Installing Mandriva 2008 x86-64 Powerpack on a Thinkpad T61

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Revision as of 17:37, 13 January 2008 by Gslt (Talk | contribs) (Added info on Suspend to RAM)
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I don't like the dual booting since I have have seen myself and others more often booting into MS Windows. So, I made the Rescue & Recovery CDs for Windows Vista Home Basic that came bundled with the system and installed Mandriva Powerpack x86-64 successfully on my Lenovo Thinkpad T61 6465-CTO.

Using the GNOME desktop environment, The problems I am facing are:

  • Unable to successfully control the brightness using the brightness keys (Fn + Home/End)
  • After suspending & resuming successfully, the screen is blank. I have to switch to a virtual terminal (Ctrl+Alt+F12) and then switch back to X (Ctrl+Alt+F7)
  • The wireless LED seems to shiver. I think it is constantly scanning for wireless networks. Having had Thinkpads with Linux in the past, I don't think this is normal.

I also have Windows XP Professional installed inside VMWare Workstation 6


The following is written by:--Gslt 17:37, 13 January 2008 (CET)

Suspend to RAM

On our Thinkpad T61 with the Intel GMA X3100 GM965 Intel and Mandriva 2008 Free, we needed to add the following into /usr/share/hal/fdi/information/10freedesktop/20-video-quirk-pm-lenovo.fdi

<match key="system.hardware.product" string="765912G">
  <merge key="power_management.quirk.s3_bios" type="bool">true</merge>
</match>

Replace the 765912G with your product no, which can be obtained by doing

lshal | grep system.hardware.product

We also tried to use key=power_management.quirk.s3_mode but then the the backlight would be set to zero (0) when resuming from suspend.

A crude way to fix the backlight issue is to create a file /etc/pm/sleep.d/00crudebacklightfix with the following

#!/bin/bash
case $1 in
    hibernate)
        ;;
    suspend)
        ;;
    thaw)
        /usr/bin/chvt 1
        sleep 1
        /usr/bin/chvt 7
        ;;
    resume)
        /usr/bin/chvt 1
        sleep 1
        /usr/bin/chvt 7
        ;;
    *)  echo "somebody is calling me totally wrong."
        ;;
esac

# chmod +x /etc/pm/sleep.d/00crudebacklightfix