SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

Lomax · 2021-01-31 02:36:36

Hi all,

A friend gave me an old Thinkpad T410, which was timely, because I had just promised another friend that I would help set him up with a laptop that had a CD-ROM drive - which this machine happens to have. I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to introduce him to Linux, and of course went to download and install Devuan, which is what I use myself (thank you very much!). But I balked at the full install ISO at over four gigs - which would eat up a substantial chunk of my monthly bandwidth allowance - so thought I'd give the "live" ISO a shot, which is only just over one gig.

<rant>
Ok, first of all, I have to get this off my chest: I was not impressed by the GUI installer the live ISO comes with. It was throwing up terminal windows and other GUI apps (gparted) left right & centre - some of them partly off screen, and fell over if anything happened to get out of sync. It presented me with some nearly unusable GUI widgets, like a drop-down containing every European TZ location (this should be a scroll-window), and the keyboard layout selection sends you on a circuitous journey just so you can tell it that yeah, the keyboard layout is the same as the (already chosen) locale. Many of the checkbox options are contradictory; for example I chose on one screen to disable the root account (btw - why does it say this is a bad idea!? It's a really good idea, and ought to be the default!) only to have the next ask me for a root password. There are two options for /home encryption & partitioning, and many other things which confused me. I had to go through the process a few times before I got it right, and there was a fair amount of swearing. And when I finally thought I'd done everything properly I rebooted to find /home still under rootfs and not encrypted on a separate partition as I had expected it to be. So I had to start over again. The text based installer is a breeze to use by comparison and far more elegant and user friendly. A simple "Install Devuan on this computer" option in the GRUB menu, which launches the text-mode setup, is all that's needed, no?
</rant>

So anyway, I persevered, and got the system partitioned and installed the way I thought I wanted, but then I ran into some issues, which is really why I came here:

1) I was surprised to see Pulseaudio installed, and then I remembered that's why I always go with the netinstall ISO. Though I have never quite managed to get all the right packages installed from there to get a 100% fully functioning and smooth desktop experience - there's always something not quite right, like "reboot" and "shut down" from the menu taking me to the Slim login screen rather than rebooting (some dbus issue, perhaps?), and missing some control panel functionality, like the menu editor. But that's ok, I'm fine with that, and happy to use the console for a lot of stuff. But I want my friend to have a positive first experience of Linux, with a complete desktop environment and simple controls, so I went for the pre-packaged environment this time. Hey ho, it's easy enough to `apt-get autoremove pulseaudio` and `apt-get install apulse volumeicon-alsa`, which works perfectly - except the hardware volume up/down/mute buttons don't work. TBH I don't think I tested them before removing pulseaudio, so I can't say if they were working or not, but they're defintely not working now. I can see that they generate the correct events with `acpi_listen`, but it seems nothing is listening to them? `lsmod` shows `thinkpad_acpi` is loaded, so that's not it.

2) I was also surprised to see it ask me for an encryption password at boot; I'm used to the encrypted /home being automagically decrypted and mounted at log-on using ecryptfs (including encrypted swap). This should offer enough security for most users I would say, to hinder identity theft in case the laptop is lost or stolen. In any case I can't give the machine to my friend like this; he'd hate having to remember and type two different passwords to turn on his computer - or even the same one twice. I also didn't like how the installer (seemingly) forced me to use a separate partition for /home if I wanted it encrypted. In my experience slicing up a small SSDs into partitions inevitably leads to one or the other outgrowing its space, while there may be plenty of free space left on another one. I would make an exception for swap, since it doesn't need to grow, and /boot because it doesn't need much space, but /root and /home need to be able to grow unrestricted in a shared volume imo. So I went back and reinstalled again, now without /home encryption. I would still like to set it up though, for the /home directory, but when I checked my notes I found that unfortunately I haven't written down how I achieved this on my own laptop. Perhaps someone here knows the steps?

3) Possibly related to issue #1, I cannot get the laptop to sleep when I close the lid. The "Fn+F4" key combination works, as does choosing "Suspend" from the shutdown menu, but the lid refuses to trigger it. Again, `acpi_listen` shows the proper events (e.g. button/lid LID close), but nothing is listening. Similar thing with the power button; I have set it to "Ask" when the power button is pressed, but nothing happens - and here `acpi_listen` shows no events. Any ideas? Perhaps relevant is that the screen brightness controls do work, and even trigger a nice notification popup.

