These are the steps and settings in getting FreeBSD running on an IBM Thinkpad X40. This article deals with a non-dual boot setup, and installation using IBM's USB DVD-CDRW drive.

Current recommended version of FreeBSD is FreeBSD-6.0, and unless otherwise noted, the instructions are for this version.

Removing Windows

First thing to do was removing the Windows sticker. :) It can be difficult to remove. Slide a thin blade underneath the edge and lift it up slightly. This will allow you to remove the sticker quite easily. The Windows XP ID sticker underneath the laptop however is not quite so easily removed. I had quite a bit of paper and glue still left behind after getting most of it off. It can be rubbed off with a soft cloth, but still a bit is left over.

Don't remove Window just yet

Pressing any of the notebook function keys such as volume, screen, LED light etc. will hang FreeBSD after install if you don't disable the second IDE channel first.

Disabling second IDE channel

From reports [1] there is no functionality loss when disabling the second IDE channel. When using the docking station devices such as the ultrabay drives will work just fine.

Disabling from IBM Thinkpad Recovery tools

...

Disabling using a DOS boot disk and PS2.EXE utility

Instructions from FreeBSD Mailing list archives

Getting drivers from Windows XP

If your WLAN card is an Intel, you will still need Windows, to extract some drivers for use in FreeBSD (see Network - Wireless).

Somebody should tell IBM to also provide these drivers in ZIP format, instead of a Windows executable.

For Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 7100 LAN Card Driver, you will need to copy these two files. A USB key is handy for this.

• W70N501.INF
• W70N51.SYS

Removing Windows XP and Recovery Partition

Reports have indicated that installing FreeBSD even with the partition set as protected in BIOS settings, prevents the recovery programs from starting up.

Installation

Installating from USB DVD Combo Drive

There are no problems with installing FreeBSD 5.3 with a USB DVD-CDRW drive. Boot options may have to be changed and can be done by pressing F12 on bootup and selecting USB CDROM as the bootup device.

Supported Devices

Network - Ethernet

The Intel PRO Gigabit Ethernet adapter is detected and works without problems as em0 device.

            em0: <Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection, Version - 1.7.35> port
            0x7000-0x703f mem 0xd0200000-0xd021ffff irq 6 at device 1.0 on pci2

Network - Wireless

Depending on the X40 model, it will either be an Atheros WiFi card (often reported as IBM WiFi card) or an Intel 2100 WiFi card reported as Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 7100 LAN Card Driver by pciconf. Both are supported.

Atheros

This card is supported natively by the ath driver. It can compiled into the kernel by adding the following options or loaded as a kernel module using kldload (untested)

                device          ath                   #Atheros
                device          ath_hal           #Atheros HAL
                device      ath_rate_onoe # Onoe rate control for ath driver

Intel Pro/Wireless 7100

This wireless card is supported both by ndiswrapper (Windows driver) as well as native drivers. ! Native IPW and IWI drivers

ipw for 2100/2200BG

There is good documentation available at the driver website.

It is supported natively on FreeBSD. Users however will need to download the firmware drivers from the ports under net/ipw-firmware and net/iwi-firmware respectively.

Users need to do an ifconfig ipw0 up or ifconfig iwi0 up after loading the firmware (port rc startup script) in order to turn the radio on.

Depending on your card, add either of the lines to your rc.conf to load the firmware on startup.

                    ipw_enable="YES"

                    iwi_enable="YES"

ndiswrapper (aka Project Evil)

This is confirmed to be working, there are some quirks such as sometimes not being able reset the interface once it's associated with a network. Generally it works quite well.

The procedure is well documented in the Wireless Networking section of the handbook. The follow are the steps specific to the Intel Pro/Wireless 7100 device.

1. Copy the two Windows driver files mentioned before and copy them to /usr/src/sys/modules/if_ndis
2. :

                           ndiscvt -O -i W70N501.INF -s W70N51.SYS -o ndis_driver_data.h
   

3. From this directory, run make and then make install The ndis kernel modules are now installed.
4. To load the kernel modules, kldload ndis and then kldload if_ndis

   Add the following lines in /boot/loader.conf to automatically load the WiFi drivers at startup

                          ndis_load="YES"
                          if_ndis_load="YES"
   

   dmesg should show the following information

                          ndis0: <Intel(R) PRO/Wireless LAN 2100 3B Mini PCI Adapter> mem 0xd0220000-0xd0220fff irq 9 at device 2.0 on pci2
                          ndis0: NDIS API version: 5.1
                          ndis0: Ethernet address: 00:0c:f1:4f:93:9e
                          ndis0: 11b rates: 11Mbps 2Mbps 1Mbps 5.5Mbps
   

   See Working with Wireless section to get WiFi up and running.

USB

USB 1.0/2.0 is support and works fine with the devices I've tested it with.a Kingston USB Key, IBM DVD-CDRW drive, HP PSC 2110 printer and types of scroll mouse.

You will need to also add this line:

            device      ehci        # USB 2.0

In your kernel config to enable it.

IR-DA

There are reports that this works with the comms/birda/ port.

It is detected as a serial device:

            sio0: <Generic IRDA-compatible device> port 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3 drq 3 flags 0x10 on acpi0
            sio0: type 16550A

Display and Video Out

The display chipset is an Intel 855GM/GME Montara Integrated Graphics Device. There is no DRI support for i810/i930 support yet for FreeBSD. DRI support has been committed to the STABLE branch and will be available in FreeBSD 6.1. 2D graphics at 1024x768 and 24bit color is snappy, and video playback is smooth with xorg 6.8.1.

