Linux on the X220

Hi guys.

This thread was instrumental in my decision to purchase an X220 to be my work laptop, so I thought I'd register and give a report on my experiences.

I am running Fedora 16 x64, with gnome3/shell installed. On the default boot options, i.e. whatever the Fedora installer felt like setting, on AC power with screen brightness all the way up, powertop is currently reporting a drain of about 21 watts. This is while working in emacs, uploading on ftp over wifi, using a 2nd monitor and with ~20 tabs open in chrome. Note that this is without adjusting any of the powertop options. The system bounces up and down between 48 and 52 degrees Celsius (does anyone use Fahrenheit still? That's 118 to 125 degrees) and even with the fan at 3500 RPM it's barely audible.

I use the default options when I know I'm going to be on AC at my desk at work most of the day, or if I'll be doing any heavy computations (openfoam, etc) and therefore don't really care about power consumption.

If I'll be traveling or just want to save as much power as possible, I set the following kernel options:

Code:

pcie_aspm=force i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1 i915.i915_enable_fbc=1

Running on battery without an external monitor, bluetooth off, screen brightness turned way down, all powertop suggestions enabled, and wifi off, I've seen powertop report power consumption as low as 6.5 Watts.

The only drawback I've noticed is that some applications take a noticeably longer time to load under this scheme. Some programs don't "snap open" like they do under the "default" settings.

All in all, I would rate my linux experience with my x220 as excellent- tablet works (though the buttons on the tablet frame don't), and with fedora/gnome3 shell almost everything worked right out of the box (bluetooth, wifi, etc), and almost everything that didn't work "out of the box" was easy enough to set up (fingerprint reader, tap-to-click, etc).

When I go to client meetings I flip the screen around and take notes in Xournal or Notelab, and it works pretty darn well (too bad OneNote does't run on linux).

I've also noticed that the system runs much cooler in this configuration. I'm on AC/default boot options as I write this but if memory serves, the system ran as much as 8 degrees cooler on battery and with all the powersaving options turned on.

Definitely consider the x220 if you're planning to run a linux laptop.

While I'm here I've got a couple questions:

1) Powertop says that my audio device(s) hwC0D0 and hwC0D3 are running 100% of the time, even with volume off/muted. This puts an additional 1-2 watts of energy drain on my system. No matter what I do I can't seem to stop this from happening. Anyone ran into a similar issue?

2) Does anyone know how to get the three buttons on the tablet frame to work? By this I mean the three buttons above the power lights. One looks like a power on/off switch. The other two appear to be for re-orienting the screen.

 

5.5W? Please post a screenshot. That is extremely low, even on the conservative CPU governor. Are you on the i3 processor? What distro and kernel version are you using?

My baseline is around 8W with wifi on, I have an i5-2520M, 40GB Intel 310 mSATA, and IPS LCD: http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/575569-linux-x220-29.html#post8075286

I'm not sure HD audio power management makes any difference on this system, or what 100% usage even means. I get a 0mW reading for audio in powertop when it's not in use.

About the tablet function buttons, try running acpi_listen to see if you are getting events for them. If you are, you just have to bind them to something (how to do that will vary depending on your environment).

 

I'll try to remember when I get home.

Currently powertop says hwC0D3 is chewing up 1.74 W.

Excellent, I'll try this after work today, thanks.

 

What are your system specs?

 

Slacking off a bit at work, figured I might as well do this now:



Fedora 16 x64 running kernel 3.3.0-4 booted with the options I mentioned previously.

This is with the backlight turned all the way down, 6205 wireless on, bluetooth off, all powertop suggestions enabled, no external monitor, no usb devices attached, and nothing running but powertop.

You can see if you add up the wattages that they total just over 5 Watts and the temperature monitor reads 43 degrees. Obviously having the backlight all the way down isn't super practical unless you work in a very dark environment. When I'm on battery I usually try to keep the brightness around 50% or less, which usually brings the power usage up to ~7 watts or so.

My system is an X220 tablet, with i7-2640M clocked at 2.8GHz, intel hd3000 graphics, 8 gigs of DDR3, and a plain old 5400 rpm hard disk.

---

Interestingly enough, these keys aren't throwing any events, or at least acpi_listen doesn't pick them up.

They work in windows, though, so I know they aren't broken.

 

You need to run powertop on battery, from your screenshot it looks like you are on AC power.

