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Toshiba Portege Z930/935
Authors
"Super" Nathan Weber
Camilo Rocha
Introduction
This page is just for discussing using Linux on the Toshiba Portege Z930/935. For a general discussion about this laptop you can visit the Toshiba Portege Z930 page on LapWik.
Editing This Page
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Specifications
For full specifications see the Toshiba Portege Z930 specifications page.
| Name | Toshiba Portege Z930/935 |
| Processor | Intel Core i5-3427U Processor 1.8 GHz (2.8 GHz with Turbo Boost Technology), 3MB L3 Cache Intel Core i7-3667U Processor 2.0 GHz (3.2 GHz with Turbo Boost Technology), 4MB L3 Cache |
| Screen | 13.3” 1366×768 Widescreen |
| RAM | Up to 6GB (some users report up to 10GB - see comments section below) |
| HDD | Up to 128GB |
| Optical Drive | None |
| Graphics | Intel HD Graphics 4000 |
| Network | 10/100/1000 Ethernet Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 (a/g/n) |
Linux Compatibility
| Device | Compatibility | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | Yes | i7 tested |
| Screen | Yes | |
| HDD | Yes | |
| Graphics Chip | Yes | With xf86-video-intel driver* |
| VGA Out | Yes | |
| HDMI Out | Yes | |
| Sound | Yes | |
| Bulti-in Microphone | Yes | |
| Headphone Jack | Yes | |
| Microphone Jack | Not Tested | |
| Ethernet | Yes | |
| Wireless | Yes | |
| Bluetooth | Yes | |
| USB | Yes | |
| Card Reader | Yes | |
| Fingerprint Reader | Not Tested | Only available for Z930 |
| Webcam | Yes | |
| Touch Pad | Yes | |
| Suspend/Resume | partly | breaks backlight changing (see z830) |
Notes
Keyboard backlight works out of the box but the manufacturer accessory keys cannot adjust ithem. they must be adjusted manually (timeout length) in the BIOS. (z935)
The only big (-ish) problem is that the screen backlight does not work after resume. To fix this do the following:
Debian/Ubuntu and any other pm-utils controlled distro screen fix:
The fn keys that control the brightness work as long as the laptop does not get suspended. If the laptop is suspended then upon resuming the fn keys no longer work. The fix is as follows:
add
acpi_backlight=vendor
in the file /etc/default/grub at the end of the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT (inside the quotes), then run update-grub. After rebooting, this will remove the acpi_video0 from /sys/class/backlight/ leaving you just with intel_backlight and toshiba. Upon resuming with these settings the screen would be completely black with no means of making it brighter. To fix this one needs to create and add the following to /etc/pm/sleep.d/restore_brightness:
#!/bin/bash
case "$1" in
suspend|hibernate)
#do nothing
;;
resume|thaw)
echo 7 > /sys/class/backlight/toshiba/brightness
;;
*)
exit 1
;;
esac
exit 0
Don't forget to chmod +x the script. You should now have a trouble free laptop :)
Arch Linux
First try booting the kernel parameter:
acpi_backlight=vendor
If that doesnt solve the problem, many folks have gotten mileage from either:
acpi_osi=Linux
or
acpi_osi="!Windows 2012"
in addition to the earlier mentioned parameter.
If neither of those solve your problem, you should edit/create /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf with the following content:
Section "Device"
Identifier "card0"
Driver "intel"
Option "Backlight" "intel_backlight"
Driver "intel"
BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection
OpenSUSE, Fedora, Sabayon, and others
If you are using systemd the Arch Linux fix from above will probably help, but it is untested. Please edit this with test results.
Notes (Camilo Rocha)
Installed Ubuntu (09/19/12) and everything worked out of the box. Tested the HDMI and VGA outputs with success, as well as the camera (with Skype). Used both bluetooth mouse and keyboard without any issues. The card reader is working just fine and Ubuntu auto-mounted it. Keyboard backlight and most Fn function keys/features are working (see the 'Comments' section below for more details). The standby/resume made my laptop freeze once. However, it has not happened twice.