Phew. Well done if you made it through all that - and apologies for the rant; sometimes you just have to let it out. I love devuan and want to show others what a great alternative it is, not only to Windows but to other Linux flavours, so I'm prepared to invest some time in getting it just right. But unfortunately I have run into these problems which I cannot figure out on my own, so I'm hoping someone here may have some advice!

Last edited by Lomax (2021-02-04 10:47:49)

fsmithred · 2021-01-31 13:07:38

Lomax wrote:

Hi all,
with some nearly unusable GUI widgets, like a drop-down containing every European TZ location (this should be a scroll-window), and the keyboard layout selection sends you on a circuitous journey just so you can tell it that yeah, the keyboard layout is the same as the (already chosen) locale.

This is the standard graphical debconf interface as the graphical install and the exact same language, time zone and keyboard settings in the debian/devuan installer or with dpkg-reconfigure. And yes, it is correct to set the keyboard separate from the language.

Many of the checkbox options are contradictory; for example I chose on one screen to disable the root account (btw - why does it say this is a bad idea!? It's a really good idea, and ought to be the default!) only to have the next ask me for a root password.

It only asks for a root password if you chose one of the options that preserves the root account. And making sudo the default is a really bad idea. Sudo is not meant to be a replacement for a root account, it's meant for fine-grained privilege escalation.

You probably would have done better with the live installer if you'd taken a look at the Installer Guide. It's the other devuan swoosh icon on the desktop. Or if you had just hit Enter at the second screen instead of clicking on Continue, you could have looked at the Help page.

The installer guide is also here for reference: https://www.devuan.org/os/documentation … f/live-gui

the hardware volume up/down/mute buttons don't work. TBH I don't think I tested them before removing pulseaudio, so I can't say if they were working or not, but they're defintely not working now. I can see that they generate the correct events with `acpi_listen`, but it seems nothing is listening to them? `lsmod` shows `thinkpad_acpi` is loaded, so that's not it.

In the Settings menu, go to Keyboard and Application Shortcuts and you can set up the volume keys to activate amixer. There are a few websites that explain how to get Thinkpad keys working in linux.

2) I was also surprised to see it ask me for an encryption password at boot; I'm used to the encrypted /home being automagically decrypted and mounted at log-on using ecryptfs (including encrypted swap). This should offer enough security for most users I would say, to hinder identity theft in case the laptop is lost or stolen. In any case I can't give the machine to my friend like this; he'd hate having to remember and type two different passwords to turn on his computer - or even the same one twice. I also didn't like how the installer (seemingly) forced me to use a separate partition for /home if I wanted it encrypted.

You have a few choices with this installer. You can install everything in one partition and have it encrypted. Your /boot directory will be part of the encypted partition. You will have to tell grub the passphrase to open it and start the boot. You will then have to repeat it for the kernel. This is referred to as full disk encryption, and it's a new feature in grub to be able ot deal with encrypted /boot.

You can encrypt the root filesystem and have /boot in a separate partition, unencrytped. You then have to give the passphrase during boot. Once.

You can optionally have a separate partition for /home. It's not mandatory, and I usually skip it on a laptop. If you choose to encrypt the separate /home, you will need to enter a passphrase for it, whether or not the root filesystem is encrypted. If you want to eliminate adding the second passphrase, you can create a key and have /home open automatically. This is only secure if the key is kept in an encrypted root filesystem (or a removable device).

I cannot get the laptop to sleep when I close the lid.

I found that it works just fine when you upgrade to chimaera, which is still in testing. Search the forum. There are a couple of discussions on how to get it working in earlier releases.

Lomax · 2021-01-31 15:27:38

fsmithred wrote:

Lomax wrote:
with some nearly unusable GUI widgets, like a drop-down containing every European TZ location (this should be a scroll-window), and the keyboard layout selection sends you on a circuitous journey just so you can tell it that yeah, the keyboard layout is the same as the (already chosen) locale.
This is the standard graphical debconf interface as the graphical install and the exact same language, time zone and keyboard settings in the debian/devuan installer or with dpkg-reconfigure. And yes, it is correct to set the keyboard separate from the language.