Here's mine right now, Debian Sid AMD64, 3.4.0-rc2 (yes, I need to reboot into rc4!):



About your tablet function buttons, if they aren't handled by ACPI, they wouldn't show up like the other Fn keys. It looks like you're running gnome shell, try going to system settings->keyboard->shortcuts->custom shortcuts and create a new one to see if you can bind those keys to it. They should be supported: [PATCH] keymap: Add Lenovo Thinkpad X220 Tablet -- Hot Plug

 

Are you saying powertop isn't accurate on AC power? It doesn't report battery drain at the top but i see no reason why the subtotals on the sides wouldn't be accurate.

xev doesn't show anything either

Thanks, I'll check this out.

 

Yeah it isn't accurate for system totals unless you run it on battery.

 

Ahh yes, you're right. I've been watching it idle for about 15 minutes now and the lowest I've seen it dip was 6.4 watts but I can't get it to stay that low. Typically idling in the 7.5W-8.5W range.

I'll edit my original post.

 

Any luck with your tablet buttons?

 

None yet. Still can't get any events to show up in xev or in acpi_listen. I believe the "circle arrow" should send 0x67/XF86Tools and the "rotate desktop" button should send 0x6c/XF86RotateWindows

Since they aren't being caught by X or ACPI, I can't bind them via any of the gnome gui tools.

 

This thread has been a great resource since I got my x220 last Sept. I'm curious if anyone has upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 yet and if things are working smoothly? It sounds like 12.04 should have better battery life which is good - but before making the jump wanted to make sure there would be minimal headaches so I can work it around my work schedule...

Thanks,

bg

 

My X220 doesn't shutdown propely. Does anyone knows how to see the shutdown sequence in a linux machine? best

 

What do you mean by it "doesn't shut down properly"?

Does it reboot instead of shutting down? I think that's something to do with power saving setting/the e1000e module. For me, it works turning all the power saving features starting with "Runtime ..." to "bad" in powertop. I think there was a more correct diagnosis here in this thread but I couldn't find it right now.

And what exactly do you want to see? Have you tried switching to the console (Ctrl + Alt + F1) and log on there and enter "sudo halt"? Which distribution are you using?

 

I haven't had a problem with shutdowns and I use SmartPowerDownEnable in e1000e on kernels 3.1 to 3.4-rc6 (Debian Sid).

However I did have a problem at one point with resume hanging, and it was fixed by adding this to /etc/pm/config.d/00sleep_modules

Code:

SUSPEND_MODULES="$SUSPEND_MODULES sdhci"

The SD card reader driver is pretty buggy.

kyriu (and mil2 if you see this), it would be interesting to know what CPU you are running, if it's the i7 with USB3 or not, and also the BIOS version.

This may be the post you are thinking of mtt1:

 

If I'm on battery and attempt to shutdown, the system reboots rather than powers down. Gnome 3/Shell, Fedora 16.

 

Look no further than the post directly above yours. Or rather, the post by mil2 quoted by ALLurGroceries:

Code:

for dpcontrol in /sys/bus/{pci,spi,i2c}/devices/*/power/control; do echo on > "$dpcontrol"; done

That should make your system shut down properly.

 

A small update on the reboot/shutdown...

The "shutdown hangs on battery" problem with e1000e is fixed in kernel 3.3 -- see https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36132.

The "shutdown causes a reboot on battery" problem with ehci_hcd is supposed to be fixed in kernel 3.4, though the following addition to the startup/shutdown sequence will apparently be required:

Code:

echo disabled >/sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:00:1a.0/power/wakeup
echo disabled >/sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:00:1d.0/power/wakeup

See https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37952 for more information on the latter.

Oh, and to the person who asked about the mobo/BIOS: I have i7-2620M (with usb3), currently running bios 1.25.

 

Has anyone seen any changes or differences in battery life between linux mint 12 and Maya or other distros? Any distros or safe tweaks that can be effective? Reason I ask is I have a 9 cell battery and its a damn shame when Windows (probably due to Lenovo`s black magic) can last me about 8 hours on average while Mint peeps out after 4 hours or so.

 

That is ridiculous, 4 hours?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/575569-linux-x220-29.html#post8075286

http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/575569-linux-x220-36.html#post8470566

 

Yeah, what on earth are you running under Linux; do you compile the kernel in an infinite loop or something? The 9 cell is a 94 Wh battery; you would need to average 23 W to discharge it that quickly. This laptop can idle at under 8 W in Linux!

