vuxu.org: hera

Hera is a Lenovo T14 Gen 4 Intel, Type 21HDCTO1WWDE3 with an i7-1355U (10 cores: 2 performance up to 5Ghz, 8 efficient at 3.7GHz, hyperthreading, VT-x, VT-d), 32G RAM, 2 TB SSD (SK Hynix Platinum P41/PC801).

The naming

Hera is the goddess of marriage, women and family, and the protector of women during childbirth. In Greek mythology, she is queen of the twelve Olympians and Mount Olympus, sister and wife of Zeus, and daughter of the Titans Cronus and Rhea.

Rough setup

• Partition the disk. Initially, I wanted to make a super small ESP (EFI System Partition), but I quickly learned a reason to make it slightly bigger: fwupd stores the firmware there before flashing. So let’s make 1G EFI System Partition and use the rest for one LUKS encrypted Linux LVM. We stick to LUKS1 as GRUB 2.06 doesn’t do Argon yet anyway, and can’t autodetect LUKS2.

  mkfs.fat -F 32 -n EFI /dev/nvme0n1p1
  
  
  cryptsetup luksFormat --type luks1 /dev/nvme0n1p2
  cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/nvme0n1p2 cryptlvm
  
  
  pvcreate /dev/mapper/cryptlvm
  vgcreate ssd /dev/mapper/cryptlvm
  
  
  lvcreate -n swap -L 16G ssd
  lvcreate -n root -L 128G ssd
  lvcreate -n home -L 128G ssd
  lvcreate -n data -L 1024G ssd
  
  
  mkfs.ext4 -L root /dev/mapper/ssd-root
  mkfs.ext4 -L home /dev/mapper/ssd-home
  mkfs.ext4 -L data /dev/mapper/ssd-data
  mkswap -L swap /dev/mapper/ssd-swap
  

• There was a BIOS update available for version 1.39, we had 1.37. This can be updated from hrmpf:

  fwupdmgr get-devices
  fwupdmgr refresh
  fwupdmgr get-updates
  fwupdmgr update
  

• Enable “Fn and Ctrl Key swap” in BIOS (Config -> Keyboard/Mouse).

• Enable “F1-F12 as Primary Function” in BIOS (Config -> Keyboard/Mouse).

• Enable VTx / VTx in BIOS (Security -> Virtualization).

• We need to set GRUB_ENABLE_CRYPTODISK=y in /etc/default/grub. Ensure the grub.cfg does some unlocking to check if it worked.

Hacks

• Make the Print key work as compose:

  xmodmap -e 'keycode 107 = Multi_key'
  

• Allow dragging with middle mouse button:

  xinput set-prop 'TPPS/2 Elan TrackPoint' 'libinput Scroll Method Enabled' 0 0 0
  

• Change backlight and volume with acpid:

  video/brightnessup) light -A 5;;
  video/brightnessdown) light -U 5;;
  button/volumeup) amixer sset Master 2+;;
  button/volumedown) amixer sset Master 2-;;
  

• ALSA: You need to install sof-firmware.

• Graphics: You need to use modesetting with X.org, xf86-video-intel has terrible performance and makes Chromium flicker and lag like hell.

• Suspend/Resume seems to work fine, expect for a major issue: the fan keeps running while it’s suspended! (WTF?)

  I work around this for now by adding a hook to zzz that turns off the fan for 15s on suspend:

  echo watchdog 15 > /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
  echo disable > /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
  

  This requires having a file in modprobe.d with:

  options thinkpad_acpi fan_control=1
  

  (I may want to use thinkfan in the future, I don’t think the fan needs to run all the time when it’s on AC.)

• perf top is broken on mainline until at least 6.6.5, but there’s a patch now.

Changelog

• 22nov2023: Flash BIOS version 1.39 (was 1.37).