Umm... That's not quite true; the text based set-up does default to a UK keyboard layout after you've chosen UK as your locale. And It doesn't put 100s of items in a drop-down list. And it doesn't force you to choose "Other" if you happen to be a non-US user.

fsmithred wrote:

Lomax wrote:
Many of the checkbox options are contradictory; for example I chose on one screen to disable the root account (btw - why does it say this is a bad idea!? It's a really good idea, and ought to be the default!) only to have the next ask me for a root password.
It only asks for a root password if you chose one of the options that preserves the root account. And making sudo the default is a really bad idea. Sudo is not meant to be a replacement for a root account, it's meant for fine-grained privilege escalation.

I respectfully beg to differ. Sudo is easier to audit, easier to administrate (by adding removing users from /etc/sudoers), and it will time out the escalated privileges after a certain interval, reducing the risk of leaving a machine unlocked with a root shell by accident. And if you really do need a root shell, sudo -i is your friend. I didn't come here to argue about that though - to each their own - but I wanted to mention that even when I chose the middle option on the first screen that said "use sudo / disable root account" I was still asked for a root password on the next screen, with another two checkboxes relating to root locking. The wording and function of these (five) checkboxes was pretty confusing.

Also, the installer died whenever I did something it didn't expect, like close a window or Ctrl+C a long running write of /dev/random to disk. The text based installer does not behave like this; at any point you can go back and redo earlier steps, and cancelling the current step simply takes you back to the menu. Furthermore, as each step is completed it helpfully moves to the next item in the menu, skipping those steps which your choices have made redundant. It's always clear where you are, and what is left to do, and a lot of the time all you need to do is confirm the sensible defaults by pressing return. You also get a lot of options that were missing from the GUI installer, such as configuring the network, setting up NTP, fetching latest packages, choosing what to install...

fsmithred wrote:

Lomax wrote:
the hardware volume up/down/mute buttons don't work. TBH I don't think I tested them before removing pulseaudio, so I can't say if they were working or not, but they're defintely not working now. I can see that they generate the correct events with `acpi_listen`, but it seems nothing is listening to them? `lsmod` shows `thinkpad_acpi` is loaded, so that's not it.
In the Settings menu, go to Keyboard and Application Shortcuts and you can set up the volume keys to activate amixer. There are a few websites that explain how to get Thinkpad keys working in linux.

Oh thousands I'm sure. But they all talk about how to make them work with Pulseaudio. I'll have another look though, now that I have some idea where this is configured - thanks for that! It is odd that I haven't needed to do this on the Thinkpad X220 and X230 laptops I've previously installed Devuan on - maybe because I've built them from netinstall and up, maybe because there's some difference in how the hardware hotkeys work on the T410.

fsmithred wrote:

Lomax wrote:
2) I was also surprised to see it ask me for an encryption password at boot; I'm used to the encrypted /home being automagically decrypted and mounted at log-on using ecryptfs (including encrypted swap). This should offer enough security for most users I would say, to hinder identity theft in case the laptop is lost or stolen. In any case I can't give the machine to my friend like this; he'd hate having to remember and type two different passwords to turn on his computer - or even the same one twice. I also didn't like how the installer (seemingly) forced me to use a separate partition for /home if I wanted it encrypted.
You have a few choices with this installer. You can install everything in one partition and have it encrypted. Your /boot directory will be part of the encypted partition. You will have to tell grub the passphrase to open it and start the boot. You will then have to repeat it for the kernel. This is referred to as full disk encryption, and it's a new feature in grub to be able ot deal with encrypted /boot.
You can encrypt the root filesystem and have /boot in a separate partition, unencrytped. You then have to give the passphrase during boot. Once.
You can optionally have a separate partition for /home. It's not mandatory, and I usually skip it on a laptop. If you choose to encrypt the separate /home, you will need to enter a passphrase for it, whether or not the root filesystem is encrypted. If you want to eliminate adding the second passphrase, you can create a key and have /home open automatically. This is only secure if the key is kept in an encrypted root filesystem (or a removable device).

You forgot the option I like to go with; use the user's login to decrypt /home. I'm not 100% sure how this bolts together (pam + ecryptfs?), but it certainly doesn't involve storing the decryption key in plain text on the machine, nor does /home need to be on a separate partition - I have to enter my (strong) password to decrypt and mount the directory as /home, but this is done seamlessly from the Slim login window. One login, two actions. And yes, I do think that's secure enough; it would take a pretty determined hacker to brute force my password, or to hijack my locked session if I left my laptop unattended in suspend somewhere - and if they can do that then it doesn't really matter how my data has been encrypted; if you're in you're in. It's not as if I'm storing the next Panama Papers or anything.

fsmithred wrote:

Lomax wrote:
I cannot get the laptop to sleep when I close the lid.
I found that it works just fine when you upgrade to chimaera, which is still in testing. Search the forum. There are a couple of discussions on how to get it working in earlier releases.

