Ubuntu Linux on SVZ1311

Hi guys,

Lets have a thread sharing our experiences with installing and running Ubuntu Linux on this very fine piece of machinery - the SVZ1311.

I just installed Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit and almost everything works perfectly. The few things that fails are:

* Touchpad right click button acts as left click
* Touchpad button area acts as touch area making clicks jumpy when clicking
* Speakes are buzzing when inactive

FYI - I installed Ubuntu 12.04 from the alternate .iso with software raid 0 support to have UEFI work correctly.

Update: Clickpad right key fix available - see this thread.

 

Im considering this laptop as well and need to run linux on it.
Could you describe the installation process step by step ?

 

I guess you've already considered it, but running Linux as VM works great too.

I've been running Ubuntu 11.04 in a VirtualBox on my old VPC Z11 for 2 years. In fact, I couldn't have done it by installing Ubuntu directly on the laptop cause the VPN solution used at my work didn't support Ubuntu, but it did support Windows so I could connect Windows via VPN and the Ubuntu VM got connected too.

Recently, they changed VPN solution so I had to move to Fedora on the SVZ. Also works flawlessly.

However, you have to leave a few GB of memory to Windows, and I guess some performance is lost, mostly 2D-gfx I think because VirtualBox doesn't accelerate 2D-gfx for linux guests, only 3D-gfx. Haven't checked other VMs.

 

Running windows as the host OS is not an option.
If that is the best solution for this vaio - i'll have to find something else.

 

Why not make it a bit more inclusive? I'm thinking of trying Mint Linux 13 on a Z22 with a dual boot option.

 

Hi Stalet,

With the exception of setting up UEFI boot and the RAID0 disks it is a pretty straightforward process. Simply install using this image:

http://mirror.bytemark.co.uk/ubuntu-releases/12.04/ubuntu-12.04-alternate-amd64.iso

Before booting the install iso enter the bios menu by pressing F2 during boot and go change boot type from "legacy" to "UEFI" and also disable hiding of the RAID controller. At next boot you will be able to access the RAID controller configuration menu - here you should delete all RAID configuration meaning you will be left with two regular disks. During installation we will convert these into SW RAID0.

Simply follow the install instructions and at some point you will have the option of manually creating new partitions. Here you should create UEFI boot, EXT4 root, and swap partitions on each disk and with same sizes. For example, I made a 100 MB UEFI boot partition, then a 124 GB ext4 root partition, and whatever remained went to a swap partition - the same partitions on both disks. After creating the partitions you need to software RAID0 configure the partitions of same type on the two disks except the boot partition which needs to be regular (will leave 100 MB empty on the second disk) - this will give you 2 RAID0 devices/partitions (root and swap). If you are not sure what I'm talking about then there are guides online describing how to do this. Also, make sure to flag the single boot partition as "bootable" and mark the RAID0 root partition as "/".

Give it try.

Oh, by the way - my example procedure simply destroys whatever Windows 7 stuff that was preinstalled. Actually, my new Z3 never even got to boot Windows 7 - I don't see the need to infect this almost perfect piece of machinery with that windows crap ha ha.

 

Here is a fix for Ubuntu which reconfigures the Synaptic touchpad device to have both a left and right key:

/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/51-clickpad.conf:

Code:

Section "InputClass"
Identifier "Default clickpad buttons"
MatchDriver "synaptics"
Option "SoftButtonAreas" "50% 6000 70% 5000 0 0 0 0"
EndSection 

You need to create the file if it does not already exist.

 

^You don't need to delete the RAID array, e.g. in the case if you want to use it on a dualboot system. The alternate CD comes with dmraid and you can partition your fakeRAID (Intel RST RAID) straight away during setup.

 

Sure, go ahead - then share your findings here. The distributions are not really that different anyway - we will face similar issues.

 

That is true - you do not need to do it like I did but SW raid is preferred because in case you somehow loose you motherboard or RAID controller then there is no gurarantee you will be able to recreate the disk array because the RAID striping information is embedded in the specific RAID controller. With SW RAID you will be able to recover.

 

Is there a list of features supported under Linux? Unfortunately, what I have found so far relates to previous versions.

