T42p preload "Linux recovery Cd' ???

[xandey]

I noticed some talk and a post a few months ago about ibm doing special orders for the T42p system preloaded with linux. As a T42p owner i'm interested to know if anyone out there has some newer information about this? Or knows of some place to start looking.

I've installed FC2 on my thinkpad, but as has usually been the case with me i have a list on the side of my cubicle of things that i have yet to get working.

So I wonder if anyone out there has any news of whether IBM will either ship "Linux Recovery Cd's" or have a downloadable "T42p script" to configure the hardware specific pieces that don't work out of box for FC2 or whatever distribution.

Sandy

[khamsin]

Sandy,

I have an A30p which obviously is different from your T42p. But why you would want an IBM recovery cd is beyond me. I have been happily running a debian unstable on my A30p since I got it 2.5 years ago.

I still run the original windows installation for bios upgrades etc, etc, etc. I also still run my original linux installation, albeit that is has migrated to a new hd. I have recently been experimenting with and contributing to the ibm-acpi project, which seems to me to have the goal of supplying proper acpi support for the thinkpad.

Maybe I am conservative (set in my ways) but why is a reinstall of a properly maintained linux needed? My experience is that any cd supplied by IBM or third parties is, sadly, going to be extremely limited in feature support. For me this means that (god forbid) if I ever need to reinstall my running linux installation, I will have to reinstall and/or recompile many apps that I am running now. For me it is better to have good documention on what I have done and by extension what I need to do if I ever have to reinstall. I regularly make images of my current install that will allow me to restore my system quickly if my HD dies. Besides which I make backups of my important data.

Reinstalling and recompiling a kernel and other modules support seems a small effort for me compared to making some other persons version of a linux installation meet my needs.

These are just my 2 cents, feel free to ignore what I'm saying. I would however, be inclined to agree with restore cd's if I were supporting a corporate enviroment based on big blue's version of what a linux desktop was all about.

HTH

Khamsin

[xandey]

Khamsin,

Very interesting. I must confess that I am new to linux. You say that you're submitting to ibm-acpi project, so i'm hesitant to mention that one of the reasons for my looking for such an IBM linux distribution is that I was hoping to get things like S3 suspend to work, and suspend to disk to work with the radeon hardware accelerated drivers. But as you say, if i'd been using linux as long as you appear to have been I wouldn't want to have to recompile all my apps.

I was also under the impression that it's not that difficult to modify the "desktop experience" to whatever you wanted under linux. Isn't that supposed to be one of the beauties of the OS. Given infinite time one could possibly modify most UI behaviors. But what i was hoping to get out of a big blue version would be specific drivers for modem, wireless, acpi, grpahics card, trackpad etc.

It doesn't appear as though they will have one for a while, at which point i may find myself in the same boat as you and not want to spend time recompiling my apps, or switching from FC2 to debian or something.

Thanks for your oppinions, I always feel as though i'm learning something.

Sandy

[Guest]

Reagding getting Linux working on your Thinkpad

Tuxmobile is a good place to start

http://tuxmobil.org/

also i found this page that may be of interest

http://www.plope.com/Members/chrism/thinkpad_notes

[khamsin]

Sandy,

I said (sorry to be pedantic) that I was contributing to the ibm-acpi project which is not the same in my mind as submitting . I test feature support on the A30p and report my findings. Regarding S3 suspend try the following http://www.stanford.edu/~sanjiv/thinkpad/thinkpad.html the site documents a linux installation on a T42 laptop with what looks to be working suspend (RAM and HD based) /resume etc. YMMV.

I know there are issues with XFree86 and suspend, as I don't use that particular xserver I do not have that particular problem. Though the above site link seems to have solved that with a workaround. Besides the techniques used seem to me to be pretty generic to other IBM thinkpads. I am not experimenting with Hibernation at all since I have 1GB of RAM in my laptop and therefore run without a swapfile, which, precludes most suspend to disk schemes in linux. Besdies which wasting 1GB of diskspace just to suspend the laptop when a shutdown would work almost equally well ...

As you say that you are new to linux and therefore hesitant, all I can say is that your questions are always welcome. Your impression about modifying a desktop experience to suit your needs is correct. It is relatively simple to change it to suit your needs. My concerns about a cd installation are more centered around time needed to configure it rather than ability. I regularly support large sites 100+ workstations and modifing a corporate installation is something that I hesitate to undertake.