Ok, thanks, I'll take a look!

Last edited by Lomax (2021-01-31 15:52:28)

Lomax · 2021-01-31 16:21:42

I got the volume up/down and mute buttons working via the Keyboard control panel, adding each as a separate command:

amixer sset Master 5%+         XF86AudioRaiseVolume
amixer sset Master 5%-         XF86AudioLowerVolume
amixer sset Master toggle      XF86AudioMute

But the little LED on the mute button does not come on when I mute the audio. It does on the X230 I'm typing this on though - and it has none of these application shortcuts defined in the Keyboard applet.

Last edited by Lomax (2021-01-31 16:21:56)

fsmithred · 2021-01-31 18:17:27

The mute light on my T420 doesn't work right. I haven't looked into that.

You are right that a window comes up asking for root password after selecting sudo as default. That part was written so long ago I didn't remember that, and nobody else has pointed it out. There is a checkbox in that window that says "Disable root account" so I know the window was meant to come up. I'm not sure why, but I'll look into it.

The debconf dialogs really are the same ones in the graphical installer, but there are some problems with that. For one, we don't offer a graphical version of the debian/devuan installer because it got too big and was making the isos larger than we wanted. If you want to see the familiar ncurses version of these dialogs, sudo apt remove libgtk3-perl in the live session before running the installer. (More on this later.)

The second problem you noted is the drop-down menu. It went off-screen on my laptop and I couldn't get down to London. I believe that's a gtk-3 feature that I've seen before. The graphical debconf dialogs are going away in the next set of isos and it'll be back to the ncurses version. That's what it was for jessie and ascii. We're working on getting the beowulf point-release out, so it should be soon.

As you noted, selecting the locale does not automatically select the keyboard map. I just checked with the netinstall iso, and it doesn't do it there on the regular install, but it does on expert install. I think that's easy to change. (dpkg-reconfigure -plow ...)

You forgot the option I like to go with; use the user's login to decrypt /home. I'm not 100% sure how this bolts together (pam + ecryptfs?), but it certainly doesn't involve storing the decryption key in plain text on the machine, nor does /home need to be on a separate partition - I have to enter my (strong) password to decrypt and mount the directory as /home, but this is done seamlessly from the Slim login window.

I'm not familiar with this method. What installer uses encryptfs? The regular debian/devuan installer can do plain luks encryption on single partitions or it can encrypt a physical volume that contains multiple logical volumes for separate partitions. If you do encrypted LVM, you only have to put in a password once to unlock the encrypted volume. The live installer does not do LVM (without some manual tricks) so you can only encrypt individual partitions. If you choose a separate /home partition (it is not mandatory) and you encrypt that partition, you will need to enter a password for it. As I mentioned before, you can create a keyfile and keep it in the encrypted root to automatically unlock the home partition. It's not a plain-text password. See man cryptsetup for details.

In either of the above situations, you need a separate /boot partition that's not encrypted. It is possible with the live installer to do full-disk encryption and have an encrypted /boot partition. In that case you get to give the luks passphrase an extra time for grub, and on top of that, it takes grub a long time to digest the password.

You also get a lot of options that were missing from the GUI installer, such as configuring the network, setting up NTP, fetching latest packages, choosing what to install...

You missed those things for the same reason you had some other problems with the live installer. It's because you are not familiar with how it works. It's different from what you are used to. You certainly do have access to all those things because you are in a running live environment, and any changes you make to the system will be copied to the installed system. That includes network setting and configuration changes. You could also remove or install packages, but installing them might use up too much ram in the live session.

Thanks for the input. I will make some changes.

Lomax · 2021-02-01 12:43:21

fsmithred wrote:

I'm not familiar with this method. What installer uses encryptfs?