I would be interested in the following:

• power management
• battery management and battery life - what battery life do you get out of the Z3 under linux, and is it possible to configure a minimum charge before recharging?
• wifi
• blutooth
• card reader
• audio (incl. speakers, volume control, audio out, microphone)
• webcam
• keyboard illumination
• display brightness control (manual or using sensors)

I am not interested in the PMD, but other might be. I have ordered a Z3 and will give it a try (using a "live" system from usb), but would be reluctant to do a full install before I know I am going to keep it.

 

I can confirm that all the features that you are requesting work quite well with Ubuntu 12.04 except for one feature, namely display brightness control using light sensor (manual works fine though). Regarding pm I can't really tell for sure how long a battery charge lasts because I have not used it much yet but I can tell you that it seems to manage both the internal and external battery charge control just fine (two battery indicators etc.). Also, using the internal battery it reports 4 hours remaining with brightness at about 70%.

 

Thanks very much! Did these work "out of the box", or did you have to install the "sony vaio modules" or something similar? If it works out of the box, I'm hopeful that it will also work from a "live" system.

Also, do you use a parallel setup, or Ubuntu only - and how did you set up the dual SSDs, i.e. one for each OS (if parallel), a raid-0 under Linux, or separate partitions without Raid under linux? If you use a parallel setup, did you have any problems shrinking the Windows partition? Did you erase the recovery partition? And finally, which boot manager do you use?

Thanks again for your help.

 

Everything worked out of the box with the exception of the Synaptic clickpad which I had to reconfigure to make right click work.

For RAID0 and UEFI boot configuration you need to install using the Ubuntu alternative image.

Please read my postings earlier in this thread and you will find the answers to your questions.

 

Thanks again. I hadn't realized that you were the OP as well, indeed, that's answered most of my questions. I'll see if I can add anything to it once I've got mine.

 

Thanks for the useful information. I ended up buying this laptop and i have now installed ubuntu 12.04 on it.
I used the alternate installation to install in order to get support for the internal raid controller and did not use the efi boot.
Worked like a charm. Was a little confused about the path to install the bootloader - ended up using: /dev/mapper/isw_deijgcidbh_Volume0

I left 40 gb for windows so i can boot into it an run an occacional game if i want to... (dont know if im gonna use it tho - on my last laptop it ended up being replaced by my music collection ... )

There is one thing that is bugging me tho and that is the click and drag with the touchpad. Im used to using the bottom buttons with my thumb (being left handed its very convenient) and simultaneously drag the pointer with another finger. Since the buttons is a part of the pad itself it makes the cursor move off target when clicking.

Found a way to disable the lower part of the pad by passing the Option "AreaBottomEdge" "3800" to the synaptics driver.
Here is the content of my /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/51-clickpad.conf file now:

Section "InputClass"
Identifier "Default clickpad buttons"
MatchDriver "synaptics"
Option "SoftButtonAreas" "50% 6000 70% 5000 0 0 0 0"
Option "AreaBottomEdge" "3800"
EndSection


This makes it better but not perfect. If the other finger is not on the pad when clicking it also wil be ignored so - you have to make sure not to lift your finger off the pad. Kinda annoying also but somewhat better than before.

 

Happy times

I did the same experiement with the AreaBottomEdge but decided not to post it because it has the very unfortunate sideeffect of disabling right click!
This is a known issue for the synaptics X input subsystem and I figure it will eventually be fixed. For now, I can make do with the dodgy clicking.

 

I didnt see that it actually disabled the right click button as well. I have also removed it now. Found that its possible to tweak the cursor speed down even further with gpointing-device-settings, that may help.

 

Anybody run powertop yet to see how much power is actually being used (and to see if they can optimize it further)?

 

It consumes about 12 watts with the display backlight turned down to about 70%. That translates to 4 hours estimated. See attached powertop report for details. I didn't tweak anything so it's likely more aggressive savings are possible.

 

any luck with the touchpad?

 

second that... any luck with the touchpad? And can you guys make the internal 4g modem work?

 

Have you tried lm sensors? Do you have fan control?

 

haven't tried lm sensors? What is that? I do not have fan control, but since the fans are not audible anyway, except when running heavy apps, I don't miss it... But still, Ubuntu is pretty much useless without the touchpad working correctly... And also, without internet, not much one can do...

