Sunday, June 6, 2010

Debian Linux 5 (Lenny) on Thinkpad T42

I know it seems backwards, but I recently switched from Ubuntu to Debian on my old reliable Thinkpad T42 laptop. Here are some of the problems I encountered and tweaks I made to get it working nicely.

Back and forward keys, and right alt as windows key:
1. Set up .xinitrc
#!/bin/sh
xmodmap -e "keycode 113 = Super_L" # reassign Alt_R to Super_L
xmodmap -e "remove mod1 = Super_L" # make sure X keeps it out of the mod1 group
xmodmap -e "keycode 234 = XF86Back" # Back button.
xmodmap -e "keycode 233 = XF86Forward" # Forward button.
2. Add command to gnome session to run .xinitrc

Fix the "Access IBM" and "Alt-Space" keys:
1. Add to /etc/rc.local
# Dumb kernel drops the acpi_fakekey.
/usr/bin/setkeycodes e017 148 # (for the Access IBM button)
/usr/bin/setkeycodes 0082 192 # (for the Fn+SPACE combination)

Emulate mouse wheel in X with middle button:
1. Add these three lines to /etc/X11/xorg.conf in the "Configured Mouse"
InputDevice section:
Option "EmulateWheel" "true"
Option "EmulateWheelTimeOut" "200"
Option "EmulateWheelButton" "2"

Note: Lenny uses XServer 1.4.2, which does use HAL, but not as fully as 1.5 or something because I couldn't get it to work with a .fdi file.

Make Fn-F5 toggle just bluetooth, not wireless:
1. Copy bluetooth_toggle.sh to /usr/local/sbin/
2. Change the action line in /etc/acpi/events/ibm-wireless to:
action=/usr/local/sbin/bluetooth_toggle.sh

Make Fn-F7 toggle between LCD,TV,and TV+LCD
1. Copy video.sh to /usr/local/sbin/
- (borrowed heavily from this script.
2. Change the action line in /etc/acpi/events/ibm-videobtn to:
action=/usr/local/sbin/video.sh toggle
3. Enable Fn-F7 by modifying the options line in /etc/modprobe.d/thinkpad_acpi.modprobe to:
options thinkpad_acpi hotkey=enable,0xffffff experimental=1

Welcome to my new blog site

Welcome to my new blog site. I figured I might as well let Google host my blog, since that will make it easier to moderate spam.

Here is the location of my old blog: hellewell.info/phillip/blogs. If you have any comments about any of the posts on my old blog, you may make them here.