Summary
Great laptop, if you are willing to add a script to fix back-light brightness and you don't mind a few of the non-essential manufacturer supplied shortcut keys not working
Discussion
Does an external USB stick boot, with Secure boot disabled in UEFI, and pressing F12 boot/work for anyone ? With an external DVD reader I can boot to a liveDVD using the above F12 technique with secure boot disabled (and thus likely install with that) but I have not yet been able to get a Toshiba Satellite Z930 to boot to an external USB stick. I note my Z930 has the older v.6.40 UEFI firmware (where v.6.70 is most recent on Toshiba website as I type this). I note v.6.60 makes reference to ” Improved the USB ODD boot process” . But I am reluctant to upgrade to v.6.70 (to obtain the v.6.60 fix) if not essential. For example, the v.6.50 fix “Improved: Exclusion process of Secure Boot” gives me some pause that it could complicate an install.
Turns out I created a USB stick with a legacy grub instead of with Grub2 (and an EFI setup). I recreated a proper grub2 in a GNU/Linux distribution (openSUSE-12.3) and I was successfully able to boot my Toshiba Ultrabook Z930. I am typing this now from my Toshiba Z930 under 64-bit KDE openSUSE-12.3 (booting to a liveUSB).
I am still very curious as to what UEFI firmware versions other GNU/Linux users have on their Toshiba Z930 Ultrabooks ? Mine currently has v.6.40 and I am debating updating it to v.6.70 prior to installing openSUSE-12.3.
What UEFI versions do the other users on this linlap page have on their Z930s ?
I have upgraded to this one from a Z820 and documented the Ubuntu 13.04 install here: http://www.gaggl.com/2013/06/installing-ubuntu-on-toshiba-z930-ultrabook/
Hope it helps somebody.
Hi, I installed Ubuntu 12.04 on a Z930 Satellite. Besides having some problem with the boot after the install (resolved using boot-repair), the only little snag is the suspend function. Closing the lid will suspend the machine once, but then shutdown hangs and one requires a hard power down. After the first suspend, closing the lid just seems to lock the screen. The suspend item in the panel menu just send hangs the machine on a black screen. I have to say that it is not a major draw back. It just forces me to shut down the machine instead of suspending, but since it boots so fast, it is no biggie. Once in while, I have to shut down the lid, and then it is unsettling to have to bring it down hard, but otherwise, the machine works flawlessly. Any suggestion how to address this issue. Thanks in advance.
There is a known bug for Toshiba Portégé Z930 (at least for some models like 14L - PT235E) and/or some BIOS versions (6.50 - 11/26/2012) that fails to resume after second suspend on kernel >=3.4 : https://bugs.launchpad.net/archlinux/+source/linux/+bug/1094800
Sorry, first time I encounter a real bug. What happens next? Wait until it gets fixed in one of the updates? Thanks in advance.
Any problem with Fedora 18 !
But many freeze with an Ubuntu 12.10 (hd4000 driver problem) and difficulty to install a Debian Wheezy (testing).
I recently installed Unbuntu 12.04LTS on a Portege Z935 which had Win8 preinstalled. Ubuntu ran from a USB drive in stellar fashion, but installation required some gymnastics, described below. Hope this helps someone else.
1) Use the 64-bit Ubuntu image, if you intend to keep Win8. If you use the 32-bit image, you won't be able to boot it until you have to set things on the BIOS setup screen in such a way you won't be able to boot Win8.
2) Either way, you'll have to turn off secure boot in the setup screen. Supposedly there is a way to add the requisite signatures to your Linux installation to allow you to re-enable secure boot, but I didn't bother.
Just getting to the setup screen is a challenge, because Win8 as installed doesn't actually shut down when you “shut down”, and you can press F2 until you're blue in the face and Win8 still pops right up. Instead, “restart” from Win8, enter the setup screen with F2, turn off secure boot, and you're in biz.
3) My Portege came with a 128MB SSB; Win8 was spread across many GTP partitions, with the boot partition not obviously labelled (at least to me). After making receover USBs for Win8, I shrank the main Win8 partition the “Windows way” following these directions:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2087466
Worked perfectly.
