Lenovo ThinkPad T480

Thank you @renehoj for your report, which is online now!

I have moved our posts into this thread. So you are using the i5-8250U like @SoPunny.

I think we are close if we can clarify whether there are suspend issues or not. What’s the difference between “Deep Suspend” and “Idle Suspend”? Has anything changed in the last few weeks – @SoPunny?

I’ve spent most of the evening testing the suspend function, and I can’t reproduce the situation where it takes a long time to wake up.

Reconfiguring the thunderbolt port can result in pci devices being added/removed, which means you manually need to update the sys-usb device list.

Enabling hyper-threading adds a 5-10 sec delay on waking up the system, but it doesn’t add the really long delay. This seems similar to how suspend works on my Windows system.

With sys-usb/thunderbolt correctly configured and hyper-threading disabled, it takes ~2 sec to wake up the system.

Sadly, I didn’t check the logs when I experienced the slow wake-up, I think some software/OS error happened during the wake-up, and the long delay is a software timeout.

Tomorrow I’ll try and get a dock and see if using the thunderbolt port makes suspend fail.

For the community recommended list it is critical that a PC works “out of the box” using just the installer and no other instructions or workarounds. Would you say that’s the case with your T480?

I haven’t found any bios settings that prevent you from using Qubes, but I need a dock to test if the thunderbolt port actually works, hopefully I can do this today.

I tried reinstalling Qubes with a couple different Thunderbolt settings, and they all worked “out of the box” with sys-usb being created during installation.

If after installing Qubes you go into the bios and change the thunderbolt configuration, it reconfigures the pci devices and this can result in an unknown or missing device in the sys-usb device list. I assume this is considered outside the standard installation.

The dock worked with default settings, I have not been able to find anything that doesn’t work out of the box.

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That’s great! … @SoPunny can you confirm?

Upgraded my motherboard from the i5-8250U to the i7-8650U

The only difference I’ve found is that the i7 is vPro with AMT, apart from that the i5 and i7 are identical.

Everything works.

Qubes-HCL-LENOVO-20L6S1LV0A-20221119-213031.yml (859 Bytes)

Qubes-HCL-LENOVO-20L6S1LV0A-20221119-213031.cpiogz (10.7 KB)

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Thank you @renehoj for your updated report, which is online now!

@aronowski can you confirm that the i7-8650U works out-of-the-box?

Hello,

As I said earlier, everything seems to work fine and I only get visual glitches by having my cursor at certain height.
Maybe there’s something more precise I could test out. Tell me more if that’s the case.

I do, however, see an older entry:

I haven’t tested Bluetooth

It does work - check this out.

Idle suspend works as intended when I just shut my laptop. I wait for about 10 seconds to be able to enter my password. I’m using it with i3, and I think i3-settings-qubes comes with xss-lock. I think. It doesn’t show any password characters but a circle that turns green whenever I press a key.

When I enter cat /sys/power/state, I get freeze mem. Freeze means suspend-to-idle and mem means suspend-to-memory.

The freeze option, when set, will initiate a lightweight software-based-only sleep state for your system. The Linux user space will be frozen (hence the term) and all I/O devices will be put into a low power state. Whilst this option and state is always supported, and does limit energy uses, it is the most light form of halting your machine. If no other options are available to you, this may still save on the electricity bills, though not as much as shutting down the system.

The mem option, when set, will initiate either a Suspend-To-Idle, which is identical to the freeze option, or do a Suspend-To-RAM, where it everything in the system is put into a low-power state except for the memory. Which option is used (Suspend-To-Idle or Suspend-To-RAM) depends on the setting of the /sys/power/mem_sleep file. You can examine the various modes of this file by simply executing cat /sys/power/mem_sleep at the terminal command line.

Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/devops/how-to-hibernate-or-sleep-linux-from-the-command-line/

No comment on suspend-to-ram. I never use it.

Did anyone update the BIOS for this thinkpad? Intel ME had a vulnerability it seems.

BIOS Update (Utility & Bootable CD) for Windows 11, 10 (64-bit), Linux - ThinkPad T480 - Lenovo Support US - i usually use the boot image, boot it upgrade and get back to qubes.

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Thank you! Can you boot that image using Ventoy? More importantly are there any risk to running it without re-installing Qubes entirely?

Download the iso file and then use the geteltorito script to make it into an img file, the img file can be booted of any usb device.

You shouldn’t need to reinstall qubes all it does is update the firmware.

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In other news, both of my charging ports finally stopped working, and I’m using the official Lenovo charger for it. It stopped charging with certain outlets and then stopped for any of them. I also tried another USB-C laptop charger and it didn’t work. If you’re getting a used Thinkpad laptop, be careful about the release date. Don’t get one that could have had the bad Thunderbolt firmware for a while. I updated my firmware soon after I got it. It’s a shame because I was finally starting to like my computer and Qubes setup.

Yeah they had a firmware update for it.

Made the critical thunderbolt and firmware update before installing. can’t seem to get keyboard backlight working and have not attempted fingerprint scanner. everything else, after enabling virtualization in BIOS, went smoothly on a fresh 4.1.2 install

---
layout:
  'hcl'
type:
  'notebook'
hvm:
  'yes'
iommu:
  'yes'
slat:
  'yes'
tpm:
  'unknown'
remap:
  'yes'
brand: |
  LENOVO
model: |
  20L6S09E00
bios: |
  N24ET72P (1.47 )
cpu: |
  Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-8350U CPU @ 1.70GHz
cpu-short: |
  FIXME
chipset: |
  Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v6/7th Gen Core Processor Host Bridge/DRAM Registers [8086:5914] (rev 08)
chipset-short: |
  FIXME
gpu: |
  Intel Corporation UHD Graphics 620 [8086:5917] (rev 07) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
gpu-short: |
  FIXME
network: |
  Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection (4) I219-LM (rev 21)
  Intel Corporation Wireless 8265 / 8275 (rev 78)
memory: |
  32276
scsi: |
  Micron_M500_MTFD Rev: MU05
usb: |
  2
versions:

- works:
    'FIXME:yes|no|partial'
  qubes: |
    R4.1
  xen: |
    4.14.5
  kernel: |
    5.15.94-1
  remark: |
    FIXME
  credit: |
    FIXAUTHOR
  link: |
    FIXLINK

---

1 Like

Do I understand correctly that this thread concluded that T480 i7-8650U meets the community list requirements? i.e. having the 2 positive R4.1 reports listed above (aronowski & renehoj).

However, I see it is not on the list. Was it added but later removed for being outdated as suggested in another thread?

Also, thank you @Sven for your fantastic work! Very very helpful!


First time using the forum: if I broke any etiquette, my apology and please let me know how I can improve!

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Thank you @kenosen for your HCL report, which is online now!