ThinkWiki - User contributions [en]

How to configure the TrackPoint

2017-05-11T01:59:47Z

Trmsw:

{| width="100%"
|style="vertical-align:top;padding-right:20px;width:10px;white-space:nowrap;" | __TOC__
|style="vertical-align:top" |Below are several ways of configuring the kernel psmouse driver for controlling extended TrackPoint features.
|}
On a '''Modern''' distribution (like Fedora, Ubuntu or OpenSUSE) you will want to use xinput or one of the graphical front ends. For distributions that are lagging a bit (e.g. Debian Lenny and PCLOS '09) you may still want to use the old xorg config method.

=Configuration using xinput=
If you want to modify changes on the fly, you can do so with {{cmd|xinput|}} (part of the optional xorg-x11-apps rpm on Fedora).
Note that these changes are not saved when the xserver is restarted. However, you can add the lines e.g. in your {{cmd|.xsessionrc|}} (depends on your distribution) so they are executed every time X starts.

To query the available options
xinput list-props "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"

More information can be found in the man-pages for evdev
man evdev

To enable vertical scrolling
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation" 1
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Button" 2
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout" 200

To enable horizontal scrolling in addition to vertical scrolling

xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes" 6 7 4 5

To enable middle button emulation (using left- and right-click simultaneously)
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Middle Button Emulation" 1
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Middle Button Timeout" 50

== old method using xinput set-int-prop ==

Previous approaches needed to find the device's numeric id instead of simply using the name, and used "set-int-prop" instead of "set-prop", which required specifying the format (8-bit, 16-bit etc.).
===Example: openSUSE 11.2 and ThinkPad USB Keyboard with TrackPoint ===

xinput list
will show two "Lite-On Technology Corp. ThinkPad USB Keyboard with TrackPoint." with two different ids. Use the id with Axis 0 and Axis 1 items.

Suppose the id was 12. The following will enable the trackpoint scrolling:

xinput set-int-prop 12 "Evdev Wheel Emulation" 8 1
xinput set-int-prop 12 "Evdev Wheel Emulation Button" 8 2
xinput set-int-prop 12 "Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout" 16 200

To do this in a script without knowing the numeric id in advance, the following will run through input devices and set properties on all those that support Evdev Wheel Emulation, assumed to be the Trackpoint(s).

#!/bin/sh
xinput list | sed -ne 's/^[^ ][^V].*id=$[0-9]*$.*/\1/p' | while read id
do
case `xinput list-props $id` in
*"Middle Button Emulation"*)
xinput set-int-prop $id "Evdev Wheel Emulation" 8 1
# etc.
;;
esac
done

and save it with any name such as trackPointScrolling.sh, and make it executable:
chmod +x trackPointScrolling.sh

It can then be run via $ ./trackPointScrolling.sh or in a startup script.

= Graphical Frontends =
If you are using GNOME, you might want to use [http://live.gnome.org/GPointingDeviceSettings GPointing Device Settings] or [http://tpctl.sourceforge.net/configure-trackpoint.html configure-trackpoint] as a graphical frontends.
=== GPointing Device Settings ===
It is available for Fedora 12, Ubuntu 9.10 and Debian Squeeze in the standard package repositories
{{NOTE|Unfortunately it seems no longer maintained, and does not work properly with GNOME3 [[https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=710053 bug]]}}

[[image:Screenshot-GPointing Device Settings-TrackPoint.png]]

=== configure-trackpoint ===
To install it in Ubuntu run ...
sudo apt-get install sysfsutils
...and then download and install the deb [http://sourceforge.net/projects/tpctl/ here]. Note that saved settings are not restored after reboot in Lucid Lynx. See methods below to make settings permanent.

= Configuration using DevKit =
Most recent distributions like Ubuntu 9.10 switch from HAL (being deprecated) to DevKit. Hence, the HAL configurations explained underneath, fail to work.

The easiest way to configure your touchpad and trackpoint with DevKit is by using the [http://live.gnome.org/GPointingDeviceSettings GPointingDeviceSettings] panel that fully supports the hardware. You can easily download the panel by installing {{cmd| gpointing-device-settings|}}. On Ubuntu open a terminal and execute the command {{cmduser| sudo apt-get install gpointing-device-settings}}

Launch the UI through the {{cmduser| gpointing-device-settings}} command, but you can also add a menu entry to your System / Preferences menu for easier access to the UI panel.

= Configuration using udev and HAL =
Modern distributions like Ubuntu 8.10 and Fedora 10 use udev and HAL to configure the input devices. You should no longer make changes to xorg.conf as by default Xorg (through the evdev driver) will let the kernel now handle input devices.

But before you get started on this you should make sure you have all the updates applied from your distro vendor as both Ubuntu 8.10 and Fedora 10 require some additional fixes that you will need.

=== Scrolling ===

By default the middle mouse button is just that, a middle mouse button, which in Linux is used for the Paste operation.

You may configure it to act in the same way as in Windows, such that you can use it for vertical scrolling: keep the button pressed and move the TrackPoint up and down to scroll. (In GPointing Device Settings, this is known as "Use wheel emulation".)

'''Note:''' This setting is not compatible with using Alt + Middle Mouse Button to resize windows. If you want to resize windows with the trackpad, disable wheel emulation. On Ubuntu 11.10, this setting resides in <tt>/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/11-evdev-trackpoint.conf</tt> (see below), although some touchpads use <tt>/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf</tt>.

==== xorg.conf.d ====

Some distributions now support the new Xorg hotplug configuration method via xorg.conf.d directories (in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx) instead of hal. In contrast to the udev method below, it should be around for some time, so it might be the best way to “statically” configure scrolling.

Create the file {{path|/usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-thinkpad.conf}} as root with the following content:

<pre>
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "Trackpoint Wheel Emulation"
MatchProduct "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint|DualPoint Stick|Synaptics Inc. Composite TouchPad / TrackPoint|ThinkPad USB Keyboard with TrackPoint|USB Trackpoint pointing device|Composite TouchPad / TrackPoint"
MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
Option "EmulateWheel" "true"
Option "EmulateWheelButton" "2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "false"
Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7"
Option "YAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection
</pre>

Save and restart Xorg (or it'll be enabled at next reboot).

{{NOTE|For Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, the correct path is {{path|/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d}}}}
{{NOTE|For Arch Linux or Fedora or PCLinuxOS, the correct path is {{path|/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d}}}}

{{NOTE|If the above does not work for you, you may need to add a different MatchProduct string. Use <pre>find /dev/input/event* -exec udevadm info --attribute-walk --name={} \; | grep -e product -e name | sort -u</pre> to get a list of possibilities.}}

{{NOTE|If the above directory doesn't exist by default in your distribution, it probably doesn't support this method. In this case, please refer to the udev or xinput method below.}}

==== udev ====

Now that Xorg doesn't use the configuration from hal (in Debian unstable starting january 2010), the only way to “statically” configure scrolling in trackpoint is udev. (for other people, xinput method, works fine). This method will be gone (_again_) in not too long so it might be a better idea to use xinput way. YMMV.

Create the file {{path|/etc/udev/rules.d/99_trackpoint.rules}} as root with the following content:

<pre>
ACTION!="add|change", GOTO="xorg_trackpoint_end"
KERNEL!="event*", GOTO="xorg_trackpoint_end"

ENV{ID_PATH}!="platform-i8042-serio-1", GOTO="xorg_trackpoint_end"

ENV{x11_options.EmulateWheel}="1"
ENV{x11_options.EmulateWheelButton}="2"
ENV{x11_options.XAxisMapping}="6 7"
ENV{x11_options.Emulate3Buttons}="0"

LABEL="xorg_trackpoint_end"
</pre>

Save and restart udev then Xorg (or it'll be enabled at next reboot).

{{NOTE|The ID_PATH used in the example above is a typical value. To determine the ID_PATH appropriate to the TrackPoint on a specific model see [[#Determining TrackPoint Path ID|Determining TrackPoint Path ID]]}}

==== Hal (soon to be deprecated) ====

To accomplish this create the file {{path|/etc/hal/fdi/policy/mouse-wheel.fdi}} as root with the following content:

<pre>
<match key="info.product" string="TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint">
<merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheel" type="string">true</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheelButton" type="string">2</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.YAxisMapping" type="string">4 5</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.Emulate3Buttons" type="string">true</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheelTimeout" type="string">200</merge>
</match>
</pre>

If you also want to have horizontal scrolling, simply add the following XAxisMapping option to the above
<pre>
<merge key="input.x11_options.XAxisMapping" type="string">6 7</merge>
</pre>
After this reboot, or restart the hal service and Xorg. You can validate the settings with {{cmd|lshal|}}.

In some models (eg: X301 and X200 since Jan 10 2010 on debian sid) you may have to use "PS/2 Generic Mouse" instead of "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint". Have a look to your input devices typing <code>lshal|grep input.product</code>.

Alternatively it is also possible to use the "old" Xorg configuration by adding the following lines to the {{path|/etc/X11/xorg.conf}}:

<pre>
Section "ServerFlags"
Option "AutoAddDevices" "false"
EndSection
</pre>

Using this entry HAL will not be used for the input devices.

====Reactivate Scrolling after suspend/resume====
Scrolling may be disabled after a resume from suspend.

You can manually reactivate the trackpoint by reloading the {{path|psmouse}} module as root:
:{{cmdroot|rmmod psmouse && modprobe psmouse}}

You can automatically force the pm-utils to reload this module.
Create a file {{path|/etc/pm/config.d/01reload_mouse}} as root with the following content:
<pre>
# reload psmouse to reactivate trackpoint scrolling
SUSPEND_MODULES="${SUSPEND_MODULES:+$SUSPEND_MODULES }psmouse"
</pre>

===Configuring other options (e.g. Press to select, Sensitivity and Speed)===

Create a file {{path|/etc/udev/rules.d/10-trackpoint.rules}} and add a line to suit your needs

<pre>
SUBSYSTEM=="serio", DRIVERS=="psmouse", ATTRS{press_to_select}="1", ATTRS{sensitivity}="122"
</pre>

Testing udev with {{cmdroot|udevadm test /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1}} should apply the new changes. All of the settings listed [[How to configure the TrackPoint#Sysfs_Options_Reference|below]] can be specified here as part of a comma separated list.
The customized values should be loaded automatically when booting. However, due to a [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=549379 kernel bug] (affecting Lucid Lynx), the attributes may not yet exist when the udev rule fires. As a work around, add a WAIT_FOR condition on the attribute. In order to make sure you are using the right constraints (SUBSYSTEM, DRIVERS, etc), you can run {{cmdroot|udevadm info --query all --attribute-walk --path /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2}}.

<pre>
SUBSYSTEM=="serio", DRIVERS=="psmouse", WAIT_FOR="/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/sensitivity", ATTRS{sensitivity}="122"
</pre>

On my system (Lucid Lynx), the above line did not work. I changed it to:
<pre>
SUBSYSTEM=="serio", DRIVERS=="psmouse", WAIT_FOR="/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/sensitivity", ATTR{sensitivity}="255"
</pre>
and tested with {{cmdroot|udevadm test /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2}}.

On trusty, the following works for me:
<pre>
KERNEL=="serio2", SUBSYSTEM=="serio", DRIVERS=="psmouse", WAIT_FOR="/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/sensitivity", ATTR{sensitivity}="255"
</pre>

On xenial (16.04) the following line works for me (WAIT_FOR is not supported anymore):
<pre>
KERNEL=="serio2", SUBSYSTEM=="serio", DRIVERS=="psmouse", ATTR{sensitivity}:="255", ATTR{speed}:="255"
</pre>

To avoid the wait you can also listen for the Trackpoint input device to appear and then run a script to set the parameters

<pre>
SUBSYSTEM=="input", ATTR{name}=="*TrackPoint*", RUN+="/etc/conf.d/trackpoint"
</pre>

An example {{path|/etc/conf.d/trackpoint}} would be

<pre>#! /bin/bash

## Trackpoint settings

# When run from a udev rule, DEVPATH should be set
if [ ! -z $DEVPATH ] ; then
TPDEV=/sys/$( echo "$DEVPATH" | sed 's/\/input\/input[0-9]*//' )
else
# Otherwise just look in /sys/
TPDEV=$(find /sys/devices/platform/i8042 -name name | xargs grep -Fl TrackPoint | sed 's/\/input\/input[0-9]*\/name$//')
fi

# http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_configure_the_TrackPoint
# http://wwwcssrv.almaden.ibm.com/trackpoint/files/ykt3eext.pdf
#------------------------------------------------------------
if [ -d "$TPDEV" ]; then
echo "Configuring Trackpoint"
echo -n 255 > $TPDEV/sensitivity # Integer 128 Sensitivity
echo -n 110 > $TPDEV/speed # Integer 97 Cursor speed
echo -n 4 > $TPDEV/inertia # Integer 6 Negative intertia
else
echo "Couldn't find trackpoint device $TPDEV"
fi
</pre>

=Configuration using sysfs=
Another way to modify changes on the fly, is echoing values directly into special files in sysfs.

{{NOTE|
The examples shown below are valid for ThinkPads with both TrackPoint and Touchpad, in which case the sysfs path is {{path|/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2}}.

If however you have a ThinkPad without Touchpad, or with the Touchpad disabled in the BIOS, the sysfs path needs to be changed to {{path|/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1}} instead (notice the missing serio2 at the end).}}

If you want to set the sysfs parameters at boot, you can use the [http://linux-diag.sourceforge.net/Sysfsutils.html sysfsutils] and put the preferred value in /etc/sysfs.conf.

===Press to Select===
Press to Select allows you to tap the control stick which will simulate a left click. You can enable this feature by typing the following in to a terminal (you may need to be root):

:{{cmdroot|echo -n 1 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select}}

Press to Select should now be enabled. You can disable it in a similar manner:

:{{cmdroot|echo -n 0 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select}}

You can use this script to automate the operation

#!/bin/bash
if [ "$1" = "1" ]; then
echo "Turning on tap on TrackPoint"
echo -n 1 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select
exit 0
fi
if [ "$1" = "0" ]; then
echo "Turning off tap on TrackPoint"
echo -n 0 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select
exit 0
fi
echo -n "Tap status: "
cat /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select

In Ubuntu 8.10 to make Press to Select a permanent change:

echo -n 1 | tee /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select

As root, append the above command above "exit 0" in /etc/gdm/Init/Default

===Sensitivity & Speed===
Adjusting the speed and sensitivity of the TrackPoint requires echoing a value between 0 and 255 into the appropriate file. For example, for a speed of 120 and a sensitivity of 250, type the following into a terminal:

:{{cmdroot|echo -n 120 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/speed}}
:{{cmdroot|echo -n 250 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/sensitivity}}

Alternatively, on my ThinkPad T420s, the correct commands are:

:{{cmdroot|echo -n 120 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/speed}}
:{{cmdroot|echo -n 250 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/sensitivity}}

Feel free to experiment with your settings until you find a combination that is comfortable.

When you satisfy your setting, add the two lines into /etc/rc.d/rc.local in order to avoid restoring the default setting every time the system reboots. In Ubuntu 9.10, add the lines to /etc/rc.local to avoid this.

===Vertical Scrolling===
No sysfs entry exists for vertical scrolling in kernels after 2.6.11.

The feature was removed as it was not a hardware feature, but rather emulating a scroll action in software and as such did not belong in the kernel.
Instead the scroll feature of the Xserver should be used, which can be activated with HAL or xinput as described above.

=Configuration using the X server (xorg.conf)=
==Using the "evdev" driver (preferred, especially for recent Xorg versions)==
Extract from /etc/X11/xorg.conf on an X31:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"
Driver "evdev"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/by-path/platform-i8042-serio-1-event-mouse"
Option "GrabDevice" "False"
Option "EmulateWheel" "true" #Enable wheel emulation for the Trackpoint
Option "EmulateWheelButton" "2" #Use the middle button for the emulation
Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7" #Map trackpoint X axis to X axis of emulated wheel
Option "YAxisMapping" "4 5" #Map trackpoint Y axis to Y axis of emulated wheel
EndSection

{{NOTE|The device path used in the example above is a typical value. To determine the device path appropriate to the TrackPoint on a specific model see [[#Determining TrackPoint Path ID|Determining TrackPoint Path ID]]}}

==Using the "mouse" driver (deprecated, only for old Xorg versions)==
{{NOTE|This only applies to old distributions with Xorg versions that did not yet use evdev. For modern distributions use one of the other methods}}
The scroll setting has been removed from the trackpoint driver in kernel versions 2.6.11 and above. Scroll emulation should now be handled in the X server.

A nice side effect of that is, that middle button scrolling applies to any mouse and not just the TrackPoint interface, which can be a quite handy feature for desktop computers or people who prefer to use an external mouse, especially when scrolling through long lists or needing to use horizontal scrolling with a mouse which has only a vertical scroll wheel.

The necessary functionality, known as "EmulateWheelTimeout" allowing to use button 2 for a middle click, wasn't implemented in Xorg prior to 6.9/7.0. However, there was a patch included in most distributions packages of Xorg, which was announced [http://www.mail-archive.com/devel@xfree86.org/msg03333.html here]. You can find an updated version of the package in the experimental branch of {{Debian}} or try to build the mouse driver yourself with the information in the announcement. This has successfully been tried with FC3's 6.8.2 packages.

Once this functionality is in the X.org, add these lines to your TrackPoint configuration section in {{path|/etc/X11/xorg.conf}}:

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

It may also be necessary to add these lines:

Option "YAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7"

which specify which buttons are mapped to motion in the vertical (Y) and horizontal (X) directions, respectively, in wheel emulation mode (see http://www.xfree86.org/current/mouse.4.html).

{{HINT| Use the program "xev" to see, what mouse button identifiers are sent by your mouse/touchpad/trackpoint. You might want to try: "xev | grep button"}}
{{HINT| If it does not work see if evdev is installed and remove it. On gentoo do the following: 
eix xf86-input-evdev 
emerge -C xf86-input-evdev 
and then remove the evdev flag in make.conf INPUT_DEVICES}}

So, a complete mouse section, that implements this nicely and works very well on my R51, even with a simultaneously connected USB mouse, looks like that (tried out today, 20th of September, 2006 on Dapper):

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "on"
Option "Emulate3TimeOut" "50"
Option "EmulateWheel" "on"
Option "EmulateWheelTimeOut" "200"
Option "EmulateWheelButton" "2"
Option "YAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

The mappings for Y and Z are the same, since the "Z-Axis" refers to actual hardware scrolling wheels which usually scroll the screen along the Y-Axis. If there is no hardware scrolling wheel present, horizontal and vertical scrolling using the TrackPoint work fine without the Z-Axis line.

Now restart X and hold down button 2 and move the mouse to scroll, or just press and release button 2 for a middle click.

To make this work with the synaptics driver for the touchpad, you can add
Option "GuestMouseOff" "1"
to the synaptics device section. This will make the synaptics driver ignore the Trackpoint, so it will be handled by the mouse driver. This allowed me to disable the touchpad while making the TrackPoint work like it should.

{{NOTE| With the above mouse section in my xorg.conf all this works like a charm:
*I can press the wheel on my external USB mouse and move the mouse up and down for scrolling
*or I can just use the wheel on the external mouse for scrolling
*or pressing the MMB button of the trackpoint and use the trackpoint for scrolling.
*Even horizontal scrolling works automagically in Konqueror, for Firefox/Opera see below.

Simultaneously I can use
*a press on the external mouse's wheel
*or the MMB of the trackpoint

for pasting the buffer. Lovely! :) }}

{{HINT| If you don't use the middle-mouse-button for pasting and sometimes pasting things by mistake while scrolling (witch is really odd) simply set the "EmulateWheelTimeOut" to "1" as a (bloody) workaround. Middle click will only possible with pressing left and right button simultaneously!}}

=Application specific tweaks=
===Configure Opera for using trackpoint horizontal scrolling===
To fix horizontal scrolling in Opera, you need to edit the configfile <tt>standard_mouse.ini</tt> in e.g. /usr/share/opera/ui/ (Debian) or /opt/opera/share/opera/ini/ (Gentoo) and comment out the following lines
<pre>
Button6 = Back
Button7 = Forward
</pre>
so they look like that
<pre>
;Button6 = Back
;Button7 = Forward
</pre>
Remember, Button6 and Button7 do not so coincidental correspond with our X configuration we know from above:
<pre>
Option "YAxisMapping" "6 7"
</pre>
After this change you will be able to scroll vertically and horizontally with your middle button.

===Firefox 3 tweaks===
These settings make Firefox on Linux behave more like the Windows version. They were tested on an out of the box Fedora 10 system on a Thinkpad T61. Go into about:config, and set the following:

middlemouse.paste = false
middlemouse.contentLoadURL = false
general.autoScroll = true

=Sysfs Options Reference=
{{NOTE|These options are current as of kernel version 2.6.29, 3 May 2009}}
{|
|-
! Name
! Type
! Default
! Notes
|-
| sensitivity
| Integer
| 128
| Sensitivity
|-
| speed
| Integer
| 97
| Cursor speed
|-
| inertia
| Integer
| 6
| Described as "negative inertia." It acts more like friction. High values cause the cursor to snap backward when the Trackpoint is released
|-
| reach
| Integer
| 10
| Backup for Z-axis press
|-
| draghys
| Integer
| 255
| Drag hysteresis (how hard it is to drag with Z-axis pressed)
|-
| mindrag
| Integer
| 20
| Minimum amount of force needed to trigger dragging
|-
| thresh
| Integer
| 8
| Minimum value for a Z-axis press
|-
| upthresh
| Integer
| 255
| Used to generate a 'click' on Z-axis
|-
| ztime
| Integer
| 38
| How sharp of a press
|-
| jenks
| Integer
| 135
| Minimum curvature for double click
|-
| press_to_select
| Boolean
| 0
| Press to select
|-
| skipback
| Boolean
| 0
| Supress movement after drag release
|-
| ext_dev
| Boolean
| 0
| Disable external device
|}
Table info taken from [http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=blob;f=drivers/input/mouse/trackpoint.h;hb=HEAD here]. The given link will always point to the current version of the driver. If the notes seem sparse, that's because the code is sparse. On the other hand, the [http://wwwcssrv.almaden.ibm.com/trackpoint/files/ykt3eext.pdf Trackpoint Engineering Specification Version 4.0]  contains more documentation information than anyone ever desired.

