Ubuntu 9.04 on the Toshiba Satellite L305

Previously I had written about installing Ubuntu 8.10 on the Toshiba Satellite L305. It was not without its problems, the hardware on Toshiba systems can be pretty picky. The omnibook module got the fan and brightness keys working, but on some systems, this also caused the laptop to turn itself on three to fifteen minutes after being shut down. The good news for those who had this problem is that in 9.04, the fan problem is easily fixable without the module, and with a few workarounds, the brightness keys work too. Furthermore, wireless now works out of the box with the ath5k module, so madwifi or ndiswrapper are no longer necessary.

If you are already running the omnibook module without this problem, I recommend using that instead, as it is a simpler fix.

Step 1: Install and get the fan going

Download and install Ubuntu 9.04. In my experience, the DVD drive in the L305 can be a little picky, so I recommend either installing from a usb stick or burning the Ubuntu CD at a slower speed. The installation should go smoothly. When it boots to your new Ubuntu desktop, you first need to get the fan going.

This is a pretty easy fix, all you need to do is modify your grub file. Open up a terminal and type:

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

*note: You can use nano, vi, kate, or whatever your preferred text editor is.

Add 'acpi_osi="Linux"' to your kernel's boot parameters. This is an example of my menu.lst file, with the part you need to add in bold (the rest may differ slightly in your file):

title Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-11-generic
uuid a91f7379-e93b-490c-b541-0681173bccc2
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=UUID=a91f.. ro quiet splash acpi_osi="Linux"
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic
quiet

Reboot and your fan should work fine. In my experience, it turns on at about 50 degrees and turns back off at about 35. Your brightness keys might be usable now, too. In my experience, though, these keys stop working after a few reboots. (If your keys continue to work, you can skip the brightness keys workaround section).

Optional: monitor your temperatures with lm-sensors
I wanted to make sure that the fan was working appropriately, so I wanted to monitor the computer's temperature. This is easy to do by installing the lm-sensors package. After you set up the sensors, you can either run the sensors package to display temperatures, or install the sensors-applet package to monitor them from the desktop:

sudo apt-get install lm-sensors sensors-applet
sudo sensors-detect

sensors-detect will set up the sensors. It will ask a lot of questions, the defaults should all be fine, though when asked if I want to add the modules to /etc/modules, I say yes. either reboot or manually add the modules it specifies manually. Add the sensors applet to the panel and you should be able to monitor your temperatures.

Step 2: Get the brightness keys working
For some reason, after a couple of reboots, the function keys no longer work for me. It seems the function key (fn) doesn't get input. I've developed a workaround to make the super (Windows) key to work with F6 and F7 to change brightness levels.

First you need to modify the keyboard with xmodmap to allow the use of the super key, because by default it is set to a different use. Though it is supposedly changeable through Gnome, I have had no luck. It is actually quite easy to do manually though.

First open a console and run xev. Hit the windows key and look for the keycode output. On my computer, it is 147, though may be different (there are a few different models of L305s). Close out of xev and make (or modify) ~/.Xmodmap (note the dot and the capital X). Add the following lines to .Xmodmap:

keycode 147 = Super_L
add mod4 = Super_L

Save and close the file, then run xmodmap. The super key should now be mapped to "Super_L" (you can test this again in xev, if you like)

Next you need to bind super+F6 and super+F7 to the brightness keys. This is doable with xbindkeys, which is installable in the console, and you may also need the keytouch daemon: (sudo apt-get install xbindkeys keytouch). Xbindkeys will be mapped to run acpi keys with "acpi_fakekey", which should already be installed on your system. The keytouch daemon will install apci-related things that make acpi_fakekey work (I'm not exactly sure how, but in my experience, without the keytouch daemon, acpi_fakekey doesn't work)

You are also going to need to install the lineakd package to find out what the event keys are for your brightness keys. Lineakd comes with a program called evtest. Run it (as root) on the different events in /dev/input/ until you find the one with brightness event codes. Mine is in /dev/input/event5, though it may be different for you:

sudo apt-get install lineakd
sudo evtest /dev/input/event5

It lists for me that brightness down is 224 and brightness up is 225.

Next you need to modify the xbindkeys config file. This is easiest by installing the xbindkeys-config package, and run that. Here you can add various commands for different combinations of keypresses. Click “add.” Name the command whatever you like. Click on “get key” and press your key combination. For the action type in “acpi_fakekey [keycode]”, where [keycode] is the event code you found with evtest. For example, for my brightness down key I put acpi_fakekey 224. You can also use this for other commands, too.

Save the file and close xbindkeys-config. Here, I like to move the config file from its default location (~/.xbindkeysrc) to its own folder in /etc, because the commands should be system wide, and also for security (the commands it will be running will be running as root). I copied it to /etc/xbindkeys/xbindkeysrc

Now it's time to test it. run xbindkeys as root with "sudo xbindkeys -f [location of xbindkeysrc file]" . Press super+F6 and super+F7 to make sure they adjust the brightness as they should. If everything is set up right, your brightness should be changing now!

Step 3: Get xbindkeys to run at boot:
As long as the keys are working, the only thing left to do is to make xbindkeys run on boot. The following is the only way I've been able to find to get that to work (init scripts make it run too early and it segfaults). Many thanks to Ubuntu Forums user BslBryan for this tip!

First, modify the sudoers file with the command "sudo visudo" Add the following to the end of the file:

[your username(s)] ALL= NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/xbindkeys

This makes xbindkeys able to be run as root without a password. It's important for the next step. Next go to System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications. Click on add. Name it xbindkeys. For the command, type "sudo /usr/bin/xbindkeys" (without the quotes). Sudo won't ask for a password now because we edited the sudoers file earlier with visudo. Type a description if you like and click add, then close out of startup applications.

Now reboot. If all went well, when you reboot super+F6 and super+F7 should adjust the brightness. Along with the easy fix for the fan, this makes Ubuntu 9.04 much more usable on newer Toshiba laptops.