Solaris on a Lenovo T61

Here's my notes on installing Solaris on a Lenovo T61

Memory and CPU

The Core2 Duo is a 64bit CPU and Solaris recognizes it as such (although it calls it amd64). Thus you get 2 CPUs and can see all 4GB of RAM.

Video (nVidia 140M)

Grab the latest nVidia Drivers as the ones in Solaris (at least nv69,nv72) won't run the 140M chipset.

The nVidia drivers come with their own install script that will install a package for you. Just run it, nice and simple.

Note that upgrading Solaris using Live Upgrade will require re-installing the nVidia packages as the upgrade process over-writes the customized version with the Sun shipped version so keep them around.

X ORG

There was some linking I had to do with nv69 to get this to work as the nVidia drivers are required. Unfortunately, I didn't write them all down but they probably include:

  • /usr/X11/lib/modules/extensions/amd64//libglx.so
  • /usr/X11/lib/modules/drivers/amd64//nvidia_drv.so
  • /usr/X11/lib/modules/amd64//libwfb.so
My xorg.conf is also attached.

Networking

Ethernet

The wired ethernet shows up as a e1000g0. Works fine out of the box.

Wireless (Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN)

This is supported by the iwk driver. You'll need dladm to configure it.

Mouse

Track point works fine and there's code to make the Synaptics touchpad work properly (of which only the middle button is a problem), but it's not yet checked in and no one seems to have time to do so.

Encrypted hard disk

Solaris sees this OK. The encryption is handled by the disk itself and the TPM in the laptop.

Turbo Memory

This is currently only supported by Windows.

Hardware

For reference, here's what I'm running:

  • T61
  • Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 (2.0GHz 800MHz 4MBL2) - The lowest speed with 4MB of level 2 cache
  • 390mm WSXGA+ TFT
  • NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M (128MB)
  • 4 GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz SODIMM Memory (2 DIMM)
  • UltraNav (TrackPoint and TouchPad) with Fingerprint Reader
  • 160 GB Hard Disk Drive, 5400rpm with Disk Encryption
  • Intel Turbo Memory 1GB
  • DVD Recordable 8x Max Dual Layer, Ultrabay Slim
  • PC Card Slot & Express Card Slot
  • 4 in 1 Media Card Reader
  • Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN
  • Integrated Bluetooth PAN
  • Wireless USB
prtconf -pv output is attached.