I run xfwm, which doesn't support vsync in its compositor -- so I can't tell for sure. It is a *lot* better than the squeeze packages were.)

FWIW, I'm not sure when the i915 gen6 support was improved to offer better vblank handling. I know that going from 2.6.39.* -> 3.0.8 was necessary to get the improvements that I did, but I'm not sure when the changes were made. That's obviously a big version gap...

 

One thing, your 3.0.8 is from packages or did you compile it yourself?

PS: I use fluxbox, maybe I can try with another WM

 

Compiled myself, but the config is based on Debian's. I disabled a bunch of modules that I know I'll never need (SCSI tape drives, RAID cards, that sort of thing), changed a couple non-driver options (mainly CPU type, cgroups, etc.), plus patched with and enabled grsecurity + PaX.

 

OK, I asked because I didn't see any .8 kernel in the packages. Snif... to get back to make menuconfig, make, install.... or just keepig apt-get... dilemmas, dilemmas...

thanks for your input

 

Here's my 3.1 config for comparison/reference/use: config-3.1.0-rc10.txt

 

eih thanks! very nice of you

best,

 

Yikes!

Learn to use the kernel-package utilities, and using a new kernel will get much, much easier. You'll end up with normal .deb packages that you can install, remove, upgrade, etc. GRUB updates will be handled for you, and you'll never have to worry about breaking something else when you remove or replace your custom kernel.

 

ahah, I've been a happy "make menuconfig" camper for the last (maybe) ten years... only this year I've tried the kernel from apt... when I got the time I'll learn new ways (it's on the todo list). For now only google-earth misbehaved and I only tried that to test a gadget.

 

I've discovered something interesting. To get rid of tearing when watching videos (such as mp4 in vlc), use Compiz.

I was wondering why I could watch a video in Fedora 15 Gnome (Classic with Compiz) without tearing in vlc, but the same video would exhibit tearing in Mageia 1 KDE and Arch Linux Xfce on the same X220. Some Google searches suggested that running Compiz might fix that issue, and sure enough I found that to be the case in Arch Xfce. Xfce's own compositor on or off would not make much difference, but when I used Compiz in Arch Xfce, my video was tear free just as in Fedora with Compiz.

 

What is everyone getting in terms of battery life with all the mods? Looking at posts over at the Ubuntu forums it looks pretty bad on 3.x kernels....even with a current fix

Also, take a look at this thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=11457201#post11457201

People's input here would also be greatly appreciated over at the Ubuntu forums

 

I'm curious at what power consumption you are looking at using your kernel. Any chance you can post some figures here (namely, what is your power consumption at idle).

 

Happy to help. I have posted a screenshot below.

First off my battery life is around 7 to 8 hours with the 9 cell. It estimates 10 hours but with my usage pattern that is never the case. With the 9 cell plus 6 cell slice I get more life than I have ever actually used, so I am not sure precisely, but it estimates 20 hours there.

My idle power consumption ranges from 7.5W to 10W depending on brightness, hard disk being on or not, and bluetooth settings.

My X220's specs: IPS screen, i5-2520m, Intel 310 40GB SSD for OS, LUKS/AES encrypted 320GB 7200RPM for data (spindown after 30 seconds), 2x4GB RAM, Intel 6205 wireless (always with power saving enabled).

Software: Debian Sid AMD64 with my 3.1.0 kernel config that I referenced previously.

Here are my boot params from /etc/default/grub:

Code:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet pcie_aspm=force i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.i915_enable_fbc=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1"

Here is my temp and fan speed as I type this:

Code:

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +45.0°C  (crit = +99.0°C)

thinkpad-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
fan1:        1984 RPM

Here is my /etc/thinkfan.conf:

Code:

(0,     0,      55)
(1,     55,     61)
(2,     57,     65)
(3,     61,     69)
(4,     69,     81)
(5,     79,     86)
(7,     84,     32767)

Here is my upower --dump:

Code:

Device: /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/line_power_AC
  native-path:          /sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0A08:00/device:09/PNP0C09:00/ACPI0003:00/power_supply/AC
  power supply:         yes
  updated:              Mon Nov 14 13:01:29 2011 (68140 seconds ago)
  has history:          no
  has statistics:       no
  line-power
    online:             no