4) I then attempted to install Ubuntu, manually partitioning along the way. This allowed me to get rid of (and add to the recovered ex-Win8 freespace) the Win8 recovery partition at the end of the drive. I gave about 30GB to Unbuntu, and 30GB to a home partition, 6GB to swap. I'd take more for home and less for Ubuntu next time.
5) All went well until intalling the bootloader. I forget exactly what happened, but I think I ended up with what were to me inscrutable error messages, and the upshot was while Ubuntu itself was installed just fine, grub was not, and the the box simply always booted Win8. Found help in a life-saving utility called boot-repair:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair
I don't understand what it was proposing to do, but I pressed “Recommended Repair”, it located the boot partition, installed grub there, and all has been happy since.
jon
I have the same issue of not being able to suspend after the fist suspend on Fedora 18.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=904303
Forget all the nitty-gritty details. How do I even enter BIOS setup or get this Portege to boot from USB?
F2 - enter BIOS setup utility
F12 - select boot media (ssd/usb/network)
Correction to what's on the wiki - this model (z930-12T) originally came with 8GB and I upgraded it to 12 GB (changing the 4gb memory slot to 8gb, adding it to the internal 4gb)
Some more info, and some more fixed items
* The issues with usb were related with laptop-mode utils (see https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=133753). Editing /etc/laptop-mode/conf.d/usb-autosuspend.conf and adding my usb mouse device to the list of blacklisted items did the trick.
* “X doesn't start” issue is related with lightdm (see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lightdm/+bug/1066410 ). There are a lot of suggestions going there, the sleep 5 method worked for me
I'll move on to other issues, suspension is by far the most important one for me
submitted bug to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1094800
Seems to be an issue that started to appear on kernels >= 3.4
Having some issues with this laptop (i7, 930-12T). I also have a i5 830 where everything works flawlessly under the same conditions (ubuntu 12.10 was rsynced), so I can guarantee that it's model specific.
* Like Rich, suspend only works 1 time. But after that first resume, power key and brightness keys don't work. intel_backlight works, though
* Hibernate doesn't resume
* Some usb issues. I have to force a lsusb -v for the kernel to detect changes
* Almost all times, X doesn't start at first. I get a blank screen with a mouse and I need to go to shell through ctrl-alt-F1, log to root and then do a killall 'pidof X'. Happened sparsely on z830, way more often on z930
can anybody tell me if z930 uses the same chipset as z830?
i ask because i want to know if adding
i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1
to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT works with the same effect on the z930 too
Hi there,
I've been trying to install fedora 17 on my new Portégé Z930 with Windows 7 dual boot without success.
I first divided the “C:” partition into two sub-partitions under Windows 7. The resulting “Free” partition is of size ~100Go. Could anyone help me regarding the following questions?
(1) Is it okay if there are 5 partitions now (including the “Free” one that I created)?
(2) Should I select the UEFI mode in the BIOS beforehand?
(3) During the fedora 17 installation process, the installer says it cannot find enough space to create the /boot parition even though I asked for the default size 500Mio: what's the problem?
(4) Always regarding the /boot partition, should I select the “ext3” or “ext4” type?
Many thanks in advance for the help…
Yours, A
Hi,
I think I can help with some of your questions.
(1) You can have at most 4 primary partitions on a drive. However, you can use extended partitions in order to have more that 4 partitions in practice. Have a look at http://www.brunolinux.com/04-The_File_System/Primary_Extended_and_Logical_Partitions.html . With the z935, the first drive is called sda.
(2) I have never changed the defaults. I got my laptop by the end of September and did not install the BIOS upgrade available from Toshiba.
(3) My boot partition has 2GB (see the end of this post, for my comments on how I installed linux on my z935 while keeping Win7 on it).
(4) My boot partition uses ntfs. As I understand, this is because Win7 bootloader also resides in that partition.
If I recall property (sorry for my bad memory), the following is the way I got Linux running in my z935.
