Installing Red Hat Linux on the Sony Vaio Z505JS Laptop computer
These notes are incomplete. Please come back here at end of August, 2000.
Revised:
Machine specs
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HREF to Sony Vaio page mirrored.
Describe , incl. optional CD-ROM.
Desired Configuration
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A Dual boot system using 4GB for Windows and 8GB for Linux.
Day 1:
First impressions
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Unpacked the machine per the enclosed instruction sheet.
Plugged in floppy to USB connector on right side of machine.
Plugged CD-ROM into PC Card connector on left side of machine.
First remove the little clip thing that is in there.
Insert the CD-ROM connector oriented so that 'Sony' shows on top.
Unplugging the unit seems to require a bit of force due to tight fit.
Powered on by sliding power button toward front of machine.
Powered off completely sliding power button toward front of machine
until the screen goes black (about four seconds).
Powered down to by sliding power button toward
front of machine briefly then releasing.
Specs garnered from readig the Setup Splash Screen
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CPU = Intel(R) Mobile Pentium(R) III Processor 650MHz
Fixed Disk 0: IBM-DARA-212000
ATAPI CD-ROM: TOSHIBA CD-ROM XM-7002Bc
BIOS Setup
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Enter Setup by powering up then pressing F2 when the 'Sony' logo
appears on the screen. This brings up the PhoenixBIOS Setup Utility.
Some of the information displayed by PhoenixBIOS Setup Utility and the
settings I made before my first attempt to install Red Hat Linux 6.2.
Main
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[nothing of interest]
Advanced
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Plug & Play O/S: [Yes]
I assume this is OK for Linux.
Logo Motion: [No]
Prevents the boot-time sound and animated Viao logo. That sound can
get to be a bit annoying. The SONY logo still appears, but it is
not preceeded by a VAIO logo with sound.
Security
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[can enter power up passwords]
Power
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CPU Performance: [Maximum Performance]
I'll start with this, figuring that it will make the SpeedStep CPU
issue be moot. Later, I'll try other settings. The settings permit
one to enable/disable the CPU from switching to low speed when
operating on battery power. After I get things working, I'll
REVISIT this choice and experiment.
OS Control: [No]
I figure this is safest for now. Search via google.com leads me to
believe that Linux does not yet support ACPI (Advanced Configuration
and Power Interface). After I get things working, I'll REVISIT this
choice and experiment.
Ref: http://www.columbia.edu/~ariel/acpi/acpi_howto.txt
CPU Speed: [Full]
The other possible setting is Auto, which means that the CPU slows
down when the system is inactive for some period of time. I think
this is the Intel SpeedStep technology and I'm not sure how Linux
interacts with this, so I'm playing it safe. After I get things
working, I'll REVISIT this choice and experiment.
Boot:
I am sticking with the defaults:
1. CD-ROM
2. Floppy
3. Hard Drive
Reading the manual
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Power saving modes.
There are four power modes: Normal, Idle, Suspend, and Hibernation.
The describes these well but does not explicitly
mention that puts the
machine into Suspend mode, which I deduce is true since when I do
that, the machine appears to be off but the power LED blinks and the
manual *does* state that a blinking power LED means the machine is in
Suspend mode. The following table describes each mode.
Normal Normal operation
Power light is green.
Idle Hard drive and video display enter low power state
CPU stops but has power.
Power light is tan.
Suspend CPU state dumped to RAM and CPU is powered down.
Power light is tan and blinks.
Hibernation Entire system state is saved to disk.
Power light is off.
Note that, as far as I can tell, you must take manual action (Fn F12)
to put the machine into any of the power saving modes (Idle, Suspend,
or Hibernation). This is important, since various documents on the
web and on paper, including the Vaio CD-ROM Manual state that some
devices will not work properly if the system is put into a power
saving mode and then put back into normal mode.
Hibernation mode requires a special file or partition on the disk. I
did not research this enough yet to know if repartitionning the hard
drive prior to installing Linux will prevent hiberation form working.
I'll revisit this later.
It's later but I'm writing this up near the top anyway. Web
research pointed me to a program that comes with the Sony, phdisk.exe.
On my unit it is located at C:\Sonysys\vsrcdfd\IMG\SPT\phdisk.exe.
(It probably stands for 'Prepare Hibernation DISK'.)
You have to reboot to MS-DOS (gag) to use phdisk.exe. So I did. It
tells me that I have a save file named C:\SAVE2DSK.BIN of size
137820KB. My Web research indicated that some other Vaios (e.g. the
505F models) have a seperate partition, /dev/hda4) for hibernation.
The good news is that the Windows save file is used by both DOS
and Linux (see below).
Starting Linux Install to check out the turf
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I chose to install Linux without first trying to modify the Disk
partitions and even before booting to Windows.
I figured I should try to boot to the Linux Installation CD-ROM and go
a ways into the installation process to see what information I might
glean before doing the partitionning.
Booted to Red Hat 6.2 Linux CD-ROM.
CDROM choice defaulted to SCSI.
This made no sense, so I started over and, using a tip from the
web, entered at boot prompt:
!!! linux ide2=0x180,0x386 expert
Device Drivers disk prompt:
entered CANCEL
Disk Druid showed:
hda1 8095M
hda5 3412M
!!! I decided to quit the Linux install at this point, repartition
the hard drive via DOS fdisk to get rid of hda5 (DOS/Windows D:)
and then resize hda1 (DOS/Windows C:) via Partition Magic 4.0 for
Windows 95/98.
