vuxu.org: rhea

Rhea is a Lenovo T480, Type 20L5CT01WW with an i7-8550U (1.8Ghz, 4 cores, hyperthreading, VT-x, VT-d), 48G RAM, 512 GB SSD (WDC PC SN720).

The naming

Rhea, titaness goddess of female fertility, motherhood and generation.

Rough setup

Flash BIOS version 1.19 (was 1.17) Get it from https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/de/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/thinkpad-t-series-laptops/thinkpad-t480-type-20l5-20l6/downloads.

Use geteltorito -o bios.img n24ur09w.iso and dd bios.img it raw on a stick. Flashing takes amazingly long for 21MB.
Enable “Fn and Ctrl Key swap” in BIOS (Config -> Keyboard/Mouse).
Enable “F1-F12 as Primary Function” in BIOS (Config -> Keyboard/Mouse).
Disable Secure Boot (Security -> Secure Boot).
Enable Legacy Boot (Startup -> UEFI/Legacy Boot).
Boot hrmpf-x86_64-4.14.10_1-20180102.iso.

Partition scheme: We use fdisk as usual, but we also encrypt /boot. So we need a 1MB partition for GRUB stage 1. (This turned out to be false, the gap when the first partition starts at sector 2048 is enough).

  nvme0n1p1 1M (active)
  nvme0n1p2 2G /boot
  nvme0n1p3 475G LVM


  luksFormat nvme0n1p2 and nvme0n1p3 with LUKS 1 defaults.


  mkfs.ext2 -L boot /dev/mapper/cryptboot


  pvcreate /dev/mapper/cryptlvm
  vgcreate ssd /dev/mapper/cryptlvm


  lvcreate -n vroot -L 40G ssd
  lvcreate -n home -L 64G ssd
  lvcreate -n data -L 256G ssd
  lvcreate -n swap -L 8G ssd


  mkfs.ext4 -L vroot /dev/mapper/ssd-vroot
  mkfs.ext4 -L home /dev/mapper/ssd-home
  mkfs.ext4 -L data /dev/mapper/ssd-data
  mkswap -L swap /dev/mapper/ssd-swap


  xi -Su xtools
  ... mkdir and mount stuff under /mnt
  xvoidstrap /mnt


  GRUB_ENABLE_CRYPTODISK=y
  add cryptboot to /etc/crypttab


  useradd leah

Hacks

Fix Intel CPU Throttling on Linux, this needs more researching.
Make the Print key work as compose:
```
xmodmap -e 'keycode 107 = Multi_key'
```

Allow dragging with middle mouse button:

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

Change backlight with xbindkeys:

"xbacklight +10"
  XF86MonBrightnessUp
"xbacklight -10"
  XF86MonBrightnessDown

RAM upgrade

On 2021-06-07 I added 32GB RAM into the empty second slot. (Mushkin D4S32GB 2666-19 Essentials 1,2v MSK, 32GB, DDR4-2666, SO-DIMM 260 pin, 154,71€ from Galaxus).

Changelog

28jan2020: Flash BIOS version 1.30 (was 1.19).
07jun2021: RAM upgrade.
03jul2023: Replaced the removable battery (unbranded, 46.89€).