 

Yes, lm sensors works just fine - it gives you the CPU temp. With coretemp module loaded it even gives your individual core temperatures. In idle the core temp drops as low as 40 degree celcius (impressive!).

The fan control is automatic.

 

Well i just got used to it...
Doesnt bother me that much anymore.

The 4g modem gets detected and recognizes a sim card.
I tried to get the 4G modem to work halfheartedly - but the driver in ubuntu seems to go wrong after connecting. Seems to be alot of similar problems with ubuntu 12.04 so im not sure its a problem with the hardware not being supported.

-S

 

I've been having difficulty with system freezes within both Ubuntu 12.04 and Linux Mint 13. Both are similar in nature:

- Seem to happen somewhat randomly while performing some kind of operation (clicking in the UI, saving a file, scrolling a webpage, etc.)
- Does not seem to happen while idle (this could just be coincidence, but it seems like multiple things need to be happening at once)
- Happens both with and without RAID configured (have used both configurations now)
- Does not log anything relevant to any /var/log entries that I've found
- Happens in both 32 and 64 bit systems
- Also note, this is only noticed when in a Gnome window manager (Unity, Cinnamon, MATE, etc...); so in theory the problem could be related to Gnome; I haven't tried running in the terminal for extended periods of time.

Anyone have any similar experiences with Ubuntu/Mint and SVZ1311? I was going to try installing arch or some other distro to see if Debian is the common factor but that's annoying and I'm hoping for a simpler fix. Any ideas of what to check or where to log?

 

Sounds like a SW issue, especially since you only experience it using the Gnome WM. Using Ubuntu 12.04 on the SVZ1311 for quite some time now I have experience the occasional UI freeze every now and then but nothing frequent. What did crash at every startup is the colord process but that is not so serious. After upgrading to Ubuntu 12.10 no such crashes occur - everything seems stable.

 

I have an SVZ13114gxx, Custom Arch install..
I have got everything to work competely. (except 4g, do not have the hardware)
Let me know if you guys need any help with anything

Here is my custom synaptics conf. This will fix both the right click and jumpy cursor issue, making the touchpad much more usable:

Code:

Section "InputClass"
Identifier "Default clickpad buttons"
MatchDriver "synaptics"
Option "ClickPad" "true"
Option "EmulateMidButtonTime" "0"
Option "SoftButtonAreas" "50% 0 82% 0 0 0 0 0"
Option "JumpyCursorThreshold" "90"
Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "on"
Option "FingerLow" "35"
Option "FingerHigh" "45"

EndSection

This is in addition to the 10-synaptics.conf, i made one with a higher number (e.g. 51-clickpad.conf).

 

I'm thinking of getting this computer to replace a 15.6 inch Clevo based laptop I bought a year and a half ago as I'm interested in something with more portability and frankly a bit of sexiness, getting tired of the Macbook snobs around the office

Anyways, I run the Ubuntu 12.10 Gnome Remix as my primary work OS but I do keep Windows on tap in a dual boot configuration and I have a few questions as follows:

a. With UEFI being supported in 12.10, do you still need that alternate image or does it install with the normal media now?
b. Any thing to be careful of concerning the fake RAID in this computer when installing Ubuntu and trying to preserve the existing Windows install? Do you just resize the Windows partition on the fake raid, create an ext4 partition for Linux and let it install GRUB2 normally? Any issues with creating two additional partitions for Linux (for / and /home) instead of a single Linux partition?
c. Do the USB 3.0 ports work at full speed in Linux on this machine? My clevo machine has a 128 GB SSD and a 750 GB hard drive so I'm downsizing storage wise. It shouldn't be a major issue since I'm not using tons of space on that 750 GB drive but using external storage (notebook harddrive in a USB 3.0 enclosure) for some of my lesser used files and handling backups will be a necessity.
d. Can the computer boot from a USB 3.0 device, I might try doing a dry run of installing Ubuntu on a external drive just to make sure it all works before switching to the internal drives
e. In Windows, how well does the machine handle extended gaming sessions when using the PMD in terms of heat? Since the GPU work is offloaded, does the laptop remain relatively cool?
f. Looking at various posts on the heat, it looks like the PMD works with Linux with no issues however it's not clear to me if Linux allows the PMD to power the internal display like it can in Windows, can someone confirm that? Not a show stopper, just curious
g. Any issues with multiple displays in Linux both with and without the PMD?

