Emma Thorpe
d172157101
- thermald on the x86 hosts (guarded; the Asahi MBP self-governs). - T400 battery charge thresholds (75/80) via tp_smapi; tlp itself comes from the nixos-hardware profile. - Bluetooth (bluez + powerOnBoot) and blueman on the laptops — the MBP already loads Apple BT firmware but bluez was never running. - earlyoom + fwupd on the physical graphical hosts; zram on the Mac Pro. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
ThinkPad T400 — install notes
Flake host: lyrathorpe-t400. Files: configuration.nix, the boot-*.nix
variants, and hardware-configuration.nix.
Hardware configuration
hardware-configuration.nix here is a hand-written placeholder. On the real
machine, run nixos-generate-config, replace the file, and commit it. It assumes
by-label partitions — root nixos (ext4) and swap — so either label them at
install time or swap in the generated UUIDs.
Bootloader — import the module matching the flashed firmware
configuration.nix imports exactly one boot module. Default is boot-bios.nix;
switch by commenting it out and uncommenting the relevant alternative.
| Firmware | Module | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Stock Lenovo BIOS, or coreboot + SeaBIOS payload | boot-bios.nix |
GRUB on the MBR. Set device to the real install disk (/dev/sda by default). MBR/legacy layout. |
| coreboot + GRUB payload | boot-coreboot-grub.nix |
GRUB is config-only (device = "nodev"); NixOS does not write to a disk. Your coreboot grub.cfg (in the flash chip) must search for and configfile the on-disk /boot/grub/grub.cfg, or chainload the disk's GRUB. |
| coreboot + Tianocore/edk2 (UEFI) payload | boot-coreboot-uefi.nix |
systemd-boot. canTouchEfiVariables = true (coreboot honours NVRAM writes). The module declares its own ESP (/boot vfat, label ESP) — when you regenerate hardware-configuration.nix, do not let it also define /boot. Create + label an ESP vfat partition (GPT). |
Graphics
This unit has the optional discrete ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 (RV620). The
open radeon KMS driver is loaded in the initrd for early modesetting; firmware
comes from enableRedistributableFirmware.
The T400 has switchable graphics (discrete ATI + Intel GMA 4500MHD). Select
Discrete in the firmware's graphics setting so only the ATI is live. If you
run Integrated instead, the Intel i915 driver takes over with no config
change and radeon stays idle.
Login
Graphical login via a Wayland greeter — greetd running ReGreet inside the
cage kiosk compositor — configured centrally in lyrathorpe/swaywm.nix for
every Sway host (gated on features.swayDesktop.enable). The greeter is forced
to the Dvorak layout to match the console and Sway session. Set the user
password (passwd lyrathorpe) after install, or the greeter cannot
authenticate. Requires working radeon/i915 KMS (see Graphics).
Apply
sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#lyrathorpe-t400