Ubuntu Wiki

• Contact: Kstanoev

• Make: Toshiba
• Brand: Satellite
• Model: L40-12K

• Website: http://eu.computers.toshiba-europe.com/cgi-bin/ToshibaCSG/jsp/productPage.do?service=EU&PRODUCT_ID=131705

This entry is for the L40-12X, which seems to have T2080 instead of T2130.

Current Issues

• As of Hardy Alpha 3 the WLAN (Atheros AR5BXB63) works with the version of ndiswrapper from the ubuntu repositories, before and including in 7.10 the version in the repositories was too old. Also, madwifi is automatically installed and needs to be manually disabled before using the XP driver with ndiswrapper by blacklisting the ath_pci kernel module.

• The modem is a winmodem. There is currently no way to make it work under Linux: http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/bigarch/archive-seventh/msg00915.html

• ACPI Fn combos do not work, except the numpad, and brightness up/down which don't work in 7.10 but work in Hardy Alpha 3 and 7.04 - there was disagreement whether to use unisgned or signed ints.
• Note: this is all done using Xubuntu.

System Info

• $ sudo dmidecode -s system-manufacturer:
  • TOSHIBA
• $ sudo dmidecode -s system-product-name
  • Satellite L40
• $ sudo dmidecode -s system-version
  • PSL40E-02801LDU

Hardware details

Notes

Wireless LAN

In 7.04 and 7.10 there is no way to make the Atheros AR5BXB63 work "the Ubuntu way", because it is not supported by Atheros HAL. In a posting made last summer, about a month before I bought this laptop, Sam Leffler mentions that "Support is coming, hopefully soon". Then there is a mysterious patch submitted by an anonymous person with an @atheros.com email which does something to the HAL and removes Sam Leffler's copyright notice, which is claimed to work. Update: this is the approach used by eeeXubuntu for the Asus EeePC
As for ndiswrapper, the repositories for 7.04 and 7.10 have ndiswrapper 1.38, with which the XP driver does not work. It has worked with versions since at I think 1.47, I'm sure about 1.47 and it may work with earlier ones, but it doesn't work with 1.38. Now there is 1.50 for Hardy Alpha 3 so at least that's an improvement.
The orange LED that indicates that the manual switch is in the "on" position is sometimes very slow to react.

Sound

Sound used to have glitches in 7.04 and 7.10, and to fix them the line "options snd-hda-intel model=3stack" had to be added to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base - it works fine out of the box in Hardy Alpha 3.

Hibernation and Suspend

Suspend works fine, the power LED begins slowly fading from light to dark and back again in orange, like in Vista.
Hibernate outputs two warnings but does work, only upon switching the laptop on again it starts Vista. When I restart again and boot Linux the state is restored. I boot into Linux with entries for GRUB in the Vista boot menu, so this is probably a problem caused by Vista.

External monitor

When plugging in an external LCD in the VGA socket, nothing happens (should something happen?). Running xrandr shows that the external LCD monitor is detected, and outputs all of the resolution / refresh rate combinations for both monitors. Running xrandr --output VGA --auto beings to send signal to both monitors, displays the current screen in 1280x1024 (which the external monitor's maximum resolution) on the external one, and resizes the current setup to fill its bigger screen. Running xrandr --output VGA --off stops sending signal to the external monitor and resizes the desktop for a 1280x800 resolution again.

Fn keys

The numpad Fn combos and the Num lock and Scroll lock ones work. The other Fn combos do not work, except brightness up/down which work in Hardy Alpha 3 and 7.04, but didn't work in 7.10 - there was disagreement whether to use unisgned or signed ints.

xev detects keypress events with the following Fn combos that do not work: ESC (mute), F1 (lock screen), up/down (volume up/down). Fn + F1 produces keycodes 115+46 which is Super_L+l. The keycodes for the other three do not have keysyms assigned (that's in xfce, I found these: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/XfceMultimediaKeys).<<BR>>

I ran "sudo tail -f /var/log/acpid" and tested the ones that xev does not detect.

Fn + F2 has no effect.

Fn + F3
received event "hotkey ATKD 0000006c 00000007"
notifying client 5006[109:117]
notifying client 5101[0:0]
completed event "hotkey ATKD 0000006c 00000007"

Fn + F4
received event "hotkey ATKD 0000006d 00000006"
notifying client 5006[109:117]
notifying client 5101[0:0]
completed event "hotkey ATKD 0000006d 00000006"

Fn + F5
received event "hotkey ATKD 00000061 00000008"
notifying client 5006[109:117]
notifying client 5101[0:0]
completed event "hotkey ATKD 00000061 00000008"

Fn + F8
received event "hotkey ATKD 0000005f 00000007"
notifying client 5006[109:117]
notifying client 5101[0:0]
completed event "hotkey ATKD 0000005f 00000007"

Fn + F9
received event "hotkey ATKD 0000006b 00000010"
notifying client 5006[109:117]
notifying client 5101[0:0]
executing action "/etc/acpi/asus-touchpad.sh"
BEGIN HANDLER MESSAGES
Can't access shared memory area. SHMConfig disabled?
END HANDLER MESSAGES
action exited with status 1
completed event "hotkey ATKD 0000006b 00000010"

Kernel version

Hardy Alpha 3 kernel: 2.6.24-5-generic #1 SMP Thu Jan 24 19:45:21 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux