One of the cool features in a Thinkpad is IBM Active Protection System.
The system consist of two parts. The driver that enables reading the acceleration data and some sort of userspace software that does the actual parking of the harddrive heads, usually hdapsd.
The hdaps driver is part of the kernel but the driver maintainers actually recommend using the tp-smapi driver instead. So that’s what we’ll do.
Make sure you have the necessary tools installed:

The tp-smapi is in the package repository (universe):

This will fetch and install the tp-smapi-source package, unpack the source and then compile and install the kernel module.

Try loading it:

The kernel log should show something like this:

For some reason some configuration for udev is missing. Fix this by running:

Now for the userspace stuff. First let us test if APS is actually working.

This will install hdaps-pivot or hdaps-gl which you can use to verify that the sensors are working.
You can also test this by running this in your terminal (stop it with pressing CTRL + C):

Next we need to update the hdapsd. The one provided in Jaunty is old. There is a PPA with newer versions.

Add the PPA key:

Update the package list and install the package:

Install gnome-hdaps-applet (optional).
There is a PPA for this. You can add it like this:

Add the key:

Update the package list again and install the packages:

Enjoy!