Comment 4 for bug 158262

To run tpb as a normal user, the user must be in the nvram group (As stated above). This can be done by running the command:
   sudo adduser <username> nvram

To fix up the init script so that the stopping works, simply add the following line to the stop) part of the switch. The file I have attached is a demonstration of this.
   killall tpb

Finally, to make the program run on startup, navigate through the menu System->Preferences->Sessions and add a new startup program. Name it "Thinkpad Button" and the command should be "tpb -d".

I could not get the init script in /etc/rc2.d/S99tpb (symbolic link to /etc/init.d/tpb) to work though.