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Top Version HW Quirks Preparation Graphics Backlight Audio Webcam Bluetooth WiFi LED Battery Resources Suspend Fingerprint Unsupported Devices
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This is a guide for installation of Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) on the Sony Vaio SZ650 notebook computer. Sony have produced many similar models with minor variations in hardware configuration or market location, which are given slightly different model numbers starting with VGN-SZ6. The recent (early 2008) SZ7 and slightly older SZ4 and SZ5 series have strong similarities with the SZ6 series so these instructions may be useful for those models as well. If you find anything that's missing here, or have any other comments, please email me.
I use the 64-bit PC (AMD64) desktop version of Ubuntu Hardy LTS, downloadable here. The torrent is usually very quick and reliable so consider using the torrent file rather than downloading the ISO directly. Ubuntu ships as a single CDROM. Hardy is an LTS release, meaning that it will be supported until 2011.
Why the 64-bit version? I want to be able to access the 4GB of RAM I have installed in my notebook. The factory install of Windows Vista is 32-bit and cannot access the last 1 GB of RAM, nor can the 32-bit XP downgrade.
Like many notebooks, the Vaio SZ6 series has some special hardware quirks. Which is fine if you work for Sony, know what the quirks are and are able to hard code for them in your drivers. The Linux way is a bit more haphazard than that...
The display has 2 settings, STAMINA and SPEED. These relate to an Intel 965 motherboard that is energy-efficient but is not very powerful in 3D (STAMINA) and an nVidia GeForce 8400M GS (SPEED), which is power-hungry but supposedly faster at 3D rendering than the Intel. So, before we start, there are already 2 display adapters to configure and to confuse Xorg.
Backlight control is a bit of a pain, because it is dependent on which graphics adapter you are using at the time. Intel have produced xbacklight, which is an app that can control the backlight when in STAMINA mode. nVidia have not been so forthcoming and there is currently no known way to control the backlight in SPEED mode. You can make the LCD blacker, but this doesn't help with battery life.
The sound card has some special settings that are relatively easy to deal with now that ALSA can handle it.
Mattia Dongili and others maintain the sony-laptop kernel module which with HAL is responsible for recognising your Vaio's hardware and allowing the Linux kernel to play with it.
Before you start, assess why you want Ubuntu on your notebook. Do you want access to a Windows installation and should you therefore dual-boot or virtualise? Will you ever want to reinstall Vista? Are you insane? (read Catch-22 before answering that question).
Flippant comments aside, it's important to have a plan. I'd advise you to go through the Vaio recovery DVD creation process (before removing Vista) just in case. Also make sure you have the Windows drivers, which Sony make available from their FTP server.
There is a new way to install as though Ubuntu was a program running under Windows, which you can read about here. Also, the automatic dual-boot installation from the LiveCD is very kind to your existing Windows installation - as I was glad to discover while installing Ubuntu on my girlfriend's Vaio. She calls it "Ubunutu", strangely.
I usually install in STAMINA mode. Put the CDROM in the drive and if you need to, hit F2 and change the boot options to allow booting from CDROM. Boot into the live CD or just install from CD. The installation process is very straightforward and there's lots of support around if you search the Web for it (I'd start at Ubuntu Forums).
I'm a bit old-school, so I made my own partition table that looks like this:
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000001 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System Mount Point /dev/sda1 * 1 1185 9518481 7 HPFS/NTFS /xp /dev/sda2 1186 2460 10241437+ 83 Linux / or /gutsy (dual boot...) /dev/sda3 2461 18182 126286965 83 Linux /home /dev/sda4 18183 19457 10241437+ 5 Extended /dev/sda5 18183 18947 6144831 83 Linux /hardy or / /dev/sda6 18948 19457 4096543+ 82 Linux swap swap
Please note that I have repartitioned and completely reformatted the entire hard disk including the hidden Vaio recovery partition, which I don't need since I have recovery DVD's. You don't need so many partitions, particularly if you're doing a single boot install. I do highly recommend having a partition mounted at /home so that you can reinstall the system and not risk your personal files.
I almost always use the Intel 965 (STAMINA mode), because not much of my work needs 3D at the moment. As of Hardy Beta, the Intel 965 is well supported and you can get compiz working with few problems. I usually leave compiz disabled because I don't need it and it wakes the processor up a lot.
The nVidia 8400M GS is moderately well supported once the proprietary driver is installed through the restricted driver manager. There are a few problems with this card and driver, but since both are widely used, expect them to be fixed one day soon. You can check out launchpad.net for information about this card.
At the time of writing the remaining issues with the graphics cards are:
There is a script that helps to select an appropriate X configuration (it copies alternative xorg.conf files during boot), but I am holding out for the final release of Hardy before committing any more time to configuring displays. The general aim of Xorg is to autoconfigure whichever display it finds at boot, with no user interaction.
The Vaio SZ6 has a very white, bright and light (as in weight) LED screen, which uses up quite a bit of power and is hard on the eyes after a while. In STAMINA mode, you can alter the backlight by installing xbacklight.
