Notes »

Installing FreeBSD on a Lenovo Thinkpad T480

I ran into an issue where FreeBSD wouldn't boot, after fiddling in the BIOS I finally found that during installation where you select UEFI, GPT, there is an option to select "...with Lenovo fix", after re-installing and selecting that I was able to boot

I had trouble with getting awesomewm to start using the startx command (looped "No protocol specified" errors). I had set up the config files: ~/.xinit.rc contains "exec awesome", but kept failing... it turned out I must've tried to startx in a root shell and it broke leaving a lock file ".Xauthority" that wasn't able to be accessed when trying to start from a normal user. I'm not sure if that's the only trouble I had, but after changing the owner (chown nak .Xauthority) I was able to startx right into awesomewm

Links:

• using GPT / EFI booting on Lenovo BIOSes (FreeBSD mailing list)
• OpenBSD video warning to enable a Thunderbolt BIOS assist