Lenovo T440s Compatibility

[Andrew Sorensen]

I've recently been testing Qubes OS on the Lenovo T440s. Here's my
results/notes so far (in case anyone is looking at the haswell series of
laptops):

* To boot the installer, you must disable secure boot and EFI in the BIOS.
* Install as normal (you can install to the 16GB SSD if you want, and
put /var/lib/qubes on your HDD or second/third SSD).
* Wireless will not work after installation. You must install the Intel
firmware first (iwl7260-firmware).
* There are no longer any dedicated buttons for for the trackpoint, so
the touchpad configuration must be changed to provide "virtual" buttons.
The touchpad works fine in F18 (not the trackpoint), but the fixes are
coming in Fedora 20.
* Sleep works fine (though wifi takes a little long to reconnect and KDE
nags about the sound cards being removed/added for some reason)
* Sound works, but you'll need to switch the outputs from HDMI

Now for the interesting topic, battery life:

A stock Fedora 20 installation showed a maximum of 32 hours of battery
life (wifi and screen off) with under 3W of power consumption. The
screen on with wifi active shows about 27 hours.

Qubes OS sees a dramatic decrease in battery life, with 17 hours being
the best case observed, and idle conditions of about 7-13 hours.

I'll post back to this list when I know more about this battery life issue.

[7v5w7go9ub0o]

THANK YOU for posting this - I look forward to follow-ups!

1. IIUC, the T440s
( <http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/t440s/> )
Indicates a single HDD or SSD box;

Are you installing to a USB?

2. FWICT, you have "Integrated Mobile Broadband ". A quick look at
<http://ark.intel.com/products/75439/Intel-Dual-Band-Wireless-AC-7260>
suggests that the mobile broadband is likely a separate card.

Could this separate card be the source of your energy loss?

(FWIW, this article
<http://www.osnews.com/story/27416/The_second_operating_system_hiding_in_every_mobile_phone>
suggests that if it is a separate card, you may want to pull it)

3. You are using KDE;

Does XFCE similarly reduce battery life?

(Should you test XFCE, does it seem any more responsive than KDE?)

4. If you have a fingerprint and/or smart card reader, how have/will you
utilize them?

5. Where did you find, and how did you install the updated firmware?
(e.g. loaded a compiled copy from somewhere into /lib/firmware, or used
yum while connected via hardware?)


Please excuse the newbie questions; I expect to order a "T" next week
(and will be new to Fedora).

[Andrew Sorensen]

If you purchase the T440s with a HDD, a 16GB SSD will be added. You can
also install another SSD in place of WWAN for a total of 3 SSDs.

> 2. FWICT, you have "Integrated Mobile Broadband ". A quick look at
> <http://ark.intel.com/products/75439/Intel-Dual-Band-Wireless-AC-7260>
> suggests that the mobile broadband is likely a separate card.
>
> Could this separate card be the source of your energy loss?

No. I do not have a WWAN card installed.

> (FWIW, this article
> <http://www.osnews.com/story/27416/The_second_operating_system_hiding_in_every_mobile_phone>
> suggests that if it is a separate card, you may want to pull it)

Eh, yes the card represents a security issue, but I think there's more
at stake here. I looked a few wireless cards and they advertised
features like having their own TCP/IP stack and reprogrammable features.
These present a significant security risk as they might allow for
persistent (and even remote) attacks against the system. Also, I'm not
even sure such a system would work. The laptop has a SIM card slot,
which is probably exposed directly to Dom0 (PIO?) and probably wouldn't
work because the "netvm" wouldn't have any way to communicate with the
SIM card (I assume the card requires the driver to negotiate with the
SIM card). This is all speculation so far, but I might evaluate this
some time in the future.

> 3. You are using KDE;
>
> Does XFCE similarly reduce battery life?

KDE 4.11 was used under Fedora 20 to produce the 32 hour battery life. I
don't think KDE is the issue here, but rather the number of wakeups from
Xen. I was able to tweak some settings get my power usage down to 5.17W,
or 18 hours of battery life.

> (Should you test XFCE, does it seem any more responsive than KDE?)
>
> 4. If you have a fingerprint and/or smart card reader, how have/will you
> utilize them?

I will not be using the fingerprint reader. If you configure the laptop
without an SSD the smart card reader witll be replaced with a 16GB ssd.
I'm currently investigating the possibility of moving that SSD
underneath my primary SSD (7mm) and adding a smart card reader myself.

> 5. Where did you find, and how did you install the updated firmware?
> (e.g. loaded a compiled copy from somewhere into /lib/firmware, or used
> yum while connected via hardware?)

Just install the package iwl7260-firmware in your template and wireless
will work.

> Please excuse the newbie questions; I expect to order a "T" next week
> (and will be new to Fedora).
>
>

Fell free to email me if you're thinking about the T440s. I've run into
a number of challenges while upgrading it (it's incredibly difficult to
take apart, and some components are difficult to find in the chassis).

[7v5w7go9ub0o]

On 01/01/14 14:04, Andrew Sorensen wrote:

[snip great stuff!]

>>
>
> Fell free to email me if you're thinking about the T440s. I've run into
> a number of challenges while upgrading it (it's incredibly difficult to
> take apart, and some components are difficult to find in the chassis).
>

THANKS AGAIN!

You have incoming.

[Andrew Sorensen]

Update:

I've found an issue related to Intel HD graphics. If system power
management sets the display power management to "off", and the system is
woken up later, the system will become unresponsive and must be power
cycled.

The workaround is to turn off display power management or put the system
to sleep instead. A permanent solution is probably upgrading kernel +
xorg-x11-drv-intel to the versions included in Fedora 20.

[Andrew Sorensen]

Update:

I still don't have a solution for the Intel HD graphics issue. I tried
using Kernel 3.13 in Dom0, but it doesn't make a difference here. Some
(many?) users of the Lenovo T440s have reported touchpad issues with
their touchpad (not working / stops working on click). This is a
hardware issue and must be corrected by taking the laptop apart and
moving the touchpad cable.

Currently the main issue is wireless and ethernet. The wireless card
will quit working every few hours and cannot be used until the system is
rebooted. Both the netvm kernel log and Xen log indicate that this issue
is related to interrupts (MSI/INTx). Additionally, if the user reboots
netvm both network cards become unusable until the entire system is
restarted.

The battery life issues seem to be caused by inefficient scheduling,
which might work better if Xen 4.2's "schedule rate limiting" system is
implemented: http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Credit_Scheduler

I suspect that a newer version of Xen will address the last two issues
I've described here. Since the Intel HD graphics issue requires
upgrading X11 and the X11 drivers, I think the most efficient means to
fix these issues is to rebuild Qubes on Fedora 20, which I am
investigating now.