This is more or less just a post for myself. I always end up dumping a couple of hours into this problem whenever I get a new machine for work -- surprise! I work for Docker now -- and tonight especially I really could have used this post instead of wasting that time researching the problem all over again. I choose Thinkpads when I have a choice, because the popular alternative is stupid.

Anyway, I use Linux Mint with Cinnamon, and LM18 is the current version. It's based on Ubuntu 16.04. I've chosen a P50 and upgraded the RAM to 64GB. Everything works out of the box, including the weird dual graphics situation going on under the hood. However, I want a super sensitive Trackpoint. The sensitivity settings are under something like /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/ in the sensitivity, speed and inertia files. I like to keep mine at about 255, 230, and 4, respectively. The value of 255 is maximal, btw.

Now, simply dumping my preferences into those files works for the current session. Meaning, when I reboot the machine, they are reset to their defaults. So I'm using systemd to write values into these files on boot. I've got a /etc/tmpfiles.d/tpoint.conf file with the following contents:

w /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/speed - - - - 230
w /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/sensitivity - - - - 255
w /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/serio2/inertia - - - - 4

Now, this works great. However, after I resume (or thaw) from a suspend (or hibernate), the location of these config files changes. So what I've done is added a simple shell script to /etc/pm/sleep.d/trackpoint-fix which contains the following:

#!/bin/bash
# set sensitivity/speed of trackpoint on resume
case "${1}" in
	suspend|hibernate)
		# suspending to RAM
		sleep 0
		;;
	resume|thaw)
		# resume from suspend 
		newdir=$(find /sys/devices/platform/ | grep sensitivity | sed -e "s/sensitivity//")
		echo 230 | sudo tee > ${newdir}speed
		echo 255 | sudo tee > ${newdir}sensitivity
		echo 4 | sudo tee > ${newdir}inertia
		;;       
esac

This is pretty self-explanatory. I dig around for the new location of these configuration files and then dump my favorite values into them. That's all there is to it.