sony-vaio-z-series team mailing list archive

[Bjorn Wesen <bjorn.wesen@xxxxxxxxx>]

[sorry for not replying to the thread directly - I didn't find any
function in launchpad to do that...]

Hi Glenn,

as I'm considering a new Vaio Z too I'd just like to ask three short
follow up questions since you seemed to have installed Ubuntu
recently:

- did you get any feeling for if the battery life is much worse with
Ubuntu than Win7?
- is the fan sound annoying? does the fan turn on even when idling?
(this is important :)
- did you try the external Radeon yet?

Best regards,
/Bjorn

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi All,

Also new here. At the weekend I installed vanilla ubuntu natty on my
vaio vpc217gg. Almost everything works straight up - as demonstrated
with Live CD.

I have not yet tried any additional scripts or newer versions of the
sony-laptop module or any other special tweaks.

There is one important gotcha - partitioning - see below.

What works:

Intel graphics works fine. Full HD.
Audio including microphone ok.
Brightness controls work fine.
Suspend and hibernate work.
Bluetooth won't turn on. Needs investigation.
Existing ssd raid0 detected and working fine. Dual boot with existing
windows 7 installation.
Battery life very good.
Touchpad works.
wireless and wired ethernet ok.
external media dock is detected and radeon graphics. Ubuntu installs
driver - but i haven't had time to test it yet. Still using intel
graphics.

The glitch is that using the graphical or alternate install....
      - the original partition table is restored after rebooting after
installation completes.
That means you are presented with a "grub rescue" prompt and are
unable to boot the system.

At that point, the Win7 filesystem has been shrunk, but it now sits in
a partition that is too big for it. I
 - rebooted from the install CD, and followed the install (including
activatiing the ssd raid),
 - drop out to a shell when the installer is ready to partition the disk.
 - Used "resizentfs -i" to work out the size of the Win7 filesystem,
 - Use "fdisk /dev/dm-0" to delete the Win7 partition and recreate it
to just accommodate the size of the Win7 filesystem with a little
safety margin
 - Use fdisk to create a new linux and swap partition in the left over space.
 - Reboot - just to be sure the partition table is saved this time....
 - Follow installer again up to the point of partitioning the disk -
and YES, the new partition table is saved.
 - Select the new, empty partitions for installing linux - for a
second time. luckily it is very fast on this laptop :-).
 - Reboot when doen - all good. I can now dual boot into Windows or Linux.

If you are prepared in advance - what may work for you is to take
precautionary action during the initial install:
 - Use alternate install disk (though graphical might work OK too).
 - Shrink the Win7 partition during installation and partition the
disk as normal
 - Drop out to a shell before proceeding with install (Alt-F2)
 - fdisk /dev/dm-0
 - Type "u" and "c" as recommended so that you can see partition
layout in blocks.
 - Use the "p" command and record the exact layout of the partition
table (just in case!!!!!)
 - Use "w" command to force the partition table write.

If you are feeling lucky, proceed with the install, or reboot into the
live cd and check the partition table has been saved. If it hasn't,
recreate the exact layout you recorded above manually with fdisk and
reboot again. Then proceed with the install.

Oh - and did I mention - this is an awesome laptop - and even better
with linux onboard :-).

Cheers,
Glenn.