Device: /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0
  native-path:          /sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0A08:00/device:09/PNP0C09:00/PNP0C0A:00/power_supply/BAT0
  vendor:               LGC
  model:                42T4942
  serial:              
  power supply:         yes
  updated:              Tue Nov 15 07:56:59 2011 (10 seconds ago)
  has history:          yes
  has statistics:       yes
  battery
    present:             yes
    rechargeable:        yes
    state:               discharging
    energy:              83.23 Wh
    energy-empty:        0 Wh
    energy-full:         92.99 Wh
    energy-full-design:  93.24 Wh
    energy-rate:         7.931 W
    voltage:             12.413 V
    time to empty:       10.5 hours
    percentage:          89.5042%
    capacity:            99.7319%
    technology:          lithium-ion
  History (charge):
    1321361819	89.504	discharging
    1321361789	89.547	discharging
    1321361759	89.633	discharging
    1321361729	89.687	discharging
  History (rate):
    1321361819	7.931	discharging
    1321361789	8.202	discharging
    1321361759	8.422	discharging
    1321361729	14.558	discharging

Daemon:
  daemon-version:  0.9.14
  can-suspend:     yes
  can-hibernate    no
  on-battery:      yes
  on-low-battery:  no
  lid-is-closed:   no
  lid-is-present:  yes
  is-docked:       no

Here is a screenshot of powertop on medium-low brightness (wifi on, bluetooth off, hard disk spun down):

 

This is the best battery life I've ever seen for X220 on Linux. I really would like to achieve the same battery performance. Did you compile 3.1 kernel with the option you posted above?

I would really appreciate if you could post more detailed instruction how I can configure the same settings as your.

 

Did you enable Intel IPS?

IIRC there were some load-order bugs with the module that stopped it from working with previous kernels...

 

@ALLurGroceries

This is outstanding. I've shared a link here at the ubuntu forums, where people are having the same problem...hope you don't mind. I'll be looking forward to trying your mods when my machine comes in

It would be awesome you could also give your 2 cents on that thread. People have reported buggy graphics and freezing on older kernels, on Sandy Bridge machines. Did you ever come across this on your X220?

 

@hamdori, what more is there? I posted my grub config, kernel config, hardware config, software settings...

@ThinkRob It's in my config as a remnant, but the module isn't loaded on my X220. Intel IPS is for nehalem, not sandy bridge.

@ali0chka
I have nothing but buttery smoothness on the X220, it's truly an amazing machine. Except for the clickpad, which is kind of a downer. I'm waiting until I get some more time (and for kernel bugzilla to come back up) to try to see how I can patch it further (past the suse xorg patches). There is some stuff in the pipeline but I haven't seen any real progress in months on the clickpad front.

I don't know if I want to step into ubuntu forums again. I posted some patches there a while ago, and it took up a lot of my time, re-explaining my posts over and over. Plus I have gotten flamed for being a debian user, so I'm not so sure... :-/

I'm happy to help out here as much as I can though, let me know what you need.

edit: I forgot to mention earlier that I am on BIOS 1.24

edit 2: I'm also getting ~8W idle on my new ASUS U24E (upower --dump posted here, scroll down to get to it).

 

Well, I guess I'll try Ubuntu...and if it doesn't work, i'll go debian with your config. I don't need all the bells and whistles ubuntu offers anyway

 

[checks block comment at the top of drivers/platform/x86/intel_ips.c]

Oh.

Ahem. Right you are. Carry on!

 

Hi all

Does anyone else has problems with shutdown on the X220? My just hangs and I have to press down the power button to make it go dead. I'm running debian on this.

best

 

No problems here shutting down, rebooting, or suspending on Debian Sid. There was a new kernel uploaded to the Sid repo last night.

 

thx... I suspect there is some service or module that doesn't shutsdown properly and hangs the system. I get some messages related to wireless (I have the intel N-1000) but wasn't able to figure it out yet.