=Determining TrackPoint Path ID=
Both the [[#udev|udev]] and [[#Configuration using the X server (xorg.conf)|xorg.conf]] configuration methods require knowledge of the Path ID of the TrackPoint. In the [[#udev|udev]] configuration method, the Path ID is used to match the ID_PATH environmental variable, in the [[#Configuration using the X server (xorg.conf)|xorg.conf]] configuration method it is the prefix for the device file name inside the {{path|/dev/input/by-id}} directory. The path ID can vary between ThinkPad models, distributions (with varying kernel patches), and between kernel versions. One way to find the path ID for the TrackPoint is to use udev's path_id utility on the sysfs device path for the TrackPoint. This device path can be found using the {{path|name}} file which describes the TrackPoint. The process can be automated using the following shell command:
/lib/udev/path_id $(find /sys/devices/platform/i8042 -name name | xargs grep -Fl TrackPoint | sed 's/\/sys$.*$\/name/\1/')

How to configure the TrackPoint

2017-05-11T01:45:50Z

Trmsw: /* old method using xinput set-int-prop */

{| width="100%"
|style="vertical-align:top;padding-right:20px;width:10px;white-space:nowrap;" | __TOC__
|style="vertical-align:top" |Below are several ways of configuring the kernel psmouse driver for controlling extended TrackPoint features.
|}
On a '''Modern''' distribution (like Fedora, Ubuntu or OpenSUSE) you will want to use xinput or one of the graphical front ends. For distributions that are lagging a bit (e.g. Debian Lenny and PCLOS '09) you may still want to use the old xorg config method.

=Configuration using xinput=
If you want to modify changes on the fly, you can do so with {{cmd|xinput|}} (part of the optional xorg-x11-apps rpm on Fedora).
Note that these changes are not saved when the xserver is restarted. However, you can add the lines e.g. in your {{cmd|.xsessionrc|}} (depends on your distribution) so they are executed every time X starts.

To query the available options
xinput list-props "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"

More information can be found in the man-pages for evdev
man evdev

To enable vertical scrolling
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation" 1
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Button" 2
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout" 200

To enable horizontal scrolling in addition to vertical scrolling

xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes" 6 7 4 5

To enable middle button emulation (using left- and right-click simultaneously)
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Middle Button Emulation" 1
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Middle Button Timeout" 50

== old method using xinput set-int-prop ==

To enable vertical scrolling
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation" 1
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Button" 2
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout" 200

To enable horizontal scrolling in addition to vertical scrolling

xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes" 6 7 4 5

To enable middle button emulation (using left- and right-click simultaneously)
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Middle Button Emulation" 1
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Middle Button Timeout" 50

==Example: openSUSE 11.2 and ThinkPad USB Keyboard with TrackPoint ==

xinput list
will show two "Lite-On Technology Corp. ThinkPad USB Keyboard with TrackPoint." with two different ids. Use the id with Axis 0 and Axis 1 items.

Suppose the id was 12. The following will enable the trackpoint scrolling:

xinput set-prop 12 "Evdev Wheel Emulation" 1
xinput set-prop 12 "Evdev Wheel Emulation Button" 2
xinput set-prop 12 "Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout" 200

The following will enable the horizontal scrolling
xinput set-prop 12 "Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes" 6 7 4 5

To disable middle button click paste functionality, remap the middle button to something else:
xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 9 3 4 5 6 7 8 2"

To do these automatically without worrying about id number, generate a bash script file:
#!/bin/sh
xinput list | sed -ne 's/^[^ ][^V].*id=$[0-9]*$.*/\1/p' | while read id
do
case `xinput list-props $id` in
*"Middle Button Emulation"*)
xinput set-prop $id "Evdev Wheel Emulation" 1
xinput set-prop $id "Evdev Wheel Emulation Button" 2
xinput set-prop $id "Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout" 200
xinput set-prop $id "Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes" 6 7 4 5
xinput set-prop $id "Evdev Middle Button Emulation" 0
;;
esac
done

# disable middle button
xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 9 3 4 5 6 7 8 2"

and save it with any name such as trackPointScrolling.sh, and make it executable:
chmod +x trackPointScrolling.sh

Next time you run it with $ ./trackPointScrolling.sh, it will enable the trackpoint scrolling and disable middle button paste.
{{Todo|some other examples}}

= Graphical Frontends =
If you are using GNOME, you might want to use [http://live.gnome.org/GPointingDeviceSettings GPointing Device Settings] or [http://tpctl.sourceforge.net/configure-trackpoint.html configure-trackpoint] as a graphical frontends.
=== GPointing Device Settings ===
It is available for Fedora 12, Ubuntu 9.10 and Debian Squeeze in the standard package repositories
{{NOTE|Unfortunately it seems no longer maintained, and does not work properly with GNOME3 [[https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=710053 bug]]}}

[[image:Screenshot-GPointing Device Settings-TrackPoint.png]]

=== configure-trackpoint ===
To install it in Ubuntu run ...
sudo apt-get install sysfsutils
...and then download and install the deb [http://sourceforge.net/projects/tpctl/ here]. Note that saved settings are not restored after reboot in Lucid Lynx. See methods below to make settings permanent.

= Configuration using DevKit =
Most recent distributions like Ubuntu 9.10 switch from HAL (being deprecated) to DevKit. Hence, the HAL configurations explained underneath, fail to work.

The easiest way to configure your touchpad and trackpoint with DevKit is by using the [http://live.gnome.org/GPointingDeviceSettings GPointingDeviceSettings] panel that fully supports the hardware. You can easily download the panel by installing {{cmd| gpointing-device-settings|}}. On Ubuntu open a terminal and execute the command {{cmduser| sudo apt-get install gpointing-device-settings}}

Launch the UI through the {{cmduser| gpointing-device-settings}} command, but you can also add a menu entry to your System / Preferences menu for easier access to the UI panel.

= Configuration using udev and HAL =
Modern distributions like Ubuntu 8.10 and Fedora 10 use udev and HAL to configure the input devices. You should no longer make changes to xorg.conf as by default Xorg (through the evdev driver) will let the kernel now handle input devices.

But before you get started on this you should make sure you have all the updates applied from your distro vendor as both Ubuntu 8.10 and Fedora 10 require some additional fixes that you will need.

=== Scrolling ===

By default the middle mouse button is just that, a middle mouse button, which in Linux is used for the Paste operation.

You may configure it to act in the same way as in Windows, such that you can use it for vertical scrolling: keep the button pressed and move the TrackPoint up and down to scroll. (In GPointing Device Settings, this is known as "Use wheel emulation".)

'''Note:''' This setting is not compatible with using Alt + Middle Mouse Button to resize windows. If you want to resize windows with the trackpad, disable wheel emulation. On Ubuntu 11.10, this setting resides in <tt>/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/11-evdev-trackpoint.conf</tt> (see below), although some touchpads use <tt>/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf</tt>.

==== xorg.conf.d ====

Some distributions now support the new Xorg hotplug configuration method via xorg.conf.d directories (in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx) instead of hal. In contrast to the udev method below, it should be around for some time, so it might be the best way to “statically” configure scrolling.

Create the file {{path|/usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-thinkpad.conf}} as root with the following content:

<pre>
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "Trackpoint Wheel Emulation"
MatchProduct "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint|DualPoint Stick|Synaptics Inc. Composite TouchPad / TrackPoint|ThinkPad USB Keyboard with TrackPoint|USB Trackpoint pointing device|Composite TouchPad / TrackPoint"
MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
Option "EmulateWheel" "true"
Option "EmulateWheelButton" "2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "false"
Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7"
Option "YAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection
</pre>

Save and restart Xorg (or it'll be enabled at next reboot).

{{NOTE|For Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, the correct path is {{path|/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d}}}}
{{NOTE|For Arch Linux or Fedora or PCLinuxOS, the correct path is {{path|/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d}}}}

{{NOTE|If the above does not work for you, you may need to add a different MatchProduct string. Use <pre>find /dev/input/event* -exec udevadm info --attribute-walk --name={} \; | grep -e product -e name | sort -u</pre> to get a list of possibilities.}}

{{NOTE|If the above directory doesn't exist by default in your distribution, it probably doesn't support this method. In this case, please refer to the udev or xinput method below.}}

==== udev ====

Now that Xorg doesn't use the configuration from hal (in Debian unstable starting january 2010), the only way to “statically” configure scrolling in trackpoint is udev. (for other people, xinput method, works fine). This method will be gone (_again_) in not too long so it might be a better idea to use xinput way. YMMV.

Create the file {{path|/etc/udev/rules.d/99_trackpoint.rules}} as root with the following content:

<pre>
ACTION!="add|change", GOTO="xorg_trackpoint_end"
KERNEL!="event*", GOTO="xorg_trackpoint_end"

ENV{ID_PATH}!="platform-i8042-serio-1", GOTO="xorg_trackpoint_end"

ENV{x11_options.EmulateWheel}="1"
ENV{x11_options.EmulateWheelButton}="2"
ENV{x11_options.XAxisMapping}="6 7"
ENV{x11_options.Emulate3Buttons}="0"

LABEL="xorg_trackpoint_end"
</pre>

Save and restart udev then Xorg (or it'll be enabled at next reboot).

{{NOTE|The ID_PATH used in the example above is a typical value. To determine the ID_PATH appropriate to the TrackPoint on a specific model see [[#Determining TrackPoint Path ID|Determining TrackPoint Path ID]]}}

==== Hal (soon to be deprecated) ====

To accomplish this create the file {{path|/etc/hal/fdi/policy/mouse-wheel.fdi}} as root with the following content:

<pre>
<match key="info.product" string="TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint">
<merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheel" type="string">true</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheelButton" type="string">2</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.YAxisMapping" type="string">4 5</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.Emulate3Buttons" type="string">true</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheelTimeout" type="string">200</merge>
</match>
</pre>

If you also want to have horizontal scrolling, simply add the following XAxisMapping option to the above
<pre>
<merge key="input.x11_options.XAxisMapping" type="string">6 7</merge>
</pre>
After this reboot, or restart the hal service and Xorg. You can validate the settings with {{cmd|lshal|}}.

In some models (eg: X301 and X200 since Jan 10 2010 on debian sid) you may have to use "PS/2 Generic Mouse" instead of "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint". Have a look to your input devices typing <code>lshal|grep input.product</code>.

Alternatively it is also possible to use the "old" Xorg configuration by adding the following lines to the {{path|/etc/X11/xorg.conf}}:

<pre>
Section "ServerFlags"
Option "AutoAddDevices" "false"
EndSection
</pre>

Using this entry HAL will not be used for the input devices.

====Reactivate Scrolling after suspend/resume====
Scrolling may be disabled after a resume from suspend.

You can manually reactivate the trackpoint by reloading the {{path|psmouse}} module as root:
:{{cmdroot|rmmod psmouse && modprobe psmouse}}

You can automatically force the pm-utils to reload this module.
Create a file {{path|/etc/pm/config.d/01reload_mouse}} as root with the following content:
<pre>
# reload psmouse to reactivate trackpoint scrolling
SUSPEND_MODULES="${SUSPEND_MODULES:+$SUSPEND_MODULES }psmouse"
</pre>

===Configuring other options (e.g. Press to select, Sensitivity and Speed)===

Create a file {{path|/etc/udev/rules.d/10-trackpoint.rules}} and add a line to suit your needs

<pre>
SUBSYSTEM=="serio", DRIVERS=="psmouse", ATTRS{press_to_select}="1", ATTRS{sensitivity}="122"
</pre>

Testing udev with {{cmdroot|udevadm test /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1}} should apply the new changes. All of the settings listed [[How to configure the TrackPoint#Sysfs_Options_Reference|below]] can be specified here as part of a comma separated list.
The customized values should be loaded automatically when booting. However, due to a [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=549379 kernel bug] (affecting Lucid Lynx), the attributes may not yet exist when the udev rule fires. As a work around, add a WAIT_FOR condition on the attribute. In order to make sure you are using the right constraints (SUBSYSTEM, DRIVERS, etc), you can run {{cmdroot|udevadm info --query all --attribute-walk --path /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2}}.

<pre>
SUBSYSTEM=="serio", DRIVERS=="psmouse", WAIT_FOR="/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/sensitivity", ATTRS{sensitivity}="122"
</pre>

On my system (Lucid Lynx), the above line did not work. I changed it to:
<pre>
SUBSYSTEM=="serio", DRIVERS=="psmouse", WAIT_FOR="/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/sensitivity", ATTR{sensitivity}="255"
</pre>
and tested with {{cmdroot|udevadm test /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2}}.

On trusty, the following works for me:
<pre>
KERNEL=="serio2", SUBSYSTEM=="serio", DRIVERS=="psmouse", WAIT_FOR="/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/sensitivity", ATTR{sensitivity}="255"
</pre>

On xenial (16.04) the following line works for me (WAIT_FOR is not supported anymore):
<pre>
KERNEL=="serio2", SUBSYSTEM=="serio", DRIVERS=="psmouse", ATTR{sensitivity}:="255", ATTR{speed}:="255"
</pre>

To avoid the wait you can also listen for the Trackpoint input device to appear and then run a script to set the parameters

<pre>
SUBSYSTEM=="input", ATTR{name}=="*TrackPoint*", RUN+="/etc/conf.d/trackpoint"
</pre>

An example {{path|/etc/conf.d/trackpoint}} would be

<pre>#! /bin/bash

## Trackpoint settings

# When run from a udev rule, DEVPATH should be set
if [ ! -z $DEVPATH ] ; then
TPDEV=/sys/$( echo "$DEVPATH" | sed 's/\/input\/input[0-9]*//' )
else
# Otherwise just look in /sys/
TPDEV=$(find /sys/devices/platform/i8042 -name name | xargs grep -Fl TrackPoint | sed 's/\/input\/input[0-9]*\/name$//')
fi

# http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_configure_the_TrackPoint
# http://wwwcssrv.almaden.ibm.com/trackpoint/files/ykt3eext.pdf
#------------------------------------------------------------
if [ -d "$TPDEV" ]; then
echo "Configuring Trackpoint"
echo -n 255 > $TPDEV/sensitivity # Integer 128 Sensitivity
echo -n 110 > $TPDEV/speed # Integer 97 Cursor speed
echo -n 4 > $TPDEV/inertia # Integer 6 Negative intertia
else
echo "Couldn't find trackpoint device $TPDEV"
fi
</pre>

=Configuration using sysfs=
Another way to modify changes on the fly, is echoing values directly into special files in sysfs.

{{NOTE|
The examples shown below are valid for ThinkPads with both TrackPoint and Touchpad, in which case the sysfs path is {{path|/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2}}.

If however you have a ThinkPad without Touchpad, or with the Touchpad disabled in the BIOS, the sysfs path needs to be changed to {{path|/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1}} instead (notice the missing serio2 at the end).}}

If you want to set the sysfs parameters at boot, you can use the [http://linux-diag.sourceforge.net/Sysfsutils.html sysfsutils] and put the preferred value in /etc/sysfs.conf.

===Press to Select===
Press to Select allows you to tap the control stick which will simulate a left click. You can enable this feature by typing the following in to a terminal (you may need to be root):

:{{cmdroot|echo -n 1 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select}}

Press to Select should now be enabled. You can disable it in a similar manner:

:{{cmdroot|echo -n 0 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select}}

You can use this script to automate the operation

#!/bin/bash
if [ "$1" = "1" ]; then
echo "Turning on tap on TrackPoint"
echo -n 1 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select
exit 0
fi
if [ "$1" = "0" ]; then
echo "Turning off tap on TrackPoint"
echo -n 0 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select
exit 0
fi
echo -n "Tap status: "
cat /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select

In Ubuntu 8.10 to make Press to Select a permanent change:

echo -n 1 | tee /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select

As root, append the above command above "exit 0" in /etc/gdm/Init/Default

===Sensitivity & Speed===
Adjusting the speed and sensitivity of the TrackPoint requires echoing a value between 0 and 255 into the appropriate file. For example, for a speed of 120 and a sensitivity of 250, type the following into a terminal:

:{{cmdroot|echo -n 120 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/speed}}
:{{cmdroot|echo -n 250 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/sensitivity}}

Alternatively, on my ThinkPad T420s, the correct commands are:

:{{cmdroot|echo -n 120 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/speed}}
:{{cmdroot|echo -n 250 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/sensitivity}}

Feel free to experiment with your settings until you find a combination that is comfortable.

When you satisfy your setting, add the two lines into /etc/rc.d/rc.local in order to avoid restoring the default setting every time the system reboots. In Ubuntu 9.10, add the lines to /etc/rc.local to avoid this.

===Vertical Scrolling===
No sysfs entry exists for vertical scrolling in kernels after 2.6.11.

The feature was removed as it was not a hardware feature, but rather emulating a scroll action in software and as such did not belong in the kernel.
Instead the scroll feature of the Xserver should be used, which can be activated with HAL or xinput as described above.

=Configuration using the X server (xorg.conf)=
==Using the "evdev" driver (preferred, especially for recent Xorg versions)==
Extract from /etc/X11/xorg.conf on an X31:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"
Driver "evdev"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/by-path/platform-i8042-serio-1-event-mouse"
Option "GrabDevice" "False"
Option "EmulateWheel" "true" #Enable wheel emulation for the Trackpoint
Option "EmulateWheelButton" "2" #Use the middle button for the emulation
Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7" #Map trackpoint X axis to X axis of emulated wheel
Option "YAxisMapping" "4 5" #Map trackpoint Y axis to Y axis of emulated wheel
EndSection

{{NOTE|The device path used in the example above is a typical value. To determine the device path appropriate to the TrackPoint on a specific model see [[#Determining TrackPoint Path ID|Determining TrackPoint Path ID]]}}

==Using the "mouse" driver (deprecated, only for old Xorg versions)==
{{NOTE|This only applies to old distributions with Xorg versions that did not yet use evdev. For modern distributions use one of the other methods}}
The scroll setting has been removed from the trackpoint driver in kernel versions 2.6.11 and above. Scroll emulation should now be handled in the X server.

A nice side effect of that is, that middle button scrolling applies to any mouse and not just the TrackPoint interface, which can be a quite handy feature for desktop computers or people who prefer to use an external mouse, especially when scrolling through long lists or needing to use horizontal scrolling with a mouse which has only a vertical scroll wheel.

The necessary functionality, known as "EmulateWheelTimeout" allowing to use button 2 for a middle click, wasn't implemented in Xorg prior to 6.9/7.0. However, there was a patch included in most distributions packages of Xorg, which was announced [http://www.mail-archive.com/devel@xfree86.org/msg03333.html here]. You can find an updated version of the package in the experimental branch of {{Debian}} or try to build the mouse driver yourself with the information in the announcement. This has successfully been tried with FC3's 6.8.2 packages.

Once this functionality is in the X.org, add these lines to your TrackPoint configuration section in {{path|/etc/X11/xorg.conf}}:

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

It may also be necessary to add these lines:

Option "YAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7"

which specify which buttons are mapped to motion in the vertical (Y) and horizontal (X) directions, respectively, in wheel emulation mode (see http://www.xfree86.org/current/mouse.4.html).

{{HINT| Use the program "xev" to see, what mouse button identifiers are sent by your mouse/touchpad/trackpoint. You might want to try: "xev | grep button"}}
{{HINT| If it does not work see if evdev is installed and remove it. On gentoo do the following: 
eix xf86-input-evdev 
emerge -C xf86-input-evdev 
and then remove the evdev flag in make.conf INPUT_DEVICES}}

So, a complete mouse section, that implements this nicely and works very well on my R51, even with a simultaneously connected USB mouse, looks like that (tried out today, 20th of September, 2006 on Dapper):

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "on"
Option "Emulate3TimeOut" "50"
Option "EmulateWheel" "on"
Option "EmulateWheelTimeOut" "200"
Option "EmulateWheelButton" "2"
Option "YAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

The mappings for Y and Z are the same, since the "Z-Axis" refers to actual hardware scrolling wheels which usually scroll the screen along the Y-Axis. If there is no hardware scrolling wheel present, horizontal and vertical scrolling using the TrackPoint work fine without the Z-Axis line.

Now restart X and hold down button 2 and move the mouse to scroll, or just press and release button 2 for a middle click.

To make this work with the synaptics driver for the touchpad, you can add
Option "GuestMouseOff" "1"
to the synaptics device section. This will make the synaptics driver ignore the Trackpoint, so it will be handled by the mouse driver. This allowed me to disable the touchpad while making the TrackPoint work like it should.

{{NOTE| With the above mouse section in my xorg.conf all this works like a charm:
*I can press the wheel on my external USB mouse and move the mouse up and down for scrolling
*or I can just use the wheel on the external mouse for scrolling
*or pressing the MMB button of the trackpoint and use the trackpoint for scrolling.
*Even horizontal scrolling works automagically in Konqueror, for Firefox/Opera see below.

Simultaneously I can use
*a press on the external mouse's wheel
*or the MMB of the trackpoint

for pasting the buffer. Lovely! :) }}

{{HINT| If you don't use the middle-mouse-button for pasting and sometimes pasting things by mistake while scrolling (witch is really odd) simply set the "EmulateWheelTimeOut" to "1" as a (bloody) workaround. Middle click will only possible with pressing left and right button simultaneously!}}

=Application specific tweaks=
===Configure Opera for using trackpoint horizontal scrolling===
To fix horizontal scrolling in Opera, you need to edit the configfile <tt>standard_mouse.ini</tt> in e.g. /usr/share/opera/ui/ (Debian) or /opt/opera/share/opera/ini/ (Gentoo) and comment out the following lines
<pre>
Button6 = Back
Button7 = Forward
</pre>
so they look like that
<pre>
;Button6 = Back
;Button7 = Forward
</pre>
Remember, Button6 and Button7 do not so coincidental correspond with our X configuration we know from above:
<pre>
Option "YAxisMapping" "6 7"
</pre>
After this change you will be able to scroll vertically and horizontally with your middle button.

===Firefox 3 tweaks===
These settings make Firefox on Linux behave more like the Windows version. They were tested on an out of the box Fedora 10 system on a Thinkpad T61. Go into about:config, and set the following:

middlemouse.paste = false
middlemouse.contentLoadURL = false
general.autoScroll = true

=Sysfs Options Reference=
{{NOTE|These options are current as of kernel version 2.6.29, 3 May 2009}}
{|
|-
! Name
! Type
! Default
! Notes
|-
| sensitivity
| Integer
| 128
| Sensitivity
|-
| speed
| Integer
| 97
| Cursor speed
|-
| inertia
| Integer
| 6
| Described as "negative inertia." It acts more like friction. High values cause the cursor to snap backward when the Trackpoint is released
|-
| reach
| Integer
| 10
| Backup for Z-axis press
|-
| draghys
| Integer
| 255
| Drag hysteresis (how hard it is to drag with Z-axis pressed)
|-
| mindrag
| Integer
| 20
| Minimum amount of force needed to trigger dragging
|-
| thresh
| Integer
| 8
| Minimum value for a Z-axis press
|-
| upthresh
| Integer
| 255
| Used to generate a 'click' on Z-axis
|-
| ztime
| Integer
| 38
| How sharp of a press
|-
| jenks
| Integer
| 135
| Minimum curvature for double click
|-
| press_to_select
| Boolean
| 0
| Press to select
|-
| skipback
| Boolean
| 0
| Supress movement after drag release
|-
| ext_dev
| Boolean
| 0
| Disable external device
|}
Table info taken from [http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=blob;f=drivers/input/mouse/trackpoint.h;hb=HEAD here]. The given link will always point to the current version of the driver. If the notes seem sparse, that's because the code is sparse. On the other hand, the [http://wwwcssrv.almaden.ibm.com/trackpoint/files/ykt3eext.pdf Trackpoint Engineering Specification Version 4.0]  contains more documentation information than anyone ever desired.

