Thinkpad Special Buttons

Special buttons

BIOS built-in stuff

The volume, mute, brightness and think-light buttons all work automatically because they're supported in BIOS. To get some feedback from them, you can install the Debian package tpb, which gives OSD ('on-screen display') feedback when you use those buttons, including useful level indicators for the volume and brightness.

tpb requires the nvram kernel module.

Access IBM button

Again using tpb, just make (or uncomment) a line in /etc/tpbrc:

(or whatever command you'd like to run.)

Fn-F* buttons

These key combinations send ACPI events, and can't be read by X or by tpb. To use them, you need to create entries in /etc/acpi/events/ - for example for Fn-F5, the 'wireless' button, I have the following file (called wireless-combo):

The specific codes for each key combination are listed on the ThinkWiki page about special keys. You'll need the kernel module ibm-acpi to receive these events, and you'll need to do this: # echo enable,0xffff >/proc/acpi/ibm/hotkey.

In turn, the 'action' file /etc/acpi/actions/wireless-combo.sh could be anything, but currently just turns wireless off: #!/bin/sh

iwconfig eth1 txpower off