BTW, with kernel 3.4.0, I no longer need any kernel command line tweaks, and the laptop idles at around 7.5 W (wifi on, screen brightness 9). It only took us what, a year? Better late than never I guess...

 

I know right?

I will try those parameters thanks!
Have they given you any issues so far?

I tend to do a lot of multitasking I suppose.

Going to try vanilla LM13 and then see how the grub parameters affect it more.

 

Hi ALLurGroceries I have a x220 with a Samsung 830 128GB. Whats is the best linux distro. To install?

 

It's debian testing, kernel 3.2.0-2-rt-amd64, Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2410M CPU @ 2.30GHz, BIOS 1.24

I think I will get the 3.3 kernel to see the problem go away

 

speedy11131, no issues with any of those boot params - other people complain but I have never had any problem and I run Linux 100% of the time.

Necroraven - that's a hard question to answer, my choice has been Debian for the past 10+ years. I would recommend that you go to DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD. and check out the top ten on LiveUSB images and see what floats your boat. Get any distro with a kernel past version 3.1 for the best experience.

 

Thks AllurGroceries.
I already try LinuxMint, Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora. I want something that is not easy to use. To learn how to do things with linux. xD
Maybe Im between Fedora, LinuxMint Debian and Debian xD

 

Then you should try slackware or build your own distro...

 

Ran Slackware for many years here, starting in the 90s... Took me a long time to switch to other distros (Went to Debian after Slack, now run Ubuntu pretty much 100% of the time that I run Linux), it's going to require you to know a bit more than some of the others... Great learning platform

That being said, my primary systems are still Windows because I actually need to use my computers for work, and I can't do what's needed in Linux without a windows VM half the time.

 

funny, I can't do my work on windows YMMV.

 

Must be nice... Especially with this Windows 8 disaster that's looming around the corner.

 

I already install Debian testing what I have to config in a x220 in this increible distro?

 

You might consider Gentoo.

 

I'll try Archlinux too , what do you think?

 

Also good.

Depending on how far into DIY territory you want to go, there's also Linux From Scratch.

 

I will keep Debian Whyzee on my Lenovo X220 any recomendation about, the batery or some hardware configuration?

 

I've posted about battery tweaks earlier here.

Wheezy is a bit behind Sid which is what I run, so I am not sure what you would need to tweak. If you run into problems I'll try to point you in the right direction though.

 

Anyone else getting kernel panic when trying to boot fedora kernel 3.4?

 

Working fine here.

 

Upgrading to 3.4.4 solved my kernel panic problem.

I'd also like to report that under kernel 3.4.4 I've noticed the laptop running anywhere from 5-10 degrees cooler. Previously, on AC power and battery unplugged, my laptop would hover around 50 C, whereas currently, after browsing for an hour or so, it's currently reporting 40.7 C.

 

Hey All,

This thread has been great for different issues with my x220.

I recently upgraded my laptop to Ubuntu 12.04. I've noticed that suspend doesn't work. This is the case when I shut the lid or try to do it manually. All that happens is that the wifi disconnects for a second or two (as if it is going to suspend) and then it reconnects and all is back to normal. This is also the case when I try to hibernate manually.

When I go into /var/log/pm-suspend.log i see some errors (a bit of data dump so don't want to post all) but some of the fails are below - my guess is it has to do with wifi but not sure how to fix...

I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts. I have an SSD and kernel 3.2.0-27

Thanks,

bg

Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/55NetworkManager suspend suspend:
Having NetworkManager put all interaces to sleep...Failed.

/usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/55NetworkManager suspend suspend: success.
Running hook /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/60_wpa_supplicant suspend suspend:
Failed to connect to wpa_supplicant - wpa_ctrl_open: No such file or directory

 

I've been perusing this thread but I figured I'd still ask a few questions seeing as how you dudes seem like knowledgeable and helpful folk

I'm contemplating an X220 with a 6-cell battery but I have a few reservations.

- What's the TRIM support and garbage collection like with the M4 and Samsung 830 SSDs? I'm a little worried about performance degradation as I'll be pulling out the platter disc and replacing it the moment I get the laptop.

- I'll be running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and am wondering what the battery life is like after optimization? I plan on fiddling with the BIOS quite a bit in order to really squeeze out as much battery life as I possibly can -- underclocking the CPU, playing with P-states and RAM voltage/timings, Unity 2D, etc. -- but if I can't over 6 hours away from an outlet with the standard 62W/hr 6-cell battery then I may have to revise my options

Thanks

 

Obviously, battery life depends on what you do. Six hours with the 6-cell is quite doable under Linux provided that you limit your activities to text entry and basic web browsing; probably not if you start watching movies or compiling things.

