[ltp] ThinkPad T41P with Debian

[Rob Browning]

William R Sowerbutts <will@sowerbutts.com> writes:

> Hope this helps someone. The advice I received on this list was
> certainly instrumental in making this machine work for me.

A few minor notes/questions:

  - does the video come back for you on the console after a sleep
    (S3)?  For me, the X vt comes back fine after a resume, but the
    consoles are black until a reboot.  I've tried a few combinations
    of kernel options, but so far, all have behaved the same.

  - you might want to check out powernowd.  I've been running that
    here on a t41p, and it seems to behave well.

  - I have the same experience with /proc/acpi/events -- after a
    resume from RAM (S3), no further events are reported.

  - FWIW I haven't had to do anything special about my ethernet card,
    and I haven't tried usb yet, but I also have to "modprobe -r
    ath_pci" before I sleep or suspend.

  - the latest (CVS) madwifi drivers improved a problem for me that's
    similar to the one you describe (where it's hard to get the card
    to connect and/or stay connected), although I do still get
    disconnected now and then.  When that happens, I just "ifdown ath0
    && ifup ath0" to fix it.  I have hooks in my
    /etc/network/interfaces that handle removing and re-probing the
    ath_pci module on down/up.  Also, with previous CVS versions, I
    used to have to be fairly explicit with the card to get it to
    connect (telling it the rate, the channel, etc.), but now all I
    have to do is tell it the key and the essid.

  - to handle the sleep/resume driver issues, I just created
    /etc/acpi/powerbtn.sh and /etc/acpi/sleepbtn.sh files and set
    these up via /etc/acpi/events/ to run at the right times.  Until
    /proc/acpi/events works across S3 sleeps, this isn't as useful as
    it might be for S3 sleep, but you can always invoke the script by
    hand.

    sleepbtn.sh (an S3 sleep) just runs an "ifdown ath0" and then
    "echo 3 > /proc/acpi/sleep".

    powerbtn.sh (an S4 sleep) stops some servers (ntp, powernowd,
    etc.), saves the clock, sets the CPU to max (for the suspend
    work), removes ath0, and then runs "echo 4 > /proc/acpi/sleep".
    Whenever that command returns, it reverses these actions (except
    that it doesn't automatically re-establish the network connection).

Hope this helps, and you're welcome to use any of this information in
your page if it's useful.

-- 
Rob Browning
rlb @defaultvalue.org and @debian.org; previously @cs.utexas.edu
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