Gentoo on the IBM ThinkPad X40

This is about installing Gentoo on my shining new ThinkPad X40 - US0H9GE Its a little brief... but was requested many times. So here it is.

Version history

2005/Oct/09: Rickard Lundin from Sweden suggested to add cdroot to the append parameters, to get aware of the 2005.1 "give-root-pass" dialog. Thanks for the feedback!
2005/Apr/03: Initial Version for Gentoo 2005.0

Hardware Configuration

In order to make sure, what model of the X40 I got - here it is...

CPU	Low Voltage Intel Pentium M 738 1,4 GHz
RAM	512 MB DDR-RAM 333 MHz ( onboard ) (but I upgraded to 1GB)
Disk	40,0 GB ATA-100 (Enhanced IDE)
Display	12,1" XGA TFT (1024x768)
Graphic Card	Intel Extreme Graphics 2, 2D/3D (i855GM)
Interfaces	PC Card, RJ-11, RJ-45, USB 2.0 (1 powered), 2 Universal Serial Bus (USB), Infrarot, Headphone/Line out, AC adapter, Expansion bus (for X4 Ultrabase Dock), External microphone, External Display
Slots	1x PCMCIA Slot, Typ II 1x CompactFlash Slot
Connectivity	56K V.92 Modem, Integrated Intel PRO/1000 Gigabit Ethernet, IBM 11a/b/g Wi-Fi Wireless (Atheros!) und Bluetooth
Battery	8 Cell Lithium-Ion, 7.5 Hrs
Weight	1.47Kg

Getting started - PXE Booting

Cause I have no USB CD-ROM drive, I needed to boot Gentoo via PXE - Thank god, we have an Intel E1000! The idea is: PXE Booting, getting PXELINUX loaded, loading the kernel via TFTP, getting an initrd and have a ready-to-shoot Gentoo LiveCD.
So here is the setup:

Get the Gentoo MiniInstall CD and do the following: (This is because of the f*cking squashfs...)

cd /mnt/
mkdir -p /export/gentoo			
mkdir /mnt/iso /mnt/initrd /mnt/squash
mount -o loop /tmp/install-x86-minimal-2005.0.iso /mnt/iso
cp iso/isolinux/gentoo /export/gentoo/vmlinuz
mount -o loop /mnt/iso/livecd.squashfs /mnt/squash
dd if=/dev/zero of=initrd-pxe bs=1024 count=165000
mke2fs initrd-pxe
mount -o loop initrd-pxe /mnt/initrd
cp -a squash/* /mnt/initrd/
umount /mnt/initrd /mnt/squash /mnt/iso
gzip initrd-pxe
mv initrd-pxe.gz /export/gentoo/
rmdir /mnt/iso /mnt/initrd /mnt/squash

Setup the dhcp service dhcpd.conf

authoritative;
server-name "knot.blackwing.de";
ddns-update-style none;
group {
  use-host-decl-names on;

  ## LINUX (tftproot: /export/gentoo)
  filename "pxelinux.0";
  # die location des nfs mounts gibts per pxelinux
  ## LINUX END

	## YOUR SERVER IP (where the tftp server is)
  next-server 172.16.32.254;
  
  option broadcast-address 172.16.32.255;
  option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
  option domain-name-servers 172.16.32.254;
  option netbios-name-servers 172.16.32.254;
  option routers 172.16.32.254;
  option domain-name "home.blackwing.de";
  option ntp-servers 172.16.32.254;
  server-identifier 172.16.32.254;

  option perform-mask-discovery       false;
  option router-discovery             false;
  option default-ip-ttl               10;
  
  ignore unknown-clients;

  host blackpad {
		# enter your hardware address HERE
    hardware ethernet aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff;
    fixed-address 172.16.32.60;
  }
}

Setup an tftp server (app-admin/tftp-hpa) so that /etc/conf.d/in.tftpd holds
```
INTFTPD_PATH="/export/gentoo/"
INTFTPD_OPTS="-l -s ${INTFTPD_PATH}"
```

Get SYSLINUX that contains PXElinux.
Unpack the pxelinux.0 to /export/gentoo/. In this dir, there should be the pxelinux.0 file. Now make a subdir called pxelinux.cfg and put a file default into it:

default gentoo
prompt 1
timeout 10

label gentoo
  kernel gentoo
	append initrd=/initrd-pxe.gz ip=dhcp ramdisk=165000 root=/dev/ram0 udev nodevfs vga=ext dokeymap cdroot
label local
  LOCALBOOT 0

Plug in your X40 and boot it. Press F12 and select PCI Lan as boot device. And now you can see the entire bootprocess passing by.

Base Installation of Gentoo

Just follow the regular guide available at http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-quickinstall.xml I usally start at stage3 to save some time. But this is up to you.

Custom Kernel

Now its your time. Choosing the right config is not so easy if you want to maximize usability. Here are some points that are special:

Processor type: Pentium M
CPUfreq: conservative governor. Speedstep Centrino.
IBM ACPI extensions
Intel E1000 Ethernet
Bluetooth stuff
USB2.0

So my config.gz migth be a good start.

Powersaving - ACPI, Suspend to Disk, Suspend to RAM

In order to get all features running I did the following:

Kernel append line:

append="acpi_sleep=s3_bios resume=/dev/hda6 gentoo-nodevfs hotkey=enable,0xffff"

/etc/conf.d/local.start to change the default govenor for cpufreqd and make shure IBM Hotkeys get enabled.

echo conservative > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_govenor
echo enable,0xffff > /proc/acpi/ibm/hotkey

Installing bluez-utils, bluez-bluefw, bluez-hcidump, bluez-libs, bluez-firmware to enable bluetooth functionality
Install madwifi-driver and madwifi-tools to get the Atheros wireless lan card working
Install acpi and acpid to get the basic ACPI features. Now you need to improve ACPI event routing.
So put into: /etc/acpi/events/default:
```
event=.*
action=ibm_x40-acpi.sh
```
This causes, that every event results in calling my ibm_x40-acpi.sh script.
This script has some prerequisites... Please have xosd installed. You might need to edit the way to find out the current XUSER. Its just the way, it works for wdm.
Add acpid to default runlevel:
```
rc-update add acpid default
```

After rebooting, FN-F12 should put your X40 into suspend-to-disk. FN-F4 into suspend-to-ram. FN-F9 should display current CPU-Speed and remaining battery time. FN-F8 cycles the ath_hal driver, FN-F5 starts bluetooth and all the required deamons.
So, have fun.

X.org

The integrated Intel Extreme Graphics 2 (i855GM) is pretty good supported via the i810 in X.org. I tried three different setups:

TFT only (1024x768) - xorg.single.conf
Presentation Mode: TFT cloned to VGA (both 1024x768) - xorg.clone.conf
Dual View - Having external Screen extending your integrated TFT - xorg.xinerama.conf

To swith to another "profile" just change a symlink to the desired config.

Open Tasks

Acpi Sleep does not really work
Never tried the docking station

EOF