 

@ALLurGroceries

Finally got my x220 in the mail, same config as yours, but with the 160gb intel SSD.

I installed Ubuntu 11.10, and after some tweaks I got roughly the same power consumption figures you get in your debian kernel (I'm running v3.0).

The one hanging issue is the fan...I use the same temp settings as you in thinkfan, but the fan seems to rev up and down from time to time...have you had any experience with this. It happens even when the computer is under light load and is very sporadic.

Any chance you could paste your whole thinkfan.conf file? Mine is as follows:

 

You can debug thinkfan by running it directly:

Code:

sudo thinkfan -n -c /etc/thinkfan.conf

My thinkfan config there was messed up with a couple of values. Thanks for making me notice that. Here's the whole thing with fixed overlapping values:

Code:

sensor /sys/devices/virtual/hwmon/hwmon0/temp1_input
(0,     0,      55)
(1,     55,     61)
(2,     57,     65)
(3,     61,     69)
(4,     69,     81)
(5,     79,     86)
(7,     84,     32767)

Make sure you have the fan_control module parameter set to 1 for the thinkpad_acpi module.

You can create a file called /etc/modprobe.d/thinkpad-acpi.conf

Code:

options thinkpad_acpi fan_control=1

 

Sweet!! You rock man! Thanks a lot!!!

 

ALLurGroceries, ali0chka, I envy you.
I have had my i7 X220, 64Gb SSD for a few months now.
Very quiet and cool under Windows. I prefer Linux though and am not too happy about the increased heat and noise and lowered battery time.
Until last week I was running Fedora on it. Overall ok but standy was a hit and miss. Then I put Mint. Better OS for the machine it seems. It fixed a few issues I had with Fedora.
The inefficient power management was not one of them.
So, I tried your suggestions and put the following command in the grub:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash pcie_aspm=force i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.i915_enable_fbc=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1″

Read on different pages I need to do "sudo update-grub" after that.. so I did but I get "/etc/default/grub: 12: splash: not found"..
Removing "quiet splash" gives same error about pcie_aspm and so on..
Rebooting doesn't seem to change the energy rate from 17-18Watts.
So, I don't know if above is in effect or not. Most probably is not since I don't feel any difference. In addition I get the following in the syslog file:

ACPI FADT declares the system doesn't support PCIe ASPM, so disable it
ACPI _OSC control for PCIe not granted, disabling ASPM

I am on Mint 12 - 3.0.0-13-generic #22-Ubuntu SMP Wed Nov 2 13:27:26 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Is it possible to achieve your results with the above version?
Also, from what I read, the above command introduces lag. In your opinion, is the lag quite noticeable?

Thanks!

 

You can edit the grub command line at the boot menu. Just append the options to the end of the line where it ends with 'quiet' or whatever your distro has there.

It sounds like you have some kind of grub configuration problem though, you might want to redo grub-install --recheck /dev/sdX and then update-grub

 

Thanks man.. this is what I get..

# grub-install --recheck /dev/sda
/etc/default/grub: 12: splash: not found
Installation finished. No error reported.

 

never mind.. wrong quotes.. the curse of copy paste from the internet..

 

Much better after the reboot..


energy: 89.7213 Wh
energy-empty: 0 Wh
energy-full: 90.5094 Wh
energy-full-design: 96.1038 Wh
energy-rate: 11.655 W
voltage: 12.397 V
time to empty: 7.7 hours
percentage: 99.1293%
capacity: 94.1788%

And the fan noise is better now.. Still, far from the figures you are achieving..
Thanks!

 

Hello

I also wanted to install Debian on my X220 but I was not successful.

Installing Fedora 16 worked just fine, even finer than Windows 7, but Debian was a major hassle for me: If I unpack any of the debian isos or imgs to my bootable USB stick it returns an error message upon booting. If I create a Debian Live Live USB with a program from pendrivelinux.com I can boot into the system, but the installer does nothing -- just nothing. If I create my bootable USB stick with unetbootin I can boot, but there are no wifi drivers, moreover connection via ethernet fails.

Well how did you make it work? Please teach me. Please give me a detailed instruction.