[3533] in Release_7.7_team
Re: Status of IBM Laptop issues: Good enough to go live!
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Wed Sep 25 22:16:44 2002
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: Pam Huntley <phuntley@us.ibm.com>
Cc: Michael Schmedlen <mschmedl@us.ibm.com>, owls@mit.edu,
release-team@mit.edu, Steven Sakata <ssakata@us.ibm.com>,
Steven Stiles <sastile@us.ibm.com>,
Victor R Rios <riosvic1@us.ibm.com>, Caroline Patzer <caro@us.ibm.com>
In-Reply-To: <OF5DE20B57.C274EED3-ON87256C3F.0004D805@boulder.ibm.com>
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Date: 25 Sep 2002 22:16:42 -0400
Message-Id: <1033006602.23442.90.camel@tokata.mit.edu>
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Thanks for all the follow-up.
It sounds like we should try out a T30 fresh from the box and involve
the support center if the wireless is well and truly mis-initialized.
At some point I'll pursue hibernation. At the moment I'm rather sour on
Partition Magic. I won't bore you with details. Suffice to say, it's
not as robust as one would like.
With regards to the middle button: I think I'll wait at least until the
suspend/resume problem is fixed. Having working suspend/resume is more
important than having the middle button work. (Especially since we're
telling people "Just close and reopen your laptop" as the first fix for
the screen blanking hangup.)
-wdc
On Wed, 2002-09-25 at 14:11, Pam Huntley wrote:
>
> Hi Bill,
>
> Thanks for all the feedback about your efforts to get Linux working on
> ThinkPads. I'm glad you got recovery working, even if I did (oops :-/)
> forget to mention the unhide/hide option. As far as the lower priority
> items go (auto-suspend, screen blanking), I am tracking all of them, and
> hopefully I'll be able to find some solutions for them. We have limited
> resources, so I can't commit to any fix timeframe, but I can keep you
> posted on what we come up with.
>
> For the high-priority items, such as the third button in the TrackPoint not
> working, we are actively working on this, and have some information that
> may be helpful.
>
> Right now, for the third TrackPoint button, we have a partial fix. There
> is a patch for X (and another one for gpm) that will enable the third
> button of the TrackPoint when the TouchPad is enabled. The gpm patch works
> fine, however the X driver has one problem - it doesn't work after
> suspend/resume. You have to restart X before it works again. We've got
> the people who did the driver modifications looking at it, hopefully the
> fix won't be too long in coming.
>
> I should also mention that if you only use the gpm patch, you can get X to
> look at the cleaned-up output of gpm, instead of /dev/psaux, and get the
> third button to work that way. This is a lot more work, and definately a
> hack, but if you are interested in this, let me know and I can sent you
> detailed instructions.
>
> You can get the X patch and detailed information from the "Synaptics
> Touchpad" section of the Linuxcare certification below:
> http://www.linuxcare.com/labs/certs/ibm/thinkpad/t30/rh73-config.epl
> The gpm patch doesn't appear to be available from that site yet. If you
> are interested in it, please let me know and I'll send it to you.
>
> Just FYI - the issue is that the TrackPoint is a "guest" mouse of the
> TouchPad. All the data from the TrackPoint gets passed through the
> TouchPad, and it's encapsulated rather weirdly. If you disable the
> TouchPad, the TrackPoint works fine, because its data is no longer getting
> "passed through". The specification for this pass-through mode has been
> released by Synaptics, and a driver patch has been written which should be
> in future versions of gpm and the synaptics X driver. The only stickler
> right now is the suspend issue, which may (I need to test) be worked around
> with X listening to /dev/gpmdata instead of using the synaptics X driver.
>
>
> About the Wireless card not working straight out of the box - I've checked
> with our Preload test team, and they have not seen this problem at all. Of
> course, they only test a Windows-only environment. I've sent a note out to
> the person who does the hardware testing for the Wireless card to see if
> there is any special initialization that has to be done. I'll let you know
> what I find out.
>
> If you are seeing this problem right out of the box, before you even resize
> the windows partition, I suggest checking the IBM support site for updates,
> or calling the IBM Support center. They would be the best resource for
> fixing issues that aren't specifically Linux related.
>
>
> About hibernation. Linux NTFS support is sketchy at best, and Microsoft is
> actively going after anyone that tries to improve it. So, for hibernation
> under Linux, you have to use a dedicated partition instead of just a file
> on an NTFS partition. According to the information I have, the
> hibernation support you see in Windows XP is different from hibernation
> support in the BIOS. I have been told (again, I haven't tested it yet)
> that once you add a hibernation partition, the bios will recognize it and
> use it, and Fn-F12 will also work. I believe you can also configure
> windows to use this hibernation partition, once it is present and properly
> formatted. Please be advised I've only started testing this, so, your
> mileage may vary.