=Determining TrackPoint Path ID=
Both the [[#udev|udev]] and [[#Configuration using the X server (xorg.conf)|xorg.conf]] configuration methods require knowledge of the Path ID of the TrackPoint. In the [[#udev|udev]] configuration method, the Path ID is used to match the ID_PATH environmental variable, in the [[#Configuration using the X server (xorg.conf)|xorg.conf]] configuration method it is the prefix for the device file name inside the {{path|/dev/input/by-id}} directory. The path ID can vary between ThinkPad models, distributions (with varying kernel patches), and between kernel versions. One way to find the path ID for the TrackPoint is to use udev's path_id utility on the sysfs device path for the TrackPoint. This device path can be found using the {{path|name}} file which describes the TrackPoint. The process can be automated using the following shell command:
/lib/udev/path_id $(find /sys/devices/platform/i8042 -name name | xargs grep -Fl TrackPoint | sed 's/\/sys$.*$\/name/\1/')

How to configure the TrackPoint

2017-05-11T01:45:24Z

Trmsw:

{| width="100%"
|style="vertical-align:top;padding-right:20px;width:10px;white-space:nowrap;" | __TOC__
|style="vertical-align:top" |Below are several ways of configuring the kernel psmouse driver for controlling extended TrackPoint features.
|}
On a '''Modern''' distribution (like Fedora, Ubuntu or OpenSUSE) you will want to use xinput or one of the graphical front ends. For distributions that are lagging a bit (e.g. Debian Lenny and PCLOS '09) you may still want to use the old xorg config method.

=Configuration using xinput=
If you want to modify changes on the fly, you can do so with {{cmd|xinput|}} (part of the optional xorg-x11-apps rpm on Fedora).
Note that these changes are not saved when the xserver is restarted. However, you can add the lines e.g. in your {{cmd|.xsessionrc|}} (depends on your distribution) so they are executed every time X starts.

To query the available options
xinput list-props "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"

More information can be found in the man-pages for evdev
man evdev

To enable vertical scrolling
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation" 1
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Button" 2
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout" 200

To enable horizontal scrolling in addition to vertical scrolling

xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes" 6 7 4 5

To enable middle button emulation (using left- and right-click simultaneously)
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Middle Button Emulation" 1
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Middle Button Timeout" 50

== old method using xinput set-int-prop ==

Note: xinput set-int-prop is deprecated according to the xinput manpage.

To enable vertical scrolling
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation" 1
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Button" 2
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout" 200

To enable horizontal scrolling in addition to vertical scrolling

xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes" 6 7 4 5

To enable middle button emulation (using left- and right-click simultaneously)
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Middle Button Emulation" 1
xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Middle Button Timeout" 50

==Example: openSUSE 11.2 and ThinkPad USB Keyboard with TrackPoint ==

xinput list
will show two "Lite-On Technology Corp. ThinkPad USB Keyboard with TrackPoint." with two different ids. Use the id with Axis 0 and Axis 1 items.

Suppose the id was 12. The following will enable the trackpoint scrolling:

xinput set-prop 12 "Evdev Wheel Emulation" 1
xinput set-prop 12 "Evdev Wheel Emulation Button" 2
xinput set-prop 12 "Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout" 200

The following will enable the horizontal scrolling
xinput set-prop 12 "Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes" 6 7 4 5

To disable middle button click paste functionality, remap the middle button to something else:
xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 9 3 4 5 6 7 8 2"

To do these automatically without worrying about id number, generate a bash script file:
#!/bin/sh
xinput list | sed -ne 's/^[^ ][^V].*id=$[0-9]*$.*/\1/p' | while read id
do
case `xinput list-props $id` in
*"Middle Button Emulation"*)
xinput set-prop $id "Evdev Wheel Emulation" 1
xinput set-prop $id "Evdev Wheel Emulation Button" 2
xinput set-prop $id "Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout" 200
xinput set-prop $id "Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes" 6 7 4 5
xinput set-prop $id "Evdev Middle Button Emulation" 0
;;
esac
done

# disable middle button
xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 9 3 4 5 6 7 8 2"

and save it with any name such as trackPointScrolling.sh, and make it executable:
chmod +x trackPointScrolling.sh

Next time you run it with $ ./trackPointScrolling.sh, it will enable the trackpoint scrolling and disable middle button paste.
{{Todo|some other examples}}

= Graphical Frontends =
If you are using GNOME, you might want to use [http://live.gnome.org/GPointingDeviceSettings GPointing Device Settings] or [http://tpctl.sourceforge.net/configure-trackpoint.html configure-trackpoint] as a graphical frontends.
=== GPointing Device Settings ===
It is available for Fedora 12, Ubuntu 9.10 and Debian Squeeze in the standard package repositories
{{NOTE|Unfortunately it seems no longer maintained, and does not work properly with GNOME3 [[https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=710053 bug]]}}

[[image:Screenshot-GPointing Device Settings-TrackPoint.png]]

=== configure-trackpoint ===
To install it in Ubuntu run ...
sudo apt-get install sysfsutils
...and then download and install the deb [http://sourceforge.net/projects/tpctl/ here]. Note that saved settings are not restored after reboot in Lucid Lynx. See methods below to make settings permanent.

= Configuration using DevKit =
Most recent distributions like Ubuntu 9.10 switch from HAL (being deprecated) to DevKit. Hence, the HAL configurations explained underneath, fail to work.

The easiest way to configure your touchpad and trackpoint with DevKit is by using the [http://live.gnome.org/GPointingDeviceSettings GPointingDeviceSettings] panel that fully supports the hardware. You can easily download the panel by installing {{cmd| gpointing-device-settings|}}. On Ubuntu open a terminal and execute the command {{cmduser| sudo apt-get install gpointing-device-settings}}

Launch the UI through the {{cmduser| gpointing-device-settings}} command, but you can also add a menu entry to your System / Preferences menu for easier access to the UI panel.

= Configuration using udev and HAL =
Modern distributions like Ubuntu 8.10 and Fedora 10 use udev and HAL to configure the input devices. You should no longer make changes to xorg.conf as by default Xorg (through the evdev driver) will let the kernel now handle input devices.

But before you get started on this you should make sure you have all the updates applied from your distro vendor as both Ubuntu 8.10 and Fedora 10 require some additional fixes that you will need.

=== Scrolling ===

By default the middle mouse button is just that, a middle mouse button, which in Linux is used for the Paste operation.

You may configure it to act in the same way as in Windows, such that you can use it for vertical scrolling: keep the button pressed and move the TrackPoint up and down to scroll. (In GPointing Device Settings, this is known as "Use wheel emulation".)

'''Note:''' This setting is not compatible with using Alt + Middle Mouse Button to resize windows. If you want to resize windows with the trackpad, disable wheel emulation. On Ubuntu 11.10, this setting resides in <tt>/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/11-evdev-trackpoint.conf</tt> (see below), although some touchpads use <tt>/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf</tt>.

==== xorg.conf.d ====

Some distributions now support the new Xorg hotplug configuration method via xorg.conf.d directories (in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx) instead of hal. In contrast to the udev method below, it should be around for some time, so it might be the best way to “statically” configure scrolling.

Create the file {{path|/usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-thinkpad.conf}} as root with the following content:

<pre>
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "Trackpoint Wheel Emulation"
MatchProduct "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint|DualPoint Stick|Synaptics Inc. Composite TouchPad / TrackPoint|ThinkPad USB Keyboard with TrackPoint|USB Trackpoint pointing device|Composite TouchPad / TrackPoint"
MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
Option "EmulateWheel" "true"
Option "EmulateWheelButton" "2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "false"
Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7"
Option "YAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection
</pre>

Save and restart Xorg (or it'll be enabled at next reboot).

{{NOTE|For Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, the correct path is {{path|/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d}}}}
{{NOTE|For Arch Linux or Fedora or PCLinuxOS, the correct path is {{path|/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d}}}}

{{NOTE|If the above does not work for you, you may need to add a different MatchProduct string. Use <pre>find /dev/input/event* -exec udevadm info --attribute-walk --name={} \; | grep -e product -e name | sort -u</pre> to get a list of possibilities.}}

{{NOTE|If the above directory doesn't exist by default in your distribution, it probably doesn't support this method. In this case, please refer to the udev or xinput method below.}}

==== udev ====

Now that Xorg doesn't use the configuration from hal (in Debian unstable starting january 2010), the only way to “statically” configure scrolling in trackpoint is udev. (for other people, xinput method, works fine). This method will be gone (_again_) in not too long so it might be a better idea to use xinput way. YMMV.

Create the file {{path|/etc/udev/rules.d/99_trackpoint.rules}} as root with the following content:

<pre>
ACTION!="add|change", GOTO="xorg_trackpoint_end"
KERNEL!="event*", GOTO="xorg_trackpoint_end"

ENV{ID_PATH}!="platform-i8042-serio-1", GOTO="xorg_trackpoint_end"

ENV{x11_options.EmulateWheel}="1"
ENV{x11_options.EmulateWheelButton}="2"
ENV{x11_options.XAxisMapping}="6 7"
ENV{x11_options.Emulate3Buttons}="0"

LABEL="xorg_trackpoint_end"
</pre>

Save and restart udev then Xorg (or it'll be enabled at next reboot).

{{NOTE|The ID_PATH used in the example above is a typical value. To determine the ID_PATH appropriate to the TrackPoint on a specific model see [[#Determining TrackPoint Path ID|Determining TrackPoint Path ID]]}}

==== Hal (soon to be deprecated) ====

To accomplish this create the file {{path|/etc/hal/fdi/policy/mouse-wheel.fdi}} as root with the following content:

<pre>
<match key="info.product" string="TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint">
<merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheel" type="string">true</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheelButton" type="string">2</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.YAxisMapping" type="string">4 5</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.Emulate3Buttons" type="string">true</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheelTimeout" type="string">200</merge>
</match>
</pre>

If you also want to have horizontal scrolling, simply add the following XAxisMapping option to the above
<pre>
<merge key="input.x11_options.XAxisMapping" type="string">6 7</merge>
</pre>
After this reboot, or restart the hal service and Xorg. You can validate the settings with {{cmd|lshal|}}.

In some models (eg: X301 and X200 since Jan 10 2010 on debian sid) you may have to use "PS/2 Generic Mouse" instead of "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint". Have a look to your input devices typing <code>lshal|grep input.product</code>.

Alternatively it is also possible to use the "old" Xorg configuration by adding the following lines to the {{path|/etc/X11/xorg.conf}}:

<pre>
Section "ServerFlags"
Option "AutoAddDevices" "false"
EndSection
</pre>

Using this entry HAL will not be used for the input devices.

====Reactivate Scrolling after suspend/resume====
Scrolling may be disabled after a resume from suspend.

You can manually reactivate the trackpoint by reloading the {{path|psmouse}} module as root:
:{{cmdroot|rmmod psmouse && modprobe psmouse}}

You can automatically force the pm-utils to reload this module.
Create a file {{path|/etc/pm/config.d/01reload_mouse}} as root with the following content:
<pre>
# reload psmouse to reactivate trackpoint scrolling
SUSPEND_MODULES="${SUSPEND_MODULES:+$SUSPEND_MODULES }psmouse"
</pre>

===Configuring other options (e.g. Press to select, Sensitivity and Speed)===

Create a file {{path|/etc/udev/rules.d/10-trackpoint.rules}} and add a line to suit your needs

<pre>
SUBSYSTEM=="serio", DRIVERS=="psmouse", ATTRS{press_to_select}="1", ATTRS{sensitivity}="122"
</pre>

Testing udev with {{cmdroot|udevadm test /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1}} should apply the new changes. All of the settings listed [[How to configure the TrackPoint#Sysfs_Options_Reference|below]] can be specified here as part of a comma separated list.
The customized values should be loaded automatically when booting. However, due to a [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=549379 kernel bug] (affecting Lucid Lynx), the attributes may not yet exist when the udev rule fires. As a work around, add a WAIT_FOR condition on the attribute. In order to make sure you are using the right constraints (SUBSYSTEM, DRIVERS, etc), you can run {{cmdroot|udevadm info --query all --attribute-walk --path /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2}}.

<pre>
SUBSYSTEM=="serio", DRIVERS=="psmouse", WAIT_FOR="/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/sensitivity", ATTRS{sensitivity}="122"
</pre>

On my system (Lucid Lynx), the above line did not work. I changed it to:
<pre>
SUBSYSTEM=="serio", DRIVERS=="psmouse", WAIT_FOR="/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/sensitivity", ATTR{sensitivity}="255"
</pre>
and tested with {{cmdroot|udevadm test /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2}}.

On trusty, the following works for me:
<pre>
KERNEL=="serio2", SUBSYSTEM=="serio", DRIVERS=="psmouse", WAIT_FOR="/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/sensitivity", ATTR{sensitivity}="255"
</pre>

On xenial (16.04) the following line works for me (WAIT_FOR is not supported anymore):
<pre>
KERNEL=="serio2", SUBSYSTEM=="serio", DRIVERS=="psmouse", ATTR{sensitivity}:="255", ATTR{speed}:="255"
</pre>

To avoid the wait you can also listen for the Trackpoint input device to appear and then run a script to set the parameters

<pre>
SUBSYSTEM=="input", ATTR{name}=="*TrackPoint*", RUN+="/etc/conf.d/trackpoint"
</pre>

An example {{path|/etc/conf.d/trackpoint}} would be

<pre>#! /bin/bash

## Trackpoint settings

# When run from a udev rule, DEVPATH should be set
if [ ! -z $DEVPATH ] ; then
TPDEV=/sys/$( echo "$DEVPATH" | sed 's/\/input\/input[0-9]*//' )
else
# Otherwise just look in /sys/
TPDEV=$(find /sys/devices/platform/i8042 -name name | xargs grep -Fl TrackPoint | sed 's/\/input\/input[0-9]*\/name$//')
fi

# http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_configure_the_TrackPoint
# http://wwwcssrv.almaden.ibm.com/trackpoint/files/ykt3eext.pdf
#------------------------------------------------------------
if [ -d "$TPDEV" ]; then
echo "Configuring Trackpoint"
echo -n 255 > $TPDEV/sensitivity # Integer 128 Sensitivity
echo -n 110 > $TPDEV/speed # Integer 97 Cursor speed
echo -n 4 > $TPDEV/inertia # Integer 6 Negative intertia
else
echo "Couldn't find trackpoint device $TPDEV"
fi
</pre>

=Configuration using sysfs=
Another way to modify changes on the fly, is echoing values directly into special files in sysfs.

{{NOTE|
The examples shown below are valid for ThinkPads with both TrackPoint and Touchpad, in which case the sysfs path is {{path|/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2}}.

If however you have a ThinkPad without Touchpad, or with the Touchpad disabled in the BIOS, the sysfs path needs to be changed to {{path|/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1}} instead (notice the missing serio2 at the end).}}

If you want to set the sysfs parameters at boot, you can use the [http://linux-diag.sourceforge.net/Sysfsutils.html sysfsutils] and put the preferred value in /etc/sysfs.conf.

===Press to Select===
Press to Select allows you to tap the control stick which will simulate a left click. You can enable this feature by typing the following in to a terminal (you may need to be root):

:{{cmdroot|echo -n 1 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select}}

Press to Select should now be enabled. You can disable it in a similar manner:

:{{cmdroot|echo -n 0 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select}}

You can use this script to automate the operation

#!/bin/bash
if [ "$1" = "1" ]; then
echo "Turning on tap on TrackPoint"
echo -n 1 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select
exit 0
fi
if [ "$1" = "0" ]; then
echo "Turning off tap on TrackPoint"
echo -n 0 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select
exit 0
fi
echo -n "Tap status: "
cat /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select

In Ubuntu 8.10 to make Press to Select a permanent change:

echo -n 1 | tee /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select

As root, append the above command above "exit 0" in /etc/gdm/Init/Default

===Sensitivity & Speed===
Adjusting the speed and sensitivity of the TrackPoint requires echoing a value between 0 and 255 into the appropriate file. For example, for a speed of 120 and a sensitivity of 250, type the following into a terminal:

:{{cmdroot|echo -n 120 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/speed}}
:{{cmdroot|echo -n 250 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/sensitivity}}

Alternatively, on my ThinkPad T420s, the correct commands are:

:{{cmdroot|echo -n 120 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/speed}}
:{{cmdroot|echo -n 250 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/sensitivity}}

Feel free to experiment with your settings until you find a combination that is comfortable.

When you satisfy your setting, add the two lines into /etc/rc.d/rc.local in order to avoid restoring the default setting every time the system reboots. In Ubuntu 9.10, add the lines to /etc/rc.local to avoid this.

===Vertical Scrolling===
No sysfs entry exists for vertical scrolling in kernels after 2.6.11.

The feature was removed as it was not a hardware feature, but rather emulating a scroll action in software and as such did not belong in the kernel.
Instead the scroll feature of the Xserver should be used, which can be activated with HAL or xinput as described above.

=Configuration using the X server (xorg.conf)=
==Using the "evdev" driver (preferred, especially for recent Xorg versions)==
Extract from /etc/X11/xorg.conf on an X31:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"
Driver "evdev"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/by-path/platform-i8042-serio-1-event-mouse"
Option "GrabDevice" "False"
Option "EmulateWheel" "true" #Enable wheel emulation for the Trackpoint
Option "EmulateWheelButton" "2" #Use the middle button for the emulation
Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7" #Map trackpoint X axis to X axis of emulated wheel
Option "YAxisMapping" "4 5" #Map trackpoint Y axis to Y axis of emulated wheel
EndSection

{{NOTE|The device path used in the example above is a typical value. To determine the device path appropriate to the TrackPoint on a specific model see [[#Determining TrackPoint Path ID|Determining TrackPoint Path ID]]}}

==Using the "mouse" driver (deprecated, only for old Xorg versions)==
{{NOTE|This only applies to old distributions with Xorg versions that did not yet use evdev. For modern distributions use one of the other methods}}
The scroll setting has been removed from the trackpoint driver in kernel versions 2.6.11 and above. Scroll emulation should now be handled in the X server.

A nice side effect of that is, that middle button scrolling applies to any mouse and not just the TrackPoint interface, which can be a quite handy feature for desktop computers or people who prefer to use an external mouse, especially when scrolling through long lists or needing to use horizontal scrolling with a mouse which has only a vertical scroll wheel.

The necessary functionality, known as "EmulateWheelTimeout" allowing to use button 2 for a middle click, wasn't implemented in Xorg prior to 6.9/7.0. However, there was a patch included in most distributions packages of Xorg, which was announced [http://www.mail-archive.com/devel@xfree86.org/msg03333.html here]. You can find an updated version of the package in the experimental branch of {{Debian}} or try to build the mouse driver yourself with the information in the announcement. This has successfully been tried with FC3's 6.8.2 packages.

Once this functionality is in the X.org, add these lines to your TrackPoint configuration section in {{path|/etc/X11/xorg.conf}}:

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

It may also be necessary to add these lines:

Option "YAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7"

which specify which buttons are mapped to motion in the vertical (Y) and horizontal (X) directions, respectively, in wheel emulation mode (see http://www.xfree86.org/current/mouse.4.html).

{{HINT| Use the program "xev" to see, what mouse button identifiers are sent by your mouse/touchpad/trackpoint. You might want to try: "xev | grep button"}}
{{HINT| If it does not work see if evdev is installed and remove it. On gentoo do the following: 
eix xf86-input-evdev 
emerge -C xf86-input-evdev 
and then remove the evdev flag in make.conf INPUT_DEVICES}}

So, a complete mouse section, that implements this nicely and works very well on my R51, even with a simultaneously connected USB mouse, looks like that (tried out today, 20th of September, 2006 on Dapper):

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "on"
Option "Emulate3TimeOut" "50"
Option "EmulateWheel" "on"
Option "EmulateWheelTimeOut" "200"
Option "EmulateWheelButton" "2"
Option "YAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

The mappings for Y and Z are the same, since the "Z-Axis" refers to actual hardware scrolling wheels which usually scroll the screen along the Y-Axis. If there is no hardware scrolling wheel present, horizontal and vertical scrolling using the TrackPoint work fine without the Z-Axis line.

Now restart X and hold down button 2 and move the mouse to scroll, or just press and release button 2 for a middle click.

To make this work with the synaptics driver for the touchpad, you can add
Option "GuestMouseOff" "1"
to the synaptics device section. This will make the synaptics driver ignore the Trackpoint, so it will be handled by the mouse driver. This allowed me to disable the touchpad while making the TrackPoint work like it should.

{{NOTE| With the above mouse section in my xorg.conf all this works like a charm:
*I can press the wheel on my external USB mouse and move the mouse up and down for scrolling
*or I can just use the wheel on the external mouse for scrolling
*or pressing the MMB button of the trackpoint and use the trackpoint for scrolling.
*Even horizontal scrolling works automagically in Konqueror, for Firefox/Opera see below.

Simultaneously I can use
*a press on the external mouse's wheel
*or the MMB of the trackpoint

for pasting the buffer. Lovely! :) }}

{{HINT| If you don't use the middle-mouse-button for pasting and sometimes pasting things by mistake while scrolling (witch is really odd) simply set the "EmulateWheelTimeOut" to "1" as a (bloody) workaround. Middle click will only possible with pressing left and right button simultaneously!}}

=Application specific tweaks=
===Configure Opera for using trackpoint horizontal scrolling===
To fix horizontal scrolling in Opera, you need to edit the configfile <tt>standard_mouse.ini</tt> in e.g. /usr/share/opera/ui/ (Debian) or /opt/opera/share/opera/ini/ (Gentoo) and comment out the following lines
<pre>
Button6 = Back
Button7 = Forward
</pre>
so they look like that
<pre>
;Button6 = Back
;Button7 = Forward
</pre>
Remember, Button6 and Button7 do not so coincidental correspond with our X configuration we know from above:
<pre>
Option "YAxisMapping" "6 7"
</pre>
After this change you will be able to scroll vertically and horizontally with your middle button.

