Thinkpads Forum

Hi all,

I did a fresh install of the new ubuntu release in my x60s. Mostly functional, I am now looking for hints on the following three issues. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

- wireless worked initially, but stopped working when i switched to the smp kernel, and i can't get it to work again. the module is still loaded in the new kernel (it shows up with lsmod), but there are no wireless extensions shown in iwconfig.

- suspend to ram (fn-4) not working. I think i will get this to work, there are many cases that succeded on this with the previous release candidates

- power consumption/scaling: for some reason the freq. scaler only gives me three choices ( 1.6, 1.2, 1Ghz) and at the lowest setting it still drains the battery too fast, and you feel the heat dissipation. I'm sure windows puts the cores at lowest speeds (600Mhz?) and has much less heat dissipation.


Thanks!
Ari

Hi!
what wireless network-card chip du you have? Note that some X60 have the ipw3945 and some the Atheros AR5212.
I have the AR5212 (you can check this with "lspci") and i had to install the newest version of madwifi to get wireless working - look here for instructions:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Installin ... s#Wireless

The other issues, suspend to ram and power consuptions/scaling are still remaining on my ubuntu installation (vs. 6.06).
Especially the "poor" battery life in linux is anoying for me (~3 hous compared to ~5h in windows), and also the ugly high noise when running on battery also have something to do with power management.

greetings,
Gernot[/url]

ari.pad wrote: - power consumption/scaling: for some reason the freq. scaler only gives me three choices ( 1.6, 1.2, 1Ghz) and at the lowest setting it still drains the battery too fast, and you feel the heat dissipation. I'm sure windows puts the cores at lowest speeds (600Mhz?) and has much less heat dissipation.

When I installed ubuntu, it only scaled down one of the cores, maybe that a part of your problem, since I think that I remeber that the the two cores need to be in the same power state to go down to the lowets power level.

kimx wrote:

ari.pad wrote: - power consumption/scaling: for some reason the freq. scaler only gives me three choices ( 1.6, 1.2, 1Ghz) and at the lowest setting it still drains the battery too fast, and you feel the heat dissipation. I'm sure windows puts the cores at lowest speeds (600Mhz?) and has much less heat dissipation.

When I installed ubuntu, it only scaled down one of the cores, maybe that a part of your problem, since I think that I remeber that the the two cores need to be in the same power state to go down to the lowets power level.

Hi, I know that there was a problem and only one of the cores was scaled with the older release candidates. In my case, after a fresh install of the official release, inmediately after I changed the default kernel and installed the smp-686 one, both cores got recognized and scaled. The problem is that I see only three freq steps for each core and (i think & hope) this cpu supports 8 steps and a wider range.

gerni wrote:Hi!
what wireless network-card chip du you have? Note that some X60 have the ipw3945 and some the Atheros AR5212.
I have the AR5212 (you can check this with "lspci") and i had to install the newest version of madwifi to get wireless working - look here for instructions:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Installin ... s#Wireless

The other issues, suspend to ram and power consuptions/scaling are still remaining on my ubuntu installation (vs. 6.06).
Especially the "poor" battery life in linux is anoying for me (~3 hous compared to ~5h in windows), and also the ugly high noise when running on battery also have something to do with power management.

greetings,
Gernot[/url]

Mine has ipw3945. And the stock smp kernel has the module loaded by default. Only it does not work (yet )

Suspend to ram should be fixable now, I've seen many success reports already, I'll keep working on this. And the battery life problem should be fixable as well: if windows can do it, linux can do it in a much better a cleaner way, i'm sure. I bought this machine to be my linux laptop . I'll keep researching.

Thanks!

ari.pad wrote:Hi all,

- wireless worked initially, but stopped working when i switched to the smp kernel, and i can't get it to work again. the module is still loaded in the new kernel (it shows up with lsmod), but there are no wireless extensions shown in iwconfig.

Ari

Don't know if this helps but I installed the 686 kernel for my t42 and I have the same problem -- no wireless extensions. I have been searching but so far nothing....

rossman wrote:

ari.pad wrote:Hi all,

- wireless worked initially, but stopped working when i switched to the smp kernel, and i can't get it to work again. the module is still loaded in the new kernel (it shows up with lsmod), but there are no wireless extensions shown in iwconfig.

Ari

Don't know if this helps but I installed the 686 kernel for my t42 and I have the same problem -- no wireless extensions. I have been searching but so far nothing....

I could confirm that the default 386/non smp kernel is still working fine for wireless, but the 686/smp is not. I posted a message in launchpad... we will probably have to open a new bug...

Mine is working now. In adept I installed "linux-686" now it works. There is also one called "linux-686-smp" - you might want to try it.

update:

- suspend to ram works! described here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam/ThinkpadX60s

- the high noise when running on battery disappeared after a bios upgrade to version 1.06


The only remaining issue on my X60: still poor battery live compared to windows

Same problem here: it's all about battery life now. Everything else works fine, even the fingerprint reader. The only problem is that I'm getting about 40% to half the battery life I'm getting from windows. Which is frustrating.
I even installed AIGLX/Compiz and it works amazingly well in this little machine! it feels so much better than windows. I'm sure some kernel guru will eventually step in and make powersave mode work, better than microsoft. The problem is, it looks like we will have to wait for that to happen, it seems.

Well, if and when you guys get powersaving to work I'd be glad to hear about it.

Back when I first got my T42 linux wasnt working perfectly, Im pretty sure that it should be fine by now - but I stayed with windows.

Now Im looking to grab an X60s and if I can get linux working on it all the better.

Also, it might be a good idea o go over to the thinkpad wiki (thinkwiki.com I believe) and write up your experiences getting Ubuntu working almost fully on the X60s, I'm sure it would help a lot of people - more so that just on the forums here.

Thanks guys!

A bit off topic, but how did you get the fingerprint reader working in Ubuntu?
Thanks in advance.

I don't know who else fell into this boat, but it took me 6 hours to figure out I was a moron. I had my router setup to do WAP, and kept using the gnome network manager to setup my WEP key, not realizing the difference until 10mins ago.

I changed my router to WEP, and viola, everything works out of the box.
BTW I'm on a ThinkPad T60, I've been reading these threads for hours, following up incase *anyone*, even one person had the same problem I did. (More details here)

BoomAM wrote:A bit off topic, but how did you get the fingerprint reader working in Ubuntu?
Thanks in advance.

I run Ubuntu 6.06 on a T43p with fingerprint reader. I refer you to:

http://linux.spiney.org/debian_gnu_linu ... int_reader

It's for the T43p, hope it may help the T60p though.

Is the problem with low battery life compared to Windows still a problem? Or have anyone managed to solve it?

On https://www.dedigentoo.org/trac/linux-phc/ there is a patch that allows you to undervolt your CPU. Has anyone tried this?

By the way, I'm curious as to how hot the X60/s with Linux. Since it does't scale down the lowest frequencies, it must be a lot hotter than with Windows. Can anyone clarify and maybe post some temperatures?