Lenovo ThinkPad T470

Fingerprint reader

As of writing this, the fingerprint reader is still under prototype development, but seems working fine on the T470.

To get the sensor working, install the python-validity^AUR package, and its dependencies: fprintd-clients-git^AUR and open-fprintd^AUR (which conflicts with the fprintd package in the official repositories, so uninstall this package first if it is installed). Enable/start the python3-validity.service.

If this fingerprint reader had been previously set up, either through Windows (dual-booted or through a Windows virtual machine), or from a previous setup of fprintd, you will likely need to reset the Validity fingerprint reader to factory defaults (must first stop python3-validity.service):

# validity-sensors-firmware
# python /usr/share/python-validity/playground/factory-reset.py

Then, start python3-validity.service again. You can now enroll your fingers with fprintd-enroll as a regular (non-root) user. You may verify your enrolled fingerprints with fprintd-verify.

After setting up the fingerprint sensor is complete, one can use it to login or authenticate for sudo or su.

For login, edit /etc/pam.d/login by adding pam_fprintd.so as sufficient to the top of the auth section:

/etc/pam.d/login

auth sufficient pam_fprintd.so

Note, the pam-auth-update command from the python-validity README.md does not exist in Arch, and the lines it adds to files in the /etc/pam.d/ directory do not work. See the pam.conf(5) manual for details.

Do the same for sudo with /etc/pam.d/sudo or su with /etc/pam.d/su

Sometimes the python3-validity service breaks after suspension of the device, a fix for this issue is to make a custom service to restart the service on exiting suspend. the name of this service does not matter but the location does see Systemd. here is a service that does the job:

[Unit]
After=suspend.target
[Service]
Type=simple
StandardOutput=syslog
ExecStart=systemctl restart python3-validity
[Install]
WantedBy=suspend.target

Screen backlight

Without the intel driver (xf86-video-intel), neither xbacklight or xrandr brightness control are working. It is possible that, with the good acpi_* kernel parameters, the backlight related keys do their job.

Other workaround exists, such as described on this post or in the wiki acpid#Enabling backlight control. Using the acpilight package as a xbacklight replacement works well. You can also check this repository as a base to add the ACPI rules to call xbacklight when backlight keys are pressed.

UEFI boot

After configuring the BIOS setup to allow UEFI boot (either UEFI only or both), it works flawlessly.

For booting directly with EFISTUB, the kernel executable (e.g. vmlinuz-linux) may need to be renamed with a .efi extension (e.g. vmlinuz-linux.efi) otherwise it will fail to load.

BIOS GPT boot

I can confirm that issue. Even with a recent bios (1.52), it does not work.

I had to trick my ThinkPad into UEFI (because my bios is locked, found that method by pure luck). It works by installing the syslinux bootloader on your freshly installed arch (be sure to follow the GPT specific instructions at Syslinux#GUID partition table) and the boot that syslinux with the arch install iso ('Boot existing OS' -> press TAB -> replace hd0 0 with hd1 0). Syslinux should show you an option to boot the Arch Linux installation in UEFI mode. Mount you Arch installation, arch-chroot into it and install GRUB (or your favorite bootloader) for UEFI. That did the trick for me.

You have to create a proper EFI system partition. Have a look at partitioning.

Special buttons

See Laptop/Lenovo#Special buttons.