Dorfl / Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook P7120

Dorfl is a Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook P7120 that I got for my consulting work. It is small, and with good battery life, so it is easy to carry to meetings, and on travels. This page describes setting it up with Debian.

General notes

On the whole, I'm happy with the laptop. It is quite small, but not so small that the keyboard is uncomfortable for my big hands. The touchpad is not very good so I tend to use an external mouse when at a desk, which never happened with my previous laptop. The screen is good. It is quite glossy, but this doesn't seem to make reflections from, say, sunlight through windows worse (it still makes the screen unusable, if there is a bad reflection). Battery time is up to about seven hours with two batteries, which is much worse than the advertised eleven hours.

Debian (testing/etch) works well on the laptop.

Driver support status

lspci -n outputs the following:

00:00.0 0600: 8086:2590 (rev 04)
00:02.0 0300: 8086:2592 (rev 04)
00:02.1 0380: 8086:2792 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 0403: 8086:2668 (rev 04)
00:1d.0 0c03: 8086:2658 (rev 04)
00:1d.1 0c03: 8086:2659 (rev 04)
00:1d.2 0c03: 8086:265a (rev 04)
00:1d.3 0c03: 8086:265b (rev 04)
00:1d.7 0c03: 8086:265c (rev 04)
00:1e.0 0604: 8086:2448 (rev d4)
00:1f.0 0601: 8086:2641 (rev 04)
00:1f.1 0101: 8086:266f (rev 04)
00:1f.2 0101: 8086:2653 (rev 04)
00:1f.3 0c05: 8086:266a (rev 04)
06:03.0 0607: 1180:0476 (rev b3)
06:03.1 0c00: 1180:0552 (rev 08)
06:03.2 0805: 1180:0822 (rev 17)
06:03.3 0880: 1180:0592 (rev 08)
06:03.4 0880: 1180:0852 (rev 03)
06:04.0 0200: 10ec:8139 (rev 10)
06:05.0 0280: 8086:4223 (rev 05)

To get an idea of how well the various devices are supported under Linux, copy and paste the above to Kenshi Muto's device driver check page. At the time of writing this (July 2006), the output looks approximately like the table below (I've shortened it), but of course the status may change, as drivers are developed further. I'm not going to be updating this part of the page very often.

PCI ID Works? Vendor Device Driver
80862590 Yes Intel Mobile 915GM/PM/GMS/910GML Express Processor to DRAM Controller intel-agp
80862592 Yes Intel Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller intelfb, vesa
80862792 - Intel Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller  
80862668 Yes Intel 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) High Definition Audio Controller snd-hda-intel
80862658 Yes Intel 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 usb-uhci
80862659 Yes Intel 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 usb-uhci
8086265a Yes Intel 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 usb-uhci
8086265b Yes Intel 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 usb-uhci
8086265c Yes Intel 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller ehci-hcd
80862448 Yes Intel 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge hw_random, i810_rng
80862641 - Intel 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge  
8086266f Yes Intel 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller piix
80862653 Yes Intel 82801FBM (ICH6M) SATA Controller ata_piix, ahci
8086266a Yes Intel 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) SMBus Controller i2c-i801
11800476 Yes Ricoh RL5c476 II yenta_socket
11800552 Yes Ricoh R5C552 IEEE 1394 Controller ohci1394
11800822 - Ricoh R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter  
11800592 - Ricoh R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter  
11800852 - Ricoh xD-Picture Card Controller  
10ec8139 Yes RealtekRT8139 8139too, 8139cp
80864223 Yes Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG Network Connection ipw2200

Hard disk

Hard disk speed test with bonnie++ gives the following results:

Version  1.03       ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
                    -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
Machine        Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP  /sec %CP
dorfl            2G 10749  50  9623   5  3561   2  5894  36  8518   2  89.4   0
                    ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
                    -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
              files  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP
                 16  2173  98 +++++ +++ +++++ +++  2276  97 +++++ +++ 11086  99
dorfl,2G,10749,50,9623,5,3561,2,5894,36,8518,2,89.4,0,16,2173,98,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,2276,97,+++++,+++,11086,99

Batteries

I have two batteries. Number 1 is the one that comes with the laptop, number 2 is the optional one I have instead of a DVD drive in the drive bay.

liw@dorfl$ cat /proc/acpi/battery/CMB1/info
present:                 yes
design capacity:         7800 mAh
last full capacity:      7800 mAh
battery technology:      rechargeable
design voltage:          7200 mV
design capacity warning: 0 mAh
design capacity low:     0 mAh
capacity granularity 1:  1 mAh
capacity granularity 2:  1 mAh
model number:            CP234019
serial number:           1
battery type:            LION
OEM info:                Fujitsu
liw@dorfl$ cat /proc/acpi/battery/CMB2/info
present:                 yes
design capacity:         2300 mAh
last full capacity:      2318 mAh
battery technology:      rechargeable
design voltage:          10800 mV
design capacity warning: 0 mAh
design capacity low:     0 mAh
capacity granularity 1:  1 mAh
capacity granularity 2:  1 mAh
model number:            CP194250 / CP194251
serial number:           2
battery type:            LION
OEM info:                Fujitsu

After about six months, the batteries last around 5-6 hours, depending on usage.

Suspend-to-ram uses power. Overnight, during about 9 hours, the battery charge of the second battery went from 100% to 94%.

Checklist

Below is a checklist of the things I want to work in the laptop. It does not cover all of the hardware, or all the stuff the hardware is capapble of, because I have no use for everything. For example, I have no landline, and no dialup account at an ISP, so the modem is useless to me.

"OK" means it works, and I use it. "Bad" means it doesn't work. "Unknown" means I don't know if it works.

I've last checked things on this list on 2006-09-12.

Graphics:

Touchpad:

Keyboard:

Networking:

External connections:

Audio:

Optical drive:

Card reader:

Power management:

See also

Joey Hess's P7120 page.

Emmanuel Fleury's P7120 page.

I have a mailing list for people using a P7120 with a free operating system (not just Linux). Mail p7120-subscribe@liw.iki.fi to subscribe.