New laptop
I’ve been wanting to buy myself a new laptop, I promised myself I will get an AMD this time.
I considered a lot of laptop models. Asus Zephyrus G14, Asus TUF A15, Acer Nitro, HP Pavillion, MSI. But after seeing Lenovo Legion 5, I kept making excuses why I should not choose the others
- Asus Zephyrus G14 - No Home, Pg Up, Pg Down, End key. Otherwise this is the best machine.
- Asus TUF A15 - Specs are great, just not there. I can’t make good excuse for this one, honest.
- Acer Nitro - Small keys
- HP Pavillion - Too new, high chance of unsupported drivers.
- MSI - Red keys
Legion 5
Why I choose Lenovo Legion:
- I used Thinkpad X20 before. It brings back nostalgia
- The keys on the keyboard is just great
- The build is great
- I don’t want my laptop to look too flashy.
So this is what I’m scoring…
██████████████████ ████████ fazreil@Legion5
██████████████████ ████████ OS: Manjaro 20.1 Mikah
██████████████████ ████████ Kernel: x86_64 Linux 5.8.13-3-MANJARO
██████████████████ ████████ Uptime: 1h 25m
████████ ████████ Packages: 1433
████████ ████████ ████████ Shell: zsh 5.8
████████ ████████ ████████ Resolution: 1920x1080
████████ ████████ ████████ DE: GNOME 3.36.4
████████ ████████ ████████ WM: Mutter
████████ ████████ ████████ WM Theme: Matcha-dark-sea
████████ ████████ ████████ GTK Theme: Matcha-sea [GTK2/3]
████████ ████████ ████████ Icon Theme: Papirus-Dark-Maia
████████ ████████ ████████ Font: Noto Sans 11
████████ ████████ ████████ Disk: 73G / 697G (11%)
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 4600H with Radeon Graphics @ 12x 3GHz
GPU: GeForce GTX 1650
RAM: 4166MiB / 15434MiB
Problem with the touchpad on Legion 5 15ARH05
…which brings us to the titular subject. As you can see there, I wiped out Windows 10 it came with and installed Pop!_Os first before deciding to go for Manjaro 20.1 Minkah. I want to use Arch based linux for a change.
Beautiful, sleek and very comfortable to use. Little did I know there was an issue with the touchpad. The cursor just don’t move. It just don’t work.
ref: launchpad
Looking for fix
The webpage above actually provide a solution for the issue. But I need to build the patched kernel myself. I’ve never build a kernel to be honest (despite being a senior build engineer, this is embarassing). The patch isn’t going to be merged into the official build anytime soon because it will break other touchpads.
ref: launchpad
Building new kernel with patched driver
I followed this step.
Here is the rundown of what I did that night:
-
Download linux58 package
wget https://gitlab.manjaro.org/packages/core/linux58/-/archive/master/linux58-master.tar.gz -
Extract it to my checkout directory
tar xvzf linux58-master.tar.gz -
change directory to the extracted
cd linux58-master -
download patch for Legion 5 touchpad
wget https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1887190/+attachment/5418465/+files/0303-pinctrl-amd2.patch -
Copy the file over to the extracted linux58
cp ~/Downloads/0303-pinctrl-amd2.patch . -
Update checksums
updpkgsums -
While making the package, I got this error:
==> ERROR: Cannot find the fakeroot binary required for building as non-root user. -
This can be solved by installing base-devel
sudo pacman -S base-devel -
The package brings fakeroot, now let’s make the package
makepkg -s -
Now let the system compile and make the new kernel package, together with the headers
What was that patch about
I went to check what the patch is all about
cat 0303-pinctrl-amd2.patch
and this is what I found:
diff --git a/drivers/pinctrl/pinctrl-amd.c b/drivers/pinctrl/pinctrl-amd.c
index 9a760f5cd7ed..e786d779d6c8 100644
--- a/drivers/pinctrl/pinctrl-amd.c
+++ b/drivers/pinctrl/pinctrl-amd.c
@@ -472,7 +472,7 @@ static int amd_gpio_irq_set_type(struct
pin_reg &= ~(ACTIVE_LEVEL_MASK << ACTIVE_LEVEL_OFF);
pin_reg |= ACTIVE_LOW << ACTIVE_LEVEL_OFF;
pin_reg &= ~(DB_CNTRl_MASK << DB_CNTRL_OFF);
- pin_reg |= DB_TYPE_PRESERVE_HIGH_GLITCH << DB_CNTRL_OFF;
+ /** pin_reg |= DB_TYPE_PRESERVE_HIGH_GLITCH << DB_CNTRL_OFF; */
irq_set_handler_locked(d, handle_level_irq);
break;
The patch actually removes one line from one of the driver to make the touchpad works, got it
Installing the newly built Kernel
Ok, after 10 minutes or so, the build completed successfully
The suspense is mounting. So far my personal achievement when dealing with kernel…
Install new kernel: checked
Build new kernel: checked
Install newly built own kernel: ?
Time to install the newly built kernel
~/.../linux58/linux58-master >>> sudo pacman -U ./linux58-5.8.14-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz ./linux58-headers-5.8.14-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
[sudo] password for fazreil:
loading packages...
