I have just upgraded my Thinkpad T60p from Etch to Lenny
with apt-get dist-upgrade.
Here is a laundry list of problems:
1. XDM
******
a) Logging
XDM does not log to /var/log/xdm.log any more.
b) Login font
XDM seems not to find the correct font; it uses a tiny font.
I checked the font -adobe- ... -18-180- ... from
/etc/X11/xdm/Xresources with xfontsel, and it seems available.
No idea why it wasn't used.
I found the solution on a posting on linuxquestions.org,
referring to a poster on forums.debian.net:
It turns out that those two files need a -dpi 100
inserted as arguments to the X server:
/etc/X11/xdm/Xservers
/etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc
c) Login mask
The password field is not visible while entering the username.
This is probably supposed to be some feature, but it prohibits
switching between the fields with "TAB".
As a consequence, my password gets displayed after the username
in clear text.
Not good.
The login mask should at least enable the TAB key.
Is there any practical reason why the password fields wouldn't
be shown immediately?
2. ACPI
*******
a) Toggling wlan0
(Fn-F5, ibm-wireless.sh)
The switching sequence documented in the file is wrong,
the modes cycle the other way around.
The Fn-F5 key otherwise works, but switching off the wireless
device does not bring down the interface wlan0.
That in turn leaves bad routes in place.
I have added
ifdown --force wlan0
as a workaround, but I'm not happy with that.
b) Bad logging of acpid
The acpid daemon does not log events to /var/log/acpid any more.
It also doesn't log IBM hotkeys to /var/log/syslog.
There is apparently no way of making acpid log more verbosely
without running in the foreground. That's a bad regression.
c) Suspend and hibernate don't work
The suspend (Fn-F4) and hibernate (Fn-F12) keys don't have any
visible effect. After fumbling with the hotkey mask in the
thinkpad_acpi module and finding out about acpid not logging,
I have now reached /usr/share/acpi/suspendorhibernate.
I don't know the intended way to set the USE_HIBERNAGE_PACKAGE
variable, though.
I have removed all SUSPEND_METHODS in /etc/default/acpi-support,
and now suspend sometimes works, but doesn't reliably come back.
d) Resume reports NMI
A resume from suspend gives a kernel message:
Uhhuh. NMI received for unknown reason b0.
You have some hardware problem, likely on the PCI bus.
Dazed and confused, but trying to continue.
I read somewhere that Thinkpads may need to enable interrupts
during APM bios calls, but I'm not sure whether this is related,
and how to do that.
3. Emacs
********
a) Colors
Emacs now apparently also uses colors when running in an xterm.
However, it doesn't set the background color. That makes for
some particularly unreadable
4. VMware
*********
a) X libraries problem
The vmware workstation gui executable fails to start; it reports
a 'Locking assertion error' with a long backtrace through
shared libraries. Most libraries (pango, gtk, etc.) come with
the VMware executable. The libX11 library is taken from the
/usr/lib32 directory.
Replacing that by the old shared library from 32-bit etch,
libX11.so.6, makes the program run fine.
Whether the error is with the X shared libraries, with the
pango/gtk libraries that come with VMware, or with the
way the VMware application calls them, I don't know.
b) VMware modules compilation problem
This is not something that Debian will fix, I guess,
but I still want to mention that it is very frustrating
for me. Within the past 15 months, I have not found a
kernel that gets wireless (Intel 3945ABG), dialup
(Huawei E870), and vmware right.
This laptop may become usable shortly before it physically
breaks down.
I'll add bug reports for those things that can be fixed.
Best regards,
Claus
--
Claus Fischer <claus.fischer@clausfischer.com>
http://www.clausfischer.com/
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