sony-vaio-z-series team mailing list archive

[Wouter van der Graaf <wouter@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

I have a new Viao Z13 (VPCZ13C5E) and I have 3 problems at the mo. I
will explain my steps for installing Ubuntu 10.10 (maverick meerkat),
but first the issues I'm having right now:

1. Set switch to Stamina, boot, stamina LED is on, X comes up, get the
Ubuntu gdm login screen, I type first characters of my password. HELP!
After a short moment, total freeze of everything. Screen still shows
login screen, but not responding to anything. No ctrl+alt+Fx for
different tty, nothing! What's up with that?

2. In Speed mode, boots successfully. Got sound working by adding
'options snd-hda-intel model=sony-vaio-tt' to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.
But microphone doesn't work with this configuration. The sound problem
has to do with Adam's 2.6.37-6 kernel. Anyone got the microphone
working?

3. Also in Speed mode, I only get into gdm when I have
no /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. As soon as I run nvidia-xconfig (which
generates it for me) and reboot, X doesn't come up and I get tty
instead. I run new nvidia driver 260.19.26 from Ubuntu-X SWAT ppa
package.

Now the steps I took to get here:

1. Unbox shiny new hardware, Sony Vaio VPCZ13C5E, Core i7, 8 GB RAM,
1920x1080 screen, WWAN modem, 128 GB RAID 0 array (2x64 GB).

2. Boot Windows 7 to test all hardware components. Need to make sure
it's all good. After that, I shrunk my Win 7 partition with the included
admin tools. I then created 2 new volumes for Linux and Swap partition.
I don't specify any drive letter or file system type for it, so these
are 2 RAW partitions.

3. Still in Windows, I download the 3 .deb packages for Linux kernel
2.6.37-6 from http://www.voip-x.co.uk/files/adam/ and put them in my
Downloads dir.

4. Set switch to Speed (was Auto).

5. Pop in Maverick 64 bit Live CD (USB actually). It boots perfectly at
native 1920x1080 screen resolution, with working sound (due to older
Maverick kernel). Installation application (ubiquity?) runs without
problem. It even detects my factory default RAID 0 setup with Windows 7
volumes and my 2 new empty volumes (making up total of 5 partitions). I
can choose the new partitions for ext4 with mount point '/' and swap. I
choose the 'parent' mapper volume (the one without the suffices in the
name) for boot loader installation. Installation successfully completed!
Ready to reboot...

6. Ouch, after reboot I get blank screen. No worries, trying hard reset
and boot with nomodeset in grub bootloader entry. I get a terminal.

7. Now I can mount my Windows partition with 'sudo mkdir /media/windows'
and 'sudo mount.ntfs-3g /dev/dm-4 /media/windows'. I copy the debs from
my Windows partition to my Linux home dir. From there, I run 'sudo dpkg
-i *.deb' to install the packages. I see that GRUB is updated with the
new kernel.

8. Reboot (still on Speed mode)! Pick the new kernel. Yeah! Enter gdm
login. Screen looks good. I can now enter gnome and do stuff. Webcam
works normally. No sound, though. In sound properties I only see the
HDMI device, not the Realtek ALC889 I was also expecting.

9. Add 'options snd-hda-intel model=sony-vaio-tt'
to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base. Reboot. Sound works now! But microphone
still doesn't work. It does show up in the sound properties input
sources (mic 1, mic 2 and line), but it's not listening.

10. Now for the nvidia driver. As recommended on
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia I remove
package xserver-xorg-video-nouveau from my system.

11. After reading about problems with the nvidia 260.x driver and
finding that these should be fixed with version 260.19.26 I installed
this version with the newer package nvidia-current from
https://edge.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat/+archive/x-updates. I added
their ppa to my software sources and install nivdia-current from
Synaptic package manager. Reboot!

12. It seems to work. I log into Ubuntu and I check the 'Additional
drivers' application from the system/administration menu to see if the
new driver is active. It is active and in use, it says. Then I try to
turn on the Compiz graphical effects, but after some waiting it just
says there was a problem and it couldn't activate effects. Bummer.

13. So I read on the BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia page that you may have to
run 'sudo nvidia-xconfig'. I run it from the terminal and it generates a
file /etc/X11/xorg.conf, which wasn't there before.

14. Reboot again. Now definitely something happened. This time I get
thrown to a tty instead of X. So it seems the nvidia driver started
loading, but couldn't initialize or something. I read
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NvidiaOnSonyLaptop about having to use
a Custom EDID file for Sony Vaio displays.

15. Windows again. I use the Windows application
http://www.entechtaiwan.com/lib/softmccs.shtm to extract the EDID binary
to my disk. I reboot into Linux (tty) and put the file
in /etc/X11/edid.bin. Then I create a new xorg.conf with the following:

Section "Device"
   Identifier "Device0"
   Driver     "nvidia"
   VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
   Option     "ConnectedMonitor"   "DFP-0"
   Option     "CustomEDID"         "DFP-0:/etc/X11/edid.bin"
EndSection

16. Reboot, hoping this will work. No, it doesn't. Now what do I have to
do? Can't find any more info on the web, or don't know how to search for
it.

17. Removing xorg.conf makes my Speed mode Ubuntu enter gdm just fine
again, without 3D graphics though (and some flickering stripy artifacts
occasionally). I'm also not sure it's actually using the nvidia driver.
But I uninstalled nouveau, so how to tell?

17. Try Stamina this time. Set switch to Stamina, boot, stamina LED is
on, X comes up, get the Ubuntu gdm login screen, I type first characters
of my password. HELP! After a short moment, total freeze of everything.
Screen still shows login screen, but not responding to anything. No ctrl
+alt+Fx for different tty, nothing! What's up with that?

18. So this is the situation I'm in. I have a working Speed mode,
without fully working nvidia drivers and microphone. And I have a
Stamina mode that halts some seconds after gdm login screen appears.
What can I do to get these issues resolved? Anyone?

Thanks in advance,

Wouter


-- 
Wouter van der Graaf
entreprogrammeur and senior web developer

d y n o r a
web developers ~ both ends technology, interaction and aesthetics

+31 (0)6 2893 0615 | wouter@xxxxxxxxx

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