Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 5)

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Reason: This page is missing a hardware and proper function keys table. It also has several style issues. It also potentiall duplicates other ThinkPad X1 Carbon articles (Discuss in Talk:Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 5))
Hardware PCI/USB ID Working?
GPU Yes
Wireless Yes
Ethernet Yes
Mobile broadband Yes
Audio Yes
Touchpad Yes
TrackPoint Yes
Webcam Yes
Fingerprint Reader Partial
Bluetooth Yes
microSD card reader Yes

Related articles

Tip: A great resource for thinkpads is https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki

Model description

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon, Gen 5.

To ensure you have this version, install the package dmidecode and run: 

# dmidecode -t system | grep Version

Version: ThinkPad X1 Carbon 5th

TrackPoint

Lenovo uses several different trackpoint types in the 5th generation X1 Carbon. Only the standard ALPS variant has Linux support.

Fingerprint reader

See Lenovo ThinkPad T460p#Fingerprint reader; the X1 Carbon (Gen 5) and T460p use fingerprint readers with the same issue. See also https://linux-hardware.org/?id=usb:138a-0097.

Configuration

Function Key actions are "swapped"

If the action performed when pressing a Function Key is "swapped" (Example: Pressing F10 kills Bluetooth instead of sending F10), this can be reversed in BIOS.

Enter BIOS and change Config > Keyboard/Mouse > F1-F12 as Primary Function to "Enabled".

Keyboard Fn Shortcuts

  • Fn+4 sends XF86Sleep (puts computer to sleep by default)
  • Fn+S sends Alt_L+Sys_Req
  • Fn+P sends Pause
  • Fn+B sends Control_L+Break
  • Fn+K sends Scroll_Lock
  • Fn+Space toggles the keyboard backlight
  • Fn by itself sends XF86WakeUp (wakes computer from sleep by default)

Special buttons

Some special buttons are not supported by X server due to keycode number limit.

Key combination Scancode Keycode
Fn+F11 0x49 374 KEY_KEYBOARD
Fn+F12 0x45 364 KEY_FAVORITES

You can remap unsupported keys using udev hwdb: 

/etc/udev/hwdb.d/90-thinkpad-keyboard.hwdb
evdev:name:ThinkPad Extra Buttons:dmi:bvn*:bvr*:bd*:svnLENOVO*:pn*
 KEYBOARD_KEY_45=prog1
 KEYBOARD_KEY_49=prog2

Update hwdb after editing the rule. 

# udevadm hwdb --update
# udevadm trigger --sysname-match="event*"

Display

There are two options for displays:

  • 14" FHD IPS (1920 x 1080): Works
  • 14" WQHD (2560 x 1440): Works

Backlight Control

I had issues with the thinkpad_acpi module in linux-4.12 and linux-4.13. When loaded no acpi events are generated for Fn+F5 and Fn+F6 keypress by default, because 

kernel: thinkpad_acpi: This ThinkPad has standard ACPI backlight brightness control, supported by the ACPI video driver
kernel: thinkpad_acpi: Disabling thinkpad-acpi brightness events by default...
kernel: thinkpad_acpi: Standard ACPI backlight interface available, not loading native one

Setting the acpi_brightness=vendor kernel parameter helped but gave issues with brightness save/restore. In linux-4.14 this issue is resolved.

TrackPoint Scrolling

TrackPoint Scrolling is working out of the box in GNOME and MATE. In some WindowManagers, the TrackPoint middle-button scrolling can be enabled by installing the xorg-xinput package from the official repositories and appending the following line to your .xinitrc: 

xinput set-prop "TPPS/2 ALPS TrackPoint" "libinput Scroll Method Enabled" 0 0 1

Lenovo ThinkPad Thunderbolt 3 Dockingstation

The USB-C Dock is a Thunderbolt 3 device. Plugging it in results in a whole lot of PCI entries: 

06:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL6540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge (C step) [Alpine Ridge 4C 2016] (rev 02)
07:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL6540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge (C step) [Alpine Ridge 4C 2016] (rev 02)
07:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL6540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge (C step) [Alpine Ridge 4C 2016] (rev 02)
07:02.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL6540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge (C step) [Alpine Ridge 4C 2016] (rev 02)
07:04.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation JHL6540 Thunderbolt 3 Bridge (C step) [Alpine Ridge 4C 2016] (rev 02)
3c:00.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Device 15d4 (rev 02)

As of stock kernel 5.2.1, the dock is fully functional with appropriate kernel modules enabled. In particular, you must enable the r8152 kernel module. See also the Kernel module article on how to enable r8152 persistently. This driver allows the kernel to recognize the USB devices and ethernet port of the dock.

