Debian Etch on a IBM Thinkpad R52 Laptop

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Installing Debian "Etch" on an IBM Thinkpad

This is a quick(ish) guide to install Debian stable "Etch" on an IBM Thinkpad R52 1858 laptop.

Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG
Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller
Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5751M Gigabit Ethernet
Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 2.26GHz
Texas Instruments PCI4510 IEEE-1394 Controller

Originally I wanted to install debian "Sarge" on the laptop, so I fired up my trusty netinstall disk but had problems from the outset. When trying to install a 2.6 series kernel the installer wouldn't detect my hard disk controller. Bizarly a 2.4 series kernel would work but i knew I would have problems later down the line and it might just be easier to try Etch, which, luckily worked.

I downloaded the latest Debian NetInstall ISO from www.debian.org

All the packages below were installed as root unless otherwise specified.

I edited my /etc/apt/sources.list to look identical to below:

deb http://debian.hands.com/debian/ etch main non-free contrib
deb-src http://debian.hands.com/debian/ etch main non-free contrib

deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main non-free contrib
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main non-free contrib

Peripherals

The following were needed post install to make the keyboard, mouse and (synaptics) touchpad work properly:

apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

I preffer not to use the touchpad and like to use the 3 buttons above it. To get the middle button to scroll I added the following lines to my /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

        Option         "EmulateWheel" "on"
        Option         "EmulateWheelButton" "2"

So the "Configued Mouse" section now looks like this:

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier         "Configured Mouse"
        Driver         "mouse"
        Option         "CorePointer"
        Option         "Device"         "/dev/input/mice"
        Option         "Protocol"         "ImPS/2"
        Option         "Emulate3Buttons"         "true"
        Option         "EmulateWheel" "on"
        Option         "EmulateWheelButton" "2"

Disabling Touchpad When Keyboard Is in Use

I looked for a while to find a way of disabling the touchpad when I was using the keyboard. I would often find myself merrily typing away only to notice later on that I'd actually managed to select another part of the page, or had completly clicked out of the window I thought I was typing in.

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Synaptics Touchpad"
        Driver           "synaptics"
        Option          "SendCoreEvents"
        Option          "Device"
        Option          "Protocol"
        Option          "HorizScrollDelta"
        Option          "SHMConfig"
EndSection

The SHMConfig part of the config is important otherwise you might get the error: "Can't access shared memory area. SHMConfig disabled?"

Now you should be able to simply restart X and use the following command to disable the touchpad while you type and then re-enable it 1 second after you stop typing.

syndaemon -i 1.0

Video

After the netinstall had finished the laptop tried starting gdm but failed. It couldn't use the VESA driver so the following will get you off to a good start:

apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-i810 i810switch

Once these are installed restart gdm and you should be able to achieve a display of 1280x1024. To get the full 1400x1050 display up and running debian now supplies a package called 915resolution. It hacks your video BIOS, not permenantly I might add :), to allow you to achieve the largest resolution possible.

apt-get install 915resolution

For me this program worked after a reboot and continues to do so after every restart without my intervention, for more information please see this link

Gigabit Ethernet

Works great but needed the "tg3" module option choosing on the install.

Wireless

The wireless required a little reading but actually turned out to be quite straight forward. make sure the following packed are installed:

apt-get install wireless-tools wpasupplicant network-manager network-manager-gnome

You will also need the kernel modules for the Intel wireless device

apt-get install linux-modules-2.6.18-3-xen-686

Now download the ipw2200 firmware (I used v.3.0) from here

and untar it into /lib/firmware/

The wireless will now come on whenever you boot your laptop which can be quite annoying, for example if you just want to use your lan connection. To stop the wireless when debian has loaded, as root, remove the module and restart networking.

modprobe -r ipw2200;/etc/init.d/networking restart

Bluetooth

works out of the box.... well sort of. Using the Fn+F5 key combination would turn on the device but there was no way to interact with it. I used a program called Obexftp to communicate with my Nokia N70:

apt-get install obexfs obexftp obexpushd openobex-apps

and to use it:

obexftp -b PHONEMACADDRESS -p FILE

If your not sure of the MAC address of your bluetooth phone you can scan using a program called hcitool. Make sure it's installed then run:

hcitool scan

One potential use for hcitool/obexftp is to automatically lock your screen when your phone moves a certain distance away from your computer.

For more information about using bluetooth under linux on Thinkpads ThinkWiki has an excellent page here

Firewire

Not yet tried but the IEEE modules appear under lsmod.

Think Pad Buttons

To get an OSD when you press certain ThinkPad buttons such as the volume and brightness get a pack called Think Pad Buttons.

apt-get install tpb

Now check the device /dev/nvram exists.If it doesn't modprobe nvram and then add the your user to the nvram group in /etc/group.
You will need to add nvram to /etc/modules. Afterwards try running "tpb &" and use the volume buttons.

NOTE: After installing tpb, i noticed my wireless beacon on the led panel no longer seemed to work. When I removed it the beacon came back.

Special Keys

Such as the forward and backwards keys. I havn't tried these yet but there is a fairly comprehensive guide at thinkwiki.org

Suspend

Suspend and hibernate did not work out of the box for me. With the help from
Richard Evans, a very good friend of mine, I have finally got the suspend to work. He has built a ibm-acpi_0.8-2_all.deb This package contains the init script and common files needed to drive acpi. To install it, download the .deb file and then as root:

dpkg -i ibm-acpi_0.8-2_all.deb

Software

Firefox is soon to be no more in Debian due to it's proprietry images, this applies to Thunderbird too which is why there is now the "Icedove" mail client.

Flash player v.9.0

Add the following to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

# debian multimedia
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ etch main

Then update:
apt-get update

Now download the following package:
apt-get install flashplayer-mozilla

Or download it from the Adobe website

Install it:
tar -zxf FP9_plugin_beta_112006.tar.gz
cp libflashplayer.so /home/$USER/.mozilla/plugins/

Realplayer 10.0

If you haven't done so already add the following to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

# debian multimedia deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ etch main

Then update:
apt-get update

Now download the following packages:
apt-get install realplayer

Or you could download it straight from the RealPlayer website

Install it as root:
chmod +x RealPlayer10GOLD.bin
./RealPlayer10GOLD.bin

I installed Realplayer in /opt/

You can run it by typing realplay in a terminal.

Internet Explorer 6

Take a look at the ies4Linux website

The people at IEs4Linux have created a cleaver script that takes the hassle out of installing IE6 and wine together. The program works really well and is occasionally usefull when certain websites are not displayed properly in Firefox.

The following instructions are also available from the IEs4Linux website.

Add these lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://wine.sourceforge.net/apt/ binary/
deb http://www.backports.org/debian/ sarge-backports main

Then update:
apt-get update

Now download the following packages:
apt-get install wine libxxf86dga1 libxxf86vm1 cabextract wget tar
Then:

wget http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/downloads/ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
tar zxvf ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
cd ies4linux-*
./ies4linux

Automatix

I've today come across an excellent package which takes all of the hard work downloading/installing most of the common comercial packages listed above. It's called Automatix and there is an excellent guide available for it's installation here.

Useful Links

For those of your who like to tinker, IBM supply a maintainence manual for the R52 which can be found here

IBM also supply a service and troubleshooting guide for the R52 which can be found here

On the 13/12/2006 IBM released a new BIOS for the R52 which can be found here