No I did it after installing a minimal system, and it's eCryptFS - a stacked filesystem that can be mounted on any directory and on top of the main file system.

sudo apt-get install ecryptfs-utils cryptsetup

Then, while logged in as a different sudo user to the one you want to encrypt /home for

sudo ecryptfs-migrate-home -u user

Where "user" is your username. When the command completes you must log out and back in as "user", before rebooting. Then you should generate a recovery passphrase and write this down somewhere safe (I typically just take a picture of it with my phone - which is also encrypted, with LUKS in fact).

ecryptfs-unwrap-passphrase

Finally, to make the system fully secure, you should also encrypt /swap

sudo ecryptfs-setup-swap

And that's pretty much all there is to it.

Last edited by Lomax (2021-02-01 12:47:39)

dice · 2021-02-01 12:58:12

ecryptfs looks user specific, not something i would want added to an installer. ecryptfs might work for ones home directory but cryptsetup is the gold standard imo. I believe there is a lot more configuration to be done for ecryptfs as you need to first create the encryption while logged in then log out and migrate the user from another account probably root and then unwrap the passphrase, that seems out of bounds for an installer imo.

Last edited by dice (2021-02-01 13:00:20)

Lomax · 2021-02-01 13:11:08

dice wrote:

ecryptfs looks user specific, not something i would want added to an installer. ecryptfs might work for ones home directory but cryptsetup is the gold standard imo. I believe there is a lot more configuration to be done for ecryptfs as you need to first create the encryption while logged in then log out and migrate the user from another account probably root and then unwrap the passphrase, that seems out of bounds for an installer imo.

I don't know enough about encryption to give any advice, I just want my laptop to not be wide open for any smack-head who finds it, and encrypting my home directory (and swap) takes care of that. This should be enough to prevent anyone stealing my laptop from also getting into my eBay account, or reading my personal data (identity theft). I don't store any state secrets so can't say how appropriate this method is if you do.

I don't think I suggested that this should be part of the installer - that's really not for me to say. But what I can say is that the /home encryption methods provided by the installer are unsuitable for my use case, since they require a separate partition and two passphrases at every boot. That's not how I want my laptop to work, but I'm not here to tell anyone how they should configure their system.

And no, there isn't any "more configuration to do"; ecyptfs hooks into PAM (I think) and decrypts and mounts my /home/user seamlessly, whether it's a console or desktop log-in. I've never had an issue, and I've used this method since before I moved to Devuan - in fact it used to be the default behaviour on Ubuntu if you selected to encrypt your home during installation.

dice · 2021-02-01 13:18:14

There are methods to create full disk encryption, i would prefer to have the whole disk encrypted if it were a laptop.

See here for a nice guide: https://www.dwarmstrong.org/fde-debian/

This method only asks for a password once and if it fails, grub goes straight to recovery.

dice · 2021-02-01 13:23:43

Lomax wrote:

And no, there isn't any "more configuration to do"; ecyptfs hooks into PAM (I think) and decrypts and mounts my /home/user seamlessly, whether it's a console or desktop log-in. I've never had an issue, and I've used this method since before I moved to Devuan - in fact it used to be the default behaviour on Ubuntu if you selected to encrypt your home during installation.

I meant if it were to be a part of an installer.

Lomax · 2021-02-01 14:16:55

Ok, so I think we can move on from the encryption stuff - but what about the other issues I encountered? I have searched for info about the non-working power button, and I've had partial success getting the volume buttons to work - albeit in a way that doesn't seem quite right. No luck with the lid close suspend, despite messing around with scripts in /etc/acpi/. I have never needed to fiddle with any of this stuff previously; it's always just worked - what am I doing wrong here?

Edit: Oh and I must apologise; I was indeed thinking of the "Expert install" flow in the ncurses set-up - I don't think I've ever used the other option. It's not as "expert" as it sounds though, I find it really quite easy to use, with sensible defaults for most things.

Last edited by Lomax (2021-02-01 15:17:40)

fsmithred · 2021-02-01 17:12:44

I don't know enough about encryption to give any advice, I just want my laptop to not be wide open for any smack-head who finds it, and encrypting my home directory (and swap) takes care of that. This should be enough to prevent anyone stealing my laptop from also getting into my eBay account, or reading my personal data (identity theft). I don't store any state secrets so can't say how appropriate this method is if you do.
I don't think I suggested that this should be part of the installer - that's really not for me to say. But what I can say is that the /home encryption methods provided by the installer are unsuitable for my use case, since they require a separate partition and two passphrases at every boot. That's not how I want my laptop to work, but I'm not here to tell anyone how they should configure their system.

