Lenovo ThinkPad SL Series hotkeys (brightness, volume and ultranav)Karmic

The company I work for gave to me a Lenovo ThinkPad SL500 notebook in which I’ve installed Ubuntu Intrepid (8.10).
Almost all has gone at the first shot but I discovered that the SL series is not a “real” ThinkPad and the thinkpad_acpi module doesn’t work at all with sl series laptops.
Volume Up, Volume Down and Mute buttons did not work and brightness was a mess: on power saving the brightness increased, pressing the brightness Up button (Fn+Home) decreased and pressing the brightness down button (Fn+End) increased.
Googleing at firs led nothing until…. I found an experimental module developed by Alexandre Rostovtsev (tetronimo).
Here a step by step guide to let Lenovo SL Series laptop hotkeys start working.

Edit: Karmic comes with tetronimo module but it does not load it…. Simply go and edit the /etc/modules file and add the lenovo-sl-laptop at the end of the list. Automagically all buttons will work again.

First, download from here the tarball of the kernel module made by Alexandre Rostovtsev.

Extract it into a directory, build the module and copy it to the modules directory:

tar zxvf tetromino-lenovo-sl-laptop-b19a08f81f693581013d7badfed6fd82e18a9a72.tar.gz
cd tetromino-lenovo-sl-laptop-b19a08f81f693581013d7badfed6fd82e18a9a72
make all
sudo cp lenovo-sl-laptop.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/misc

The tarball name and the directory name could be different from the one I wrote on this guide.

Rebuild modules dependencies:

sudo depmod

Blacklist thinkpad_acpi module, as it simply doesn’t load.
To do that, edit the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file:

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist &

and add the following line to the end of file

blacklist thinkpad-acpi

save and close.

Edit /etc/init.d/hotkey-setup by adding the following lines after the:

LENOVO*)
case "$version" in

at line 147 and before the line

*Think[Pp]ad*)

*Think[Pp]ad*SL*)
. /usr/share/hotkey-setup/lenovo.hk
echo 0 > /sys/module/video/parameters/brightness_switch_enabled
modprobe lenovo-sl-laptop
;;

After you modified the file it should became as follows:

LENOVO*)
 case "$version" in
 *Think[Pp]ad*SL*)
 . /usr/share/hotkey-setup/lenovo.hk
 echo 0 > /sys/module/video/parameters/brightness_switch_enabled
 modprobe lenovo-sl-laptop
 ;;
 *Think[Pp]ad*)
 do_thinkpad --no-brightness
 ;;
 *)
 . /usr/share/hotkey-setup/lenovo.hk
 ;;
 esac

save and close.

Edit:

Canonical has released Ubuntu 9.04 and hotkey-setup is completely different from the 8.10 version. If you upgraded to Ubuntu 9.04 the hotkey-setup file coming from 9.04 has to be “patched” as follows, adding the two bold lines after the do_video call:

do_video
echo 0 > /sys/module/video/parameters/brightness_switch_enabled
modprobe lenovo-sl-laptop

Now let’s set some options for the module.

Create the file /etc/modprobe.d/lenovo-sl-laptop.conf

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/lenovo-sl-laptop.conf

and paste into it the following line

options lenovo-sl-laptop control_backlight=1

Now we have to restart the modules:

sudo /etc/init.d/hotkey-setup stop
sudo /etc/init.d/hotkey-setup start

and you will be able to use (almost) all the special keys of your laptop.

Edit: For all of you that upgraded to 9.04 and experience warning about lenovo-sl-laptop.modprobe file, simply rename it to lenovo-sl-laptop.conf. I edited the guide to ensure the correct naming convention.

If you still experience strange behaviours with the brightness control, blacklist video module, comment the line in the script with the echo 0 >/sys/module/video/parameters/brightness_switch_enabled and restart.

The only special key that won’t work will be Fn+F8. If you want also use the Fn+F8 (ultranav) key you have to hack a little bit more:

First we have to enable shared memory for synaptic touchpad.

Create the file /etc/hal/fdi/policy/shmconfig.fdi

sudo gedit /etc/hal/fdi/policy/shmconfig.fdi

and paste into it the following lines:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
 <deviceinfo version="0.2">
 <device>
 <match key="input.x11_driver" string="synaptics">
 <merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">True</merge>
 </match>
 </device>
 </deviceinfo>

save and close.

Ubuntu doesn’t installs, by default, the very useful tool notify-send. Install it with apt-get:

sudo apt-get install libnotify-bin

Now we must create a script to be launched when we press the Fn+F8 key. This script will simply toggle the touchpad status.
let’s make a directory to store the script:

sudo mkdir /usr/share/hotkey-setup/gconf-commands

Now let’s create the file /usr/share/hotkey-setup/gconf-commands/synaptic-touchpad-toggle

sudo gedit /usr/share/hotkey-setup/gconf-commands/synaptic-touchpad-toggle

copy and paste the following lines into the file:

#!/bin/bash
 STATE=`synclient -l | grep TouchpadOff | cut -f2 -d'=' | cut -c2`
 PARAMS="-t 1500 -i /usr/share/pixmaps/gnome-user-interface.png"
 if [ $STATE -eq 0 ] ; then
 synclient TouchpadOff=1
 notify-send $PARAMS "Touchpad <i>DISABLED</i>" "Touchpad has been <b><i>DISABLED</i></b>"
 else
 synclient TouchpadOff=0
 notify-send $PARAMS "Touchpad <i>ENABLED</i>" "Touchpad has been <b><i>ENABLED</i></b>"
 fi

save and close

now let the file executable:

sudo chmod uga+x /usr/share/hotkey-setup/gconf-commands/synaptic-touchpad-toggle

The lenovo-sl-module echoes the keycode 148 (or the X equivalent XF86Launch1) when we press Fn+F8.

To let gnome launch the script we just created we have to add a copule of keys in gconf:

gconftool-2 -s --type string /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands/command_1 /usr/share/hotkey-setup/gconf-commands/synaptic-touchpad-toggle
gconftool-2 -s --type string /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/run_command_1 XF86Launch1

Edit: Jaunty Jackalope added a new feature in the keyboard shortcuts thal let every user to define a custom action. The previous gconf hack doesn’t work anymore and must be changed as follows (the first two lines simply reset the previous hack):

gconftool-2 -s --type string /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands/command_1 disabled
gconftool-2 -s --type string /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/run_command_1 disabled
gconftool-2 -s --type string /desktop/gnome/keybindings/custom0/name "Touchpad Toggle"
gconftool-2 -s --type string /desktop/gnome/keybindings/custom0/action /usr/share/hotkey-setup/gconf-commands/synaptic-touchpad-toggle
gconftool-2 -s --type string /desktop/gnome/keybindings/custom0/binding  XF86Launch1

Now by pressing the Fn+F8 the touchpad will toggle from Enabled to Disabled with a notification message.

I hope this guide will help you. I also hope Alexandre module will be added to the kernel as soon as possible.

That’s all folks!