===Firefox 3 tweaks===
These settings make Firefox on Linux behave more like the Windows version. They were tested on an out of the box Fedora 10 system on a Thinkpad T61. Go into about:config, and set the following:

middlemouse.paste = false
middlemouse.contentLoadURL = false
general.autoScroll = true

=Sysfs Options Reference=
{{NOTE|These options are current as of kernel version 2.6.29, 3 May 2009}}
{|
|-
! Name
! Type
! Default
! Notes
|-
| sensitivity
| Integer
| 128
| Sensitivity
|-
| speed
| Integer
| 97
| Cursor speed
|-
| inertia
| Integer
| 6
| Described as "negative inertia." It acts more like friction. High values cause the cursor to snap backward when the Trackpoint is released
|-
| reach
| Integer
| 10
| Backup for Z-axis press
|-
| draghys
| Integer
| 255
| Drag hysteresis (how hard it is to drag with Z-axis pressed)
|-
| mindrag
| Integer
| 20
| Minimum amount of force needed to trigger dragging
|-
| thresh
| Integer
| 8
| Minimum value for a Z-axis press
|-
| upthresh
| Integer
| 255
| Used to generate a 'click' on Z-axis
|-
| ztime
| Integer
| 38
| How sharp of a press
|-
| jenks
| Integer
| 135
| Minimum curvature for double click
|-
| press_to_select
| Boolean
| 0
| Press to select
|-
| skipback
| Boolean
| 0
| Supress movement after drag release
|-
| ext_dev
| Boolean
| 0
| Disable external device
|}
Table info taken from [http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=blob;f=drivers/input/mouse/trackpoint.h;hb=HEAD here]. The given link will always point to the current version of the driver. If the notes seem sparse, that's because the code is sparse. On the other hand, the [http://wwwcssrv.almaden.ibm.com/trackpoint/files/ykt3eext.pdf Trackpoint Engineering Specification Version 4.0]  contains more documentation information than anyone ever desired.

=Determining TrackPoint Path ID=
Both the [[#udev|udev]] and [[#Configuration using the X server (xorg.conf)|xorg.conf]] configuration methods require knowledge of the Path ID of the TrackPoint. In the [[#udev|udev]] configuration method, the Path ID is used to match the ID_PATH environmental variable, in the [[#Configuration using the X server (xorg.conf)|xorg.conf]] configuration method it is the prefix for the device file name inside the {{path|/dev/input/by-id}} directory. The path ID can vary between ThinkPad models, distributions (with varying kernel patches), and between kernel versions. One way to find the path ID for the TrackPoint is to use udev's path_id utility on the sysfs device path for the TrackPoint. This device path can be found using the {{path|name}} file which describes the TrackPoint. The process can be automated using the following shell command:
/lib/udev/path_id $(find /sys/devices/platform/i8042 -name name | xargs grep -Fl TrackPoint | sed 's/\/sys$.*$\/name/\1/')

BIOS Upgrade/X Series

2011-04-28T21:20:36Z

Trmsw: /* Approach 10A: Booting an ISO image using Grub and Syslinux for X61 */

__TOC__

X Series Thinkpads do not have internal optical or floppy drives. If there is no Windows installed, the BIOS must be updated by booting from an USB drive or a drive that is integrated in the docking station. In recent times Lenovo provides BIOS updates in form of bootable CD images. Unfortunately, in most cases these images are intended to be used with the docking station's CD drive. If you do not own such a drive, things get complicated.

The problem is that current BIOS updates are quite large, about 3 MB in size. Booting from CDs typically works like booting from a 1.44 MB or 2.88 MB floppy disk. The floppy image is stored on the CD and is referenced in the CD's boot record. Because the BIOS update files are that large, they do not fit on such a floppy image. To resolve it, you have to either use a large harddisk image for your bootimage (e.g. in [[:Category:X200|X200]], [[:Category:X200_Tablet|X200 Tablet]] and [[:Category:X301|X301]]), or store these update files on the CD outside the virtual floppy image. For the former case, see [[BIOS update without optical disk]]. This page concerns with the later case.

To access the BIOS update files on the CD outside the bootimage, a driver for the CD drive has to be loaded. Since Lenovo's CD images are intended to be used with a docking station's CD drive, it is not possible to use them for BIOS updates by booting from an USB CD drive.

Another problem is that older X Series (like the {{X32}}) don't have bootable iso images at all. They have only two options: 1. update from Windows, 2. update using a diskette updater, which requires you to have a real floppy disk drive.

But there is hope. This page describes some approaches to solve the problems above.

Here is a brief overview of each approach:
* [[#Approach 1: Use larger boot image and create virtual CD drive]] Requires a USB CD drive. Reported to work on {{X60s}}.

* [[#Approach 2: Load an USB driver, create RAM disk and copy the files to the RAM disk]] Requires a USB CD drive. People have reported mixed results, with the flash update software freezing, depending on things like CD drive letter and type. Reported to work on {{X60s}}.

* [[#Approach 3: Alternative method using a USB stick]] Requires a USB flash drive, Microsoft Windows, and some HP software tool. Reported to work on {{X60s}}, {{X61}}.

* [[#Approach 4: Alternative method to the above "alternative method"]] Requires a USB flash drive, Microsoft Windows, and some HP software tool. Seems functionally similar to Approach 3.

* [[#Approach 5: Free Alternative method to the above "alternative method"]] Requires a USB flash drive, does not require MS Windows or any proprietary software.

* [[#Approach 6: Using a USB stick to upgrade BIOS on older X Series Thinkpads]] Requires a USB flash drive. Reported to work on {{X32}}.

* [[#Approach 7: Use syslinux to boot floppy images which are part of the IBM/ Lenovo BIOS update CD ISO files.]] Done with a {{X31}} to upgrade the EC to version 1.08 and the BIOS to 3.02.

= Approach 1: Use larger boot image and create virtual CD drive =

The CD images provided by Lenovo can be modified such that a BIOS update is possible -- without loading any drivers. I ([[User:Joachim_Selke|Joachim Selke]]) successfully updated my Thinkpad {{X60s}} using the following method.

My first idea was to take Lenovo's ISO CD image and modify it such that a USB CD drive can be used instead the CD drive in the docking station. Unfortunately, simply replacing the drivers is not enough. While doing the BIOS update, the USB ports seem to get disabled or something like that. To circumvent this problem I tried to create a RAM disk, copy the needed files to this RAM disk, and then use this RAM disk as some kind of virtual CD drive. However, there were some problems with this approach as reported below. For a description of this old approach see the section "Approach 2: Load an USB driver, create RAM disk and copy the files to the RAM disk" below. I developed a new approach to solve this problem and will describe it here.

The idea is to create a new bootable ISO image that is large enough to hold the original ISO file. This can be done by switching from the virtual floppy drive used by Lenovo's update disk to a virtual hard disk drive (for details, see the El Torito standard). Instead of loading the CD drive driver provided by Lenovo we load the [[http://www.oocities.com/jadoxa/shsucdx/index.html SHSUCD drivers]]. This driver enables us to create a virtual CD drive from Lenovo's original ISO file.

I wrote a script to automate this steps and create a new ISO file from Lenovo's ISO file. This new ISO file can directly be used to update the BIOS. My script takes four arguments:
<ol>
<li>the filename of Lenovo's original ISO file (e.g. <tt>/home/selke/Desktop/7buj23uc.iso</tt>)</li>
<li>the filename of the new ISO file to be created (e.g. <tt>/home/selke/Desktop/out.iso</tt>)</li>
<li>the location of shsucdrd.exe (e.g. <tt>/home/selke/Desktop/shsucdrd.exe</tt></li>
<li>the location of shsucdx.com (e.g. <tt>/home/selke/Desktop/shsucdx.com</tt></li>
</ol>

Both shsucdrd.exe and shsucdx.com can be downloaded from [http://www.oocities.com/jadoxa/shsucdx/index.html].

To sum up, an example call of the script would be <tt>convertlenovo.sh /home/selke/Desktop/7buj23uc.iso /home/selke/Desktop/out.iso /home/selke/Desktop/shsucdrd.exe /home/selke/Desktop/shsucdx.com</tt>

Note that you need recent versions of the following tools:
<ul>
<li>mkdosfs (for Fedora users: contained in the package dosfstools)</li>
<li>mkisofs</li>
</ul>

The script runs perfectly on my Fedora 11 system (it should also run without problems on Fedora 7, 8, 9, 10 and other popular distributions). If there are problems, please tell me ([[User:Joachim_Selke|Joachim Selke]]).

Further note that the script at some point requires you to enter the root password since it must mount a disk image. As far as I know, this cannot be done without root privileges.

What does the script do? I will give a short overview:
<ol>
<li>Extract the boot floppy image from Lenovo's bootable ISO file.</li>
<li>Create a new boot hard disk image and copy both the boot sector and the files from Lenovo's boot floppy image to the new image.</li>
<li>Copy Lenovo's ISO image to the new hard disk image.</li>
<li>Also copy the SHSUCD drivers to the hard disk and change autoexec.bat and config.sys accordingly. When booting this hard disk image a new virtual CD drive will be created by SHSUCD. This virtual CD drive will have Lenovo's original ISO disc "inserted."</li>
<li>Create a new ISO file that only consists of the boot image given by the bootable hard disk image just created.</li>
</ol>

Some additional notes:
<ul>
<li>Currently, the script is not able to handle spaces in file names properly. Thus, the file names and directory path names used when calling the script should not contain spaces.</li>
<li>The file name of the original ISO file (7buj23uc.iso in the example above) must follow the DOS 8.3 file name conventions; otherwise SHSUCD will not be able to load the ISO image.</li>
</ul>

Here is the complete script (save it as <tt>convertlenovo.sh</tt>):

<pre>
#!/bin/bash

# Written by Joachim Selke (mail@joachim-selke.de), 2007-12-28

# Known bugs:
# - spaces in file names make trouble at the moment (so try to avoid spaces),
# I will fix that later
# - some users seem to have problems with some of the sed statements,
# I currently have no idea what is wrong there ... (please report those bugs)

CDIMAGE=$1 # location of Lenovo's CD image
NEWCDIMAGE=$2 # filename of ISO file to create
SHSUCDRD_EXE=$3 # location of shsucdrd.exe
SHSUCDX_COM=$4 # location of shsucdx.com

MB_HDD=50 # HDD image size in megabyte (base 1000)

TMPDIR=`mktemp -d`
ISODIR=`mktemp -d`

HDDIMG=$ISODIR/hdd.img # filename of HDD image to create
FLOPPYIMG=$TMPDIR/floppy.img # filename of floppy image to create

##############################################################################

# This script extracts the floopy boot image from bootable ISO images
#
# Written by Joachim Selke (mail@joachim-selke.de), 2007-04-07

ISOFILE=$CDIMAGE
IMAGEFILE=$FLOPPYIMG

if [ ! -r $ISOFILE ]; then
echo $ISOFILE: file does not exist or is not readable
exit 1
fi

if [ -z $IMAGEFILE ]; then
echo Error: no image file specified
exit 1
fi

ISOFILESIZE=`stat -c %s $ISOFILE`

# collect El Torito data
# see http://www.phoenix.com/NR/rdonlyres/98D3219C-9CC9-4DF5-B496-A286D893E36A/0/specscdrom.pdf for reference

BOOTCATALOGPOINTERBYTE=$((17 * 0x800 + 0x47))

if [ $ISOFILESIZE -lt $(($BOOTCATALOGPOINTERBYTE + 4)) ]; then
echo ISO file is too short, possibly damaged
exit 1
fi

# absolute pointer to first sector of boot catalog:
BOOTCATALOG=`od -A n -t x4 -N 4 -j $BOOTCATALOGPOINTERBYTE $ISOFILE | tr -d [:blank:]`

BOOTCATALOGBYTE=$((0x$BOOTCATALOG * 0x800))

echo Boot catalog starts at byte $BOOTCATALOGBYTE

if [ $ISOFILESIZE -lt $(($BOOTCATALOGBYTE + 32 + 2)) ]; then
echo ISO file is too short, possibly damaged
exit 1
fi

# media type of boot image
# only floppy disk images are supported by this script
BOOTMEDIATYPE=`od -A n -t x1 -N 1 -j $(($BOOTCATALOGBYTE + 32 + 1)) $ISOFILE | tr -d [:blank:]`

if [ $BOOTMEDIATYPE -eq 1 ]; then
echo Boot media type is 1.2M floppy disk
IMAGEBLOCKS=$((1200 / 2))
elif [ $BOOTMEDIATYPE -eq 2 ]; then
echo Boot media type is 1.44M floppy disk
IMAGEBLOCKS=$((1440 / 2))
elif [ $BOOTMEDIATYPE -eq 3 ]; then
echo Boot media type is 2.88M floppy disk
IMAGEBLOCKS=$((2880 / 2))
else
echo Boot media type is $((0x$BOOTMEDIATYPE)). This type is not supported yet.
exit 1
fi

# absolute pointer to start of boot image
BOOTIMAGE=`od -A n -t x4 -N 4 -j $(($BOOTCATALOGBYTE + 32 + 8)) $ISOFILE | tr -d [:blank:]`

BOOTIMAGEBYTE=$((0x$BOOTIMAGE * 0x800))

echo Boot image starts at byte $BOOTIMAGEBYTE

if [ $ISOFILESIZE -lt $((0x$BOOTIMAGE * 0x800 + $IMAGEBLOCKS * 0x800)) ]; then
echo ISO file is too short, possibly damaged
exit 1
fi

echo Extracting boot image ...

dd if=$ISOFILE of=$IMAGEFILE bs=2K count=$IMAGEBLOCKS skip=$((0x$BOOTIMAGE))

echo Finished

##############################################################################

NO_HEA=16 # heads
NO_SECT=63 # sectors per cylinder/track
B_SECT=512 # bytes per sector

B_CYL=$(($NO_HEA * $NO_SECT * $B_SECT)) # bytes per cylinder/track

NO_CYL=$(($MB_HDD * 1000 * 1000 / $B_CYL)) # cylinders/tracks per head

echo -n -e "Cylinders: $NO_CYL\nHeads: $NO_HEA\nSectors per track: $NO_SECT\nBytes per sector: $B_SECT\n"

echo Creating empty image ...
dd if=/dev/zero of=$HDDIMG bs=$B_CYL count=$NO_CYL >/dev/null 2>&1

echo Creating partition structure ...
echo -n -e "o\n n\n p\n 1\n \n \n t\n 6\n a\n 1\n w\n" | /sbin/fdisk -b $B_SECT -C $NO_CYL -H $NO_HEA -S $NO_SECT $HDDIMG >/dev/null 2>&1

echo Writing master boot record ...
echo -n -e "\
\xFA\xB8\x00\x10\x8E\xD0\xBC\x00\xB0\xB8\x00\x00\x8E\xD8\x8E\xC0\
\xFB\xBE\x00\x7C\xBF\x00\x06\xB9\x00\x02\xF3\xA4\xEA\x21\x06\x00\
\x00\xBE\xBE\x07\x38\x04\x75\x0B\x83\xC6\x10\x81\xFE\xFE\x07\x75\
\xF3\xEB\x16\xB4\x02\xB0\x01\xBB\x00\x7C\xB2\x80\x8A\x74\x01\x8B\
\x4C\x02\xCD\x13\xEA\x00\x7C\x00\x00\xEB\xFE\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x52\xF9\x06\x00\x00\x00\
" | dd of=$HDDIMG bs=1 conv=notrunc >/dev/null 2>&1

echo Creating primary partition ...
# extract partition, create FAT16 filesystem and copy back
PARTFILE=${HDDIMG}-PARTITION
SECT_PARTTABLE=$NO_SECT
B_PARTTABLE=$(($SECT_PARTTABLE * $B_SECT))
dd if=$HDDIMG of=$PARTFILE bs=$B_SECT skip=$SECT_PARTTABLE >/dev/null 2>&1
/sbin/mkdosfs -F 16 -h $NO_SECT $PARTFILE
# Correct physical drive number (set to 0x00, should be 0x80)
echo -n -e "\x80" | dd of=$PARTFILE bs=1 seek=36 conv=notrunc >/dev/null 2>&1
# Correct sectors per track (set to 0x0020, should be $NO_SECT)
NO_SECT_HEX1=$(echo "ibase=10; obase=16; $(($NO_SECT / 256))" | bc)
NO_SECT_HEX2=$(echo "ibase=10; obase=16; $(($NO_SECT % 256))" | bc)
NO_SECT_HEX=$(echo -n -e "\\x$NO_SECT_HEX2\\x$NO_SECT_HEX1")
echo -n -e $NO_SECT_HEX | dd of=$PARTFILE bs=1 seek=24 conv=notrunc >/dev/null 2>&1
dd if=$PARTFILE of=$HDDIMG bs=$B_SECT seek=$SECT_PARTTABLE >/dev/null 2>&1
rm -f $PARTFILE

# transfer floppy boot sector code
B_BOOTSECPARAM=62 # length of parameter block in boot sector
B_BOOTSECCODE=$(($B_SECT - B_BOOTSECPARAM)) # length of code block in boot sector
echo Copying boot sector ...
dd if=$FLOPPYIMG of=$HDDIMG bs=1 count=$B_BOOTSECCODE skip=$B_BOOTSECPARAM seek=$(($B_PARTTABLE + $B_BOOTSECPARAM)) conv=notrunc >/dev/null 2>&1

echo Copying DOS files ...
CDIMAGE_BASENAME=$(basename $CDIMAGE)
HDDDIR=$TMPDIR/hdd
FLOPPYDIR=$TMPDIR/floppy
su --command="\
mkdir $HDDDIR;\
mkdir $FLOPPYDIR;\
mount -oloop $FLOPPYIMG $FLOPPYDIR;\
mount -t msdos -oloop,offset=$(($SECT_PARTTABLE * $B_SECT)) $HDDIMG $HDDDIR;\
cp --preserve $FLOPPYDIR/ibmbio.com $HDDDIR;\
cp --preserve $FLOPPYDIR/ibmdos.com $HDDDIR;\
cp --preserve -u $FLOPPYDIR/* $HDDDIR;\
cp --preserve=timestamps $CDIMAGE $HDDDIR;\
cp --preserve=timestamps $SHSUCDRD_EXE $HDDDIR;\
cp --preserve=timestamps $SHSUCDX_COM $HDDDIR;\
cat $FLOPPYDIR/config.sys | \
sed -e 's/A:\\\/C:\\\/' | \
grep -v IBMTPCD.SYS >$HDDDIR/config.sys;\
cat $FLOPPYDIR/autoexec.bat | \
sed -e 's/LOADHIGH MSCDEX.EXE \/D:TPCD001/shsucdrd.exe \/f:$CDIMAGE_BASENAME\r\nshsucdx.com \/d:SHSU-CDR,R/' >$HDDDIR/autoexec.bat;\
umount $FLOPPYDIR;\
umount $HDDDIR;\
rm -rf $FLOPPYDIR;\
rm -rf $HDDDIR"

echo Creating ISO image ...
mkisofs -input-charset default -hard-disk-boot -b $(basename $HDDIMG) -hide boot.cat -hide $(basename $HDDIMG) -o $NEWCDIMAGE $ISODIR

rm -rf $TMPDIR
rm -rf $ISODIR

echo Completed!
</pre>

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. :-)

BTW: It would be much simpler if I simply could put the new ISO images for download somewhere. But I guess for legal reasons this will not be possible.

== Comments on Approach 1 ==

<ul>

<li>
Reported to work on:
<ul>
<li>ThinkPad X60s (1702-55G) with Plextor PX-608CU USB DVD recorder</li>
<li>ThinkPad X60 (1702-55G) with Plextor PX-608CU USB DVD recorder, upgraded BIOS from version 2.14 to 2.16</li>
<li>ThinkPad X60 (1706-GMG) with Plextor PX-608CU USB DVD recorder, upgraded BIOS from version 2.03 to 2.14</li>
<li>ThinkPad X61s (7666-36G) with Freecom FS-50 USB DVD recorder, upgraded BIOS from version 1.10 to 2.07</li>
<li>ThinkPad X300 (6476-CTO) with Nu SBW-242US USB DVD recorder, upgraded BIOS from 1.05 to 1.08</li>
<li>Thinkpad X60s (1704-44U) with Lite-On DX-20A3H, upgraded BIOS from 2.17 to 2.18</li>
<li>ThinkPad X61s (7666-36G) with Samsung SE-S224 USB DVD recorder, upgraded BIOS from version 2.07 to 2.20</li>
</ul>
</li>

</ul>

= Approach 2: Load an USB driver, create RAM disk and copy the files to the RAM disk =

I ([[User:Joachim_Selke | Joachim Selke]]) successfully updated my Thinkpad {{X60s}} using the following method.

My first idea was to take Lenovo's ISO CD image and modify it such that a USB CD drive can be used instead the CD drive in the docking station. Unfortunately, simply replacing the drivers is not enough. While doing the BIOS update, the USB ports seem to get disabled or something like that. To circumvent this problem I tried to create a RAM disk, copy the needed files to this RAM disk, and then use this RAM disk as some kind of virtual CD drive. However, there were some problems with this approach as reported below.

