sony-vaio-z-series team mailing list archive

["Jon Young" <jon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Below is a brief summary of what I've found to work to get kubuntu 10.10 installed and almost fully functional on my Z (vpcz133gx).  I haven't had time to make this as newbie friendly as it should be.  Many thanks to all of you who put in the real work to make this happen, I've just documented a bit of what to do but all of you did the real work that makes this possible.  I hope this helps someone.

set switch to speed
in bios, set clock, enabled TPM, confirmed boot order, enabled VT
booted from hirems and selected mini XP with USB drive also connected
partitioned usb as big ntfs drive using disk management, rebooted back into mini XP
formatted usb drive and confirmed usb drive letter and started ghost32.bat from the HBCD menu - took 22:33min to dump drive (1.2GB/min).  File is a bit under 22G with 'fast' compression
reboot with kubuntu 10.10 x64 alt cd (usb drive unplugged)
select install kubuntu
set keyboard correctly (the install chose us-intl but this is just us std so I had to fix that later)
go manual on drive partitioning and delete the partitions
run guided partition creation with LVM encryption passphrase 
accept the defaults
add your user
don't encrypt the home directory since we are already doing full disk encryption
first boot had blank screen
edit grub for nomodeset nosplash, remove quiet acpi_sleep=nonvs
(not sure if acpi_sleep is required still)
now edit etc/default/grub and grub-update
install Adam's kernels, boot into 2.6.28 and then back to .37  (step only required if you haven't hacked the bios)
install nvidia binary drivers
edit fstab for noatime
copy my stuff (63G in 16min direct connected over network!!)
change phonon to internal audio for each group
hack bios and set video to static (removes the need for the 2.6.28 reboot hack)
install current natty kernel from ppa (I installed 2.6.37 release mainline build)
download the current sony np0.9np7 and setup dkms to autobuild
edit /etc/pm.d/default to include ADD_PARAMETERS="--quirk-test --quirk-s3-bios --quirk-s3-mode" (reported to be necessary for intel suspend/resume but I haven't tested the necessity)
install uswsusp (seems to be critical for suspend/resume to function)
change knotify to have no audio (apparently improves battery dramatically)

what works:
everything except that listed below
I can even run my external 24" monitor at full 2048x1152 on the nvidia over hdmi along with the 1600x900 Z screen (not tested in intel yet)
4-5hrs of battery on speed with wireless off and browser closed (flash is a battery killer) and no additional tuning

quirks:
after rebooting in a different video mode (e.g., stamina versus speed) kde will restart during the login sequence.  reinstalling nvidia-common seems to fix it even if in stamina mode.

what has trouble:
on stamina: the cleanup script doesn't seem to work correctly as the stamina sensor doesn't exist in sys in the current natty kernel.  removing the xorg.conf (as the script would have) seems to allow X to work ok.  resume then gives a black screen; this is hopefully an easy fix but I haven't yet looked into it much
no brightness control on nvidia
microphone
I think the Bluetooth module is a broken after resume but as I haven't actually had a need for it so I haven't investigated at all; this is hopefully as simple as configuring the modules to properly unload/reload

untested:
express card
sd slot
memory card slot

still to do:
migrate from the kubuntu 10.10 default dm to mdmadm to realize the performance boosts reported by others