Lenovo ThinkPad X250 - ArchWiki

# Lenovo ThinkPad X250

From ArchWiki

The Lenovo ThinkPad X250 is the successor to the Lenovo ThinkPad X240. Major differences include the physical TrackPoint buttons above the touchpad mouse as well as the Broadwell line of Intel CPUs.

#### Tested Configurations

Tip: Below are the tested configurations at the current time.

Feature | Configuration 1 | Configuration 2
--- | --- | ---
CPU | Intel i5-5200U | Intel i7-5600U
Graphics | Intel HD 5400 | Intel HD 5500
RAM | 8 GB | 8GB
Disk | unknown 180 GB SSD | SanDisk X300 256GB
Display | 12.5" IPS FHD (1920x1080) non-touch | 12.5" IPS FHD (1920x1080) non-touch
Wireless | Intel Wireless 7265 AC | Intel Wireless 7265 AC
Built-in Battery | 9 Cell | 9 Cell
Additional Pluggable Battery | 6 Cell 19+ | 6 Cell 19+
Backlight Keyboard | Yes | Yes
ThinkLight | No | No
Fingerprint Scanner | Yes | Yes
Bluetooth | Yes | Yes
Camera | Yes | Yes
WWAN | ? | Sierra EM7345
Smartcard reader | ? | Yes

### System Configuration

#### Mouse

With kernels > 4.0.5 TrackPoint and touchpad work out of the box.

#### Fingerprint

The fingerprint reader works out of the box with fprintd.

#### Backlight and Keyboard

In order to get the backlight to work, I added `options thinkpad_acpi force-load=1` to `/etc/modprobe.d/x250.conf`. This forces the thinkpad_acpi module to load, which is needed for controlling the backlight via xorg-xbacklight as well as enable some of the extra media keys.

Note: Not all X250 keyboards have backlight

Although a dedicated Pause-key is missing, it can be input using the key combination `Fn` + `P`

#### Sound and Volume Control

In order to get control of the audio from Intel hdmi, you have to disable it and force alsa to use Intel PCH. See ALSA#Set the default sound card to set the default sound card to Intel PCH (speakers and headphones).

     /etc/modprobe.d/thinkpad-x250.conf

    options snd_hda_intel index=1,0

With acpid and alsa-utils installed, you can map the volume buttons to change the volume. Here are some samples:

`/etc/acpi/events/volumemute`:

    event=button/mute
    action=amixer -c 1 sset Master toggle -q

`/etc/acpi/events/volumedown`:

    event=button/volumedown
    action=amixer -c 1 sset -M Master 5%%- unmute -q

`/etc/acpi/events/volumeup`:

    event=button/volumeup
    action=amixer -c 1 sset -M Master 5%%+ unmute -q

`/etc/acpi/events/mutemic`:

    event=button/f20
    action=amixer -c 1 sset Mic toggle -q

PulseAudio and pavucontrol are also great tools for fixing volume issues.

#### Bluetooth

Bluetooth works out of the box with bluez and gnome-bluetooth. When you use i3-wm, you can use blueman in order to have a working bluetooth connection to and from the device, including a tray icon you can start by adding `blueman-applet` to you i3-conf.

### BIOS updates

Warning: This may brick your device! Be careful!

In order to get a working and bootable usb dongle to flash a current BIOS it may be necessary to follow these steps:

1. Download newest BIOS update tool (ISO) from Lenovos x250 downloads section[1]

2. Install geteltoritoAUR or find another way to extract the hidden image. With geteltorito you just do `geteltorito -o thinkpadbios.img xyz.iso`

3. Copy the extracted image to a usb dongle with dd: `sudo dd if᐀thinkpadbios.img of᐀/dev/sdX bs᐀1M`

4. Just in case run `sync` once.

5. Reboot

6. Press enter at the Lenovo screen, chose your usb dongle

7. Flash the BIOS update following the description on your screen. You need to have a charged battery and a connected ac adapter in order to run this tool successfully.

### Tipps and tricks

#### Battery

Some x250 come with dual batteries: One build-in and one detachable. Applications like cbatticon, a battery monitor for system tray, cannot handle dual battery setups. One way to check the batteries statuses is via conky with BAT0 and BAT1 as variables.

## See also

Thinkwiki on BIOS updates (German)

Category:

- Lenovo