>
>
> Good luck with your Athena project... I have to say that I'm also working
> on my master's part time at N.C. State University, and our Realm Kit is
> almost completely based off of Athena.... :-D
>
> Please keep me posted as to your progress, and I'll let you know as to our
> progress, especially the mouse driver fix.
>
> Thanks!
> Pam
>
>
> ============================================
> Pamela Huntley, IBM PCD Software Development
> Phone: (919) 543-3598 Email: phuntley@us.ibm.com
>
>
>
>
> Bill Cattey
> <wdc@MIT.EDU> To: Pam Huntley/Raleigh/IBM@IBMUS, owls@MIT.EDU, release-team@MIT.EDU
> cc: Steven Sakata/Waltham/IBM@IBMUS, Victor R Rios/Raleigh/IBM@IBMUS, Michael
> 09/24/2002 08:26 Schmedlen/Hamden/IBM@IBMUS, Steven Stiles/Minneapolis/IBM@IBMUS
> PM Subject: Status of IBM Laptop issues: Good enough to go live!
>
>
>
>
>
>
> The urgent issue appears resolved, unless something new jumps out at me
> I'm going to green light moving forward on blessing the T30 and R32
> systems.
>
> I've re-inventoried the issues. They are secondary for the most part.
> (Though the scare-impact of a blanked out screen, and of a non-working
> middle button can be pretty severe.)
>
> Here is the present state of understanding:
>
> Issue 1: Getting the maintenance partition to boot.
>
> Status: CLOSED
>
> Grub will boot the partition, but it must be configured to unhide the
> partition.
>
> Subsequent research turned up that F11 used the IBM loader in the MBR
> which we blew away with grub.
>
> Issue 2: SXGA+ screen blanking problem.
>
> Status: WORK-AROUND
>
> What' we'll tell people is to open and close the case to recover (since
> that's the default suspend/resume behavior.) We'll investigate the F7
> work-around as well. We'll ENCOURAGE people to disable it in their
> BIOS.
>
> QUESTION: Is there someone at IBM who is taking the lead in getting this
> fixed?
>
> Issue 3: Wireless ships broken
>
> Status: OPEN
> Priority: TBD
>
> You may need to observe a 'fresh from the box system' to see this issue.
> It's unclear how we'll document it. I'll check in with the support
> folks to find out how big a problem this is turning out to be.
>
> Issue 4: Getting hibernate to work.
>
> Status: OPEN
> Priority: Low
>
> I believe I need to clarify this issue:
>
> If I boot windows, and press Fn-F12, windows will hibernate to disk and
> the machine will power down. This means that the hibernate capabilities
> are already initialized.
>
> If I boot Linux, the Fn-F12 key sequence is ignored.
>
> Note: I'd really like to AVOID trying to get tpctl working for this and
> other stuff.
>
> Am I misunderstanding the proffered solution of "create a hibernate
> partition"? Is it the case that the default hibernation setup (I'm
> testing on a T30.) is a file in the NTFS partition which Linux cannot
> see?
>
> Issue 5: Getting auto-suspend to work.
>
> Status: OPEN
> Priority: LOW
>
> I believe I need to clarify here.
>
> If windows is running, after the BIOS-defined timeout period, the laptop
> goes into suspend mode.
>
> If I am running in single user Linux, after that same BIOS-defined
> timeout period the laptop ALSO goes into suspend mode.
>
> If X is running (the default state on most systems) the auto-suspend
> NEVER occurs. The battery will drain to zero and the system will crash.
> Going into the DPMS variables and setting monitor suspend and power down
> does not seem to affect anything. (This may not be the cleanest test,
> since Red Hat hooks into DPMS in an odd way: through the screen saver
> option in the GNOME control panel.)
>
> QUESTION: What is getting set such that the BIOS timeout starts getting
> ignored when X runs? How can we change it?
>
> 6. Middle mouse button detection.
>
> Status: NEW
> Priority: High
>
> I forgot this one in my previous note. The R32, having only 3 buttons
> detects the mouse buttons without problem, and paste on middle button
> works fine.
>
> The T30, unfortunately, with its pair of left buttons and its pair of
> right buttons detects a middle button but it doesn't work. The only
> thing that seems to work for me is to go into XF86Config-4 by hand and
> change Emulate3Buttons from "off" to "on".
>
> QUESTION: What is going on here? Who should move forward on making
> sure this issue is resolved. Basic mouse operation is important, and
> this seems like galling teeny problem that stands in the way of total
> user comfort.
>
> ----
>
> Special thanks to Pam Huntley of IBM and Karem Limon of MIT for getting
> quick and decisive resolution of the urgent issue!
>
> -wdc
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
