ubuntu on vpcz1

just about to put ubuntu on my vpcz1, anyone else done this ?

 

I vaguely recall someone doing a pure installation (i.e. no VM) having issues with the graphics driver. The more successful ones (and which I'm going for) are those using VMs. Since Win7 seems pretty stable, and drivers for Windows tend to be released earlier, I'll have Windows as the host OS. This is mildly amusing to me because about a year ago I would never think I'll say this some day

 

thanks very much !!

downloading ubuntu 64 just now and will be gparting and installing along side ult 7 this evening

 

You managed to do it? I've been toying with the idea (I boot ubuntu isos off the network (kind of useful when you don't have a CD drive and it's twice as fast as USB) and for some reason, it thinks the network card is 10mbit!). Then there's the issue with the dual graphics. It'd be interesting to hear how you get on. I tried the nightly 10.04 and that doesn't seem to work, might give 9.10 another spin.

 

Please keep us updated. I had tried just booting the live CD from 9.04, and got a black screen with artifacts with the Intel graphics. With Nvidia i got to the home screen, but the panels kept on reloading preventing me from using keyboard shortcuts to do anything. The touch pad didn't work.

I only tried this at a Sonystyle store so I couldn't go too far sadly. This is a very important point though, I hope we can get Ubuntu running well with at least with one graphics card!

 

I am running VirtualBox 3.1.6 and Ubuntu 9.1. Once you install the extensions it just blends into the background and runs very well. .
Running Ubuntu full screen is speedy, no indication of being virtualized.
Also, it runs just fine at 1920x1200.

Don't forget to turn on the virtualization in the bios.

 

I've done the same as Oscar2. I tried the live cd for both 9.10 and the latest 10 beta and had issues with the (lack of a) trackpad driver on both and couldn't be bothered to sort it out... performance is fine in VirtualBox.

 

Apparently the touchpad works if you update the kernel (as does the NIC at full speed)...something which isn't easy on a live CD. I'm going to try installing anyway off a usb drive now just to see how far I get. I also want to do a thorough backup of my hdd (dd if=/dev/sda of=boot.img bs=512 count=1) for the MBR and then ntfsclone for the windows partitions before trying the install!

 

Heh, I was going to install onto a USB stick too.

... but apparently 2GB isn't enough and there's no way of even selecting which packages get installed? Bizarre.

 

hmmm...
so i put the ubuntu 9.10 iso onto a cd and booted off of this, on the first boot i got a screen where the resolution was good, but then it rebooted before i could install and on the second boot i got 800x600 - i carried on and installed. the installation went ok but i noticed no mouse pad nor wireless. so i connected wired and updated - 246 files and an update to the kernel and i was still at 800x600 with not wireless. i then updated hardware drivers and the top one was accelerated graphics nvidia 185. after installing this and rebooting i currently get a black screen of nothingness. so am still investigating. will keep you posted.

space

 

using the recovery option in grub i can drop down to root and remove the invidia-glx-185 driver and then reboot to get back in with 800x600 - so, no wireless, no mousepad, and no graphics. anyone have any ideas ?

space

 

apt-get remove nvidia-glx-185 gets rid of the black screen, but puts me back to 800x600, still without wireless and mousepad

space

mine is the hdd version of vcpz1, i7, 8gb

 

Maybe the folks at ubuntuforums can give you some good ideas: http://ubuntuforums.org/index.php

 

the wireless can be enabled with:
dmesg | grep iwl
rfkill list
sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-karmic-generic
sudo rmmod -f iwlagn
sudo modprobe iwlagn

link - http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=9010440
thanks Oscar2

yey, wireless working - now for the graphics and mouse

please note, messing with the graphics in ubuntu somehow disables nvidia in the windows 7 install, i had to go to the vaio recovery center to reinstall the nvidia drivers (symptoms were that after messing around in ubuntu and then switching to windows the resolution was 800x600 with the default driver and no sign of nvidia, at least i could change it to something decent before installing nvidia, in ubuntu 800x600 is the highest resolution available

space

 

i have not been able to get the video drivers to play nicely with nvidia.

so i have tried to get ubuntu 64 on virtualbox 3.1.6 to work. went through the same pain, and within vbox cannot get the install guest additions to work (i presume this is what you mean Oscar2 when you say extensions - can you tell me how you got it to work )

giving up til ubuntu 10.04

space

 

When I installed the guest addiitons here is what I did.

First I installed dkms: sudo apt-get install dkms

Then guest additions:
cd /media/cdrom1
sudo VboxLinuxAdditions-x86.run

 

x86 or amd64? I did the 64-bit install and had no problems with virtualbox and the extras (using the amd64 extras, not x86).

 

Well, just I figured that since the Z doesn't have an Amd, I just used the Intel.

 

The amd64 is for all 64-bit x86 variants. If you look in the autorun.sh script:

uname -m

returns "x86_64"

 

So, when I do uname -m I get i686

Is it better to do the amd instead?

