Thinkpad X60s configuration (ipw3945, network-manager, hda-intel...)
By gildor on Wednesday, December 5 2007, 02:08 - Permalink
I spend quite a long time to fully configure my new Thinkpad X60s laptop. This will be my work computer and i wish to use Debian Etch on it. Since it is for my job, i want to use a stable debian release. The aim of this laptop is to always have something that works -- to keep focus on my job.
The configuration was tricky because there is a lot of people reporting that everything works with this laptop, but not a lot of people describing problems they encounter. Here is a list:
Sound:
hda_intel: azx_get_response timeout, switching to polling mode… hda_intel: azx_get_response timeout, switching to single_cmd mode…
It prevents to have the sound working. The problem is related to the modem. You need to be sure that the modem is enabled in the BIOS.
ipw3945:
The WIFI driver of etch doesn't work well. To fix this, you must get the version 1.2.2 of ipw3945-source and rebuild it with module-assistant. I also use firmware-ipw3945 from unstable (v0.7) but I am not sure this is a firmware issue.
network-manager disconnects every 10 seconds or so:
This bug was pretty annoying. The wifi connection was good with wpasupplicant alone (or at least seems to be OK). With network-manager-gnome i keep getting messages about connection and disconnection every 10 seconds.
The solution is to remove everything which is related to bluetooth. This really improves the situation a lot! (i.e. i am not having disconnection messages for at least the time i am writing this blog entry).
apt-get remove --Purge bluez-utils bluetooth
in file /etc/modprobe.d/myblacklist:
blacklist bluetooth
and run:
update-initramfs -u
Update:
As stated in a comment, this is not really an issue related to bluetooth. Using a kernel "with preemption enabled" is enough. The issue in fact as almost nothing to do with bluetooth, because there is no bluetooth module in the laptop.
"linux is an HDD killer":
You need to copy /etc/acpi/start.d/90-hdparm.sh from unstable and place it in /etc/acpi/{suspend|resume|start}.d. This prevents an increase of the Load_Cycle_Count.
Now the laptop seems stable, the wifi connection is up and running -- let's start working (again).
Comments
Hi, nice writeup. Please remember to contribute it to the thinkpad wiki at thinkwiki.org, if you didn't already.
cheers,
Guido
PS: french captcha potentially difficult for non-french people ;-)
Done
Thanks for remembering me about that
Try using a kernel with preemption enabled. This might help with any ipw3945 issues. It improved things a lot, reducing random disconnects of the wireless device.
It seems that the ipw3945 driver does disable all interrupts now an then, which might get bluetooth confused in turn. And when a too big queue piles up, the ipw3945 driver will reset.