Thinkpads Forum

Hi all,

i know this is sort of linux question but it is also a bit T60 specific (drivers) and a bit general so i decided to place it here. please move it if you feel it should be somewhere else.

I recently bought a new WesternDigital drive (WD7500BPKT - 750 GB, advanced format drive 4KB sectors instead of 512B) and I'd like to install Debian on it (never did it before). To keep some consistency with respect to (wrt) some apps I'm using and my work I'd like to virtualize my current installation (XP Pro) and run also another virtual machine (Win7) under Debian. To add some security layer I'd like to encrypt the drive (full drive encryption) probably with TrueCrypt. So here are my questions:

1. Do I need to take some action wrt. WD being advanced format drive? I know some partition alignment is needed before XP installation and that it should be fine for newer systems but don't have a clue how it is regarding XP running in virtual machine (probably VMWare)?

2. What is the best time for full disk encryption - before the Debian installation or after? Is it good idea at all?

3. Do you have experience with installation and running Debian on a Thinkpad T60 (model 2007)? Could you maybe link your steps if they are recorded somewhere? Have you been able to make all the peripherals work (wireless, touchpad, fingerprint reader, Fn keys etc.)?

4. Could you please recommend how to do partitioning for Debian (how big swap partition do I need, which partitions is good to have separate - I mean swap, root, /home ...)?

thank you in advance
be well
kr

Hi krajicek,

I've a T60 and I'm using Debian on it without any problems. My HD on the T60 is smaller than yours but I've installed Debian on many different machines with disks bigger than that and it has never been a problem.

I also have full disk encryption on the T60 and I'd recommend you to partition the disk using LVM and encrypting the disk with LUKS and dmcrypt. Also, if you have no special preferences, I'd recommend using a lightweight windows manager like Xfce or LXDE. They don't have all the latest eye candy of Gnome or KDE but functionally wise you do not miss anything and in return you'll have a much leaner and faster desktop.

On the T60, I'd recommend to start a clean installation from an official, "netinst" CD image for the "stable" release:
http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/7.2 ... etinst.iso

Once you are presented with the first menu, choose:

1) Select "Advanced options" -> "Alternate desktop environments" -> XFCE (or LXDE)
2) Select "Graphical expert install"

and then, when asked "Load installer components from CD", check "crypto-dm-modules" (for encryption support).

The rest is mostly straightforward.

Regarding partitioning, LVM configuration and encryption setup you can follow these guidelines (they were written for Ubuntu but it doesn't matter as it is just a disguised Debian
http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2011/05/10/ho ... le-system/

Once you have the base system installed, you can log in into your new Debian and install the rest of the software from the repositories. For VM, I recommend VirtualBox (also available from Debian repos).

You may also want to later upgrade Debian from "stable" to "testing". I haven't had any problems with "testing" release on my T60. Haven't tried "unstable" though.

Regards and enjoy Debian freedom!!

I recently bought a new WesternDigital drive (WD7500BPKT - 750 GB, advanced format drive 4KB sectors instead of 512B)
[...]
To add some security layer I'd like to encrypt the drive (full drive encryption) probably with TrueCrypt. So here are my questions:

Unless you also want to use a native Windows partition, better forget about Truecrypt and just use the Linux built in LUKS feature. Using a Truecrypt based full disk encryption won't allow for a secondary Debian installation on the same machine.

Before switching to a SSD, I have been happily using that exact drive on a T61 Frankenpad using Debian installed with full disk encryption based on an LUKS encrypted LVM setup. This is offered right away by the standard Debian installer and involves no complications at all.

So here are my answers to your questions:

1. You don't need to take any special actions before installation, just do it and it will work fine. Regarding the alignment for XP within a virtual machine, any doubts related to the WD7500BPKT are irrelevant as the VM will separately offer everything what XP needs to work well.

2. The Debian installer offers installation into a LUKS encrypted LVM setup, better use that feature and forget about Truecrypt. Yes, this is a very good idea.

3. Installing and running Debian on any T60 just works. This is old, well hung hardware, and it is well supported since years. If in doubt, you can always refer to www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/T60 for reference.

4. My partition setup consists of a 1GB primary partition for /boot (size is because it also contains an ISO with a Linux rescue system), and the remaining disk space as one single encrypted LVM volume group. This VG contains a 30GB / root logical volume (need that space for a partial Debian mirror via apt-cacher-ng), one 4GB swap logical volume (machine has 2x4=8GB of RAM), a 100GB /home logical volume, and another big /scratch logical volume for everything else and the kitchen sink. Furthermore, I use a few dedicated logical volumes as virtual disk drives for each single VM used with the Linux built in KVM (=Kernel-based Virtual Machine).

BTW, my preference for KVM is mostly based on the ability to easily use any type of native disk partition or LVM logical volume as virtual disk device, which at the time i started using VMs was too complicated to configure using VirtualBox or VMware. Current situation might be different now, but as i am perfectly happy using KVM, i never bothered looking back.

Some after thoughts: If you intend to use Windows VMs on any Linux running on a T60, be aware that this might be a very memory hungry experience, depending on what you plan to do within these VMs. As all T60 are limited to a maximum of 3GB of RAM, regardless whether you use a 32bit or a 64bit operating system, it might be worthwhile thinking about replacing the mainboard/CPU with a T61 one. The T61 mainboard is able to handle up to 2x4=8GB of RAM, but since this is an expensive option nowadays, maybe 2x2=4GB of RAM would already suffice? The other thing to take into account is that the T60 CPU offerings might be a little bit on the slow side, depending on what you plan to do. Well, i am touching a can of worms now, i guess...