<ol>
<li>
Download the ISO image style BIOS update from Lenovo's website. This file will be refered to as <tt>/tmp/bios-lenovo.iso</tt>.
</li>

<li>
Extract the floppy image from this ISO image. You can use the following shell script for this task (or an alternative one from [http://userpages.uni-koblenz.de/~krienke/ftp/noarch/geteltorito/]). Simply save this code into the file <tt>/tmp/extractbootimage.sh</tt>, set the x-flag (<tt>chmod +x /tmp/extractbootimage.sh</tt>) and call it using the command <tt>/tmp/extractbootimage.sh /tmp/bios-lenovo.iso /tmp/bios-lenovo.img</tt>. The floppy image contained in the ISO image will then be saved to <tt>/tmp/bios-lenovo.img</tt>. Here is the code of the shell script:
<pre>
#!/bin/bash

# This script extracts the floopy boot image from bootable ISO images
#
# Written by Joachim Selke (mail@joachim-selke.de), 2007-04-07

ISOFILE=$1
IMAGEFILE=$2

if [ ! -r $ISOFILE ]; then
echo $ISOFILE: file does not exist or is not readable
exit 1
fi

if [ -z $IMAGEFILE ]; then
echo Error: no image file specified
exit 1
fi

ISOFILESIZE=`stat -c %s $ISOFILE`

# collect El Torito data
# see http://www.phoenix.com/NR/rdonlyres/98D3219C-9CC9-4DF5-B496-A286D893E36A/0/specscdrom.pdf for reference

BOOTCATALOGPOINTERBYTE=$((17 * 0x800 + 0x47))

if [ $ISOFILESIZE -lt $(($BOOTCATALOGPOINTERBYTE + 4)) ]; then
echo ISO file is too short, possibly damaged
exit 1
fi

# absolute pointer to first sector of boot catalog:
BOOTCATALOG=`od -A n -t x4 -N 4 -j $BOOTCATALOGPOINTERBYTE $ISOFILE | tr -d [:blank:]`

BOOTCATALOGBYTE=$((0x$BOOTCATALOG * 0x800))

echo Boot catalog starts at byte $BOOTCATALOGBYTE

if [ $ISOFILESIZE -lt $(($BOOTCATALOGBYTE + 32 + 2)) ]; then
echo ISO file is too short, possibly damaged
exit 1
fi

# media type of boot image
# only floppy disk images are supported by this script
BOOTMEDIATYPE=`od -A n -t x1 -N 1 -j $(($BOOTCATALOGBYTE + 32 + 1)) $ISOFILE | tr -d [:blank:]`

if [ $BOOTMEDIATYPE -eq 1 ]; then
echo Boot media type is 1.2M floppy disk
IMAGEBLOCKS=$((1200 / 2))
elif [ $BOOTMEDIATYPE -eq 2 ]; then
echo Boot media type is 1.44M floppy disk
IMAGEBLOCKS=$((1440 / 2))
elif [ $BOOTMEDIATYPE -eq 3 ]; then
echo Boot media type is 2.88M floppy disk
IMAGEBLOCKS=$((2880 / 2))
else
echo Boot media type is $((0x$BOOTMEDIATYPE)). This type is not supported yet.
exit 1
fi

# absolute pointer to start of boot image
BOOTIMAGE=`od -A n -t x4 -N 4 -j $(($BOOTCATALOGBYTE + 32 + 8)) $ISOFILE | tr -d [:blank:]`

BOOTIMAGEBYTE=$((0x$BOOTIMAGE * 0x800))

echo Boot image starts at byte $BOOTIMAGEBYTE

if [ $ISOFILESIZE -lt $((0x$BOOTIMAGE * 0x800 + $IMAGEBLOCKS * 0x800)) ]; then
echo ISO file is too short, possibly damaged
exit 1
fi

echo Extracting boot image ...

dd if=$ISOFILE of=$IMAGEFILE bs=2K count=$IMAGEBLOCKS skip=$((0x$BOOTIMAGE))

echo Finished
</pre>
</li>

<li>
Mount the floppy image '''as root''' using the loop device:
:{{cmdroot|mkdir /tmp/bios-lenovo.img-mnt}}
:{{cmdroot|mount -o loop /tmp/bios-lenovo.img /tmp/bios-lenovo.img-mnt}}
The image is now mounted as <tt>/tmp/bios-lenovo.img-mnt</tt>.
</li>

<li>
Download needed drivers. First download some [http://panasonic.co.jp/pcc/products/drive/other/driver/f2h_usb.exe USB drivers] from Panasonic Japan. Save the file to <tt>/tmp/f2h_usb.exe</tt> This file is a self-extracting EXE file, that can be executed under Linux using [http://www.winehq.com/ Wine]:
:{{cmduser|wine /tmp/f2h_usb.exe}}
You will be asked where to save the extracted files. Choose <tt>/tmp</tt>. A new directory <tt>/tmp/F2h</tt> containing the needed drivers will be created.

Additionally, you will need drivers for the RAM disk mentioned. Download them from the [http://sourceforge.net/projects/srdisk ReSizeable RAMDisk project]. Unzip them to <tt>/tmp/srdisk</tt>.
</li>

<li>
Let's modify the floppy image:
:{{cmduser|cp /tmp/F2h/Usbaspi.sys /tmp/bios-lenovo.img-mnt/}}
:{{cmduser|cp /tmp/F2h/USBCD.SYS /tmp/bios-lenovo.img-mnt/}}
:{{cmduser|cp /tmp/F2h/RAMFD.SYS /tmp/bios-lenovo.img-mnt/}}
:{{cmduser|cp /tmp/srdisk/srdxms.sys /tmp/bios-lenovo.img-mnt/}}
:{{cmduser|cp /tmp/srdisk/srdisk.exe /tmp/bios-lenovo.img-mnt/}}
Now add the following lines to <tt>/tmp/bios-lenovo.img-mnt/config.sys</tt> replacing the line <tt>DEVICE = A:\IBMTPCD.SYS /R /C</tt>:
<pre>
DEVICE = A:\SRDXMS.SYS
DEVICE = A:\RAMFD.SYS
DEVICE = A:\USBASPI.SYS /V
DEVICE = A:\USBCD.SYS /D:TPCD001
</pre>
Finally, edit the file <tt>/tmp/bios-lenovo.img-mnt/autoexec.bat</tt> replacing the last line (saying <tt>COMMAND.COM</tt>) by the following:
<pre>
A:\SRDISK 10000
COPY *.* D:
D:
COMMAND.COM
</pre>

Maybe the RAM disk gets a drive letter different from D: on your system. In this case, you have to change the above lines accordingly.
</li>

<li>
Unmount the floppy image (as root):
:{{cmdroot|umount /tmp/bios-lenovo.img-mnt}}
</li>

<li>
Copy the content of the original CD image to a new directory and create a new ISO file:
:{{cmdroot|mkdir /tmp/bios-lenovo.iso-mnt}}
:{{cmdroot|mount -o loop /tmp/bios-lenovo.iso /tmp/bios-lenovo.iso-mnt}}
:{{cmduser|mkdir /tmp/bios-new.iso-mnt}}
:{{cmduser|cp /tmp/bios-lenovo.iso-mnt/* /tmp/bios-new.iso-mnt}}
:{{cmduser|cp /tmp/bios-lenovo.img /tmp/bios-new.iso-mnt/boot.img}}
:{{cmdroot|umount /tmp/bios-lenovo.iso-mnt}}
:{{cmduser|mkisofs -relaxed-filenames -b boot.img -o /tmp/bios-new.iso /tmp/bios-new.iso-mnt/}}
</li>

<li>
The file <tt>/tmp/bios-new.iso</tt> is the modified ISO file. Just burn it to CD and use this CD for updating your BIOS (boot from it using your USB drive). Please give some comments here if it worked for you.
</li>

</ol>

== Comments on Approach 2 ==

<ul>

<li>
I have followed your excellent instructions. The CD booted, the update program ran but stopped working and responding while updating. Luckily the BIOS was not destroyed. Since destroying the BIOS is a very high risk, I am going to recover the original Windows on an old HD and will run the update exe update program from there.
</li>

<li>
I followed these clear instructions, and like the comment above I ended up with a CD that booted but the update program stopped working and responding. An ALT-CTRL-DELETE rebooted my x60s, and it works so the BIOS must not have been damaged. I was trying to upgrade from version 2.08 to 2.11, I wonder if these instructions are somehow particular to certain versions?
[[User:Latch|Latch]] 01:22, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
</li>

<li>
After following the above instructions, the program also stopped working while updating the BIOS. But after changing the drive letter from D: to C: (see code below), it everything worked fine. However, I had some trouble figuring out, which letter to choose over D: at first, as the BIOS Upgrade program started right away.

<pre>
A:\SRDISK 10000
COPY *.* C:
C:
COMMAND.COM
</pre>
[[User:Mtx|Mtx]], 1 August 2007, Thinkpad X61s
</li>

<li>
Flashing the bios (2.12) works for me on a X60s (using drive c). Using the DVD-R on an USB-Hub did not work. [[User:Ra|Ra]] 00:15, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
</li>

<li>
Flashing BIOS 2.14 works for me on a X60s (using drive c). 25-02-2008
</li>

</ul>

= Approach 3: Alternative method using a USB stick =

''Note: none of the above methods worked on my X60s. This method worked for me, however.'' [[User:PhilipPaeps|PhilipPaeps]] 16:41, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

This method was surprisingly painless once I convinced my ThinkPad X60s to boot DOS from a USB stick. I used VMWare and some mystical tool to get DOS on the stick. If you can find another way to get a bootable DOS stick, please update this section!

* Tell VMWare to create a virtual floppy image for you and format it under Microsoft Windows and tell it to create a system disk. You can do this by clicking into "My Computer", then right-clicking on the "Floppy" icon and selecting "Format". In the box that pops up, you need to check the box that says "Create an MS-DOS startup disk" and then click "Start".

* When you've done that, get this tool: http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/330/mirrors.php and install it. The tool is apparantly something HP once wrote, but I have been unable to find a link to it anywhere on the HP website.

* In a command prompt again: <code>C:\DriveKey\HPUSBF.EXE E: -Q -B:A:\</code>, replacing the <code>E:</code> with the "drive letter" associated with your USB stick (you can find this letter in "My Computer" under "Removable Storage"). '''WARNING:''' this wipes anything on the USB stick. You will end up with a USB stick which appears empty at this point, but there is DOS on it somewhere.

* Now mount the BIOS update ISO image from Lenovo as a virtual CDROM using VMWare again and copy the files from it to the USB stick: <code>copy D:\*.* E:\</code>.

At this point, you may want to fiddle with the splash image, as described elsewhere on ThinkWiki.

* Reboot and press F12, tell the BIOS to boot from your USB stick.

* <code>cd flash</code> ; <code>updtflsh.exe</code>

Think happy thoughts. The ThinkPad will beep quite ominously (and loudly!) a couple of times. Do not let this worry you too much. After about three minutes, the program will ask you to press enter to restart and hopefully all will be well.

= Approach 4: Alternative method to the above "alternative method" =

This is based on the above "Alternative Method" and works on my {{X60}}.

1. Download the [[BIOS_Upgrade_Downloads|BIOS Update]] iso image and the [http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/330/mirrors.php|HP USB Stick Formatter].

2. Now get access to Windows -- be it in an emulator, or a colleague's PC. Steps 3, 4, 5 needs Windows to complete.

3. Install the HP USB Stick Formatter.

4. Go to the directory where you installed the tool: e.g. C:\DriveKey and extract HPUSBF.EXE to a new directory HPUSBF\ (using WinRAR, 7zip or similar).

5. Run the HPUSBFW.EXE utility, selecting the location of system files as C:\DriveKey\HPUSBF, and let it format the USB stick.

6. Extract the iso image to the USB stick, for example to K:\7buj22us (K: being the USB stick).

7. On the target computer, boot with the USB stick and issue the commands "cd 7buj22us" then "command.com"

This brings up the BIOS flash interface and you can update your BIOS from here.

== Comments on Approach 4 ==

<ul>
<li>
I (Martin Aulbach) followed these clear instructions and updated my X61t (from BIOS v1.08 to v1.10) without any problems and with a nice graphic splash screen. It is not necessary to let Windows format the USB stick as a MS-DOS startup disk, as outlined in Approach 3. The HP format tool will take care of this (in Step 5) and the USB stick will boot sucessfully at startup (correct boot order provided).
</li>
<li> This update to BIOS 2.14 worked on a brand-new X61s, 2008-06-27. (adsmith)
</li>
<li> This update to BIOS 2.19 worked on a X61 (76754KU), 2009-01-21. (leonardokroeger)
</ul>

= Approach 5: Free Alternative method to the above "alternative method" =

This is functionally equivalent to the above two "alternative methods", yet does not depend on MS Windows or any other proprietary software. It updates the BIOS through a bootable USB stick, and depends upon the FreeDOS, SYSLINUX, and AdvanceMAME projects. A detailed description is provided at [http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=5459421#post5459421].
''This method currently isn't redommended by the author "due to troubles reported by users (August 9th, 2008)".''

= Approach 6: Using a USB stick to upgrade BIOS on older X Series Thinkpads =

This method has been successfully applied for upgrading an {{X32}} Thinkpad. The previous BIOS version was 3.00d, and it was upgraded to 3.02 . Below are the steps:

1. Download the new BIOS and EC Diskette-type upgrades.

2. Make a DOS-bootable USB stick. See the section above for instructions on how to do this.

3. Copy the upgrade programs to the USB stick.

4. Make two zero-files (using dd), each with the size of a floppy disk.

5. Boot up the USB stick using QEMU, with the USB stick as hda, and the two floppy disk images as A: and B: .

6. Run the BIOS upgrade program, and select the first diskette as its destination. This will not actually upgrade the BIOS; it will only fill up the disk image.

7. Run the EC upgrade program, with the second diskette as target. Again, this will only fill up the disk image, not upgrade the EC.

8. Make two directories, C:\1 and C:\2 .

9. Copy the contents of the first diskette to C:\1 and the second diskette to C:\2 .

10. Exit QEMU, use the USB stick to boot the Thinkpad which BIOS we are going to upgrade.

11. cd into C:\1 and run command.com inside it. This will bring up the BIOS update interface, so update the BIOS.

12. After updating the BIOS, the machine will turn off by itself. Now boot again, with the same USB stick.

13. cd into C:\2 and run command.com inside it. This will bring up the EC update interface. Update the EC and wait for the machine to shut down completely.

14. Remove the USB stick. Now boot into the machine and go into BIOS setup. Right now you should see the new BIOS and EC version. If not, then something is wrong; make sure you have followed the above steps properly. Please also discuss this.

= Approach 7: Use syslinux to boot floppy images which are part of the CD ISO files. Done with a {{X31}} to upgrade the EC to version 1.08 and the BIOS to 3.02. =

1. Download the CD ISO files of the embedded controller and the BIOS.

2. loop mount these files, check for files like 1quj08us.img (EC) and 1quj19us.img (BIOS) and copy them to /boot/

3. Install the syslinux package and boot the two images with the help of the memdisk feature ( grub: kernel /boot/memdisk initrd /boot/{ec|bios}.img)

= Approach 8 : Use HP USB Format Utility and Win98Boot files to Create Bootable USB Stick =
(This process works for most X-series that has Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 OS)

1. There is an HP utility tool floating around the net called HP USB Boot Utility. This [http://blogs.oreilly.com/digitalmedia/2004/10/utility-to-make-usb-flash-driv.html can create a bootable USB flash drive using the boot/system files you have].

2. Get some [http://www.bay-wolf.com/utility/usbkey/win98boot.zip DOS (or similar) boot files] - I found something called "win98boot.zip" e.g.

3. Extract the (*.ima) from the ISO BIOS image (e.g. [http://www.rarsoft.com WinRAR] will do this).

4. Using a tool that can open .IMA files (such as [http://www.winimage.com/ WinImage]), extract all files to a temporary folder.

4. Run the HP tool, select the USB device, I used FAT32, create a DOS bootable disk and point at the win98boot folder - then "Start". Warning: this '''formats''' the USB flash drive and all data will be erased!

5. Once complete (you could test if it boots at this point), copy the extracted BIOS files from the temporary folder you created to the USB flash drive.

6. Boot from USB flash drive by pressing F11 within the BIOS boot logo. At the DOS command prompt, type "updflsh" and then follow the prompts by pressing "Y" or Enter. Make sure that you have a fully charged battery pack and the AC Adapter is firmly plugged before proceeding with the BIOS update.
'''DO NOT Power off the laptop or unplug the USB flash drive while the update is in progress or else update will fail and your computer will be unable to boot and system board may need to be serviced.'''

This process takes around 1-2 minutes. A long beep followed by a short beep will notify you that the update is complete and the system will automatically power off.

7. Power on the laptop then enter the BIOS setup by pressing F1 and Load BIOS defaults.

= Approach 8: Updating via "IBM Predesktop area", suitable for model X (not have CDROM and floppy) =
It's so difficult to update BIOS and ECP without cdrom, floppy disk.
Don't know the reason why I couldn't update BIOS and ECP(1QHJ08US and 1QUJ19US) for my IBM Thinkpad X31.Hmm, may be cause of the dividing partition on my hard disk, that is:
<blockquote style="background: white; border: 1px solid black; padding: 1em;">
<pre><nowiki>
Primary: ext3, ext3, ntfs
Extended: Ntsf, fat32
Bootloader: GRUB
</nowiki></pre></blockquote>

No problem, you can use this way to do it:
* First, config in BIOS
In Security part:
# Remove all password of Supervisor and Power on password
# Set Access IBM Predesktop Area to Normal
# Choose Enable "Flash BIOS updating by End User" in BIOS update Option.

In Config part:
# Choose Enable for Network flash over Lan

* Second, download the newest version of BIOS update and ECP update
Running: The program extract all files to the folder. There is a .img file (1QUJ19US.IMG, 1QUJ08US.IMG) in each folder.
Copy the imformation content in that img file and paste it to one FAT partition(using winimage or TotalCmd to extract)

as seen All files in 1QUJ19US.IMG is extracted to D:\BIOS
<blockquote style="background: white; border: 1px solid black; padding: 1em;">
<pre><nowiki>
695,764 $018E000.FL1
163 0691.HSH
2,049 0691.PAT
163 0694.HSH
2,049 0694.PAT
163 0695.HSH
2,049 0695.PAT
2,049 06D0.PAT
163 06D1.HSH
2,049 06D1.PAT
163 06D2.HSH
2,049 06D2.PAT
163 06D6.HSH
2,049 06D6.PAT
2,049 06D8.PAT
697 CHKBMP.EXE
8,128 COMMAND.COM
26 CONFIG.SYS
24,860 FLASH2.EXE
26 LCREFLSH.BAT
170 LOGO.BAT
330 LOGO.SCR
111,925 PHLASH16.EXE
91,648 PREPARE.EXE
45 PROD.DAT
22,252 QKFLASH.EXE
9,923 README.TXT
4,260 TPCHKS.EXE
39,666 UPDTFLSH.EXE
6,958 UPDTMN.EXE
12,501 USERINT.EXE
15,254 UTILINFO.EXE
</nowiki></pre></blockquote>

And all files in 1QUJ08US.IMG are: D:\ECP
<blockquote style="background: white; border: 1px solid black; padding: 1em;">
<pre><nowiki>
315,404 $018E000.FL2
8,000 COMMAND.COM
36 CONFIG.SYS
16,910 ECFLASH2.EXE
45 PROD.DAT
17,812 QKFLASH.EXE
990 README.TXT
4,260 TPCHKS.EXE
89,738 UPDTEC.EXE
31,134 UPDTFLSH.EXE
12,501 USERINT.EXE
15,226 UTILINFO.EXE
</nowiki></pre></blockquote>

* Okie, now plug AC Adapter, charge full battery to your laptop and continue third step:

** '''Flash BIOS first,'''
1. Power On, press blue button on keyboard: '''Access IBM'''

2. On "Utilities", double click " Diagnostic disk"

3. Your laptop will start PC-DOS, wait when this message appear:
<blockquote style="background: white; border: 1px solid black; padding: 1em;">
<pre><nowiki>
Please insert the first floppy diskette and
Press any key to continue
</nowiki></pre></blockquote>

4. Press Ctrl + Break, you will see :
<blockquote style="background: white; border: 1px solid black; padding: 1em;"><pre><nowiki>Terminate batch job (Y/N) ?</nowiki></pre></blockquote>

5. Okie, press Y, you will get DOS prompt like D:\
{{NOTE|D:\ is my RAMDISK, C:\ is my disk format as FAT.!}}

6. Enter to c:\BIOS
<blockquote style="background: white; border: 1px solid black; padding: 1em;">
<pre><nowiki>
c:
cd c:\BIOS
</nowiki></pre></blockquote>

7. Run FLASH2.EXE /u $018E000.FL1

8. Wait flash progress compelete and reboot.
** '''Flash ECP'''
Follow above instruction from step 1 to 5

6. Enter to c:\ECP
<blockquote style="background: white; border: 1px solid black; padding: 1em;">
<pre><nowiki>
c:
cd c:\ECP
</nowiki></pre></blockquote>

7. run UPDTFLSH.EXE $018E000.FL2

8. Follow UPDTFLSH's instructions

9. Wait flash complete and auto turn off computer.

I done it on my IBM Thinkpad X31.

Enjoy,

Tested by nm.

= Approach 10: Booting the Lenovo ISO image using Grub and SysLinux =

I ran this on my [[:Category:X100e|X100e]] L625 (Dual-Core) 3508-5EG.

Also worked on my [[:Category:X301|X301]] with the default ubuntu 10.10 memdisk (/usr/lib/syslinux/memdisk). My menu entry structure however looked like this (ext4 root/boot partition): --[[User:Blk|Blk]] 17:54, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
menuentry 'BIOS Upgrade' {
insmod ext2
set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
linux16 /boot/memdisk iso
initrd16 /boot/bios.iso
}
small note: the upgrade itself took about 2minutes (it beeped in the middle) and after rebooting i was probably in a reboot-loop. The system rebooted twice in a row after showing the "Press the ThinkVantage button..." blabla, so the third time i went into the bios, reset the default options (F9) and reconfigured it the way i had it before. Then it all worked.
Now to the original instructions (thanks mate!)

Basically, you download the iso of the cd for bios upgrade from Lenovo and let grub + syslinux emulate a cd-rom drive for you, running the software on the iso.

It's nice and feels safe, since either the iso boots from grub or it doesn't, but if it does, you are running the full OS and update software stack as provided and tested by Lenovo. If it doesn't your bios will not be affected and you will not have bricked your laptop.

* Download the latest bios upgrade from Lenovo website. I used version 1.25 ({{path|6xuj08uc.iso}})
* Get your hands on memdisk of syslinux. I had to compile a recent version, because my memdisk version that came with Ubuntu did not work correctly.
* To compile a recent version of syslinux (I used 3.86):
** Download the sources from http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index.php/ISOLINUX (Download link in my case: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/syslinux-3.86.tar.bz2),
** Extract the sources and issue {{cmduser|make}} in the root directory of the source.
** Once compiled, the memdisk file you need will be in {{path|syslinux-3.86/memdisk/memdisk}}
* Copy the memdisk file of syslinux to {{path|/boot/memdisk}}
* Update the grub config file: add the code snippet below to the end of the file {{path|/boot/grub/grub.cfg}}. (on Ubuntu, add it to the file {{path|/etc/grub.d/40_custom}} instead, and do a {{cmduser|sudo update-grub}} afterwards).
menuentry "Thinkpad x100e BIOS Upgrade to 1.25" {
set root='(hd0,1)' # This line should match the other menuentries in your grub.cfg
linux16 /boot/memdisk iso
initrd16 /boot/6xuj08uc.iso # Make sure this is the correct filename (a different version will have a different filename)
}
* Now reboot, press and hold shift right after the Thinkpad logo disappears and you should see an option in the grub boot menu to boot the bios upgrade cd.
* Select that option and press enter, the Lenovo bios update software should boot, and you'll get a text-menu interface.
** If you just see text on a black background and your Thinkpad no longer responds, your booting failed. At this point you are not updating the bios, so you can safely reboot using the power on/off button, recheck your config and find out what you did wrong.
* If it does boot, follow the directions carefully:
** Make absolutely sure you have power attached and a well loaded battery just in case
** The process takes around a minute
** When it asks to remove the cd and press enter to reboot, just press enter.
** You should then reboot having and updated bios.

= Approach 10A: Booting an ISO image using Grub and Syslinux for X61 =

The Lenovo ISO images for X61 (and T61) can be booted using Grub as described above, but they don't work as they are intended to be used from a cdrom drive.

Fortunately you can adapt an ISO image from a more recent model, such as the X201.
The following instructions rely on the X201 BIOS Update Bootable CD for version 1.34, filename '''6quj11uc.iso'''.
Other versions may or may not work.

