13th February 2009

FreeBSD on the IBM ThinkPad X40

In this document, I will try to give a comprehensive report on installing FreeBSD on an IBM ThinkPad X40 – what I got to work, and how, and what still does not work for me. I provide this information in the hope that it might be useful, but without any implied warranty whatsoever. If you have corrections, additional insight or feedback regarding FreeBSD on the IBM ThinkPad X40 to share, please drop me a line.

I own two IBM ThinkPad X40 models with type 2371-8NG and 2372-GG0 respectively. In the beginning, they ran RELENG_5_X with an almost GENERIC kernel; these days they run RELENG_7_X with a GENERIC kernel. Parts of this document might (in the future? :) ) also contain useful bits of information for running NetBSD, OpenBSD, or any of the GNU/Linux flavours on the X40 series ThinkPad.

Remaining Showstoppers

Hardware Gotchas / BIOS Settings

Make sure you turn off the secondary IDE unit in the BIOS or using TP98.exe if the BIOS does not have the option. With the secondary IDE unit enabled, the X40 hangs on ATA device probe (FreeBSD 7.0) or crash randomly shortly after booting (earlier releases). The cd drive in the docking station still works perfectly fine even when the secondary IDE unit is turned off.

The following BIOS error message is referring to the built-in Atheros miniPCI NIC:

ERROR
Resource Conflict - PCI Network Controller in slot 01 Bus:02, Device:02, Function:00

Press <F1> to Setup

Removing and reinserting the miniPCI card made the error disappear.

The older of these machines does not boot sometimes, displaying:

ERROR
0211: Keyboard error
ERROR
0260: System timer error

Press <F1> to Setup

I have no cure. Replacing the RTC battery (FRU 92P1004) did not help. I suspect a hardware defect.

Power Managment / ACPI & APM

It generally runs fine with ACPI enabled, suspend/resume does work. Sometimes closing and re-opening the lid just garbles the screen (which can be fixed by switching console, but that seems to lock up the machine for some people sometimes).

Try to remove APIC from the kernel configuration if your disk fails upon resuming:

device apic

Additionally, selecting a different scheduler may prevent from crashing upon suspending:

options        SCHED_ULE
options        PREEMPTION

If that doesn’t help, try with the following sysctl values:

hw.pci.do_power_resume: 3
hw.pci.do_power_nodriver: 1

Enhanced SpeedStep runs fine. I used to run sysutils/est and have later migrated to the base system cpufreq framework.

Internal NICs

Both the integrated 10/100/1000 Mbps ethernet NIC and the integrated Atheros 802.11 a/b/g NIC work fine.

em0: <Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection, Version - 1.7.35> port 0x7000-0x703f mem 0xd0220000-0xd023ffff irq 20 at device 1.0 on pci2
em0: Ethernet address: 00:0a:xx:xx:xx:xx
em0:  Speed:N/A  Duplex:N/A

ath0: <Atheros 5212> mem 0xd0200000-0xd020ffff irq 21 at device 2.0 on pci2
ath0: mac 5.6 phy 4.1 5ghz radio 1.7 2ghz radio 2.3
ath0: Ethernet address: 00:05:xx:xx:xx:xx
ath0: 11a rates: 6Mbps 9Mbps 12Mbps 18Mbps 24Mbps 36Mbps 48Mbps 54Mbps
ath0: 11g rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps 6Mbps 9Mbps 12Mbps 18Mbps 24Mbps 36Mbps 48Mbps 54Mbps

Some models have an integrated Intel PRO/Wireless 2200 BG which works with the if_iwi kernel module (tested with FreeBSD 7.0).

Internal Modem

Doesn’t work.

Xorg

Used to work with classic dual head setup and DRM (Xorg 7.3 and FreeBSD 7.0). As of Xorg 7.4 and FreeBSD 7.1, DRM is utterly broken again.

With Xorg 7.4, the i810 driver does not work anymore and the intel driver needs the following in its device config in order to work:

Option  "NoAccel" "true"

On the other hand, XRandR works perfectly fine with the intel driver.

To set the keyboard, hald is now used. Create /usr/local/etc/hal/fdi/policy/x11-input.fdi containing something like the following to set the keyboard layout and options:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
  <device>
    <match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.keyboard">
      <merge key="input.xkb.layout" type="string">ch</merge>
      <merge key="input.xkb.options" type="string">ctrl:nocaps</merge>
    </match>
  </device>
</deviceinfo>

PCMCIA / CardBus / PC Card

The slot is detected correctly:

cbb0: <RF5C476 PCI-CardBus Bridge> mem 0xb0000000-0xb0000fff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci2
cardbus0: [CardBus bus](CardBus_bus) on cbb0
pccard0: <16-bit PCCard bus> on cbb0

All my old PCMCIA NICs work fine:

an0: <Cisco Systems 340 Series Wireless LAN Adapter> at port 0x100-0x13f irq 11 
an0: got RSSI <-> dBM map
an0: Ethernet address: 00:40:xx:xx:xx:xx
an0: supported rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps

wi0: <D-Link D-Link Air DWL-660 Wireless PC Card> at port 0x100-0x13f irq 11 function 0 config 1 on pccard1
wi0: 802.11 address: 00:05:xx:xx:xx:xx
wi0: using Lucent Technologies, WaveLAN/IEEE
wi0: Lucent Firmware: Station (8.10.1)
wi0: supported rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps

wi0: <D Link DRC-650 11Mbps WLAN Card> at port 0x100-0x13f irq 11 function 0 config 1 on pccard1
wi0: 802.11 address: 00:05:xx:xx:xx:xx
wi0: using RF:PRISM2.5 MAC:ISL3873
wi0: Intersil Firmware: Primary (1.0.5), Station (1.3.4)
wi0: supported rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps

ed1: <Ethernet Adapter> at port 0x100-0x11f irq 11 function 0 config 0 on pccard
ed1: address 00:e0:xx:xx:xx:xx, type NE2000 (16 bit)

Universal Serial Bus

Works.

Integrated Bluetooth Adapter

/boot/loader.conf:

ng_ubt_load="YES"

Console Mouse

Works.

Sound

/boot/loader.conf:

snd_ich_load="YES"

DVD Playback

Works.

Serial

Works.

Other Devices

These modules add ThinkPad and Intel chipset specific support for various things.

/boot/loader.conf: acpi_ibm_load=“YES” ichsmb_load=“YES” ichwd_load=“YES”

I haven’t tested parallel and firewire ports.

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