]$ sudo apt-get install xbacklight
Until this bug is fixed, you have to run the following at the beginning of your session:
]$ xrandr --output LVDS --set BACKLIGHT_CONTROL native
Then to alter the backlight:
]$ xbacklight -set n
Where 0<= n <=100.
To get the Fn keys (Fn+F5, Fn+F6) working, you have to modify /etc/acpi/sonybright.sh
as described here.
#!/bin/bash if [ "x$1" = "xdown" ]; then xbacklight -time 100 -steps 10 -dec 10 2>/tmp/sonybright.log elif [ "x$1" = "xup" ]; then xbacklight -time 100 -steps 10 -inc 10 2>/tmp/sonybright.log else echo >&2 Unknown argument $1 fi
and on each reboot, restart acpid and reset the xrandr settings.
]$ sudo /etc/init.d/acpid restart ]$ xrandr --output LVDS --set BACKLIGHT_CONTROL native
No-one knows (and if they do, they're not telling) how to control the backlight LED in SPEED mode; hopefully that will change soon.
Ubuntu Hardy contains ALSA that supports the sound card, but you have to do a bit of configuring yourself. Open the ALSA config file:
]$ sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base
Add these lines to the end:
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel options snd-card-0 index=0 options snd-hda-intel model=vaio
Then restart ALSA
]$ sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils restart
Then in the volume control app (double click the wee speaker icon by the clock), Edit->Preferences and check all the check boxes.
The driver for the webcam is being maintained and has been nominated for packaging into Ubuntu. Download the source for compiling yourself here, or user-supplied deb packages for amd64 or i386. If you can't see yourself with cheese or xawtv, you can test that you've properly installed r5u870 by running this:
]$ gst-launch-0.10 v4l2src ! ffmpegcolorspace ! ximagesink
Keep an eye on this bug for updates to this issue.
I've got no bluetooth peripherals so no need for bluetooth. It just uses power and gives people a way to poke at your computer. If you turn bluetooth off by disabling the modules (e.g. with powertop), the LED stays on, and the device stays powered. To turn off the device you have to enable the superuser (root) account by going to System->Administration->Users and Groups then:
]$ su ]$ echo "0" > /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/bluetoothpower
And voila, the LED goes out and power supply to bluetooth ceases.
Full support for the WiFi LED is on its way to the kernel; in the meantime you can get it to work by doing this:
]$ sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-hardy-generic
If you're having trouble associating with a WPA-Enterprise access point, try this (it may take a few goes):
]$ sudo rmmod iwl4965; sudo modprobe iwl4965
The best way to extend battery life is to install powertop and follow the on-screen instructions:
]$ sudo apt-get install powertop ]$ sudo powertop
The battery-saving feature of the Windows install makes the battery stop charging at 50%, 80% or 100%; the only way to get to 100% charge is to turn off the battery-saving feature in Windows (in the Vaio control panel). See this bug report.
Also, check out Less Watts.
I've had a few problems with suspend-to-RAM on both the Intel and nVidia adapters. The current solution for suspend-to-RAM on the Intel 965 adapter is to edit a few files and always boot with the wireless swtch set to OFF.
]$ sudo gedit /etc/default/acpi-support
Edit the MODULES line so that it looks like this:
MODULES="hci_usb iwl4965"
Then open /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist and add this to the end:
#uvcvideo prevents STR (LP #178286) blacklist uvcvideo
Save the files, close gedit and restart.
Because of LP 193970
you will have to restart the wireless kernel module by running the following line after rebooting:
]$ sudo rmmod iwl4965; sudo modprobe iwl4965
These were useful sources of information:
Support for the fingerprint sensor is coming on rapidly. If you don't mind compiling your own drivers, try these instructions, and keep up to date with LP 163156.
These devices are unsupported:
This is here for completeness: note the output of lspci is different if you are in SPEED or STAMINA mode.
]$ lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 0c) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c) 00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03) 00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03) 00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03) 00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 03) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03) 00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03) 00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03) 00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f3) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03) 06:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN Network Connection (rev 61) 07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8055 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 12) 09:04.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx12 Cardbus Controller 09:04.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments PCIxx12 OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller 09:04.2 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments 5-in-1 Multimedia Card Reader (SD/MMC/MS/MS PRO/xD)
]$ lsusb Bus 007 Device 004: ID 054c:0281 Sony Corp. <- Vaio memory card adapter Bus 007 Device 001: ID 0000:0000 Bus 006 Device 003: ID 05ca:183a Ricoh Co., Ltd <- webcam Bus 006 Device 001: ID 0000:0000 Bus 005 Device 003: ID 044e:300d Alps Electric Co., Ltd <- bluetooth Bus 005 Device 001: ID 0000:0000 Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000 Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000 Bus 003 Device 002: ID 046d:c018 Logitech, Inc. <- an external USB mouse Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000 Bus 001 Device 007: ID 147e:2016 <- UPEK touchstrip fingerprint scanner Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
This file last modified 2023hrs 21 July 2008 © Michael Doube 2004-2008 :: Designed to be interoperable and standards-compliant. Looks best with Mozilla Firefox