The first thing I did once I got my z935 was to create the recovery media and then reinstalled the system from it. The catch here is that after this process you are left with two partitions. One for the Windows Boot System (sda1 / primary / ntfs / 2GB) and the other for the Windows installation (sda2 / primary / ntfs / 80GB). After installing linux on the remaining disk space, I got one partition for linux main installation (sda3 / primary / ext4 / 35GB), an extended partition (sda4 / extended / 2.8GB) , and the swap partition as a logical partition under sda4 (sda5 / logical / linux-swap / 2.8GB).
I hope this helps.
Hi Camilo,
Many thanks, that worked! Here is how I installed almost effortlessly fedora17 on my new Portégé Z-930 (may prove useful for newbies like me):
(1) created the Windows 7 recovery DVDs (needed four DVDs)
(2) rebooted
(3) pressed F2 and made the Optical Disk Drive (ODD) the first option for next booting
(4) rebooted again
(5) pressed F12 and asked for a boot on ODD with my recovery DVDs inserted in it
(6) THE KEY: asked for a reinstallation of Windows 7
(7) after completion of the Windows 7 reinstallation, I rebooted with my fedora 17 ISO disk inserted in the ODD and pressed F12
(8) the fedora 17 installer did all the rest, after I told it to use all the free space
This is certainly not optimal, but it worked. Contrarily to what the Toshiba guide may suggest, there is no need to play with the UEFI/CSM boot options, whatever that means.
Thanks again Camilo, A
I have suspend problems on my new Z935-P390 as follows:
I have Ubuntu 12.10 x86_64 with EFI boot. On the first suspend, the laptop suspends, and then I can resume it properly. On the second suspend attempt the display goes away but backlight remains and the laptop does not appear to suspend properly. It cannot be resumed from this second suspend.
When I change BIOS to support legacy boot (non-EFI) and boot 32-bit 12.04.1 I can suspend and resume multiple times with no problems I have seen. Unfortunately I can't install 12.04.1 with EFI, as far as I can tell.
Any suggestions for what the problem might be? I can't get any clues from the logs. Is this likely a problem with 64 bit?
To clarify, with 64 bit Ubuntu 12.10 booted via EFI, my Z935-P390 suspends once, resumes fine, but appears to fail on the second suspend and certainly cannot be resumed (if it even suspended at all).
However if I boot 32 bit Ubuntu 12.04.1 off a USB stick (after changing BIOS to allow non-EFI boot) then I can suspend and resume multiple times without problem.
What is the likely culprit? 64 bit module bug? EFI? 12.10 vs. 12.04?
My attempts to print diagnostic messages on the suspend have so far not been helpful.
Same issue here on Z930-12Q, with 64 bit Arch Linux booted from UEFI. I also tried with 32 bit and 64 bit Arch Linux booted via standard BIOS (non-EFI), but the laptop still freezes on the second suspend.
Has somebody got any clues about solving this issue ?
A somewhat older kernel version is able to suspend/resume multiple times. For example, Ubuntu 12.04 has no problems in that regard while 12.10 can only suspend/resume once before failing. I am pursuing this with the Ubuntu team in this bug report:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1088721
Rich
Same issue on Toshiba Portégé Z930, running Fedora 17 with kernel 3.6.10-2.fc17.x86_64
A
I was trying this laptop z930 and not only do the screen backlight keys not work, it seems the display control panel shows brightness at minimum but the screen is very bright, and the slider does not move. This is with a Linux mint live CD of the long term version (13 I think).
Does anyone have any thoughts on this… sure don't want to install and burn through a battery charge in 2 or even 4 hours
Some last minute updates. I have upgraded the RAM to 10GB by replacing the 4GB module by a new 8GB module. In case you wonder, I used Kingston 8GB 1600MHz DDR3 (PC3-12800) SODIMM Memory (KTA-MB1600/8G).
just a question, is this a 1.35v or 1.50v module? i searched a bit but no mention of its voltage.
@Camilo Rocha:
You said in your last post that ” the backlight control keys do not work in general”.
This is not what you wrote in your note: ” Keyboard backlight and Fn function keys/features are also working.”
Would you mind clarify the status?