 

I'm seeing 12 hrs of battery without ANY tweaks on the x230 in Ubuntu 12.04 with the 9--cell. I highly recommend you nab one. Ubuntu FLIES on this machine. I installed it on a 128GB mSATA SSD and use my 320GB HDD for movies, music, and documents.

 

Don't worry about TRIM. Yes, you'll notice a difference if you're benchmarking. No, you probably won't notice a difference in practice.

(That said, the 830 does have pretty good background GC. I don't run with TRIM support on any of the machines that I have that use 830s, and there's no tangible difference.)

Normally I'd recommend the use of the 'discard' flag for ext4, but since you're going to be running with full disk encryption (you *ARE* going to use FDE, aren't you? Since this is a laptop I assume you will...) that's not an option.

Comparable to Windows. i.e. very, very good.

You can't mess with RAM timings, at least not using the stock BIOS/EFI. And as far as underclocking is concerned there's really not much you need to do: set the cpufreq profile to 'powersave' and it'll clock down as appropriate.

Honestly, pretty much the only tweak you have to do is install and enable laptop-mode-tools. It'll handle everything: wireless powersaving, cpufreq, SATA powersaving, etc.

I know, pretty boring. But it's true.

But there *is* something you can do to help your battery life if you want to get your hands dirty. Build your own kernel and keep up with the latest mainline release. The kernel frequently gets power-saving improvements, and staying on top of these will likely improve your battery life a good bit from what you might get with a distro's stock kernel (unless, of course, said distro backports the changes or updates their packages...)

 

Awesome info, thanks a bunch.

My usage pattern will consist mostly of reading PDFs, basic web browsing and background Pandora.

I won't be doing a lot of writing on the SSD thus the TRIM support, or lack thereof, won't matter too much considering most SSDs are pretty good with background GC. I have read that the Samsung 830s do take a bit of time for the GC to kick in though, but it really shouldn't impact me much or at all.

windelicato, I'd rather grab the x220 for the keyboard and the lower price. The new chipset and HD4000 really don't interest me as this machine is going to be a portable long distance runner rather than a casual gaming laptop. I do plan on snagging the 9-cell battery as that seems to be quite good.

Thinkrob, I am planning to use encryption. Are any of the more advanced BIOS settings available? I'm considering creating different P-states to regulate the chip's power consumption under as many conditions as possible. If I can't get to certain BIOS settings then it's not a big deal considering just how well these things tend to do under Linux.

I thought I was going to be forced into building my own kernel but it seems like things have changed drastically over the past 2 years with Ubuntu's mobile out-of-the-box support. If I'm feeling bored or unsatisfied I'll probably do a little digging

 

1) Good for you re: FDE! I'd recommend dm-crypt, but TC should be fine too.

2) No, the BIOS's power configuration is fairly minimal.

I do my own kernel builds, but that's because I would never dream of running my day-to-day laptop without grsecurity/PaX, especially considering the security track records of boxes with and without it...

 

Well, after many months I think I've fixed this issue so I thought I'd come back to report in case others have a similar problem.

I used the following commands to enable power management on the device,

$ echo 1 > /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save
$ echo Y > /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save_controller

and then restarted pulseaudio with

$ pulseaudio -k

It seems to have worked, and I now am seeing a drain of approximately 2.5 W less, without the audio codecs chewing up so much power.

Seems almost trivially stupid/easy in hindsight.

 

This isn't exactly hot news, but I just wanted to report that with the 3.6 kernel, clickpad click and drag finally works with two finger scrolling enabled (without patching).

Also in 3.6, expresscard hotplugging has completely died. I'm not sure what's going on there, insert/eject aren't producing events. Will investigate further and hopefully post a fix.

If anyone wants my 3.6 or 3.7 configs, just ask and I'll upload them.

 

I'm interested, although, I have a x230.. I wonder if there is much difference? Maybe I can manually pinpoint the things I should change

thaks

 

OK, here's my 3.6.11 config: config-3.6.11.txt

As far as I can see, there shouldn't be any difference in terms of the kernel config for the X230.

If you have a cellular modem you will want to enable the module for it. I don't have any of the WWAN drivers selected.