[ltp] T60, Gutsy, woes!

[John Jason Jordan]

On Sun, 02 Dec 2007 11:31:04 +0000
Phil <phil@stairbridge.org.uk> dijo:

> OK, against my better judgement I upgraded my T60 to Gutsy. 

> 1) Wireless is much worse than before. I've got an Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG, and browsing on the net there's lots of people having problems and not a lot of good solutoins. In the end I got it working by removing network manager, and running the following (several times, first time didn't work):
>     modprobe -r ipw3945
>     modprobe ipw3945
>     iwlist scan
>     iwconfig eth1 essid <my network essid>
>     dhclient eth1
> 
> I'd love to get network manager running again, but most stuff I've read seems to imply it's the cause of the problem.

I have issues with network manager on Gutsy x86_64 on my brand new T61. I have the 4965AGN and it suddenly stops working, although everything says I am still connected. There are quite a few comments on Ubuntu forums about flaky wireless with Intel chips on Thinkpads, although as far as I know, the only ones having problems are the x86_64 users.

I cannot think of anything to help, except that I did find that Wifi-Radar was a good tool. It's much faster than network manager and seems to work better at getting me connected. It's in Synaptic.

> 2) Gnome fails on startup - I can only run in safe session mode. Looking in .xsession-errors I see the following:
...
> /etc/gdm/Xsession: Beginning session setup...
> Checking for nVidia: not present.

I wonder why it is looking for nVidia if your video is ATI. Maybe the upgrade mis-detected your video?

> Fatal server error:
> no screens found

>From past experience, "no screens found" means it couldn't find a display that could handle the resolution it was trying to use.

> safe session works fine, but I'm not sure what's blowing me up. XGL? What should I do about this?
> I'm using the ATI fglrx driver (latest version pulled of AMD's site) - I've got an  ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility X1400

Sounds as though xorg.conf is seriously messed up. First thing I would do is open it up in gedit and see what it says. I have nVidia video and when I made a fresh install on this T61 it failed to detect the video. I had to copy and paste the string from lspci into xorg.conf and also edit the resolutions, then update x. It took several attempts before I got it working right. Ubuntu has never been as good as Fedora at detecting and setting up video, but I'm surprised that an upgrade would not recognize the existing setup and just keep it.

> 3) On battery, the display brightness drops very low (ignoring the gnome power manager setting). If I up the brightness using the keyboard Fn-Home key it gets brighter, but after a few minutes something kicks it back down again.

None of the brightness controls work on my T61 at all. It is permanently on the brightest setting. Some have said that the Fn keys work if you shell out before using them (guessing at what you want because you have no X then), but even that doesn't change the setting for me. I haven't messed with it because I'd just as soon have it on the brightest setting anyway - I don't spend much time on just battery power.

I also found comments that other Fn keys that didn't work on the T61s finally worked after upgrading the BIOS. I did so and that got the volume keys working. Even though you have a T60, it might be worth checking to see if you have the latest BIOS, just on general principles.

I probably haven't been much help, but maybe I have generated some thought processes.