Save this script as '''convert-iso.sh'''

#!/bin/bash

X201=$1 # X201 iso to use
X61=$2 # X61 update
OUT=$3 # output filename

ISO=`mktemp`
SRC=`mktemp -d`
DST=`mktemp -d`

cp $X201 $ISO

# discovered using geteltorito, to get the offset of the disk image
# and fdisk, to get the offset of the partition inside the disk image
OFFSET=71680

mount $ISO $DST -o rw,loop,offset=$OFFSET

# create a ramdisk big enough for the flash files
cat <<EOF | sed 's/$/\r/' > $DST/CONFIG.SYS
FILES=30
BUFFERS=10
DEVICE=C:\HIMEM.SYS /NUMHANDLES=120
DEVICEHIGH=C:\ramdrive.sys /E 30720
DOS=HIGH,UMB
STACKS=9,256
EOF

# copy the flash files to the ramdisk
# if not, the update will simply hang because the files cannot be accessed
#
# remove the command.com line if you need a shell
cat <<EOF | sed 's/$/\r/' > $DST/AUTOEXEC.BAT
copy FLASH\*.* d:
d:
command.com
EOF

rm -r $DST/FLASH/*
mount $X61 $SRC -r -o loop
cp $SRC/* $DST/FLASH

umount $SRC $DST
rmdir $SRC $DST

mv $ISO $OUT
echo "Done: $OUT created."

Then run the script against the X201 bios ISO and the X61 one (in this example, version 2.22, filename '''7nuj22uc.iso''').

{{cmdroot|./convert-iso.sh 6quj11uc.iso 7nuj22uc.iso X61.iso}}.

In theory this should create a file called '''X61.iso''' that can be booted using Grub and Syslinux, and which will successfully update the BIOS.

BIOS Upgrade/X Series

2011-04-28T21:19:34Z

Trmsw: /* Approach 10: Booting the Lenovo ISO image using Grub and SysLinux */

__TOC__

X Series Thinkpads do not have internal optical or floppy drives. If there is no Windows installed, the BIOS must be updated by booting from an USB drive or a drive that is integrated in the docking station. In recent times Lenovo provides BIOS updates in form of bootable CD images. Unfortunately, in most cases these images are intended to be used with the docking station's CD drive. If you do not own such a drive, things get complicated.

The problem is that current BIOS updates are quite large, about 3 MB in size. Booting from CDs typically works like booting from a 1.44 MB or 2.88 MB floppy disk. The floppy image is stored on the CD and is referenced in the CD's boot record. Because the BIOS update files are that large, they do not fit on such a floppy image. To resolve it, you have to either use a large harddisk image for your bootimage (e.g. in [[:Category:X200|X200]], [[:Category:X200_Tablet|X200 Tablet]] and [[:Category:X301|X301]]), or store these update files on the CD outside the virtual floppy image. For the former case, see [[BIOS update without optical disk]]. This page concerns with the later case.

To access the BIOS update files on the CD outside the bootimage, a driver for the CD drive has to be loaded. Since Lenovo's CD images are intended to be used with a docking station's CD drive, it is not possible to use them for BIOS updates by booting from an USB CD drive.

Another problem is that older X Series (like the {{X32}}) don't have bootable iso images at all. They have only two options: 1. update from Windows, 2. update using a diskette updater, which requires you to have a real floppy disk drive.

But there is hope. This page describes some approaches to solve the problems above.

Here is a brief overview of each approach:
* [[#Approach 1: Use larger boot image and create virtual CD drive]] Requires a USB CD drive. Reported to work on {{X60s}}.

* [[#Approach 2: Load an USB driver, create RAM disk and copy the files to the RAM disk]] Requires a USB CD drive. People have reported mixed results, with the flash update software freezing, depending on things like CD drive letter and type. Reported to work on {{X60s}}.

* [[#Approach 3: Alternative method using a USB stick]] Requires a USB flash drive, Microsoft Windows, and some HP software tool. Reported to work on {{X60s}}, {{X61}}.

* [[#Approach 4: Alternative method to the above "alternative method"]] Requires a USB flash drive, Microsoft Windows, and some HP software tool. Seems functionally similar to Approach 3.

* [[#Approach 5: Free Alternative method to the above "alternative method"]] Requires a USB flash drive, does not require MS Windows or any proprietary software.

* [[#Approach 6: Using a USB stick to upgrade BIOS on older X Series Thinkpads]] Requires a USB flash drive. Reported to work on {{X32}}.

* [[#Approach 7: Use syslinux to boot floppy images which are part of the IBM/ Lenovo BIOS update CD ISO files.]] Done with a {{X31}} to upgrade the EC to version 1.08 and the BIOS to 3.02.

= Approach 1: Use larger boot image and create virtual CD drive =

The CD images provided by Lenovo can be modified such that a BIOS update is possible -- without loading any drivers. I ([[User:Joachim_Selke|Joachim Selke]]) successfully updated my Thinkpad {{X60s}} using the following method.

My first idea was to take Lenovo's ISO CD image and modify it such that a USB CD drive can be used instead the CD drive in the docking station. Unfortunately, simply replacing the drivers is not enough. While doing the BIOS update, the USB ports seem to get disabled or something like that. To circumvent this problem I tried to create a RAM disk, copy the needed files to this RAM disk, and then use this RAM disk as some kind of virtual CD drive. However, there were some problems with this approach as reported below. For a description of this old approach see the section "Approach 2: Load an USB driver, create RAM disk and copy the files to the RAM disk" below. I developed a new approach to solve this problem and will describe it here.

The idea is to create a new bootable ISO image that is large enough to hold the original ISO file. This can be done by switching from the virtual floppy drive used by Lenovo's update disk to a virtual hard disk drive (for details, see the El Torito standard). Instead of loading the CD drive driver provided by Lenovo we load the [[http://www.oocities.com/jadoxa/shsucdx/index.html SHSUCD drivers]]. This driver enables us to create a virtual CD drive from Lenovo's original ISO file.

I wrote a script to automate this steps and create a new ISO file from Lenovo's ISO file. This new ISO file can directly be used to update the BIOS. My script takes four arguments:
<ol>
<li>the filename of Lenovo's original ISO file (e.g. <tt>/home/selke/Desktop/7buj23uc.iso</tt>)</li>
<li>the filename of the new ISO file to be created (e.g. <tt>/home/selke/Desktop/out.iso</tt>)</li>
<li>the location of shsucdrd.exe (e.g. <tt>/home/selke/Desktop/shsucdrd.exe</tt></li>
<li>the location of shsucdx.com (e.g. <tt>/home/selke/Desktop/shsucdx.com</tt></li>
</ol>

Both shsucdrd.exe and shsucdx.com can be downloaded from [http://www.oocities.com/jadoxa/shsucdx/index.html].

To sum up, an example call of the script would be <tt>convertlenovo.sh /home/selke/Desktop/7buj23uc.iso /home/selke/Desktop/out.iso /home/selke/Desktop/shsucdrd.exe /home/selke/Desktop/shsucdx.com</tt>

Note that you need recent versions of the following tools:
<ul>
<li>mkdosfs (for Fedora users: contained in the package dosfstools)</li>
<li>mkisofs</li>
</ul>

The script runs perfectly on my Fedora 11 system (it should also run without problems on Fedora 7, 8, 9, 10 and other popular distributions). If there are problems, please tell me ([[User:Joachim_Selke|Joachim Selke]]).

Further note that the script at some point requires you to enter the root password since it must mount a disk image. As far as I know, this cannot be done without root privileges.

What does the script do? I will give a short overview:
<ol>
<li>Extract the boot floppy image from Lenovo's bootable ISO file.</li>
<li>Create a new boot hard disk image and copy both the boot sector and the files from Lenovo's boot floppy image to the new image.</li>
<li>Copy Lenovo's ISO image to the new hard disk image.</li>
<li>Also copy the SHSUCD drivers to the hard disk and change autoexec.bat and config.sys accordingly. When booting this hard disk image a new virtual CD drive will be created by SHSUCD. This virtual CD drive will have Lenovo's original ISO disc "inserted."</li>
<li>Create a new ISO file that only consists of the boot image given by the bootable hard disk image just created.</li>
</ol>

Some additional notes:
<ul>
<li>Currently, the script is not able to handle spaces in file names properly. Thus, the file names and directory path names used when calling the script should not contain spaces.</li>
<li>The file name of the original ISO file (7buj23uc.iso in the example above) must follow the DOS 8.3 file name conventions; otherwise SHSUCD will not be able to load the ISO image.</li>
</ul>

Here is the complete script (save it as <tt>convertlenovo.sh</tt>):

<pre>
#!/bin/bash

# Written by Joachim Selke (mail@joachim-selke.de), 2007-12-28

# Known bugs:
# - spaces in file names make trouble at the moment (so try to avoid spaces),
# I will fix that later
# - some users seem to have problems with some of the sed statements,
# I currently have no idea what is wrong there ... (please report those bugs)

CDIMAGE=$1 # location of Lenovo's CD image
NEWCDIMAGE=$2 # filename of ISO file to create
SHSUCDRD_EXE=$3 # location of shsucdrd.exe
SHSUCDX_COM=$4 # location of shsucdx.com

MB_HDD=50 # HDD image size in megabyte (base 1000)

TMPDIR=`mktemp -d`
ISODIR=`mktemp -d`

HDDIMG=$ISODIR/hdd.img # filename of HDD image to create
FLOPPYIMG=$TMPDIR/floppy.img # filename of floppy image to create

##############################################################################

# This script extracts the floopy boot image from bootable ISO images
#
# Written by Joachim Selke (mail@joachim-selke.de), 2007-04-07

ISOFILE=$CDIMAGE
IMAGEFILE=$FLOPPYIMG

if [ ! -r $ISOFILE ]; then
echo $ISOFILE: file does not exist or is not readable
exit 1
fi

if [ -z $IMAGEFILE ]; then
echo Error: no image file specified
exit 1
fi

ISOFILESIZE=`stat -c %s $ISOFILE`

# collect El Torito data
# see http://www.phoenix.com/NR/rdonlyres/98D3219C-9CC9-4DF5-B496-A286D893E36A/0/specscdrom.pdf for reference

BOOTCATALOGPOINTERBYTE=$((17 * 0x800 + 0x47))

if [ $ISOFILESIZE -lt $(($BOOTCATALOGPOINTERBYTE + 4)) ]; then
echo ISO file is too short, possibly damaged
exit 1
fi

# absolute pointer to first sector of boot catalog:
BOOTCATALOG=`od -A n -t x4 -N 4 -j $BOOTCATALOGPOINTERBYTE $ISOFILE | tr -d [:blank:]`

BOOTCATALOGBYTE=$((0x$BOOTCATALOG * 0x800))

echo Boot catalog starts at byte $BOOTCATALOGBYTE

if [ $ISOFILESIZE -lt $(($BOOTCATALOGBYTE + 32 + 2)) ]; then
echo ISO file is too short, possibly damaged
exit 1
fi

# media type of boot image
# only floppy disk images are supported by this script
BOOTMEDIATYPE=`od -A n -t x1 -N 1 -j $(($BOOTCATALOGBYTE + 32 + 1)) $ISOFILE | tr -d [:blank:]`

if [ $BOOTMEDIATYPE -eq 1 ]; then
echo Boot media type is 1.2M floppy disk
IMAGEBLOCKS=$((1200 / 2))
elif [ $BOOTMEDIATYPE -eq 2 ]; then
echo Boot media type is 1.44M floppy disk
IMAGEBLOCKS=$((1440 / 2))
elif [ $BOOTMEDIATYPE -eq 3 ]; then
echo Boot media type is 2.88M floppy disk
IMAGEBLOCKS=$((2880 / 2))
else
echo Boot media type is $((0x$BOOTMEDIATYPE)). This type is not supported yet.
exit 1
fi

# absolute pointer to start of boot image
BOOTIMAGE=`od -A n -t x4 -N 4 -j $(($BOOTCATALOGBYTE + 32 + 8)) $ISOFILE | tr -d [:blank:]`

BOOTIMAGEBYTE=$((0x$BOOTIMAGE * 0x800))

echo Boot image starts at byte $BOOTIMAGEBYTE

if [ $ISOFILESIZE -lt $((0x$BOOTIMAGE * 0x800 + $IMAGEBLOCKS * 0x800)) ]; then
echo ISO file is too short, possibly damaged
exit 1
fi

echo Extracting boot image ...

dd if=$ISOFILE of=$IMAGEFILE bs=2K count=$IMAGEBLOCKS skip=$((0x$BOOTIMAGE))

echo Finished

##############################################################################

NO_HEA=16 # heads
NO_SECT=63 # sectors per cylinder/track
B_SECT=512 # bytes per sector

B_CYL=$(($NO_HEA * $NO_SECT * $B_SECT)) # bytes per cylinder/track

NO_CYL=$(($MB_HDD * 1000 * 1000 / $B_CYL)) # cylinders/tracks per head

echo -n -e "Cylinders: $NO_CYL\nHeads: $NO_HEA\nSectors per track: $NO_SECT\nBytes per sector: $B_SECT\n"

echo Creating empty image ...
dd if=/dev/zero of=$HDDIMG bs=$B_CYL count=$NO_CYL >/dev/null 2>&1

echo Creating partition structure ...
echo -n -e "o\n n\n p\n 1\n \n \n t\n 6\n a\n 1\n w\n" | /sbin/fdisk -b $B_SECT -C $NO_CYL -H $NO_HEA -S $NO_SECT $HDDIMG >/dev/null 2>&1

echo Writing master boot record ...
echo -n -e "\
\xFA\xB8\x00\x10\x8E\xD0\xBC\x00\xB0\xB8\x00\x00\x8E\xD8\x8E\xC0\
\xFB\xBE\x00\x7C\xBF\x00\x06\xB9\x00\x02\xF3\xA4\xEA\x21\x06\x00\
\x00\xBE\xBE\x07\x38\x04\x75\x0B\x83\xC6\x10\x81\xFE\xFE\x07\x75\
\xF3\xEB\x16\xB4\x02\xB0\x01\xBB\x00\x7C\xB2\x80\x8A\x74\x01\x8B\
\x4C\x02\xCD\x13\xEA\x00\x7C\x00\x00\xEB\xFE\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\
\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x52\xF9\x06\x00\x00\x00\
" | dd of=$HDDIMG bs=1 conv=notrunc >/dev/null 2>&1

echo Creating primary partition ...
# extract partition, create FAT16 filesystem and copy back
PARTFILE=${HDDIMG}-PARTITION
SECT_PARTTABLE=$NO_SECT
B_PARTTABLE=$(($SECT_PARTTABLE * $B_SECT))
dd if=$HDDIMG of=$PARTFILE bs=$B_SECT skip=$SECT_PARTTABLE >/dev/null 2>&1
/sbin/mkdosfs -F 16 -h $NO_SECT $PARTFILE
# Correct physical drive number (set to 0x00, should be 0x80)
echo -n -e "\x80" | dd of=$PARTFILE bs=1 seek=36 conv=notrunc >/dev/null 2>&1
# Correct sectors per track (set to 0x0020, should be $NO_SECT)
NO_SECT_HEX1=$(echo "ibase=10; obase=16; $(($NO_SECT / 256))" | bc)
NO_SECT_HEX2=$(echo "ibase=10; obase=16; $(($NO_SECT % 256))" | bc)
NO_SECT_HEX=$(echo -n -e "\\x$NO_SECT_HEX2\\x$NO_SECT_HEX1")
echo -n -e $NO_SECT_HEX | dd of=$PARTFILE bs=1 seek=24 conv=notrunc >/dev/null 2>&1
dd if=$PARTFILE of=$HDDIMG bs=$B_SECT seek=$SECT_PARTTABLE >/dev/null 2>&1
rm -f $PARTFILE

# transfer floppy boot sector code
B_BOOTSECPARAM=62 # length of parameter block in boot sector
B_BOOTSECCODE=$(($B_SECT - B_BOOTSECPARAM)) # length of code block in boot sector
echo Copying boot sector ...
dd if=$FLOPPYIMG of=$HDDIMG bs=1 count=$B_BOOTSECCODE skip=$B_BOOTSECPARAM seek=$(($B_PARTTABLE + $B_BOOTSECPARAM)) conv=notrunc >/dev/null 2>&1

echo Copying DOS files ...
CDIMAGE_BASENAME=$(basename $CDIMAGE)
HDDDIR=$TMPDIR/hdd
FLOPPYDIR=$TMPDIR/floppy
su --command="\
mkdir $HDDDIR;\
mkdir $FLOPPYDIR;\
mount -oloop $FLOPPYIMG $FLOPPYDIR;\
mount -t msdos -oloop,offset=$(($SECT_PARTTABLE * $B_SECT)) $HDDIMG $HDDDIR;\
cp --preserve $FLOPPYDIR/ibmbio.com $HDDDIR;\
cp --preserve $FLOPPYDIR/ibmdos.com $HDDDIR;\
cp --preserve -u $FLOPPYDIR/* $HDDDIR;\
cp --preserve=timestamps $CDIMAGE $HDDDIR;\
cp --preserve=timestamps $SHSUCDRD_EXE $HDDDIR;\
cp --preserve=timestamps $SHSUCDX_COM $HDDDIR;\
cat $FLOPPYDIR/config.sys | \
sed -e 's/A:\\\/C:\\\/' | \
grep -v IBMTPCD.SYS >$HDDDIR/config.sys;\
cat $FLOPPYDIR/autoexec.bat | \
sed -e 's/LOADHIGH MSCDEX.EXE \/D:TPCD001/shsucdrd.exe \/f:$CDIMAGE_BASENAME\r\nshsucdx.com \/d:SHSU-CDR,R/' >$HDDDIR/autoexec.bat;\
umount $FLOPPYDIR;\
umount $HDDDIR;\
rm -rf $FLOPPYDIR;\
rm -rf $HDDDIR"

echo Creating ISO image ...
mkisofs -input-charset default -hard-disk-boot -b $(basename $HDDIMG) -hide boot.cat -hide $(basename $HDDIMG) -o $NEWCDIMAGE $ISODIR

rm -rf $TMPDIR
rm -rf $ISODIR

echo Completed!
</pre>

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. :-)

BTW: It would be much simpler if I simply could put the new ISO images for download somewhere. But I guess for legal reasons this will not be possible.

== Comments on Approach 1 ==

<ul>

<li>
Reported to work on:
<ul>
<li>ThinkPad X60s (1702-55G) with Plextor PX-608CU USB DVD recorder</li>
<li>ThinkPad X60 (1702-55G) with Plextor PX-608CU USB DVD recorder, upgraded BIOS from version 2.14 to 2.16</li>
<li>ThinkPad X60 (1706-GMG) with Plextor PX-608CU USB DVD recorder, upgraded BIOS from version 2.03 to 2.14</li>
<li>ThinkPad X61s (7666-36G) with Freecom FS-50 USB DVD recorder, upgraded BIOS from version 1.10 to 2.07</li>
<li>ThinkPad X300 (6476-CTO) with Nu SBW-242US USB DVD recorder, upgraded BIOS from 1.05 to 1.08</li>
<li>Thinkpad X60s (1704-44U) with Lite-On DX-20A3H, upgraded BIOS from 2.17 to 2.18</li>
<li>ThinkPad X61s (7666-36G) with Samsung SE-S224 USB DVD recorder, upgraded BIOS from version 2.07 to 2.20</li>
</ul>
</li>

</ul>

= Approach 2: Load an USB driver, create RAM disk and copy the files to the RAM disk =

I ([[User:Joachim_Selke | Joachim Selke]]) successfully updated my Thinkpad {{X60s}} using the following method.

My first idea was to take Lenovo's ISO CD image and modify it such that a USB CD drive can be used instead the CD drive in the docking station. Unfortunately, simply replacing the drivers is not enough. While doing the BIOS update, the USB ports seem to get disabled or something like that. To circumvent this problem I tried to create a RAM disk, copy the needed files to this RAM disk, and then use this RAM disk as some kind of virtual CD drive. However, there were some problems with this approach as reported below.

<ol>
<li>
Download the ISO image style BIOS update from Lenovo's website. This file will be refered to as <tt>/tmp/bios-lenovo.iso</tt>.
</li>

<li>
Extract the floppy image from this ISO image. You can use the following shell script for this task (or an alternative one from [http://userpages.uni-koblenz.de/~krienke/ftp/noarch/geteltorito/]). Simply save this code into the file <tt>/tmp/extractbootimage.sh</tt>, set the x-flag (<tt>chmod +x /tmp/extractbootimage.sh</tt>) and call it using the command <tt>/tmp/extractbootimage.sh /tmp/bios-lenovo.iso /tmp/bios-lenovo.img</tt>. The floppy image contained in the ISO image will then be saved to <tt>/tmp/bios-lenovo.img</tt>. Here is the code of the shell script:
<pre>
#!/bin/bash

# This script extracts the floopy boot image from bootable ISO images
#
# Written by Joachim Selke (mail@joachim-selke.de), 2007-04-07

ISOFILE=$1
IMAGEFILE=$2

if [ ! -r $ISOFILE ]; then
echo $ISOFILE: file does not exist or is not readable
exit 1
fi

if [ -z $IMAGEFILE ]; then
echo Error: no image file specified
exit 1
fi

ISOFILESIZE=`stat -c %s $ISOFILE`

# collect El Torito data
# see http://www.phoenix.com/NR/rdonlyres/98D3219C-9CC9-4DF5-B496-A286D893E36A/0/specscdrom.pdf for reference

BOOTCATALOGPOINTERBYTE=$((17 * 0x800 + 0x47))

if [ $ISOFILESIZE -lt $(($BOOTCATALOGPOINTERBYTE + 4)) ]; then
echo ISO file is too short, possibly damaged
exit 1
fi

# absolute pointer to first sector of boot catalog:
BOOTCATALOG=`od -A n -t x4 -N 4 -j $BOOTCATALOGPOINTERBYTE $ISOFILE | tr -d [:blank:]`

BOOTCATALOGBYTE=$((0x$BOOTCATALOG * 0x800))

echo Boot catalog starts at byte $BOOTCATALOGBYTE

if [ $ISOFILESIZE -lt $(($BOOTCATALOGBYTE + 32 + 2)) ]; then
echo ISO file is too short, possibly damaged
exit 1
fi

# media type of boot image
# only floppy disk images are supported by this script
BOOTMEDIATYPE=`od -A n -t x1 -N 1 -j $(($BOOTCATALOGBYTE + 32 + 1)) $ISOFILE | tr -d [:blank:]`

if [ $BOOTMEDIATYPE -eq 1 ]; then
echo Boot media type is 1.2M floppy disk
IMAGEBLOCKS=$((1200 / 2))
elif [ $BOOTMEDIATYPE -eq 2 ]; then
echo Boot media type is 1.44M floppy disk
IMAGEBLOCKS=$((1440 / 2))
elif [ $BOOTMEDIATYPE -eq 3 ]; then
echo Boot media type is 2.88M floppy disk
IMAGEBLOCKS=$((2880 / 2))
else
echo Boot media type is $((0x$BOOTMEDIATYPE)). This type is not supported yet.
exit 1
fi

# absolute pointer to start of boot image
BOOTIMAGE=`od -A n -t x4 -N 4 -j $(($BOOTCATALOGBYTE + 32 + 8)) $ISOFILE | tr -d [:blank:]`

BOOTIMAGEBYTE=$((0x$BOOTIMAGE * 0x800))

echo Boot image starts at byte $BOOTIMAGEBYTE

if [ $ISOFILESIZE -lt $((0x$BOOTIMAGE * 0x800 + $IMAGEBLOCKS * 0x800)) ]; then
echo ISO file is too short, possibly damaged
exit 1
fi

echo Extracting boot image ...

dd if=$ISOFILE of=$IMAGEFILE bs=2K count=$IMAGEBLOCKS skip=$((0x$BOOTIMAGE))

echo Finished
</pre>
</li>

<li>
Mount the floppy image '''as root''' using the loop device:
:{{cmdroot|mkdir /tmp/bios-lenovo.img-mnt}}
:{{cmdroot|mount -o loop /tmp/bios-lenovo.img /tmp/bios-lenovo.img-mnt}}
The image is now mounted as <tt>/tmp/bios-lenovo.img-mnt</tt>.
</li>

<li>
Download needed drivers. First download some [http://panasonic.co.jp/pcc/products/drive/other/driver/f2h_usb.exe USB drivers] from Panasonic Japan. Save the file to <tt>/tmp/f2h_usb.exe</tt> This file is a self-extracting EXE file, that can be executed under Linux using [http://www.winehq.com/ Wine]:
:{{cmduser|wine /tmp/f2h_usb.exe}}
You will be asked where to save the extracted files. Choose <tt>/tmp</tt>. A new directory <tt>/tmp/F2h</tt> containing the needed drivers will be created.