Your point about drivers is a valid one especially regarding support for wireless and other manufacturer specific hardware. However, in my view a n installation cd is already out of date when it hits the streets. There may be a few thing that change faster than laptop specifications and the hardware that is in them, I am however, stumped as to think of one or two offhand .

On a general note time spent om my personal machine is IMO always well spent.

HTH

Khamsin

[xandey]

The link to sanjiv's site detailing his installation of s3 was very useful. Not sure it saved me a lot of time, but now i can suspend I couldn't get S4 to work because of some hard drive trouble, but i didn't really try to resolve becuase i don't use suspend to disk either, and with 2GB of ram it takes a lot of space.

When I said i was looking for a recovery CD I was not hoping to "recover" some original image on my hard drive. The only reason i would like a cd, or preferably, a site with drivers available for download would be to make everything "play nice" together. Since I saw that IBM was beginning to ship linux with their T42p's i thought they might have spent some effort in making this sort of thing work.


The only gripe i have with the S3 is that i had to disable hardware acceleration. (I use xorg as an x-server, but the ati drivers gave me an XF86config-4 files which i've linked to xorg.conf. I had to comment out the following line to get suspend to work without crashing on wakup.

# This loads the GLX module
#Load "glx" # libglx.a
Load "dri" # libdri.a

Since I work in computer graphics/vision ther are time when i will need hardware acceleration working. Do you know of any way to dynamically load/unload this module? something I could put into the suspend script?

You've been very helpful Khamsin, thanks,

Sandy

[xandey]

The link to sanjiv's site detailing his installation of s3 was very useful. Not sure it saved me a lot of time, but now i can suspend I couldn't get S4 to work because of some hard drive trouble, but i didn't really try to resolve becuase i don't use suspend to disk either, and with 2GB of ram it takes a lot of space.

When I said i was looking for a recovery CD I was not hoping to "recover" some original image on my hard drive. The only reason i would like a cd, or preferably, a site with drivers available for download would be to make everything "play nice" together. Since I saw that IBM was beginning to ship linux with their T42p's i thought they might have spent some effort in making this sort of thing work.


The only gripe i have with the S3 is that i had to disable hardware acceleration. (I use xorg as an x-server, but the ati drivers gave me an XF86config-4 files which i've linked to xorg.conf. I had to comment out the following line to get suspend to work without crashing on wakup.

# This loads the GLX module
#Load "glx" # libglx.a
Load "dri" # libdri.a

Since I work in computer graphics/vision ther are time when i will need hardware acceleration working. Do you know of any way to dynamically load/unload this module? something I could put into the suspend script?

You've been very helpful Khamsin, thanks,

Sandy

[khamsin]

Sandy,

It was my pleasure to be of assistance.

Personally I use a commercial Xerver on my A30p (summit platinum by XIG, http://www.xig.com , this is not a plug but at the time XFree86 did not support my chipset.)

FWIW the Xorg server is a fork of XFree86. That means IMO that the Xorg server suffers from the some of the same problems that XFree86 does. Personally I feel that the Sanjiv's option of shutting down the xserver on suspend and starting it on resume is an option. For me it means that, closing al my X apps before closing the lid (suspend) and reopening them once I open the lid and press power button (resume,) is a workable alternative. It is an issue but one I could live with.

I do not know of a way to dynamically reinitialize the hardware accelleration on Xorg or Xfree86 servers, it does not mean there aren't any. My server does not suffer from these problems.

Regarding "play nice":
I feel that play nice simply does not work. Laptop HW changes too often to make a generic system support on all laptops feasable. Some tweaking will always be needed.

Reagarding the unloading:
The HW accelleration is part of the Xserver. Unloading and loading of drivers will need to part of the design. If not specifically designed around before hand then, doing so without restarting the xserver seems like an impossible aim. As a comparison I offer you this:
You are using a laptop with an external display when you suspend. Then you restart the laptop without the external display, lets leave alone the issue of different resolutions on the external display built-in (LCD) display. IMO that is asking for trouble. Windows does not solve this satisfactorally either. Suspend with external monitor also means resume with external monitor.

HTH

Khamsin

p.s. Pardon my French but i seem to be making many typo's. It must be fatigue.