kernel-packages team mailing list archive

[Salvatore Giudice <toregiudice@xxxxxxxxx>]

It took me a week to get Debian Wheezy to run properly on a W541. I'll
give a list of the nexesary items. Many of which should be applicable to
Ubuntu. Firts of all, don't expetc to be able to boot this from a live
usb any time soon. The W541 is way too new. If you wish to install, then
there is hope for a working system.

1. You should disable the virtualization vt-d option in the bios
2. Bios 2.21 is unnecessary. It only provides some mitigation for the rowhammer vulnerability.
3. Booting: try the following grub command line options: nomodeset and acpi=off     

nomodeset was necessary because the W541 will hang on boot until the
nouveau driver is blacklisted

4. Go into recovery mode on an installed systemand blacklist the nouveau
driver. Should be somethign along the lines of adding the following to
/etc/modprobe.d/nouveau.conf:

blacklist nouveau
options nouveau modeset=0

At this point, you should be able to boot. However, your trackpad and
nvidia graphics are not going to work at this point. The synaptics
driver also won't honor the bios setting to disable the touchpad portion
of the device.


5. Trackpad: use psmouse imps protocol and don't use the synaptics driver. W541 trackpad is not supported as of this post by synaptics

create/edit /etc/modprobe.d/psmouse.conf and isert the following line:

options psmouse proto=imps

After a reboot, the trackpad, touch stick, and buttons will magically
start functioning properly. You just won't have the useless fancy
gestures synaptics normally provides for the type of users who actually
thought Windows 8 was a good product.

6. Graphics: Now this is where the horror begins. I strongly suggest you
take a disk image with clonezilla at this point. It is extremely likely
that you will blow up your system in spectacular ways several times
before you get graphics to a workable state. So plan on reimaging a few
times.

The plan of attack is to install bumblebee, nvidia refererence drivers,
remove xserver-xorg-video-intel, enable multiarch, install primus and
primus-lib:i386, and customize the bumblebee driver configuration to
use:

# Driver=nvidia
# KernelDriver=nvidia-current

After all this, you'll need to compile intel mesa from source and
install it over the mesa drivers that were installed via package
manager. Yes. You read that right.

Finally for GPU switching to work, you'll need to modify /etc/default/grub:
-GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
+GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_osi=\"!Windows 2013\""

And then update-grub and reboot


I wish you the bets of luck. I spent a week on this 8 hours/day to work
out all the issues for our company laptops since we run Debian Wheezy
here. Hopefully the above helps you get Ubuntu running properly.
However, if this is a personal mahcine. I strongly suggest that you
avoid it at all costs. Sell it on ebay or return it to lenovo and buy a
model that has been around for at least a year. The W541 just isn't
worth the headache. I know some users that chose instead to get a W540
and swap out the trackpad with the part from the W541 to get usable
buttons. If you go that route you will save yourself alot of headache.

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Kernel
Packages, which is subscribed to linux in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1437386

Title:
  Unable to boot LenovoThinkpad W541

Status in linux package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete

Bug description:
  I tried to boot my Lenovo Thinkpad W541 using a bootable USB(having
  Ubuntu 14.04 image).

  I could see the welcome screen where I can choose to try or install
  Ubuntu. Choosing either one causes a freeze.

  Initial boot screen shows the following error (which maybe the
  reason?):

  "mmc0 unknown controller version(3), You may experience problems"

  I cannot run "apport-collect" since this problem stops me from booting.
  --- 
  ApportVersion: 2.12.5-0ubuntu2
  Architecture: amd64
  AudioDevicesInUse:
   USER        PID ACCESS COMMAND
   /dev/snd/controlC1:  ubuntu     2803 F.... pulseaudio
   /dev/snd/controlC0:  ubuntu     2803 F.... pulseaudio
  CasperVersion: 1.336ubuntu1
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.10
  LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 13.10 "Saucy Salamander" - Release amd64 (20131016.1)
  MachineType: LENOVO 20EGS01600
  MarkForUpload: True
  Package: linux (not installed)
  ProcFB: 0 inteldrmfb
  ProcKernelCmdLine: file=/cdrom/preseed/username.seed boot=casper initrd=/casper/initrd.lz quiet splash -- maybe-ubiquity
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.11.0-12.19-generic 3.11.3
  RelatedPackageVersions:
   linux-restricted-modules-3.11.0-12-generic N/A
   linux-backports-modules-3.11.0-12-generic  N/A
   linux-firmware                             1.116
  Tags:  saucy
  Uname: Linux 3.11.0-12-generic x86_64
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
  UserGroups: adm cdrom dip lpadmin plugdev sambashare sudo
  dmi.bios.date: 02/26/2015
  dmi.bios.vendor: LENOVO
  dmi.bios.version: GNET72WW (2.20 )
  dmi.board.asset.tag: Not Available
  dmi.board.name: 20EGS01600
  dmi.board.vendor: LENOVO
  dmi.board.version: Not Defined
  dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Information
  dmi.chassis.type: 10
  dmi.chassis.vendor: LENOVO
  dmi.chassis.version: Not Available
  dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnLENOVO:bvrGNET72WW(2.20):bd02/26/2015:svnLENOVO:pn20EGS01600:pvrThinkPadW541:rvnLENOVO:rn20EGS01600:rvrNotDefined:cvnLENOVO:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
  dmi.product.name: 20EGS01600
  dmi.product.version: ThinkPad W541
  dmi.sys.vendor: LENOVO

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