The screen does however have problems when you close and reopen the lid. You will get a garbled display at the top and the display is shifted a bit lower. This doesn't happen if restoring from S3 suspend. It also occurs when switching to external display.

When closing and opening a lid, a workaround in devd.conf was posted by James Snow

In /etc/devd.conf add the following lines at the bottom

            notify 10 {
                    match "system"          "ACPI";
                    match "subsystem"       "Lid";
                    action "/usr/X11R6/bin/xrandr -display :0.0 -s 0";
            };

One workaround is to start X from the console form external display.

Another workaround is use dua head xorg setup. (FIXME)

Xorg Display Device

xorg.conf Device settings

                    Section "Device"
                        Identifier  "i810"
                        Driver      "i810"
                        VideoRam    8192 
                        #Option      "NoAccel"
                        #Option      "SWCursor"
                        Option      "VBERestore" "yes"
                        Option      "DevicePresence" "yes"
                    EndSection

Video Out

Pressing Fn+F7 will switch display output between LCD and external Monitor. See caveat regarding bug with X display above.

Xinerama/Dual Head

A few video output modes are supported.

• LCD Only
• LCD + Video Out (Clone mode)

  This mode is currently buggy. Video out is not displayed properly.

• Video out only
• Dual Head

  You can run dual head in two modes, xinerama and dual screen.

  • Xinerama

    With Xinerama enabled, your desktop will be the size of your LCD + Video out resolution.

  • Dual Screen

    In this mode, two separate desktops will be loaded as display 0.0 and display 0.1. You can access both, but windows cannot be dragged from one screen to another.

... link to dual screen xorg.conf

Trackpoint and USB Mouse

Works immediately out of the box with FreeBSD's moused driver. An external USB mouse can be plugged in, and should work immediately and handled by FreeBSD's mouse driver in both console and X. Both trackpoint and USB mouse can be used interchangebly. If you have a USB wheel mouse the following settings will allow you to use the scroll wheel.

xorg.conf Input Device section

            Identifier  "Mouse1"
                Driver  "mouse"
                Option "Protocol"    "Auto"
                Option "Device"      "/dev/sysmouse"
                Option "Buttons"    "5"
                Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"

SD Card

Currently there is no support for SD cards. Some reference material has been release and a Linux driver is currently in progress.

ACPI and Power Management

Suspend and Resume

S3 suspend and resume works well add these lines to the respective configuration files. The settings below set the notebook to go into suspend when the lid is closed. Display, sound, mouse, usb devices and network devices all are restored upon resume.

/etc/sysctl.conf

            hw.acpi.lid_switch_state=S3
            hw.acpi.standby_state=S0
            hw.acpi.suspend_state=S3
            hw.acpi.sleep_button_state=S3
            vfs.usermount=1
            hw.acpi.sleep_delay=3

Mouse needs a device hint to work properly after resume.

/boot/device.hints

            hint.psm.0.flags="0x2000"

CPUFreq (CPU Frequency Control Framework) and Speedstep.

CPUFreq has been merged and is available in FreeBSD 6.0. Other CPUFreq drivers such as enhanced speedstep for the X40's Pentium-M are also now part of FreeBSD.

This has meant that the performance controls have changed in rc.conf.

In my rc.conf I have this set:

            performance_cx_lowest="HIGH"                # Online CPU idle state
            economy_cx_lowest="LOW"             # Offline CPU idle state

powerd

FreeBSD now also has an adaptive power management utility called powerd that scales CPU according to usage.

In your rc.conf add these lines:

            powerd_enable="YES"

Algorithms to improve life and performance are currently being worked on.

Depending on your usage, you can get up to 3hrs with standard battery and up to 6 and half hours with 8 cell battery.

Working with Wireless

Scanning for APs

Make sure the radio is on first and the firmware is loaded if using ipw or iwi drivers.

You can turn on the radio by running the following command (or iwi0 depending on your card)

          ifconfig ipw0 up

Configuring dhclient

Using dhclient.conf options for DHCP enabled networks is the easiest way to get on to WiFi networks, multiple media options can be given for different networks.

In FreeBSD 6.0 this has now been replaced with OpenBSD's dhclient and media options no longer work in dhclient.conf. Instead users are supposed to use wpa_supplicant.conf for which no documentation has been written yet.

For now, you have to associate with an ssid after scanning manually and then run dhclient on the interface.

Scanning for AP

            ifconfig ipw0 list scan

            ifconfig ipw0 ssid 'access point ssid'
            dhclient ipw0

Kernel optimizations and Compiler Flags

Compiler flags

The Pentium-M of the X40 is not really a Pentium III or Pentium 4, as well as having some unique characteristics that result in default i686 build flag of gcc resulting in less than optimum performance.[2]

cpuflags for the pentium-m has been added to FreeBSD 6.0 PR 72340

I have yet to encounter any problems however for ports with gcc 3.4.2 and -march=pentium-m optimizations for 6.0. You can enable pentium-m optimizations by added the following CPUTYPE. Keep the ? in front, some ports have problems compiling with CPUTYPE and need to allow the ports to override your CPUTYPE.

/etc/make.conf

            CPUTYPE?=pentium-m

Kernel

The Pentium-M of the X40 has a large 1 MB L2 cache, which you can tune by adding a PQ_CACHESIZE in your kernel options.

Additionally removing I486_CPU and I586_CPU suppport may make some parts of the system run faster.

            cpu             I686_CPU
            options             PQ_CACHESIZE=1024

Screenshot

[1] Report that disabling IDE2 has no adverse effects

[2] Linux and the Desktop Pentium M: Uncommon Performance