Thinkpads Forum

Hello I did a network install of Debian 8.6 with XFCE, and almost everything worked out of the box. I had to install iwlwifi for Intel wireless card, xinit and add some settings to xinitrc for the Trackpoint scroll. The mute sound, volume up and down, the ThinkLight and brightness buttons all worked out of the box.

I'm trying to figure out how to get the mic mute button and other special keys to work. (Fn+F2 lock screen, Fn+F4 sleep, etc) The only one that works is Fn+F5 for wifi on/off.
Also would like to get the "When power button is pressed" Ask to work.

I also read that the fan is at a fixed speed and could lead to problems.

I've used the ThinkWiki and looked at other wikis (Arch, gentoo etc) for thinkpad-acpi and thinkfan configuration, but these articles are tough to decipher for me.

thinkpad-acpi is not an available package in my repos, and synaptic gives a few results for thinkpad namely tp-smapi and tpb. Is tp-smapi the same thing? I installed thinkfan alone but it outputs an error.

Can anyone give me a hand with this? Would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT; I almost forgot! When scrolling (with trackpad or trackpoint) on webpages I hear a low but audible buzz. Is this a problem? Can I fix it? I've noticed this on Ubuntu 16.04 as well, with and without proprietary driver installed.

Tp_smapi goes with tlp for power saving.

Have you read https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Le ... nkPad_T420

Thinkpad-acpi is part of the default Debian kernel. Open a terminal window, type:
You'll see it if it's already loaded.

Tp-smapi is for advanced controls like setting charge thresholds. A program called tlp helps here. I recommend installing it as it also provides a lot of power saving optimizations.

I haven't tried playing around with fan speed control.

I'm on my X61 at the moment, so I can't help with the Mic Mute function.

Thank you, I have installed tlp and tp-smapi

However I am getting this error;
d@t420:~$ sudo systemctl enable thinkfan.service
Synchronizing state for thinkfan.service with sysvinit using update-rc.d...
Executing /usr/sbin/update-rc.d thinkfan defaults
Executing /usr/sbin/update-rc.d thinkfan enable
d@t420:~$ sudo systemctl status thinkfan.service
● thinkfan.service - simple and lightweight fan control program
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/thinkfan.service; enabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Wed 2016-12-07 05:00:47 AST; 6min ago

Dec 07 05:00:47 t420 thinkfan[2434]: thinkfan 0.9.1 starting...
Dec 07 05:00:47 t420 systemd[1]: thinkfan.service: control process exited, code=exited status=4
Dec 07 05:00:47 t420 systemd[1]: Failed to start simple and lightweight fan control program.
Dec 07 05:00:47 t420 systemd[1]: Unit thinkfan.service entered failed state.

Journalctl displays these errors;
Dec 07 05:09:23 t420 thinkfan[700]: /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal: No such file or directory
Dec 07 05:09:23 t420 thinkfan[700]: add_sensor: Error getting temperature.
Dec 07 05:09:23 t420 thinkfan[700]: /proc/acpi/ibm/thermal: No such file or directory
Dec 07 05:09:23 t420 thinkfan[700]: Error parsing temperatures:
Dec 07 05:09:23 t420 thinkfan[700]: readconfig: Error getting temperature.
Dec 07 05:09:23 t420 thinkfan[700]: Refusing to run without usable config file!
Dec 07 05:09:24 t420 systemd[1]: Failed to start simple and lightweight fan control program.

Did I miss something?

Yes its not configured correctly. The error means that the file its looking for doesn't exist.
First step to work out whats happened is ;m_sensors. plus can you find thinkfan.conf

Have you installed and configured the lm_sensors package? If so what does the command sensors output?

Okay so after some trial and tribulation I've gotten ThinkFan to work;
I added this to my thinkfan.conf file:
#values found here: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=119546
hwmon /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
(0, 0, 42)
(1, 40, 47)
(2, 45, 52)
(3, 50, 57)
(4, 55, 62)
(5, 60, 67)
(6, 65, 72)
(7, 70, 77)
(127, 75, 32767)


d@t420:~$ sensors
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1: +45.0°C (crit = +98.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Physical id 0: +46.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 0: +40.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1: +43.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

thinkpad-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
fan1: 1959 RPM

Logs return this:
Dec 07 07:04:27 t420 thinkfan[701]: WARNING: Using default fan control in /proc/acpi/ibm/fan.

Is it not using the values listed in thinkfan.conf?

Thanks for your help, I will most likely edit this post as I try to get the special keys to work tomorrow.