 

No, for i686 you actually do want the x86. I guess you installed the 32-bit version of Ubuntu?

 

yes, I guess you're right. I checked the Ubuntu website and it looks like you get the 32 bit by default

For my purposes either is just as good but I will install the 64 bit just so I can play around with that one.

 

I installed dkms: sudo apt-get install dkms
Then guest additions:
cd /media/cdrom1
sudo ./VboxLinuxAdditions-amd64.run

and the graphics and mouse now work correctly

thanks very much guys !

space

 

Just to let you know, ubuntu 10.04 nightly build (and before) allow me to install (with external mouse) but still can't boot (stuck at black screen!). Would be nice if there was a way to force the intel card!

 

success, with ubuntu 9.10, the latest (beta?) nvidia driver works (10.04 will have a change such that the installer won't work!)!

http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/linux_display_amd64_195.36.15_uk.html

Wonderfull HD...now just need to get my touchpad working!

 

touchpad now working by appending "i8042.nopnp" to the boot options

 

Wireless works if backport modules are installed as does bluetooth. Switch turns things on/off. SD card reader works too. Have not tried memory stick (do people even use these??). Last thing to get working is brightness control, power (suspend/hibernate) and the strange thing where the nic sets itself to 10mbit after I attempt to hibernate

 

kimbja are you dual booting?

No matter what I do when trying to install (already have win7) I get a "grub installation failed" error at the end of the ubuntu installation.

Any advice?

 

Amazing, congrats.
Q: When you say wireless, I'm assuming you just mean the WLAN, right? Or is the WWAN supported as well? I know there was some work done on Gobi 1000 in the previous VAIO but wasn't sure if those drivers would be the same for the 2000 series.

Thanks

 

I am dual booting from a 500GB HDD but I don't have a WWAN card (I just use my phone for mobile internet ).

If you're trying to install grub onto the SSDs, remember that they're raid0, so they could appear as /dev/md0 rather than its component drives which are /dev/sda, sdb etc (it's fakeraid/dmraid rather than true hardware raid).

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FakeRaidHowto
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1360445

This may be of help. Remember, you can always boot the live CD/USB environment, then chroot to your ubuntu install, then you can apt-get packages, update grub etc.
(e.g. if your ubuntu root (and boot etc is not in separate partitions) is on /dev/sda5, type:
mount /dev/sda5 /mnt
then need to mount special filesystems inside too:
mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
mount --bind /tmp /mnt/tmp
mount --bind /var/lib/dbus /mnt/var/lib/dbus
then go chroot /mnt
and you're inside It's important to mount the special filesystems or apt scripts etc will fail in strange ways when things like /dev/null are not available! I had to do this when messing round with nvidia packages.)

It does seem like grub2 and fakeraid don't get along, which is why they suggest installing a different version.

 

/dev/md0 to me would imply an mdadm raid configuration (i.e. a Linux software RAID and not fakeraid). The Z's raid should instead be picked up by device-mapper (dmraid), so it should be in /dev/mapper/...

(I haven't checked this yet as I don't have a bootable linux image with me).

 

Thanks so much Kimbja. I cannot get wireless working even after installing the backports. I was able to get it up with a new kernel but it broke video again.

Interestingly testing 10.x the video doesn't work at all. New and old Z both would require 2 boots from Windows into linux for the bios to figure out it didn't have software control over which graphics adapter. You could confirm this by noting the speed light comes on the second time at post. 10.x doesn't seem to trigger that sort of behavior so I can't get it working. 10.x does work with my wireless though

 

Hi, Folks,

For what it's worth, I've just installed Ubuntu 9.10 on VMWare Workstation 7, and it just works. Touchscreen, graphics, WiFi, etc. No changes, mods, or tweaks were necessary.

FYI!
Mark

 

Works fine for me on VirtualBox as well...but that's no fun Getting it to work "native" is more entertaining.

 

True But running it on a VM is soooooo convenient (or maybe I'm just lazy )

 

@Kimbja98

can you please help me, i am trying to get my mouse working but i am having a problem. I am newbie to linux and i dont understand where to apply the i8042.nopnp to get my mouse working.

please help.

 

You need to edit /etc/default/grub (as root) to add the line, then run update-grub and restart. You'll want to change this line to:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash i8042.nopnp"

If you're in old ubuntu/old grub, edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and where it says kernel /boot/vmlinuz blablabla put it on the end there (it'll at least say ro quiet or something along those lines).

Also, if you're a newbie to linux, you might want to try it out on an older/more linux friendly machine such as dells or lenovos to get familiar with it, otherwise it can be very frustrating! I'm not sure you see, if the above trick would work on other linux other than ubuntu 9.10 or upwards as it could be the kernel version ubuntu uses and others may work fine, or not at all and some kernel module compiling would be necessary. Until I get ubuntu working properly (brightness controls etc) then I'll be sticking in windows. At least ubuntu 10.04 will be out on the 15th but I don't know how much progress with these machines would have been made.