If you only encrypt your home and swap, there may be other things at risk. For example, wireless passwords may be stored in /var or /etc in plain text. There may be other things, so it's a good idea to encrypt the root partition. If you don't want /home on a separate partition, then don't put it on a separate partition, and it will be part of the root partition. The live installer will also make a swap file if you don't have a swap partition, and that file is kept in the root partition.

So...

Make a separate /boot partition, put everything else in the root partition and encrypt the root (i.e. Do not make or use a separate partition for /home). You will be required to give the passphrase ONCE to unlock and boot the system. Everything except /boot will be encrypted. If you don't want to give your user password to access the desktop, then set the display manager for autologin.

Or, if you really want, you can encrypt nothing during the install, put all in one partition and then encrypt /home with ecryptfs after the install.

I'm not sure what to say about your mute button or the power button issue. My setting for power button is Ask. That is the default setting. I was going to ask you what acpi software you had installed, but I see on mine, two acpi packages were removed (acpi-support-base and acpid) and the power manager does ask when I press the power button.

And I fixed my mute button light by switching the command to 'toggle' like yours instead of volume 99%-. Does aplay -l show more than one sound card? That can sometimes confuse things, depending on which one shows up as card0.

@dice: Thanks for the info on how to get the key into the initramfs to avoid having to give the password more than once. That might get included in a future version of the installer. It already does full-disk encryption.

Lomax · 2021-02-01 18:34:41

fsmithred wrote:

If you only encrypt your home and swap, there may be other things at risk. For example, wireless passwords may be stored in /var or /etc in plain text.

Not on my watch.

Lomax · 2021-02-01 18:50:39

~~Massively irrelevant rant~~

Last edited by Lomax (2021-02-03 18:20:22)

Lomax · 2021-02-01 22:55:07

Sorry about the rant. I'm afraid these have been more frequent of late. But really.

So, about that mute button...

dice · 2021-02-01 23:15:44

fsmithred wrote:

@dice: Thanks for the info on how to get the key into the initramfs to avoid having to give the password more than once. That might get included in a future version of the installer. It already does full-disk encryption.

you're welcome, i followed this quide not long ago and can confirm working in beowulf . Would be a nice addition to refractainstaller.

Last edited by dice (2021-02-01 23:16:37)

dice · 2021-02-01 23:31:25

Lomax wrote:

I got the volume up/down and mute buttons working via the Keyboard control panel, adding each as a separate command:
amixer sset Master 5%+         XF86AudioRaiseVolume
amixer sset Master 5%-         XF86AudioLowerVolume
amixer sset Master toggle      XF86AudioMute
But the little LED on the mute button does not come on when I mute the audio. It does on the X230 I'm typing this on though - and it has none of these application shortcuts defined in the Keyboard applet.

Lomax wrote:

Sorry about the rant. I'm afraid these have been more frequent of late. But really.
So, about that mute button...

so the mute button is working but not the led light?, that could be vendor specific for that laptop on how they control the feature i think. Maybe do a web search for "mute button led light not working lenovo T410"

Also what desktop environment is this?

Last edited by dice (2021-02-01 23:32:47)

Lomax · 2021-02-02 00:04:09

dice wrote:

so the mute button is working but not the led light?, that could be vendor specific for that laptop on how they control the feature i think. Maybe do a web search for "mute button led light not working lenovo T410"
Also what desktop environment is this?

Thanks. This is stock "Cinnabar" XFCE4 with the Slim DM. Beyond /home/user encryption (sshhh!) I haven't changed much. Had to mess around with the swap partition's UUID but that's now working (yes, encrypted - ssshhh!). Added xserver-xorg-input-synaptics to get clicks working on the touch pad (which enables an extra tab in the control panel app). Enabled unattended-upgrades and set up root emails to actually go somewhere. And yes, I got rid of pulseaudio, and got the volume control buttons (and mute) working as XF86 "Application Shortcuts", but yes, the mute LED does not come on. It does on my X230, and did on the X220 I had previously, and on neither did I have to add any "Application Shortcuts"; it just worked once I got all the desktop bits installed. And checking my X230 now I can see none have been created for me - it clearly uses some other mechanism (note: both systems run Devuan, ASCII on the X220 and ASCII upgraded to Beowulf on the X230 - neither has pulseaudio installed).

Edit: I am also still looking for a fix for the non-working power button, and a way to suspend and lock screen when the lid is closed.