Thinkfan can't find the stored temp value to read off.

run cat /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp see what value is stored there, if no file exists check for a /temp file in thermal_zone1 directory. If that's where the temp value is being stored change hwmon statement as appropriate.

d@t420:~$ sudo cat /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
43000
d@t420:~$ sensors
acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1: +43.0°C (crit = +98.0°C)

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Physical id 0: +43.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 0: +37.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1: +39.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

thinkpad-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
fan1: 1975 RPM

They both return 43 degrees. I checked again on boot today and got;
Dec 07 20:09:06 t420 thinkfan[695]: WARNING: Using default fan control in /proc/

I'm on Debian Testing, this is not that far from Jessie, at least for matters discussed. I don't get Fn+F2 to lock the screen indeed. It may be hard to map manually (as Fn is seen by xev to be 'XF86WakeUp'). However Fn+F4 works for sleep. You may want to check whether it is actually possible to put the laptop in to standbay/sleep mode at all, e.g. by trying XFCE's menu option.

This is how my Debian Jessie XFCE is configured for screen locking:

Go to: Settings > Keyboard > Application Shortcuts

Add a new command:

Command: xflock4
Shortcut : (you can set this to Fn+F2)

xflock4 is part of the xfce4-session package. AFAIK it's automatically installed as part XFCE.

Nice thank you guys, got thinkfan to find the right file. I used;

d@t420:~$ sudo find /sys/devices -type f -name "temp*_input"

to find what sensors, and added those to thinkfan.conf like;

tp_fan /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
hwmon /sys/devices/virtual/hwmon/hwmon0/temp1_input
hwmon /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/hwmon/hwmon1/temp3_input
hwmon /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/hwmon/hwmon1/temp1_input
hwmon /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/hwmon/hwmon1/temp2_input

Now on boot I don't get the error message.

Also got the FN+F2 to lock to work under XFCE keyboard macros. The easiest thing I've done so far lol.

Does anyone have thoughts on the scrolling issue? This buzzing is driving me mad. I've researched it a bit to no avail.

About the buzzing sound, try muting the one labelled "Beep" on Audio Mixer.
Not sure if it would work though.

Add into any files that are read during your boot. This would be: .bashrc, .bash_profile, .xinitrc, and that funny XFCE "autostart" group. Anyhow first try this comand out in the terminal, it should completely disable the beep everywhere. Then it's up to you how to make it pernament. In my case I have it in my window manager's startup, but I don't use XFCE nor Gnome nor anything you know:)

I've never noticed buzzing with my T420. For other electrical noises I run:
sudo powertop --auto-tune

Sleep may be this command:
xfce4-session-logout --suspend

You can set shortcut keys via
xfce4-keyboard-settings

Other sleep/lock screen ideas:
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions ... d-shortcut

xset b off works to turn off the beep but it doesn't make the buzz go away. Do you guys think the buzz is caused by interference from the pc speaker and the mobo/soundcard? If that's the case shouldn't I turn off the speaker entirely?

I get this when I use the aforementioned command;
d@t420:~$ sudo powertop --auto-tune
Loaded 3 prior measurements
Cannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_parameters.powertop
RAPL device for cpu 0
RAPL device for cpu 0
RAPL device for cpu 0
Cannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_parameters.powertop
Leaving PowerTOP

Does the buzzing stop after running the 'powertop' command?

If you are using alsamixer you can also disable it through there.

jaspen-meyer wrote:Does the buzzing stop after running the 'powertop' command?

Sorry nope.

Disabling the beep in alsamixer makes no change.

Also I have encountered another problem. I have both pulseaudio and alsamixer. When I press the mute button it mutes master in alsa, and the built in audio analog stereo in pavucontrol. However when you press it again to unmute, it only unmutes the master in alsa, and built in audio remains muted in pavucontrol. I have it set as fallback already.

powertop does not do anything active on your laptop it just produces a report with settings it thinks with reduce power consumption

I'm thinking that the pcspkr kernel module may need to be blacklisted (prevented from loading). https://wiki.debian.org/KernelModuleBlacklisting has a guide, but I haven't tried it yet.

Dekks wrote:powertop does not do anything active on your laptop it just produces a report with settings it thinks with reduce power consumption

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Powertop

You can use the --auto-tune feature from PowerTOP which sets all tunable options to their GOOD setting.

Powertop finds settings which could be adjusted and issues commands to adjust them. However, the commands it issues are not compatible with every system, adjusting the issued commands is needed to get the full benefit.

jaspen-meyer wrote:

Dekks wrote:powertop does not do anything active on your laptop it just produces a report with settings it thinks with reduce power consumption

Code: Select all

sudo powertop --auto-tune

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Powertop

You can use the --auto-tune feature from PowerTOP which sets all tunable options to their GOOD setting.

Powertop finds settings which could be adjusted and issues commands to adjust them. However, the commands it issues are not compatible with every system, adjusting the issued commands is needed to get the full benefit.

Why ive never looked t autotune - best to do it manually/.