This is my random troubleshooting page for issues and challenges with getting my ThinkPad L520 to run Ubuntu 11.04 properly. I will aim to outline all the issues I encounter and the resolutions I discover along the way. If you have an L520, or know how to resolve any of these issues, I would love to know about it.
Blank Screen on Installation
The problem: The screen goes blank (often with a cursor in the top corner) when trying to run the installer.
My solution: We need to enable the noapic option, which from my tests appears to have the best results.
- Use either the Alternate Installer, or press a key when the purple screen comes up with the little white keyboard logo
- Press F6 and select noapic from the options
- Press Esc and then Enter to Install Ubuntu
- Ubuntu should now install correctly
Blank Screen on Boot
The problem: This follows the previous step, after Ubuntu is installed, it still throws to a blank screen when it boots.
My solution: We need to enable the noapic option, first in GRUB manually to get into Ubuntu, and then into the GRUB config so it remembers it each time.
- Hold down Shift when the BIOS screen is up, and keep it down until the GRUB menu appears
- Press E to bring up the edit box
- Locate the line containing the words: quiet splash
- Add noapic to the line after splash
- Press Ctrl+X to boot into Ubuntu with the new option
- Once logged into Ubuntu, edit the GRUB config file: /etc/default/grub
- Locate the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT option and add noapic to it
- Save the GRUB config file and update GRUB: sudo update-grub
- Ubuntu 11.04 should now boot successfully
Weird colours and lines across the screen on Boot
The problem: Sometimes when I boot into Ubuntu, I end up with a screen full of weird coloured lines and patterns, making it totally unusable.
My solution: I found this solution on the Lenovo Forums:
- Press Fn+F4 to put the computer to sleep
- Once the computer is asleep, press the power button to wake it up and the display should be back to normal
Screen freezes instead of showing screensaver
The problem: I left my laptop copying files from my media box into it for a number of hours. When I got back to it the screen was frozen on the copy window. Although the mouse moves around on the screen, it cannot interact with anything.
My solution: I found restarting GDM does the trick.
- Press Ctrl+Alt+1
- Login at the prompt
- Run: sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart
- You should get a login window, and be back into Ubuntu in a few moments
Unity UI freezes/stutters every couple of seconds
The problem: Unity freezes every couple of seconds for a second or two, and playing games results in freezing video (particularly OpenGL games).
Martin has commented below to say that this has been fixed in a recent Kernel update, so you should be good without this flag.
My solution: I found this solution on AskUbuntu, which solves the issues in Games but not in normal usage:
- Edit your GRUB config (sudo vim /etc/default/grub)
- Locate the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT option and add i915.semaphores=1 to it
- Save the GRUB config file and update GRUB: sudo update-grub
- Restart, and that should solve the problem
For those who are interested, that line in my GRUB file looks like this:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash noapic i915.semaphores=1"
Another Solution: greyfiend proposed another solution which works for him. (I’m testing it and will update here if it works for me too).
Run these commands in your terminal:
echo "options psmouse proto=imps"|sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/psmouse.conf
sudo modprobe -r psmouse
sudo modprobe psmouse
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Thank’s a lot.
Thanks for this, have you managed to get the laptop to support dual monitors? My monitor seems to be working and but not at the right resolution.
Yep, my 24″ Dell monitor works fine on 1920×1200.
What monitor/resolution are you trying?
its a hansg monitor thats currently only doing 1024 x 768 but another laptop running ubuntu supports 1360×768 on it. Looks like its not correctly identifying the res. Need to find a way to manually force it.
It sounds like a graphics driver issue. I assume the other machine had an ATI/NVidia card instead of the “intel integrated” chip of the L520?
Not sure how to get it working, I’m afraid. Have you tried asking on AskUbuntu?
It’s my first point-of-call for all Ubuntu related questions.
Found this and it worked a treat
http://unliterate.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/fixing-external-monitor-resolutionmode-in-ubuntu/
Hello
at first i’m sorry because my english is bad
I have a G62 notebook with ATI 5470 graphic card and I whant to install ubuntu 11.04
at first when I choose installation the screen become black.”now it is solved”
I installed it from text mode but when I want to boot from grub at the same way the screen become black
when I want to install with nomodeset I see the loading but after 2 minutes loading stops
and after 5 minutes I understand installation halts
I know my ubuntu dvd is ok because I installed ubuntu in oracle virtualBox and it work properly.
my notebook is G62-a20se:
core i 3
ATI 5470
3GB DDR3 ram
why the installation loading halts?
please help me I tried alot
Hi Sam, I’m not really the best person to ask about this. Try asking over at AskUbuntu.
struggled with random mouse freezes on 11.04 studio on a thinkpad l520, dmesg showed:
‘psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio4/input0 lost sync at byte 1′
after some digging this was the solution:
echo “options psmouse proto=imps”|sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/psmouse.conf; sudo modprobe -r psmouse; sudo modprobe psmouse
Thanks, I’ll give it a try
I haven’t experienced any freezes yet, but it has broken the “trackpad disable” feature. Since I only use the touchpoint and find the trackpad really annoying, it’s almost worse than the micro-freezes.
Any ideas?
Hello:
I use same computer, L520 with i5 CPU, the only problem that I have is on Firefox, sometimes it freezes the machine and I have to reboot using the power button, nothing is working. I don’t know it is an issue with flash or any other problem. I installed Chromium and everything is OK.
i915.semaphores=1 seems not to be necessary anymore with today’s new kernel (2.6.38-11).
That’s good to know
I’ve actually moved onto Oneiric, which still needs the noapic flag, but didn’t need the semaphores one. Hopefully they’ll roll out a fix for the noapic flag soon too.
hey stephen,
i hve a big prob with ubuntu 11.04..as soon as i login in my profile only desktop background displays….no task bars and menu bars in my screen i cant even shutdown my systems too….pls help me with this issue…thanks in advance….
You should try asking on: http://askubuntu.com/
I’m not the best person to ask for support.