Linux on Thinkpad T420

The Lenovo/Thinkpad T420 series was released in March, 2011.

Networking

Wired: Drivers for the Intel 82579LM network adapter were not available on the Debian 6.01 installation disk. The workaround was to use a spare USB network device, which did have drivers. The final fix was to upgrade to kernel version 2.6.38.
Wireless: Drivers for the integrated Realtek RTL8188CE wireless existed in the default Debian installation, but they did not work. The solution was to download and compile new drivers from the Realtek website.

Openbox

Openbox is a lightweight window manager for X11. The packages I'm using are

volti: Volume control. Available at http://code.google.com/p/volti/downloads/list.
tint2: Task panel and system tray.
oblogout: Logout box. Available at http://assets.tensixtyone.com/releases/oblogout/

Useful Commands

dirs, popd, pushd: Remember and switch between directories.
setsid: Fork program into new session.

Other

Log output from wpa_supplicant:

Modify /usr/share/dbus-1/system-services/fi.epitest.hostap.WPASupplicant.service file and add "-dddt" to the end of the Exec= line so that the file looks like this:

[D-BUS Service]
Name=fi.epitest.hostap.WPASupplicant
Exec=/usr/sbin/wpa_supplicant -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -u -f /var/log/wpa_supplicant.log -dddt
User=root

> kill -SIGUSR1 `pidof wpa_supplicant`

Display BIOS version in Linux: dmidecode -s bios-version