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...
Packages (2) linux58-5.8.14-1 linux58-headers-5.8.14-1
Total Installed Size: 197.55 MiB
Net Upgrade Size: 0.03 MiB
:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] Y
(2/2) checking keys in keyring [##################################] 100%
(2/2) checking package integrity [##################################] 100%
(2/2) loading package files [##################################] 100%
(2/2) checking for file conflicts [##################################] 100%
(2/2) checking available disk space [##################################] 100%
:: Running pre-transaction hooks...
(1/2) Removing linux initcpios...
(2/2) Save Linux kernel modules
:: Processing package changes...
(1/2) upgrading linux58 [##################################] 100%
(2/2) upgrading linux58-headers [##################################] 100%
:: Running post-transaction hooks...
(1/5) Arming ConditionNeedsUpdate...
(2/5) Updating module dependencies...
(3/5) Updating linux initcpios...
==> Building image from preset: /etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux58.preset: 'default'
-> -k /boot/vmlinuz-5.8-x86_64 -c /etc/mkinitcpio.conf -g /boot/initramfs-5.8-x86_64.img
==> Starting build: 5.8.14-1-MANJARO
-> Running build hook: [base]
-> Running build hook: [udev]
-> Running build hook: [autodetect]
-> Running build hook: [modconf]
-> Running build hook: [block]
-> Running build hook: [filesystems]
-> Running build hook: [resume]
-> Running build hook: [keyboard]
-> Running build hook: [fsck]
==> Generating module dependencies
==> Creating gzip-compressed initcpio image: /boot/initramfs-5.8-x86_64.img
==> Image generation successful
==> Building image from preset: /etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux58.preset: 'fallback'
-> -k /boot/vmlinuz-5.8-x86_64 -c /etc/mkinitcpio.conf -g /boot/initramfs-5.8-x86_64-fallback.img -S autodetect
==> Starting build: 5.8.14-1-MANJARO
-> Running build hook: [base]
-> Running build hook: [udev]
-> Running build hook: [modconf]
-> Running build hook: [block]
-> Running build hook: [filesystems]
-> Running build hook: [resume]
-> Running build hook: [keyboard]
-> Running build hook: [fsck]
==> Generating module dependencies
==> Creating gzip-compressed initcpio image: /boot/initramfs-5.8-x86_64-fallback.img
==> Image generation successful
(4/5) Updating Grub-Bootmenu
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found theme: /usr/share/grub/themes/manjaro/theme.txt
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-5.8-x86_64
Found initrd image: /boot/intel-ucode.img /boot/amd-ucode.img /boot/initramfs-5.8-x86_64.img
Found initrd fallback image: /boot/initramfs-5.8-x86_64-fallback.img
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-5.4-x86_64
Found initrd image: /boot/intel-ucode.img /boot/amd-ucode.img /boot/initramfs-5.4-x86_64.img
Found initrd fallback image: /boot/initramfs-5.4-x86_64-fallback.img
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-5.4-rt-x86_64
Found initrd image: /boot/intel-ucode.img /boot/amd-ucode.img /boot/initramfs-5.4-rt-x86_64.img
Found initrd fallback image: /boot/initramfs-5.4-rt-x86_64-fallback.img
Adding boot menu entry for UEFI Firmware Settings ...
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+/memtest.bin
/usr/bin/grub-probe: warning: unknown device type nvme0n1.
done
(5/5) Restore Linux kernel modules
==> Warning:
-> Kernel has been updated. Modules of the current kernel
-> have been backed up so you can continue to use your
-> computer. However, the new kernel will only work
-> at next boot.
~/.../linux58/linux58-master >>>
Reboot
Next, I kept faith in all kernel developers and reboot the machine. Praise to god, the new kernel works!
~ >>> screenfetch
██████████████████ ████████ fazreil@Legion5
██████████████████ ████████ OS: Manjaro 20.1 Mikah
██████████████████ ████████ Kernel: x86_64 Linux 5.8.14-1-MANJARO
██████████████████ ████████ Uptime: 3m
████████ ████████ Packages: 1433
████████ ████████ ████████ Shell: zsh 5.8
████████ ████████ ████████ Resolution: 1920x1080
████████ ████████ ████████ DE: GNOME 3.36.4
████████ ████████ ████████ WM: Mutter
████████ ████████ ████████ WM Theme: Matcha-dark-sea
████████ ████████ ████████ GTK Theme: Matcha-sea [GTK2/3]
████████ ████████ ████████ Icon Theme: Papirus-Dark-Maia
████████ ████████ ████████ Font: Noto Sans 11
████████ ████████ ████████ Disk: 75G / 697G (12%)
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 4600H with Radeon Graphics @ 12x 3GHz
GPU: GeForce GTX 1650
RAM: 1628MiB / 15434MiB
~ >>> uname -r
5.8.14-1-MANJARO
~ >>>
More interestingly the touchpad now works!
Now I can unplug my laptop and carry it around without carrying mouse with me.
p.s. I could use i3 but when it comes to browsing on firefox, I really need the touchpad.