 

kimbja - are you able to get backlight control working? I've gotten everything working but that. If so, how did you do it?

 

compiz-fusion works?
WWAN works?
modem works?
Camera/mic works?

I think vmware is great, but really, it's not the same as running bare metal.

 

Hi, Arth1!

Please accept my apologies if I conveyed the wrong impression! Sure, I also have other hard-Linux boxes, including my 13-drive monster home file server, as well as my firewall/DNS/DHCP server. My only intention was to try to lower the barrier to entry for folks who'd like to join Linux land, and VMWare truly helps in that regard for such folks.

FYI!
Mark

 

nope, brightness control still evades me which is very annoying, as that eats the battery. Also, suspend/hibernate/resume don't work for me either...and if I try doing that it immediately wakes up and the LAN is forced into 10mbt mode! If these get fixed, I'll probably be working in linux a lot more. Using flash with HW acceleration also seems to fail strangely. Because these machines are quite cutting-edge, I think it'll be maybe a month or 2 before these issues are finally sorted (it relies on clever people buying similar hardware and then submitting patches/updates )

 

@kimbja98

thanks for the reply, i am actually working on puppy linux.

would the same apply on puppy for the i8042.nopnp trick ?

also, i decided to connect an external mouse so that i can skip forward to check functionality of the wifi. unfortunately its not running as well. so the other wifi trick you posted will it work on puppy ?

thanks

 

After fighting about 10 hours with the dynamic switching graphics, it's working now.

I patched the Advanced menu of the BIOS ( Thanks psyq321) and enabled the static switching. The BIOS enables and poweres the graphics card now at powering on, according to the state of the graphics switch.

Ubuntu 10.04 Beta 2 is running fine with Nvidia graphics, but the Intel kernel module causes the screen to black out (under 9.10, both should work).

Should work with any distro, but the config files and update scripts could be somewhere else (or a different grub version).

The linux-backports-modules-karmic-generic package is Ubuntu-specific. I think besides using another kernel, there's not much you can do about it.

 

@Xod

thanks, if possible can you please advise me where can i find the config files on Puppy ?

thanks

 

Did you get any brightness control working by any chance?

 

I can have a quick look at puppy tomorrow.

Currently using the NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-195.36.15 Binary driver and brightness control and standby isn't working. Maybe it's working with the Intel card or with the open source nouveau driver (lucid).

 

thanks

i found this while searching for more info :

this is a Patch i found on another forum, not sure how to use it though.


diff --git a/drivers/input/serio/i8042-x86ia64io.h b/drivers/input/serio/i8042-x86ia64io.h
index ead0494..7c0cb87 100644
--- a/drivers/input/serio/i8042-x86ia64io.h
+++ b/drivers/input/serio/i8042-x86ia64io.h
@@ -495,6 +495,14 @@ static const struct dmi_system_id __initconst i8042_dmi_nopnp_table[] = {
DMI_MATCH(DMI_BOARD_VENDOR, "MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO., LTD"),
},
},
+ {
+ /* Sony Vaio VPCZ1 */
+ .matches = {
+ DMI_MATCH(DMI_BOARD_NAME, "VAIO"),
+ DMI_MATCH(DMI_BOARD_VENDOR, "Sony Corporation"),
+ DMI_MATCH(DMI_PRODUCT_NAME, "VPCZ1"),
+ },
+ },
{ }
};

 

Agreed. I often recommend VMware Server, because it's free (as in beer), supports 64-bit, dual core and bridged networking out of the box, and if people later want to use special features like basic 3D support, they can easily switch to VMware Workstation. (And if they want to switch to a high performance hypervisor solution, VMware will be happy to sell you that too.)

Fedora 12 and other new Linux versions work just great with VMware, by the way. Just don't install the vmware supplied guest toolkit, but instead install openvm-tools.

For running Linux natively bare metal, though, the Sony Z is unfortunately not the most compatible laptop you can get. I do it here, but I have to reboot twice to switch between Linux and Windows, and some features (like immediate switching between graphics cards) just won't work.
And unless you take extreme care when installing, chances are that the linux bootloader install will irreversibly blow away access to your recovery partition and F10 functionality. I use Vista's bootloader just because of this, but VMware would be a good choice then too -- no risk of messing up that!

 

Hi

i just wanted to let you know that i was successful with touchpad. thanks for all the help, and thanks to another member on puppy forum that directed me to syslinux.cfg!!
i edited the syslinux.cfg and added i8042.nopnp=1 on the kernel line

Thanks

 

Does anyone has an idea why both graphic cards are working fine when booting the live cd directly from usb (Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator, syslinux) and the screen blacks out when booting the same kernel (parameters) through grub?