Edit2: I should add, for the record, and in case anyone ends up here because they're searching for how to set up eCryptFS home directory encryption, that the required packages were pulled from the Buster release (and hence Beowulf) due to a critical bug which hadn't been fixed in time for the release. This has long since been fixed however, so I grabbed the latest debs from packages.debian.org and installed from there. The two packages you need are "ecryptfs-utils" and "libecryptfs1" ("libtspi1" and "cryptsetup" are also required but present in the Beowulf repos).

Last edited by Lomax (2021-02-02 00:28:45)

dice · 2021-02-02 01:38:10

doesnt xfce4-power-manager-settings handle the power button, suspend and lid ?

https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-power- … references

Last edited by dice (2021-02-02 01:41:04)

Lomax · 2021-02-02 01:47:49

The options are there (lid close set to "suspend" and "lock screen", power button set to "Ask"), but neither gets triggered.

dice · 2021-02-02 02:23:34

maybe post up your .xsession-errors file, that sometimes might help debug the issue.

Also are laptop-mode-tools installed, they should be but you never know.

apt install laptop-mode-tools

Lomax · 2021-02-02 10:30:52

Thanks. laptop-mode-tools was not installed. Unfortunately the only obvious difference after installing it is that the machine now hangs for ~20s when a reboot is requested. I saw that there's a "Mic Mute LED-Mode" in alsamixer, which is set to "Follow Mute", but there is no equivalent for "Master" (and I did press F5 to see all devices). More frustratingly it turns out that for some reason I cannot add an Application Shortcut for the mic mute button like I could for the master mute button; the button press is not registered by the Application Shortcut applet, though it does show up as button/micmute with acpi_listen. I have removed my attempts at lid switch control from /etc/acpi , and I've uninstalled xscreensaver, rebooted a few times, all issues remain.

Oh and there's really nothing of note in .xsession-errors, I see volume change events there when I press the volume buttons, but there are no errors when I do this, or close the lid (which adds nothing to the log), or press the power button (also adds nothing to the log). Xsession/dbus init looks completely normal.

Lomax · 2021-02-02 10:54:48

Update: I found that the powerbtn ACPI event doesn't trigger unless you hold in the power button for a moment - and then it does "Ask" as requested, so that's actually working as it should. One issue off the list, now only lid suspend and mute buttons left.

Last edited by Lomax (2021-02-02 10:55:15)

dice · 2021-02-02 11:15:31

I was about to say that on my laptop i have to hold for a good 5 seconds before i get any action. Sorry i cant help with the rest as ~~i dont use suspend or resume~~. My laptop lid when closed is controlled by xscreensaver and that is all.

edit: actually xscreensaver has display power management built in for suspend after a certain time, not sure if it works though? Doesnt help with close lid and then suspend though.

Last edited by dice (2021-02-02 11:19:38)

Lomax · 2021-02-02 11:26:23

Yeah, but the power management applet also has suspend and screen blanking timeouts, so I just use those, which works fine. I managed to get the microphone mute button working, complete with LED, by adding an acpi event that listens to the button press:

/etc/acpi/events/thinkpad-micmute:

event=button/micmute MICMUTE 00000080 00000000 K
action=/etc/acpi/thinkpad-micmute.sh

/etc/acpi/thinkpad-micmute.sh:

amixer sset Capture toggle

then:

sudo chmod +x /etc/acpi/thinkpad-micmute.sh
sudo service acpid restart

I actually remember doing this on my X230 as well. Now only volume mute LED and lid suspend left on my list.

Last edited by Lomax (2021-02-02 11:26:41)

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#1 2021-01-31 02:36:36

SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

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Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

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Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

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Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

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Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

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Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

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Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

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Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

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Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

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Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

#11 2021-02-01 14:16:55

Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

#12 2021-02-01 17:12:44

Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

#13 2021-02-01 18:34:41

Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

#14 2021-02-01 18:50:39

Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

#15 2021-02-01 22:55:07

Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

#16 2021-02-01 23:15:44

Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

#17 2021-02-01 23:31:25

Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

#18 2021-02-02 00:04:09

Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

#19 2021-02-02 01:38:10

Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

#20 2021-02-02 01:47:49

Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

#21 2021-02-02 02:23:34

Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

#22 2021-02-02 10:30:52

Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

#23 2021-02-02 10:54:48

Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

#24 2021-02-02 11:15:31

Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

#25 2021-02-02 11:26:23

Re: SOLVED: Issues using "live" install on Thinkpad T410

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