Thinkpad configurations

[Teunis]

The Lenovo Thinkpads are some of the best Linux supported laptops around and most works 'Out of the Box'.
Missing are Hibernation, Hard Disk shock protection and the Hot Keys for screen brightness.

These are my experiences with a W520, no guarantees for other models.

To get the hot keys for screen brightness working (Fn+Home or End) you need an /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.
Either make it or edit the existing one (this does require root privileges)

Add this to the file:

Section "Device"
    Identifier    "Default Device"
    Option "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1"
    Option    "NoLogo"    "True"
EndSection

After a new log-in your keys should work, this includes the brightness function present in the Battery Monitor plasmoid.

For hard disk shock protection you need to install two packages, tp-smapi-dkms and hdapsd.

On 13.10 I am successful with the regular packages but on older distributions you might have to get patched versions:
http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/TP-SMAPI (A German site but you'll recognise the download buttons

Now you'll have check the /etc/default/hdapsd file and if missing add (as root) the following:

# hdapsd default file

# start hdapsd at boottime?
START="yes"

# the name of the disk device that hdapsd should monitor.
#
# usually this is 'hda' for the primary IDE master or 'sda'
# for the primary S-ATA drive
DISK="sda"

# sensitivity
SENSITIVITY=15

# other options to pass to hdapsd.
# the -d $DISK, -s $SENSITIVITY, -b and -p $PIDFILE options are always passed.
OPTIONS=""

# The new interface in kernels >=2.6.28 sometimes wrongly detects HDAPS-capable
# drives as not supported. Set this to "yes" to force-enable the feature.
# Please be carefull with this setting!
FORCEENABLE="no"

The value 15 in SENSITIVITY can be edited, a higher value is LESS sensitive.

You can also add the flag -a to automatically lower the sensitivity when the keyboard is being used.
For HD's that don't recognise HDAPSD you can change FORCEENABLE from no to yes

Once done with the configuration you should restart the daemon:

sudo /etc/init.d/hdapsd restart

To test you need to stop the daemon:

sudo /etc/init.d/hdapsd stop

And restart it with output to your Konsole:

sudo hdapsd -d sda -s 15

Gently shaking the laptop should result in similar:

Sun Oct 25 22:17:34 2009: Starting hdapsd
Sun Oct 25 22:17:34 2009: WARNING: You did not supply any devices to protect, trying autodetection.
Sun Oct 25 22:17:34 2009: Adding autodetected device: sda
Sun Oct 25 22:17:34 2009: Selected interface: HDAPS
Sun Oct 25 22:17:35 2009: Selected HDAPS input device: /dev/input/event21
Sun Oct 25 22:17:36 2009: parking
Sun Oct 25 22:17:37 2009: un-parking
Sun Oct 25 22:17:40 2009: parking
Sun Oct 25 22:17:41 2009: un-parking

Once happy you can stop the daemon with Ctrl+C and restart the regular operation with:

sudo /etc/init.d/hdapsd start

Would you end up with errors like "Error! Not parked etc" the no. 1 reason is likely more than one HD and with different capabilities.

I suggest to read this (German) site;
http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Festplattenschutz

Hibernation is not enabled OOTB but can easily be added to the shut down options.

You need to make or edit (as root) the file /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local-d/com.ubuntu.enable-hibernate.pkla

And add the text:

[Re-enable hibernate by default]
Identity=unix-user:*
Action=org.freedesktop.upower.hibernate
ResultActive=yes

Rebooting will bring hibernation to the menu.
The original page:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/94754...le-hibernation

Update 2014/03/02
Things have changed around 13.10, I ran into it after installing 14.04 (Trusty) and the following gave me back Hibernation:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/36173.../362499#362499

Citation from Jeffery To's post on Launchpad Bug Report #1232814:
For Saucy, indicator-session was updated to use logind (org.freedesktop.login1) instead of upower.
If you check /var/lib/polkit-1/localauthority/10-vendor.d/com.ubuntu.desktop.pkla, you'll see that hibernate is disabled by default in both upower and logind.
So the first step to re-enable the Hibernate option is to edit (as root) /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/com.ubuntu.enable-hibernate.pkla to something like:

[Re-enable hibernate by default in upower]
Identity=unix-user:*
Action=org.freedesktop.upower.hibernate
ResultActive=yes

[Re-enable hibernate by default in logind]
Identity=unix-user:*
Action=org.freedesktop.login1.hibernate
ResultActive=yes

After rebooting, the login screen session menu should have a Hibernate option.

[linuxforall]

TLP from www.linrunner.de is the best laptop power saving tool around with its own Ubuntu ppa. It was made for Thinkpad and comes with extra tools but can be used on any laptops.

[dode]

Nice post with very useful information!

I just made a clean new install of 13.10 on a ThinkPad L420 and would like to add:
- The Fn keys for screen brightness work out of the box
- The fingerprint reader works fine following the steps here: http://ullrich-online.cc/nview/Appli...ep-manual.html
NOTE: There is no PPA for Saucy yet, but the packages from the Raring PPA install and work without problems.

[Snowhog]

Nice write up Teunis! Very nice.

[SteveRiley]

Don't forget thinkfan. Very useful at quieting your ThinkPads down.