Additionally, you will need drivers for the RAM disk mentioned. Download them from the [http://sourceforge.net/projects/srdisk ReSizeable RAMDisk project]. Unzip them to <tt>/tmp/srdisk</tt>.
</li>

<li>
Let's modify the floppy image:
:{{cmduser|cp /tmp/F2h/Usbaspi.sys /tmp/bios-lenovo.img-mnt/}}
:{{cmduser|cp /tmp/F2h/USBCD.SYS /tmp/bios-lenovo.img-mnt/}}
:{{cmduser|cp /tmp/F2h/RAMFD.SYS /tmp/bios-lenovo.img-mnt/}}
:{{cmduser|cp /tmp/srdisk/srdxms.sys /tmp/bios-lenovo.img-mnt/}}
:{{cmduser|cp /tmp/srdisk/srdisk.exe /tmp/bios-lenovo.img-mnt/}}
Now add the following lines to <tt>/tmp/bios-lenovo.img-mnt/config.sys</tt> replacing the line <tt>DEVICE = A:\IBMTPCD.SYS /R /C</tt>:
<pre>
DEVICE = A:\SRDXMS.SYS
DEVICE = A:\RAMFD.SYS
DEVICE = A:\USBASPI.SYS /V
DEVICE = A:\USBCD.SYS /D:TPCD001
</pre>
Finally, edit the file <tt>/tmp/bios-lenovo.img-mnt/autoexec.bat</tt> replacing the last line (saying <tt>COMMAND.COM</tt>) by the following:
<pre>
A:\SRDISK 10000
COPY *.* D:
D:
COMMAND.COM
</pre>

Maybe the RAM disk gets a drive letter different from D: on your system. In this case, you have to change the above lines accordingly.
</li>

<li>
Unmount the floppy image (as root):
:{{cmdroot|umount /tmp/bios-lenovo.img-mnt}}
</li>

<li>
Copy the content of the original CD image to a new directory and create a new ISO file:
:{{cmdroot|mkdir /tmp/bios-lenovo.iso-mnt}}
:{{cmdroot|mount -o loop /tmp/bios-lenovo.iso /tmp/bios-lenovo.iso-mnt}}
:{{cmduser|mkdir /tmp/bios-new.iso-mnt}}
:{{cmduser|cp /tmp/bios-lenovo.iso-mnt/* /tmp/bios-new.iso-mnt}}
:{{cmduser|cp /tmp/bios-lenovo.img /tmp/bios-new.iso-mnt/boot.img}}
:{{cmdroot|umount /tmp/bios-lenovo.iso-mnt}}
:{{cmduser|mkisofs -relaxed-filenames -b boot.img -o /tmp/bios-new.iso /tmp/bios-new.iso-mnt/}}
</li>

<li>
The file <tt>/tmp/bios-new.iso</tt> is the modified ISO file. Just burn it to CD and use this CD for updating your BIOS (boot from it using your USB drive). Please give some comments here if it worked for you.
</li>

</ol>

== Comments on Approach 2 ==

<ul>

<li>
I have followed your excellent instructions. The CD booted, the update program ran but stopped working and responding while updating. Luckily the BIOS was not destroyed. Since destroying the BIOS is a very high risk, I am going to recover the original Windows on an old HD and will run the update exe update program from there.
</li>

<li>
I followed these clear instructions, and like the comment above I ended up with a CD that booted but the update program stopped working and responding. An ALT-CTRL-DELETE rebooted my x60s, and it works so the BIOS must not have been damaged. I was trying to upgrade from version 2.08 to 2.11, I wonder if these instructions are somehow particular to certain versions?
[[User:Latch|Latch]] 01:22, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
</li>

<li>
After following the above instructions, the program also stopped working while updating the BIOS. But after changing the drive letter from D: to C: (see code below), it everything worked fine. However, I had some trouble figuring out, which letter to choose over D: at first, as the BIOS Upgrade program started right away.

<pre>
A:\SRDISK 10000
COPY *.* C:
C:
COMMAND.COM
</pre>
[[User:Mtx|Mtx]], 1 August 2007, Thinkpad X61s
</li>

<li>
Flashing the bios (2.12) works for me on a X60s (using drive c). Using the DVD-R on an USB-Hub did not work. [[User:Ra|Ra]] 00:15, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
</li>

<li>
Flashing BIOS 2.14 works for me on a X60s (using drive c). 25-02-2008
</li>

</ul>

= Approach 3: Alternative method using a USB stick =

''Note: none of the above methods worked on my X60s. This method worked for me, however.'' [[User:PhilipPaeps|PhilipPaeps]] 16:41, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

This method was surprisingly painless once I convinced my ThinkPad X60s to boot DOS from a USB stick. I used VMWare and some mystical tool to get DOS on the stick. If you can find another way to get a bootable DOS stick, please update this section!

* Tell VMWare to create a virtual floppy image for you and format it under Microsoft Windows and tell it to create a system disk. You can do this by clicking into "My Computer", then right-clicking on the "Floppy" icon and selecting "Format". In the box that pops up, you need to check the box that says "Create an MS-DOS startup disk" and then click "Start".

* When you've done that, get this tool: http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/330/mirrors.php and install it. The tool is apparantly something HP once wrote, but I have been unable to find a link to it anywhere on the HP website.

* In a command prompt again: <code>C:\DriveKey\HPUSBF.EXE E: -Q -B:A:\</code>, replacing the <code>E:</code> with the "drive letter" associated with your USB stick (you can find this letter in "My Computer" under "Removable Storage"). '''WARNING:''' this wipes anything on the USB stick. You will end up with a USB stick which appears empty at this point, but there is DOS on it somewhere.

* Now mount the BIOS update ISO image from Lenovo as a virtual CDROM using VMWare again and copy the files from it to the USB stick: <code>copy D:\*.* E:\</code>.

At this point, you may want to fiddle with the splash image, as described elsewhere on ThinkWiki.

* Reboot and press F12, tell the BIOS to boot from your USB stick.

* <code>cd flash</code> ; <code>updtflsh.exe</code>

Think happy thoughts. The ThinkPad will beep quite ominously (and loudly!) a couple of times. Do not let this worry you too much. After about three minutes, the program will ask you to press enter to restart and hopefully all will be well.

= Approach 4: Alternative method to the above "alternative method" =

This is based on the above "Alternative Method" and works on my {{X60}}.

1. Download the [[BIOS_Upgrade_Downloads|BIOS Update]] iso image and the [http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/330/mirrors.php|HP USB Stick Formatter].

2. Now get access to Windows -- be it in an emulator, or a colleague's PC. Steps 3, 4, 5 needs Windows to complete.

3. Install the HP USB Stick Formatter.

4. Go to the directory where you installed the tool: e.g. C:\DriveKey and extract HPUSBF.EXE to a new directory HPUSBF\ (using WinRAR, 7zip or similar).

5. Run the HPUSBFW.EXE utility, selecting the location of system files as C:\DriveKey\HPUSBF, and let it format the USB stick.

6. Extract the iso image to the USB stick, for example to K:\7buj22us (K: being the USB stick).

7. On the target computer, boot with the USB stick and issue the commands "cd 7buj22us" then "command.com"

This brings up the BIOS flash interface and you can update your BIOS from here.

== Comments on Approach 4 ==

<ul>
<li>
I (Martin Aulbach) followed these clear instructions and updated my X61t (from BIOS v1.08 to v1.10) without any problems and with a nice graphic splash screen. It is not necessary to let Windows format the USB stick as a MS-DOS startup disk, as outlined in Approach 3. The HP format tool will take care of this (in Step 5) and the USB stick will boot sucessfully at startup (correct boot order provided).
</li>
<li> This update to BIOS 2.14 worked on a brand-new X61s, 2008-06-27. (adsmith)
</li>
<li> This update to BIOS 2.19 worked on a X61 (76754KU), 2009-01-21. (leonardokroeger)
</ul>

= Approach 5: Free Alternative method to the above "alternative method" =

This is functionally equivalent to the above two "alternative methods", yet does not depend on MS Windows or any other proprietary software. It updates the BIOS through a bootable USB stick, and depends upon the FreeDOS, SYSLINUX, and AdvanceMAME projects. A detailed description is provided at [http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=5459421#post5459421].
''This method currently isn't redommended by the author "due to troubles reported by users (August 9th, 2008)".''

= Approach 6: Using a USB stick to upgrade BIOS on older X Series Thinkpads =

This method has been successfully applied for upgrading an {{X32}} Thinkpad. The previous BIOS version was 3.00d, and it was upgraded to 3.02 . Below are the steps:

1. Download the new BIOS and EC Diskette-type upgrades.

2. Make a DOS-bootable USB stick. See the section above for instructions on how to do this.

3. Copy the upgrade programs to the USB stick.

4. Make two zero-files (using dd), each with the size of a floppy disk.

5. Boot up the USB stick using QEMU, with the USB stick as hda, and the two floppy disk images as A: and B: .

6. Run the BIOS upgrade program, and select the first diskette as its destination. This will not actually upgrade the BIOS; it will only fill up the disk image.

7. Run the EC upgrade program, with the second diskette as target. Again, this will only fill up the disk image, not upgrade the EC.

8. Make two directories, C:\1 and C:\2 .

9. Copy the contents of the first diskette to C:\1 and the second diskette to C:\2 .

10. Exit QEMU, use the USB stick to boot the Thinkpad which BIOS we are going to upgrade.

11. cd into C:\1 and run command.com inside it. This will bring up the BIOS update interface, so update the BIOS.

12. After updating the BIOS, the machine will turn off by itself. Now boot again, with the same USB stick.

13. cd into C:\2 and run command.com inside it. This will bring up the EC update interface. Update the EC and wait for the machine to shut down completely.

14. Remove the USB stick. Now boot into the machine and go into BIOS setup. Right now you should see the new BIOS and EC version. If not, then something is wrong; make sure you have followed the above steps properly. Please also discuss this.

= Approach 7: Use syslinux to boot floppy images which are part of the CD ISO files. Done with a {{X31}} to upgrade the EC to version 1.08 and the BIOS to 3.02. =

1. Download the CD ISO files of the embedded controller and the BIOS.

2. loop mount these files, check for files like 1quj08us.img (EC) and 1quj19us.img (BIOS) and copy them to /boot/

3. Install the syslinux package and boot the two images with the help of the memdisk feature ( grub: kernel /boot/memdisk initrd /boot/{ec|bios}.img)

= Approach 8 : Use HP USB Format Utility and Win98Boot files to Create Bootable USB Stick =
(This process works for most X-series that has Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 OS)

1. There is an HP utility tool floating around the net called HP USB Boot Utility. This [http://blogs.oreilly.com/digitalmedia/2004/10/utility-to-make-usb-flash-driv.html can create a bootable USB flash drive using the boot/system files you have].

2. Get some [http://www.bay-wolf.com/utility/usbkey/win98boot.zip DOS (or similar) boot files] - I found something called "win98boot.zip" e.g.

3. Extract the (*.ima) from the ISO BIOS image (e.g. [http://www.rarsoft.com WinRAR] will do this).

4. Using a tool that can open .IMA files (such as [http://www.winimage.com/ WinImage]), extract all files to a temporary folder.

4. Run the HP tool, select the USB device, I used FAT32, create a DOS bootable disk and point at the win98boot folder - then "Start". Warning: this '''formats''' the USB flash drive and all data will be erased!

5. Once complete (you could test if it boots at this point), copy the extracted BIOS files from the temporary folder you created to the USB flash drive.

6. Boot from USB flash drive by pressing F11 within the BIOS boot logo. At the DOS command prompt, type "updflsh" and then follow the prompts by pressing "Y" or Enter. Make sure that you have a fully charged battery pack and the AC Adapter is firmly plugged before proceeding with the BIOS update.
'''DO NOT Power off the laptop or unplug the USB flash drive while the update is in progress or else update will fail and your computer will be unable to boot and system board may need to be serviced.'''

This process takes around 1-2 minutes. A long beep followed by a short beep will notify you that the update is complete and the system will automatically power off.

7. Power on the laptop then enter the BIOS setup by pressing F1 and Load BIOS defaults.

= Approach 8: Updating via "IBM Predesktop area", suitable for model X (not have CDROM and floppy) =
It's so difficult to update BIOS and ECP without cdrom, floppy disk.
Don't know the reason why I couldn't update BIOS and ECP(1QHJ08US and 1QUJ19US) for my IBM Thinkpad X31.Hmm, may be cause of the dividing partition on my hard disk, that is:
<blockquote style="background: white; border: 1px solid black; padding: 1em;">
<pre><nowiki>
Primary: ext3, ext3, ntfs
Extended: Ntsf, fat32
Bootloader: GRUB
</nowiki></pre></blockquote>

No problem, you can use this way to do it:
* First, config in BIOS
In Security part:
# Remove all password of Supervisor and Power on password
# Set Access IBM Predesktop Area to Normal
# Choose Enable "Flash BIOS updating by End User" in BIOS update Option.

In Config part:
# Choose Enable for Network flash over Lan

* Second, download the newest version of BIOS update and ECP update
Running: The program extract all files to the folder. There is a .img file (1QUJ19US.IMG, 1QUJ08US.IMG) in each folder.
Copy the imformation content in that img file and paste it to one FAT partition(using winimage or TotalCmd to extract)

as seen All files in 1QUJ19US.IMG is extracted to D:\BIOS
<blockquote style="background: white; border: 1px solid black; padding: 1em;">
<pre><nowiki>
695,764 $018E000.FL1
163 0691.HSH
2,049 0691.PAT
163 0694.HSH
2,049 0694.PAT
163 0695.HSH
2,049 0695.PAT
2,049 06D0.PAT
163 06D1.HSH
2,049 06D1.PAT
163 06D2.HSH
2,049 06D2.PAT
163 06D6.HSH
2,049 06D6.PAT
2,049 06D8.PAT
697 CHKBMP.EXE
8,128 COMMAND.COM
26 CONFIG.SYS
24,860 FLASH2.EXE
26 LCREFLSH.BAT
170 LOGO.BAT
330 LOGO.SCR
111,925 PHLASH16.EXE
91,648 PREPARE.EXE
45 PROD.DAT
22,252 QKFLASH.EXE
9,923 README.TXT
4,260 TPCHKS.EXE
39,666 UPDTFLSH.EXE
6,958 UPDTMN.EXE
12,501 USERINT.EXE
15,254 UTILINFO.EXE
</nowiki></pre></blockquote>

And all files in 1QUJ08US.IMG are: D:\ECP
<blockquote style="background: white; border: 1px solid black; padding: 1em;">
<pre><nowiki>
315,404 $018E000.FL2
8,000 COMMAND.COM
36 CONFIG.SYS
16,910 ECFLASH2.EXE
45 PROD.DAT
17,812 QKFLASH.EXE
990 README.TXT
4,260 TPCHKS.EXE
89,738 UPDTEC.EXE
31,134 UPDTFLSH.EXE
12,501 USERINT.EXE
15,226 UTILINFO.EXE
</nowiki></pre></blockquote>

* Okie, now plug AC Adapter, charge full battery to your laptop and continue third step:

** '''Flash BIOS first,'''
1. Power On, press blue button on keyboard: '''Access IBM'''

2. On "Utilities", double click " Diagnostic disk"

3. Your laptop will start PC-DOS, wait when this message appear:
<blockquote style="background: white; border: 1px solid black; padding: 1em;">
<pre><nowiki>
Please insert the first floppy diskette and
Press any key to continue
</nowiki></pre></blockquote>

4. Press Ctrl + Break, you will see :
<blockquote style="background: white; border: 1px solid black; padding: 1em;"><pre><nowiki>Terminate batch job (Y/N) ?</nowiki></pre></blockquote>

5. Okie, press Y, you will get DOS prompt like D:\
{{NOTE|D:\ is my RAMDISK, C:\ is my disk format as FAT.!}}

6. Enter to c:\BIOS
<blockquote style="background: white; border: 1px solid black; padding: 1em;">
<pre><nowiki>
c:
cd c:\BIOS
</nowiki></pre></blockquote>

7. Run FLASH2.EXE /u $018E000.FL1

8. Wait flash progress compelete and reboot.
** '''Flash ECP'''
Follow above instruction from step 1 to 5

6. Enter to c:\ECP
<blockquote style="background: white; border: 1px solid black; padding: 1em;">
<pre><nowiki>
c:
cd c:\ECP
</nowiki></pre></blockquote>

7. run UPDTFLSH.EXE $018E000.FL2

8. Follow UPDTFLSH's instructions

9. Wait flash complete and auto turn off computer.

I done it on my IBM Thinkpad X31.

Enjoy,

Tested by nm.

= Approach 10: Booting the Lenovo ISO image using Grub and SysLinux =

I ran this on my [[:Category:X100e|X100e]] L625 (Dual-Core) 3508-5EG.

Also worked on my [[:Category:X301|X301]] with the default ubuntu 10.10 memdisk (/usr/lib/syslinux/memdisk). My menu entry structure however looked like this (ext4 root/boot partition): --[[User:Blk|Blk]] 17:54, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
menuentry 'BIOS Upgrade' {
insmod ext2
set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
linux16 /boot/memdisk iso
initrd16 /boot/bios.iso
}
small note: the upgrade itself took about 2minutes (it beeped in the middle) and after rebooting i was probably in a reboot-loop. The system rebooted twice in a row after showing the "Press the ThinkVantage button..." blabla, so the third time i went into the bios, reset the default options (F9) and reconfigured it the way i had it before. Then it all worked.
Now to the original instructions (thanks mate!)

Basically, you download the iso of the cd for bios upgrade from Lenovo and let grub + syslinux emulate a cd-rom drive for you, running the software on the iso.

It's nice and feels safe, since either the iso boots from grub or it doesn't, but if it does, you are running the full OS and update software stack as provided and tested by Lenovo. If it doesn't your bios will not be affected and you will not have bricked your laptop.

* Download the latest bios upgrade from Lenovo website. I used version 1.25 ({{path|6xuj08uc.iso}})
* Get your hands on memdisk of syslinux. I had to compile a recent version, because my memdisk version that came with Ubuntu did not work correctly.
* To compile a recent version of syslinux (I used 3.86):
** Download the sources from http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index.php/ISOLINUX (Download link in my case: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/syslinux-3.86.tar.bz2),
** Extract the sources and issue {{cmduser|make}} in the root directory of the source.
** Once compiled, the memdisk file you need will be in {{path|syslinux-3.86/memdisk/memdisk}}
* Copy the memdisk file of syslinux to {{path|/boot/memdisk}}
* Update the grub config file: add the code snippet below to the end of the file {{path|/boot/grub/grub.cfg}}. (on Ubuntu, add it to the file {{path|/etc/grub.d/40_custom}} instead, and do a {{cmduser|sudo update-grub}} afterwards).
menuentry "Thinkpad x100e BIOS Upgrade to 1.25" {
set root='(hd0,1)' # This line should match the other menuentries in your grub.cfg
linux16 /boot/memdisk iso
initrd16 /boot/6xuj08uc.iso # Make sure this is the correct filename (a different version will have a different filename)
}
* Now reboot, press and hold shift right after the Thinkpad logo disappears and you should see an option in the grub boot menu to boot the bios upgrade cd.
* Select that option and press enter, the Lenovo bios update software should boot, and you'll get a text-menu interface.
** If you just see text on a black background and your Thinkpad no longer responds, your booting failed. At this point you are not updating the bios, so you can safely reboot using the power on/off button, recheck your config and find out what you did wrong.
* If it does boot, follow the directions carefully:
** Make absolutely sure you have power attached and a well loaded battery just in case
** The process takes around a minute
** When it asks to remove the cd and press enter to reboot, just press enter.
** You should then reboot having and updated bios.

= Approach 10A: Booting an ISO image using Grub and Syslinux for X61 =

The Lenovo ISO images for X61 (and T61) can be booted using Grub as described above, but they don't work as they are intended to be used from the UltraBase cdrom drive.

Fortunately you can adapt an ISO image from a more recent model, such as the X201.
The following instructions rely on the X201 BIOS Update Bootable CD for version 1.34, filename '''6quj11uc.iso'''.
Other versions may or may not work.

Save this script as '''convert-iso.sh'''

#!/bin/bash

X201=$1 # X201 iso to use
X61=$2 # X61 update
OUT=$3 # output filename

ISO=`mktemp`
SRC=`mktemp -d`
DST=`mktemp -d`

cp $X201 $ISO

# discovered using geteltorito, to get the offset of the disk image
# and fdisk, to get the offset of the partition inside the disk image
OFFSET=71680

mount $ISO $DST -o rw,loop,offset=$OFFSET

# create a ramdisk big enough for the flash files
cat <<EOF | sed 's/$/\r/' > $DST/CONFIG.SYS
FILES=30
BUFFERS=10
DEVICE=C:\HIMEM.SYS /NUMHANDLES=120
DEVICEHIGH=C:\ramdrive.sys /E 30720
DOS=HIGH,UMB
STACKS=9,256
EOF

# copy the flash files to the ramdisk
# if not, the update will simply hang because the files cannot be accessed
#
# remove the command.com line if you need a shell
cat <<EOF | sed 's/$/\r/' > $DST/AUTOEXEC.BAT
copy FLASH\*.* d:
d:
command.com
EOF

rm -r $DST/FLASH/*
mount $X61 $SRC -r -o loop
cp $SRC/* $DST/FLASH

umount $SRC $DST
rmdir $SRC $DST

mv $ISO $OUT
echo "Done: $OUT created."

