sony-vaio-z-series team mailing list archive

[shairemail-launchpad@xxxxxxxxx]

Thank you, Andreas,

With the encouragement that this should work, I tried Adam's kernel again, and found the problems which prevented it form working before. My VPCZ1390x system now starts 10.10 with the intel driver and has GLX working using 2.6.37-6-vaioz. This is my preferred mode, as I am primarily concerned with battery life; maybe in a few months I'll bother with nVidia.

The audio still doesn't seem to work. pavucontrol's configuration tab reports that there are no cards available for configuration. More on that below.

--- The Xorg caveats were:

(1) When I installed ubuntu I had to use the following options in the installer: 
  xforcevesa nosplash nomodeset i8042.nopnp=1
of these, I left nosplash nomodeset i8042.nopnp=1 in my /etc/default/grub GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT setting. It seems the nomodeset option prevents the kernel from starting the intel driver correctly. 
Adam -- please add the appropriate kernel commandline dos and don'ts to your excellent README. It would have saved me a few days of grief.

(2) GLX still wasn't working. I examined /var/log/Xorg.0.log and found that even though I used aptitude to reinstall mesa GLX (the 'L' key forces a reinstall), xorg was still loading Nvidia drivers. It turns out that nvidia drivers were installed in /usr/lib/xorg/extra-modules/, which sits earlier in the search path for xorg than /usr/lib/xorg/modules that contains the intel GLX libraries. A sudo mv extra-modules extra-modules-NVIDIA got those drivers out of the search path and now everything intel X related seems to work okay.

(3) It seems none of the EDID hacks are needed. My current xorg.conf reads:

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"Configured Video Device"
	Driver		"intel"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier	"Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier	"Default Screen"
	Monitor		"Configured Monitor"
	Device		"Configured Video Device"
EndSection

--- Regarding audio, sudo lspci -v gives the following Audio devices:

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 05)
        Subsystem: Sony Corporation Device 905a
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 44
        Memory at d7820000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
        Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
        Capabilities: [60] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
        Capabilities: [70] Express Root Complex Integrated Endpoint, MSI 00
        Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel
        Capabilities: [130] Root Complex Link
        Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
        Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

01:00.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation High Definition Audio Controller (rev ff) (prog-if ff)
        !!! Unknown header type 7f

--Shai

--- On Fri, 12/24/10, Andreas Wittmann <a_wittmann@xxxxxx> wrote:

> From: Andreas Wittmann <a_wittmann@xxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: [Sony-vaio-z-series] Vaio VPCZ1390x
> To: sony-vaio-z-series@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Date: Friday, December 24, 2010, 4:41 AM
> Hi Shai,
> 
> I think I got a similar "lovely machine".
> Product name on the machine is VPCZ13C5E, customized
> recently at sony
> online and the hardware is like that on VPCZ139E/X.
> 
> I set it up as described here:
> http://www.adhocism.net/2010/11/installing-ubuntu-10-10-on-sony-vaio-vpc-z13m9eb
> 
> Two things I did differently:
> - I disabled the nouveau nvidia driver by installing nvidia using synaptic first
> - I got the latest nvidia driver directly from nvidia downloads.
> 
> To sum it up:
> - Ubuntu 10.10 + Win7 running (dual boot)
> - Using Adam's kernel and upstart script
> - I'm using an external monitor on the docking station's
> DVI port as  main: Too bad this requires the nvidia card :-( and thus
> - I need to start the 2.6.28.10 reboot-kernel prior to
> starting 2.6.37.6
> - Suspend/hibernate does not yet work (I think I saw a post
> concerning this, but have not yet managed to try) so I simply set
> gnome to only switch of the screen when I close the labtop
> 
> One last thing:
> In order to deal with switching on/off the external monitor
> (i.e. when I want to take the machine from the docking station) I'm
> using disper: http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/disper
> 
> To switch to labtop only: "disper -S"
> To switch to external-main/labtop: "disper -d auto -e -t left"
> 
> Only flaw is the need to boot two kernels to start ubuntu... but I learned to accept that. 
> Andi