Rebooted the Sony to Windows 98 in MS-DOS mode.
Ran fdisk.
Removed the logical partition (D:) in the extended partition.
Removed the extended partition.
Rebooted the Sony to Windows 98.
I now saw only a C: partition. The D: partition had been successfully
removed by fdisk.
Did Fn-F12 to make sure that hibernation mode still worked. It did.
Installed Partition Magic 4.0.
Ran Partition Magic 4.0. and resized the C: drive to be 4096MB. Success.
Rebooted to Windows 98.
Cofirmed that Windows now sees just a 4GM C: drive (3.99 GM, actually).
Shutdown Windows.
-- The Linux install --
Booted to Red Hat 6.2 Linux CD-ROM.
CDROM choice defaulted to SCSI.
This made no sense, so I started over and, using a tip from the web, entered at boot prompt:
!!! linux ide2=0x180,0x386 expert
Devices: Insert your driver disk and press "OK" to continue.
pressed Cancel
Lanugage
English
Keyboard Type
US
Installation method
Local CD-ROM
Devices: ... special device ...
Done
??? Some quick screens went by so fast I could barely read them.
Something about an Unknows card and X Windows. I gather that my video
card went undetected so the installation program came up in dumb
termincal mode.
Perusing my limited Web reseach on Vaio indicates that a Vaio Z505JE
uses a NeoMagic MagicMedia 256AV. Maybe that will be useful info.
Don't know.
!!!I press Fn F12 and hibernation works. The Linux install screen is saved!
Will the CD-ROM work when next accessed??? (yes, no problem, but don't forget
that I still have power saver features turned off.)
Dinner Break.
Back from dinner.
Install Custom System.
Using fdisk, I set up:
part start blocks
hda1 1 4192933 Windows C: Partition
hda2 523 3132675 /
hda3 913 257040 swap
hda4 945 4200997 /home
For video card prompt, I specified NeoMagic, per above tip.
??? Error while making the boot disk. 'An error occured while
making the boot disk. Please make sure that there is a formatted
floppy in the first floppy drive.
'Installation successful'.
System ejected CD-ROM.
Got 'Invalid parition table' at reboot attempt. Fuck.
!!! linux ide2=0x180,0x386 rescue
No go.
Rebooted to do a reinstall/upgrade.
!!! Entered special LILO parameters:
ide2=0x180,0x386
Tried to avoid actually doing any upgrades, since I just wanted to
specify LILO parms. Thought I turned off all package upgrades. But
Package Installation still thought it needed to install 118 packages
(about half of the first time?).
Geeees. That did it.
Got a nice 'Lilo Boot:' prompt after power up.
Default boots to Linux.
Day 2
To make a long story short, X Windows did not work right after I first
ran Xconfigurator. 'startx' would cause X to come up, but with the
screen zoomed-in an absurd amount.
I did some guessing and research on the Web, to arrive at the
following /etc/X11/XF86Config file:
# File generated NOT by XConfigurator, but, rather by a lot of
#mucking around and, finally, finding this file on the Web at:
#
#http://larve.net/people/hugo/2000/07/linux-vaio
Section "Files"
RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType"
FontPath "unix/:-1"
EndSection
Section "ServerFlags"
# Uncomment this to cause a core dump at the spot where a signal is
# received. This may leave the console in an unusable state, but may
# provide a better stack trace in the core dump to aid in debugging
#NoTrapSignals
# Uncomment this to disable the server abort sequence
# This allows clients to receive this key event.
#DontZap
# Uncomment this to disable the / mode switching
# sequences. This allows clients to receive these key events.
#DontZoom
EndSection
Section "Keyboard"
Protocol "Standard"
AutoRepeat 500 5
LeftAlt Meta
RightAlt Meta
ScrollLock Compose
RightCtl Control
XkbKeycodes "xfree86"
XkbTypes "default"
XkbCompat "default"
XkbSymbols "us(pc101)"
XkbGeometry "pc"
XkbRules "xfree86"
XkbModel "pc101"
XkbLayout "us"
EndSection
Section "Pointer"
Protocol "PS/2"
Device "/dev/mouse"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "LCD XGA TFT"
VendorName "Sony"
ModelName "No clue"
HorizSync 31.5,35.15,35.5
VertRefresh 50-90
Modeline "1024x768" 44.9 1024 1048 1208 1264 768 776 784 817 Interlace
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Linux Frame Buffer Device"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "NeoMagic (laptop/notebook)"
VendorName "NeoMagic"
BoardName "NeoMagic 256AV+"
Chipset "NM2200"
Option "power_saver"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Driver "FBDev"
Device "Linux Frame Buffer Device"
Monitor "LCD XGA TFT"
Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "default"
EndSubsection
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Driver "svga"
Device "NeoMagic (laptop/notebook)"
Monitor "LCD XGA TFT"
Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
EndSection
Day 3:
Networking.
Linuxconf continues to disappoint.
Instead, after recovering, I logged in as root and ran netconfig to setup
a DHCP client on my friend's network. That worked. I have to do netconfig
everytime I boot, but later I'll go back and figure out how to set up
networking permanently once I have the machine back home.
More to come:
Configuring Networking for use while on local LAN or off-site.
Installing Corel Office Suite.
Installing and configuring Oracle.
Configuring Apache/mod_perl.
Appendix (under construction)
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References (under construction)
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Scan image of the manual cover and title page.
128MB RAM
12.1 GB Hard Drive
Built-in ethernet (??? eepro100 in /etc/conf.modules)
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