 

Hi all,

Trying to install Ubuntu 12.10 from USB onto my SVZ1311 without messing up Windows 7 or any of my data. Getting the ubi-partman failed with error code 1. No UEFI, legacy mode. Any suggestions?

 

So is this just not possible?

 

Does anyone know if the Z3 with the i7-3632QM has an option to enable VT-D in the bios?

Reason I'm asking is that I'm curious if the Vaio Z with the PMD would support Xen and VGA passthrough, anyone tried it?

 

You can change bootmode from legacy to UEFI in the bios.

 

This is a late follow-up, but I never got any Debian distributions to work on my SVZ1311AFXX (Ubuntu, Mint, Bodhi, Debian including wheezy) regardless of the window manager used (though all were X based I believe). I'm still assuming this is something within the Debian core that conflicts with my hardware in some way but I never did narrow it down to anything specific.

Ultimately I decided to go with Arch Linux as it's stable, highly compatible (everything on the laptop works including keyboard backlight, wifi, sd reader, hdmi out with sound, etc...), and quite fast. I actually now prefer it to Ubuntu because I like the added flexibility the Arch package management provides and I've had zero issues with configuring and maintaining the system.

Overall, I'm very happy with the computer now that I've found a solid Linux distro for my needs. As a side-note to any of you Linux installers after a TON of full installs with RAID configured (meaning you have to chroot into the new environment and manually load the grub configuration and/or the kernel image) I ultimately went with no RAID and run a Linux install on one drive and a Win 7 on the other; it's easier to configure and I haven't noticed any measurable decrease in performance (disclaimer: I don't use this laptop as my primary means of media storage so you may find ~60gb per environment too small for your needs).

 

You must have been unlucky with your hardware or else your specific install configuration simply does not work. I'm running Ubuntu 12.10 on my SVZ1311 and everything works and it is stable. As mentioned in the initial thread I'm running with UEFI boot enabled and SW raid.

Anyway, I can relate to your feelings and experience with Arch Linux because years ago I was a long time user of Crux Linux, the distro from which Arch Linux was heavily inspired. It was a lot of fun but it required a bit more maintenance and mangling under the hood. Though, for the last 6 years or so I've been running Ubuntu Linux exclusively, because in the end, that means less maintenance and it is also a more popular platform amongst professionals.

 

Was that a straight install from 12.10 or an upgraded install from 12.04? The reason I ask is that I had no luck getting 12.10 to install directly with UEFI, the install always required a bootloader to be specified and even if I tried dev/sda or dev/md0 (the software raid) it would fail with a dummy grub error and the details would state that I was trying to install grub to an impossible location. Under legacy it failed under dev/sda but prompted me for a new location and worked under /dev/md0

 

It is an install from 12.04 alternative cd and later upgraded to 12.10. You can find the install description in the start of this thread.

 

The processor supports VT-d, but the chipset does not (I don't know any mobile chipset for i7-3k series that does). The HM77 chipset (what the Vaio Z--and every other Ivy Bridge laptop I've looked into--uses) does not support VT-d.

It would have been rather nice to be able to pass through one of the GPU's to the VM when connected to a dock, but alas, not in the cards.

 

What was your experience with Arch like? I am about to embark an install of Arch Linux. What kind of issues did you run into? Is there anything special I should be aware of? Are there any install guides out there? I haven't found any, but maybe I'm looking in the wrong place. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

 

Is it possible to install Ubuntu 13.04 on top of an existing Windows 7 installation, or do I need to start from scratch? I'm specifically curious about how to handle the fact that the drives are already in RAID 0.

 

13.04 doesn't provide the alternate install-cd, so you'll have a difficult time to say the least to get RAID working. Petition Canonical to provide RAID support with 13.10 and we'll be good to go come fall...

 

Alternatively you can install 12.10 from the alternate-cd and upgrade to 13.04 post-install. Though some peeps have reported that it breaks RAID, so you might have to do some tinkering with your system to get it working....