Then run the script against the X201 bios ISO and the X61 one (in this example, version 2.22, filename '''7nuj22uc.iso'''.

{{cmdroot|./convert-iso.sh 6quj11uc.iso 7nuj22uc.iso X61.iso}}.

In theory this should create a file called '''X61.iso''' that can be booted using Grub and Syslinux, and which will successfully update the BIOS.

How to configure the TrackPoint

2011-04-04T17:54:42Z

Trmsw: /* Configuring other options (e.g. Press to select, Sensitivity and Speed) */ - alternative udev rule

{| width="100%"
|style="vertical-align:top;padding-right:20px;width:10px;white-space:nowrap;" | __TOC__
|style="vertical-align:top" |Below are several ways of configuring the kernel psmouse driver for controlling extended TrackPoint features.
|}
On a '''Modern''' distribution (like Fedora, Ubuntu or OpenSUSE) you will want to use xinput or one of the graphical front ends. For distributions that are lagging a bit (e.g. Debian Lenny and PCLOS '09) you may still want to use the old xorg config method.

=Configuration using xinput=
If you want to modify changes on the fly, you can do so with {{cmd|xinput|}} (part of the optional xorg-x11-apps rpm on Fedora).
Note that these changes are not saved when the xserver is restarted. However, you can add the lines e.g. in your {{cmd|.xsessionrc|}} (depends on your distribution) so they are executed every time X starts.

To query the available options
xinput list-props "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"

More information can be found in the man-pages for evdev
man evdev

To enable vertical scrolling
xinput set-int-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation" 8 1
xinput set-int-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Button" 8 2
xinput set-int-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout" 8 200

To enable horizontal scrolling in addition to vertical scrolling

xinput set-int-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes" 8 6 7 4 5

To enable middle button emulation (using left- and right-click simultaneously)
xinput set-int-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Middle Button Emulation" 8 1
xinput set-int-prop "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint" "Evdev Middle Button Timeout" 8 50

==Example: openSUSE 11.2 and ThinkPad USB Keyboard with TrackPoint ==

xinput list
will show two "Lite-On Technology Corp. ThinkPad USB Keyboard with TrackPoint." with two different ids. Use the id with Axis 0 and Axis 1 items.

Suppose the id was 12. The following will enable the trackpoint scrolling:

xinput set-int-prop 12 "Evdev Wheel Emulation" 8 1
xinput set-int-prop 12 "Evdev Wheel Emulation Button" 8 2
xinput set-int-prop 12 "Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout" 8 200

The following will enable the horizontal scrolling
xinput set-int-prop 12 "Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes" 8 6 7 4 5

To disable middle button click paste functionality, remap the middle button to something else:
xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 9 3 4 5 6 7 8 2"

To do these automatically without worrying about id number, generate a bash script file:
#!/bin/sh
xinput list | sed -ne 's/^[^ ][^V].*id=$[0-9]*$.*/\1/p' | while read id
do
case `xinput list-props $id` in
*"Middle Button Emulation"*)
xinput set-int-prop $id "Evdev Wheel Emulation" 8 1
xinput set-int-prop $id "Evdev Wheel Emulation Button" 8 2
xinput set-int-prop $id "Evdev Wheel Emulation Timeout" 8 200
xinput set-int-prop $id "Evdev Wheel Emulation Axes" 8 6 7 4 5
xinput set-int-prop $id "Evdev Middle Button Emulation" 8 0
;;
esac
done

# disable middle button
xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 9 3 4 5 6 7 8 2"

and save it with any name such as trackPointScrolling.sh, and make it executable:
chmod +x trackPointScrolling.sh

Next time you run it with $ ./trackPointScrolling.sh, it will enable the trackpoint scrolling and disable middle button paste.
{{Todo|some other examples}}

= Graphical Frontends =
If you are using GNOME, you might want to use [http://live.gnome.org/GPointingDeviceSettings GPointing Device Settings] or [http://tpctl.sourceforge.net/configure-trackpoint.html configure-trackpoint] as a graphical frontends.
=== GPointing Device Settings ===
It is available for Fedora 12, Ubuntu 9.10 and Debian Squeeze in the standard package repositories

[[image:Screenshot-GPointing Device Settings-TrackPoint.png]]

=== configure-trackpoint ===
To install it in Ubuntu run ...
sudo apt-get install sysfsutils
...and then download and install the deb [http://sourceforge.net/projects/tpctl/ here]. Note that saved settings are not restored after reboot in Lucid Lynx. See methods below to make settings permanent.

= Configuration using DevKit =
Most recent distributions like Ubuntu 9.10 switch from HAL (being deprecated) to DevKit. Hence, the HAL configurations explained underneath, fail to work.

The easiest way to configure your touchpad and trackpoint with DevKit is by using the [http://live.gnome.org/GPointingDeviceSettings GPointingDeviceSettings] panel that fully supports the hardware. You can easily download the panel by installing {{cmd| gpointing-device-settings|}}. On Ubuntu open a terminal and execute the command {{cmduser| sudo apt-get install gpointing-device-settings}}

Launch the UI through the {{cmduser| gpointing-device-settings}} command, but you can also add a menu entry to your System / Preferences menu for easier access to the UI panel.

= Configuration using udev and HAL =
Modern distributions like Ubuntu 8.10 and Fedora 10 use udev and HAL to configure the input devices. You should no longer make changes to xorg.conf as by default Xorg (through the evdev driver) will let the kernel now handle input devices.

But before you get started on this you should make sure you have all the updates applied from your distro vendor as both Ubuntu 8.10 and Fedora 10 require some additional fixes that you will need.

=== Scrolling ===
By default the middle mouse button is that, a middle mouse button, which in Linux is used for the Paste operation.

But you can configure it to act in the same way as in Windows, such that you can use it for vertical scrolling (keep the button pressed and move the TrackPoint up and down to scroll).

==== xorg.conf.d ====

Some distributions now support the new Xorg hotplug configuration method via xorg.conf.d directories (in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx) instead of hal. In contrast to the udev method below, it should be around for some time, so it might be the best way to “statically” configure scrolling.

Create the file {{path|/usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-thinkpad.conf}} as root with the following content:

<pre>
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "Trackpoint Wheel Emulation"
MatchProduct "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint|DualPoint Stick|Synaptics Inc. Composite TouchPad / TrackPoint|ThinkPad USB Keyboard with TrackPoint|USB Trackpoint pointing device|Composite TouchPad / TrackPoint"
MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
Option "EmulateWheel" "true"
Option "EmulateWheelButton" "2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "false"
Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7"
Option "YAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection
</pre>

Save and restart Xorg (or it'll be enabled at next reboot).

{{NOTE|For Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, the correct path is {{path|/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d}}}}
{{NOTE|For Arch Linux or Fedora, the correct path is {{path|/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d}}}}

{{NOTE|If the above does not work for you, you may need to add a different MatchProduct string. Use <pre>find /dev/input/event* -exec udevadm info --attribute-walk --name={} \; | grep -e product -e name | sort -u</pre> to get a list of possibilities.}}

{{NOTE|If the above directory doesn't exist by default in your distribution, it probably doesn't support this method. In this case, please refer to the udev or xinput method below.}}

==== udev ====

Now that Xorg doesn't use the configuration from hal (in Debian unstable starting january 2010), the only way to “statically” configure scrolling in trackpoint is udev. (for other people, xinput method, works fine). This method will be gone (_again_) in not too long so it might be a better idea to use xinput way. YMMV.

Create the file {{path|/etc/udev/rules.d/99_trackpoint.rules}} as root with the following content:

<pre>
ACTION!="add|change", GOTO="xorg_trackpoint_end"
KERNEL!="event*", GOTO="xorg_trackpoint_end"

ENV{ID_PATH}!="platform-i8042-serio-1", GOTO="xorg_trackpoint_end"

ENV{x11_options.EmulateWheel}="1"
ENV{x11_options.EmulateWheelButton}="2"
ENV{x11_options.XAxisMapping}="6 7"
ENV{x11_options.Emulate3Buttons}="0"

LABEL="xorg_trackpoint_end"
</pre>

Save and restart udev then Xorg (or it'll be enabled at next reboot).

{{NOTE|The ID_PATH used in the example above is a typical value. To determine the ID_PATH appropriate to the TrackPoint on a specific model see [[#Determining TrackPoint Path ID|Determining TrackPoint Path ID]]}}

==== Hal (soon to be deprecated) ====

To accomplish this create the file {{path|/etc/hal/fdi/policy/mouse-wheel.fdi}} as root with the following content:

<pre>
<match key="info.product" string="TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint">
<merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheel" type="string">true</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheelButton" type="string">2</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.YAxisMapping" type="string">4 5</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.Emulate3Buttons" type="string">true</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheelTimeout" type="string">200</merge>
</match>
</pre>

If you also want to have horizontal scrolling, simply add the following XAxisMapping option to the above
<pre>
<merge key="input.x11_options.XAxisMapping" type="string">6 7</merge>
</pre>
After this reboot, or restart the hal service and Xorg. You can validate the settings with {{cmd|lshal|}}.

In some models (eg: X301 and X200 since Jan 10 2010 on debian sid) you may have to use "PS/2 Generic Mouse" instead of "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint". Have a look to your input devices typing <code>lshal|grep input.product</code>.

Alternatively it is also possible to use the "old" Xorg configuration by adding the following lines to the {{path|/etc/X11/xorg.conf}}:

<pre>
Section "ServerFlags"
Option "AutoAddDevices" "false"
EndSection
</pre>

Using this entry HAL will not be used for the input devices.

====Reactivate Scrolling after suspend/resume====
Scrolling may be disabled after a resume from suspend.

You can manually reactivate the trackpoint by reloading the {{path|psmouse}} module as root:
:{{cmdroot|rmmod psmouse && modprobe psmouse}}

You can automatically force the pm-utils to reload this module.
Create a file {{path|/etc/pm/config.d/01reload_mouse}} as root with the following content:
<pre>
# reload psmouse to reactivate trackpoint scrolling
SUSPEND_MODULES="${SUSPEND_MODULES:+$SUSPEND_MODULES }psmouse"
</pre>

===Configuring other options (e.g. Press to select, Sensitivity and Speed)===

Create a file {{path|/etc/udev/rules.d/10-trackpoint.rules}} and add a line to suit your needs

<pre>
SUBSYSTEM=="serio", DRIVERS=="psmouse", ATTRS{press_to_select}="1", ATTRS{sensitivity}="122"
</pre>

Testing udev with {{cmdroot|udevadm test /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1}} should apply the new changes. All of the settings listed [[How to configure the TrackPoint#Sysfs_Options_Reference|below]] can be specified here as part of a comma separated list.
The customized values should be loaded automatically when booting. However, due to a [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=549379 kernel bug] (affecting Lucid Lynx), the attributes may not yet exist when the udev rule fires. As a work around, add a WAIT_FOR condition on the attribute

<pre>
SUBSYSTEM=="serio", DRIVERS=="psmouse", WAIT_FOR="/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/sensitivity", ATTRS{sensitivity}="122"
</pre>

To avoid the wait you can also listen for the Trackpoint input device to appear and then run a script to set the parameters

<pre>
SUBSYSTEM=="input", ATTR{name}=="*TrackPoint*", RUN+="/etc/conf.d/trackpoint"
</pre>

An example {{path|/etc/conf.d/trackpoint}} would be

<pre>#! /bin/bash

## Trackpoint settings

# When run from a udev rule, DEVPATH should be set
if [ ! -z $DEVPATH ] ; then
TPDEV=/sys/$( echo "$DEVPATH" | sed 's/\/input\/input[0-9]*//' )
else
# Otherwise just look in /sys/
TPDEV=$(find /sys/devices/platform/i8042 -name name | xargs grep -Fl TrackPoint | sed 's/\/input\/input[0-9]*\/name$//')
fi

# http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_configure_the_TrackPoint
# http://wwwcssrv.almaden.ibm.com/trackpoint/files/ykt3eext.pdf
#------------------------------------------------------------
if [ -d "$TPDEV" ]; then
echo "Configuring Trackpoint"
echo -n 255 > $TPDEV/sensitivity # Integer 128 Sensitivity
echo -n 110 > $TPDEV/speed # Integer 97 Cursor speed
echo -n 4 > $TPDEV/inertia # Integer 6 Negative intertia
else
echo "Couldn't find trackpoint device $TPDEV"
fi
</pre>

=Configuration using sysfs=
Another way to modify changes on the fly, is echoing values directly into special files in sysfs.

{{NOTE|
The examples shown below are valid for ThinkPads with both TrackPoint and Touchpad, in which case the sysfs path is {{path|/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2}}.

If however you have a ThinkPad without Touchpad, or with the Touchpad disabled in the BIOS, the sysfs path needs to be changed to {{path|/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1}} instead (notice the missing serio2 at the end).}}

If you want to set the sysfs parameters at boot, you can use the [http://linux-diag.sourceforge.net/Sysfsutils.html sysfsutils] and put the preferred value in /etc/sysfs.conf.

===Press to Select===
Press to Select allows you to tap the control stick which will simulate a left click. You can enable this feature by typing the following in to a terminal (you may need to be root):

:{{cmdroot|echo -n 1 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select}}

Press to Select should now be enabled. You can disable it in a similar manner:

:{{cmdroot|echo -n 0 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select}}

You can use this script to automate the operation

#!/bin/bash
if [ "$1" = "1" ]; then
echo "Turning on tap on TrackPoint"
echo -n 1 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select
exit 0
fi
if [ "$1" = "0" ]; then
echo "Turning off tap on TrackPoint"
echo -n 0 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select
exit 0
fi
echo -n "Tap status: "
cat /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select

In Ubuntu 8.10 to make Press to Select a permanent change:

echo -n 1 | tee /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/press_to_select

As root, append the above command above "exit 0" in /etc/gdm/Init/Default

===Sensitivity & Speed===
Adjusting the speed and sensitivity of the TrackPoint requires echoing a value between 0 and 255 into the appropriate file. For example, for a speed of 120 and a sensitivity of 250, type the following into a terminal:

:{{cmdroot|echo -n 120 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/speed}}
:{{cmdroot|echo -n 250 > /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/sensitivity}}

Feel free to experiment with your settings until you find a combination that is comfortable.

When you satisfy your setting, add the two lines into /etc/rc.d/rc.local in order to avoid restoring the default setting every time the system reboots. In Ubuntu 9.10, add the lines to /etc/rc.local to avoid this.

===Vertical Scrolling===
No sysfs entry exists for vertical scrolling in kernels after 2.6.11.

The feature was removed as it was not a hardware feature, but rather emulating a scroll action in software and as such did not belong in the kernel.
Instead the scroll feature of the Xserver should be used, which can be activated with HAL or xinput as described above.

=Configuration using the X server (xorg.conf)=
==Using the "evdev" driver (preferred, especially for recent Xorg versions)==
Extract from /etc/X11/xorg.conf on an X31:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"
Driver "evdev"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/by-path/platform-i8042-serio-1-event-mouse"
Option "GrabDevice" "False"
Option "EmulateWheel" "true" #Enable wheel emulation for the Trackpoint
Option "EmulateWheelButton" "2" #Use the middle button for the emulation
Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7" #Map trackpoint X axis to X axis of emulated wheel
Option "YAxisMapping" "4 5" #Map trackpoint Y axis to Y axis of emulated wheel
EndSection

{{NOTE|The device path used in the example above is a typical value. To determine the device path appropriate to the TrackPoint on a specific model see [[#Determining TrackPoint Path ID|Determining TrackPoint Path ID]]}}

==Using the "mouse" driver (deprecated, only for old Xorg versions)==
{{NOTE|This only applies to old distributions with Xorg versions that did not yet use evdev. For modern distributions use one of the other methods}}
The scroll setting has been removed from the trackpoint driver in kernel versions 2.6.11 and above. Scroll emulation should now be handled in the X server.

A nice side effect of that is, that middle button scrolling applies to any mouse and not just the TrackPoint interface, which can be a quite handy feature for desktop computers or people who prefer to use an external mouse, especially when scrolling through long lists or needing to use horizontal scrolling with a mouse which has only a vertical scroll wheel.

The necessary functionality, known as "EmulateWheelTimeout" allowing to use button 2 for a middle click, wasn't implemented in Xorg prior to 6.9/7.0. However, there was a patch included in most distributions packages of Xorg, which was announced [http://www.mail-archive.com/devel@xfree86.org/msg03333.html here]. You can find an updated version of the package in the experimental branch of {{Debian}} or try to build the mouse driver yourself with the information in the announcement. This has successfully been tried with FC3's 6.8.2 packages.

Once this functionality is in the X.org, add these lines to your TrackPoint configuration section in {{path|/etc/X11/xorg.conf}}:

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

It may also be necessary to add these lines:

Option "YAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7"

which specify which buttons are mapped to motion in the vertical (Y) and horizontal (X) directions, respectively, in wheel emulation mode (see http://www.xfree86.org/current/mouse.4.html).

{{HINT| Use the program "xev" to see, what mouse button identifiers are sent by your mouse/touchpad/trackpoint. You might want to try: "xev | grep button"}}
{{HINT| If it does not work see if evdev is installed and remove it. On gentoo do the following: 
eix xf86-input-evdev 
emerge -C xf86-input-evdev 
and then remove the evdev flag in make.conf INPUT_DEVICES}}

So, a complete mouse section, that implements this nicely and works very well on my R51, even with a simultaneously connected USB mouse, looks like that (tried out today, 20th of September, 2006 on Dapper):

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "on"
Option "Emulate3TimeOut" "50"
Option "EmulateWheel" "on"
Option "EmulateWheelTimeOut" "200"
Option "EmulateWheelButton" "2"
Option "YAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

The mappings for Y and Z are the same, since the "Z-Axis" refers to actual hardware scrolling wheels which usually scroll the screen along the Y-Axis. If there is no hardware scrolling wheel present, horizontal and vertical scrolling using the TrackPoint work fine without the Z-Axis line.

Now restart X and hold down button 2 and move the mouse to scroll, or just press and release button 2 for a middle click.

To make this work with the synaptics driver for the touchpad, you can add
Option "GuestMouseOff" "1"
to the synaptics device section. This will make the synaptics driver ignore the Trackpoint, so it will be handled by the mouse driver. This allowed me to disable the touchpad while making the TrackPoint work like it should.

{{NOTE| With the above mouse section in my xorg.conf all this works like a charm:
*I can press the wheel on my external USB mouse and move the mouse up and down for scrolling
*or I can just use the wheel on the external mouse for scrolling
*or pressing the MMB button of the trackpoint and use the trackpoint for scrolling.
*Even horizontal scrolling works automagically in Konqueror, for Firefox/Opera see below.

Simultaneously I can use
*a press on the external mouse's wheel
*or the MMB of the trackpoint

for pasting the buffer. Lovely! :) }}

{{HINT| If you don't use the middle-mouse-button for pasting and sometimes pasting things by mistake while scrolling (witch is really odd) simply set the "EmulateWheelTimeOut" to "1" as a (bloody) workaround. Middle click will only possible with pressing left and right button simultaneously!}}

=Application specific tweaks=
===Configure Opera for using trackpoint horizontal scrolling===
To fix horizontal scrolling in Opera, you need to edit the configfile <tt>standard_mouse.ini</tt> in e.g. /usr/share/opera/ui/ (Debian) or /opt/opera/share/opera/ini/ (Gentoo) and comment out the following lines
<pre>
Button6 = Back
Button7 = Forward
</pre>
so they look like that
<pre>
;Button6 = Back
;Button7 = Forward
</pre>
Remember, Button6 and Button7 do not so coincidental correspond with our X configuration we know from above:
<pre>
Option "YAxisMapping" "6 7"
</pre>
After this change you will be able to scroll vertically and horizontally with your middle button.

===Firefox 3 tweaks===
These settings make Firefox on Linux behave more like the Windows version. They were tested on an out of the box Fedora 10 system on a Thinkpad T61. Go into about:config, and set the following:

middlemouse.paste = false
middlemouse.contentLoadURL = false
general.autoScroll = true

=Sysfs Options Reference=
{{NOTE|These options are current as of kernel version 2.6.29, 3 May 2009}}
{|
|-
! Name
! Type
! Default
! Notes
|-
| sensitivity
| Integer
| 128
| Sensitivity
|-
| speed
| Integer
| 97
| Cursor speed
|-
| inertia
| Integer
| 6
| Described as "negative inertia." It acts more like friction. High values cause the cursor to snap backward when the Trackpoint is released
|-
| reach
| Integer
| 10
| Backup for Z-axis press
|-
| draghys
| Integer
| 255
| Drag hysteresis (how hard it is to drag with Z-axis pressed)
|-
| mindrag
| Integer
| 20
| Minimum amount of force needed to trigger dragging
|-
| thresh
| Integer
| 8
| Minimum value for a Z-axis press
|-
| upthresh
| Integer
| 255
| Used to generate a 'click' on Z-axis
|-
| ztime
| Integer
| 38
| How sharp of a press
|-
| jenks
| Integer
| 135
| Minimum curvature for double click
|-
| press_to_select
| Boolean
| 0
| Press to select
|-
| skipback
| Boolean
| 0
| Supress movement after drag release
|-
| ext_dev
| Boolean
| 0
| Disable external device
|}
Table info taken from [http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=blob;f=drivers/input/mouse/trackpoint.h;hb=HEAD here]. The given link will always point to the current version of the driver. If the notes seem sparse, that's because the code is sparse. On the other hand, the [http://wwwcssrv.almaden.ibm.com/trackpoint/files/ykt3eext.pdf Trackpoint Engineering Specification Version 4.0]  contains more documentation information than anyone ever desired.

=Determining TrackPoint Path ID=
Both the [[#udev|udev]] and [[#Configuration using the X server (xorg.conf)|xorg.conf]] configuration methods require knowledge of the Path ID of the TrackPoint. In the [[#udev|udev]] configuration method, the Path ID is used to match the ID_PATH environmental variable, in the [[#Configuration using the X server (xorg.conf)|xorg.conf]] configuration method it is the prefix for the device file name inside the {{path|/dev/input/by-id}} directory. The path ID can vary between ThinkPad models, distributions (with varying kernel patches), and between kernel versions. One way to find the path ID for the TrackPoint is to use udev's path_id utility on the sysfs device path for the TrackPoint. This device path can be found using the {{path|name}} file which describes the TrackPoint. The process can be automated using the following shell command:
/lib/udev/path_id $(find /sys/devices/platform/i8042 -name name | xargs grep -Fl TrackPoint | sed 's/\/sys$.*$\/name/\1/')