By the way, what about multitouch ?
Thank you for your testings anyways (I dont have the Z930, but it sounds a nice one, I try to make sure I can make linux work on it before buy (ubuntu or debian), here is one of the rare page I can find some information).
It is not Ubuntu related, but the FN keys for screen backlight work perfectly¹ with the z930-102 on a Linux Mageia 2 (I had to insert the “acpi_backlight=vendor” to /etc/default/grub. See more on: http://www.linlap.com/wiki/toshiba+portege+z830-10f)
¹ Including after the suspend/resume
Hi,
You are right, some clarification is needed. Keyboard backlight button (Fn+z) is detected by Ubuntu (a message is graphically displayed) but this action has no apparent effect, since the backlight keeps working: it is on when you are typing and it goes off about 15 seconds after one stops using the keyboard. Some other Fn+ keys do not work and they seem to be Windows specific features. For example Fn+SpaceBar is suppose to do something but it does not work (I have no idea what it is for since I removed Windows from my machine); this also happens with the disable/enable feature for the mouse (Fn+F9).
Volume, screen lock, suspend, screen brightness, wifi on/off, and numeric keys, all work just fine. After a suspend, the screen brightness can not be adjusted (which has been discussed previously).
I apologize for any confusion.
Hi every one…
I'm curently trying Mageia 2 on this amazing laptop.
Most of the things works out of the box. I had some difficulties to make the wifi work with Magiea network tool, but it worked fine with networkmanager (I don't know why).
The screen backlight keys are working fine. Even after a suspend (which appears to work fine too). The sound FN keys work fine too.
Many FN keys don't work. For instance, the mouse-suspend keys won't work (and it is too bas, besause with a huge pad, we might slip a finger on it while entering text and it is anoying). Same thing for the backlight keyboard key.
There is still many things to test… I will give some news here.
So an update, apparently the debian iso's only come with kernel 2.6, after upgrading to 3.2 everything is now working perfectly.
Wifi is recognized with no configuration issues and the display drivers are working correctly. The only thing i'm unable to get working is backlight controls after a suspend (after a hibernate it works fine, i have applied the changes suggested for the z830 with no effect on the standby backlight controls)
The backlight problem seems to be documented here:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/935778
By using the methods described on the z830 page i'm able to remove the achi_backlight0 however the problem persists with suspend.
I'll just add another note - when pressing ctrl-alt-f2 (to go to a cli session) the screen goes white and I'm unable to go back to X by ctrl-alt-f1'ing
So, i've installed debian wheezy(x64/gnome) and i've had some problems so far:
1) Wifi is not present out of the box. it looks like the pcie device is failing on boot :(
ath9k: probe of 0000:02:00.0 failed with error -95
in relation to this, there is a message on boot ( pvi 0000:02:00.0 BAR 6: no parent found for of device [0xffff0000-0xffffffff]
rfkill list does not show the wifi device and iwconfig does not list any wifi devices
2)Graphics driver isnt using intel (in system>preferences>moniters its listed as unknown, and the resolution is set at 1368×768 by default)
there is no xorg.conf file and when i've run Xorg -configure in single user mode from cli it segfaults and does not complete properly (so i can't go and change the xorg.conf file to force the intel driver after)
I'll be using the fixes listed on the z830 page for the screen backlight as well as the extended battery life if i can fix the above two issues before i go any further.
Also as a sidenote - I can't reboot from terminal, the screen just goes white : i'm assuming this issue is related to the graphics driver problem.
(it appears rebooting of any kind kills X and doesnt display anything - a full shutdown/boot cycle is needed)
Note: Keyboard backlight works and so does screen backlight (with FN keys controlling screen brightness properly)
Any help is greatly appreciated (googling problems for the above have had some results but none of the fixes so far have worked.
Camilo Rocha: Is backlight still working after suspend? And you can togglebacklight via [ctrl]+[y] / [ctrl]+[z]?
@ another author: The backlight does work after suspend. However, the backlight control keys do not work in general, not even before any suspend. Sorry for the month-delayed answer, I just saw your post.