Finally, in order for the internal USB hub in the dock to work, you need to set Thunderbolt 3 security appropriately. To do this, use the bolt tool, which can be installed via bolt. Go to "Security level" under Thunderbolt settings in the BIOS, and set it to "Secure". After booting, attach the dock and (using the laptop's own keyboard) run boltctl list to find the UUID of your dock. Following that, run boltctl enroll --policy=auto <uuid> to give the dock permission to access the PCIe bus automatically whenever it is plugged in. You may need to reboot your system after this. This procedure is verified to work with the X1 Carbon Gen 5 and Lenovo's dock. It may or may not work with other docks.

Also remember to enable the "Support in pre boot environment" for USB peripherals connected to the dock to work at all.

HP Thunderbolt 3 Dock

The HP Thunderbolt 3 Dock is working out of the box with the insecure method described above. It is not known whether the secure method works with this dock.

Lenovo p27h-10 (USB Type C)

Charging while using the monitor via USB-Type-C is working but the dock functionality needs investigation (e.g. speakers, mouse, directly from the monitor).

BIOS

Downloads and instructions for updating the BIOS can be found in [1].

In order to update the BIOS, you may either use a bootable ISO or the BIOS Update Utility for Linux. The update utility is only supported on UEFI BIOS version 1.34 or higher [2].

ISO

The ISO files provided by Lenovo are only bootable from a CD or DVD, not from USB. So in order to create a bootable media, you either need an external (R/W) DVD or converting the ISO file so that it can be written to a USB.

DVD

  1. Download the ISO file from [3] (and remember to validate its checksum).
  2. Put a DVD in your external DVD writer, and locate what device it was assigned to (e.g., using lsblk). For this example, we assume that it is assigned to /dev/sr0.
  3. Burn it to the DVD: growisofs -Z /dev/sr0=n1mur23w.iso
  4. Reboot, enter the device boot menu by pressing F12, and carfully follow the instructions on the screen.

USB

According to Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 6)#Manual (El Torito), it is possible to create a bootable USB like so:

  1. Download the ISO file
  2. Install geteltoritoAUR
  3. Convert the ISO image: geteltorito.pl -o bios-update.img n1mur23w.iso
  4. Burn bios-update.img to a USB using dd
  5. Reboot and select the USB as boot device

Troubleshooting

Fans blowing at max speed after resuming

There is a bug in the kernel before 4.12.4-1, causing the fans to often go on full throttle non-stop after resuming from suspend-to-ram.

This bug is fixed since the kernel 4.12.4-1.

Set of patches available for older version: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196129#c26

If you have an older version of the kernel, you need to manually patch the kernel or work around the issue by repeatedly suspend (Fn+4) and resume (Fn) until it resumes without the fans starting with a short burst of activity. For me, the issue arises in about 2/3 resumes without the patches and never with kernel 4.12.0-2 with patches.

Trackpoint/Trackpad not working

Several different trackpoints are used with the X1 Carbon Gen 5. There are at least three different trackpoints in use. You can identify them in dmesg as either LEN0071, LEN0072 or LEN0073.

There is a bug in Synaptics drivers that prevent both Trackpoint and Trackpad to function properly if Trackpoint is enabled at boot. This issue affects the Elantech trackpoint as well as one of the ALPS variants.

If you have the Elantech trackpoint, identified as LEN0073 you will see the following in your dmesg log. 

kernel: psmouse serio1: TouchPad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 1
kernel: psmouse serio1: TouchPad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 1
kernel: psmouse serio1: TouchPad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 1
kernel: psmouse serio1: TouchPad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 1
kernel: psmouse serio1: TouchPad at isa0060/serio1/input0 lost sync at byte 1
kernel: psmouse serio1: issuing reconnect request

Solution 1

Since kernel v4.14 you can workaround this by adding psmouse.synaptics_intertouch=1 to your kernel parameters.

Solution 2

If you uses a kernel older than 4.14, you can patch it using https://gist.github.com/ursm/6d1007f44a1d6beeb670b3c3a6a78ea4. Note that this only works on the Elantech trackpoint (LEN0073).

TrackPoint stops working after waking up from suspend

A workaround is to manually insert the elan_i2c module after waking up from suspend: 

# modprobe elan_i2c

See this bugticket for details.