Sony Vaio VGN-B3VP
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Introduction
This is my first attempt to write a wiki. I will try to be as helpfull as I can but I must make clear that I'm no linux genius, I'll do my best for this article, and while it is not completed I will mention so in the ending of it. Once completed the STUB marking will be removed. Of course you are free (and welcomed) to alter sections if you have a better solution/options. And please forgive my english, they are not the best but I'll try :)
Intro 2
This wiki entry will try to simplify the installation of Arch in a Sony Vaio VGN-B3VP laptop. The procedure should be the same for other VGN-B laptops, quite similar for many Vaio's (series VGN especially), and once completed it might help as a guideline for laptop installations in general. The media used for the start of this installation is Arch 0.7.1 Noodle - Base
Sony Vaio VGN-B3VP
Vaio VGN-B3VP is a small (14.1") laptop that weighs 2.3kg and it is loaded with the following:
- Pentium M 1.6GHz proccessor
- 512mb Ram
- 60gb HDD
- Wireless & Wired Lan
- X-Black lcd screen 14.1" (love it!)
- Intel 855 graphics chipset with 64mb shared ram (hate it...)
- DVD+-RW Double Layer
- 2 USB & 1 Firewire Port
- One PCMCIA slot
- MemoryStick reader
Sony sells it with estimated battery life of 8 hours... With some nice management that we'll try to explain in here you will pass 4 hours!
lspci gives this output:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02) 00:00.1 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02) 00:00.3 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03) 00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03) 00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 83) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 03) 00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) IDE Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 03) 02:04.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI7420 CardBus Controller 02:04.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments PCI7x20 1394a-2000 OHCI Two-Port PHY/Link-Layer Controller 02:04.3 Mass storage controller: <pci_lookup_name: buffer too small> 02:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB PRO/100 VE (MOB) Ethernet Controller (rev 83) 02:0b.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG (rev 05)
The laptop is also labelled (at the bottom) PCG-5B1M. This might be the chassis code number, since it is the same with the VGN-B1VP.
Basic Installation
Boot with your Arch cd-rom and install the system! Nothing special here, but in case you are a first-timer in arch or linux I'll cover some stuff. You can partition your disc any way you like, only "/" and swap are needed for a correct linux installation. As a general guideline you need to now that your swap area is good to be 2-3 times your ram size. hda5 (everything more than hda4 actually) indicates a logical partition. Hard disks can have 4 primary partitions maximum, or less primary and one logical. Inside the logical partition more partitions can be added. If you wan't more than 4 partitions total you should use logical partitions. Auto configuration of the hard disk is always an option (and not a bad one) if you don't care of loosing all your data.
My partition table is like this:
/hda1 /boot 64mb (also market as bootable from cfdisk) /hda5 swap 2048mb /hda6 /var 4096mb /hda7 /home 40961mb (~41gb) /hda8 / 12839mb (~2.8gb)
Install the packages you wan't, install a kernel and a boot loader. I always prefer a base installation and GRUB (placed in the MBR of hda). But you should feel free to to your own installation
Grub Configuration for 1024x768 in console
In the grub configuration it is not a bad idea to add "vga=773" at the end of your kernel line. This way once your laptop boots into console you will have a 1024x768 resolution (handy and nice)
# (0) Arch Linux title Arch Linux root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/hda8 ro vga=773 initrd /initrd26.img
Getting Started
Once logged in try to update the system with the latest packages.
pacman -Syu
If you wan't to use packages from the community repository edit /etc/pacman.conf and remove the "#" from the begining of [Community] and the line with the servers file.
CPU Speedsteping
Install cpudyn and acpid
pacman -S cpudyn acpid
add them to the daemons in your /etc/rc.conf and the modules listed to your modules section
modules: speedstep_centrino (from kernel 2.6.21 on don't load speedstep_centrino - load acpi_cpufreq !) cpufreq_powersave cpufreq_userspace freq_table daemons: cpudyn (only add cpudyn if you want Linux to AUTOMATICALLY scale your processor speed!) acpid
After rebooting your computer speedsteping should be working! More info for speedsteping can be found here: SpeedStep
X.org Configuration
Install X.org (more info about Xorg here: Xorg)
pacman -S xorg
You don't need to follow everything the wiki page says about X.org, since every VGN-B has the same hardware you can simply use my "xorg.conf". Below are only the sections that are relevant with the hardware.
Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "VAIO VGN-B3VP" Screen "Internal Screen" InputDevice "Alps Touchpad" "AlwaysCore" InputDevice "Configured Mouse" "CorePointer" InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard" Option "Standbytime" "5" EndSection Section "Files" RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb" ModulePath "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/PEX" # Additional fonts: Locale, Gimp, TTF... FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic" # FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/latin2/75dpi" # FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/latin2/100dpi" # True type and type1 fonts are also handled via xftlib, see /etc/X11/XftConfig! FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1" FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/ttf/western" FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/ttf/decoratives" FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/truetype" FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/truetype/openoffice" FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-bitstream-vera" FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/latex-ttf-fonts" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/defoma/CID" FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/defoma/TrueType" EndSection Section "Module" # Load "GLcore" Load "bitmap" Load "dbe" Load "ddc" Load "dri" Load "extmod" Load "freetype" Load "glx" Load "int10" Load "record" # Load "speedo" Load "synaptics" Load "type1" Load "vbe" EndSection Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Keyboard0" Driver "keyboard" Option "CoreKeyboard" Option "XkbRules" "xfree86" Option "XkbModel" "pc105" Option "XkbLayout" "us,el" Option "XkbOptions" "grp:alt_shift_toggle" Option "XkbVariant" "nodeadkeys" EndSection Section "InputDevice" Driver "synaptics" Identifier "Alps Touchpad" Option "Device" "/dev/psaux" Option "Protocol" "auto-dev" Option "LeftEdge" "120" Option "RightEdge" "830" Option "TopEdge" "120" Option "BottomEdge" "650" Option "FingerLow" "14" Option "FingerHigh" "15" Option "MaxTapTime" "180" # Option "FastTaps" "True" Option "MaxTapMove" "110" Option "EmulateMidButtonTime" "75" Option "VertScrollDelta" "20" Option "HorizScrollDelta" "20" Option "MinSpeed" "0.3" Option "MaxSpeed" "0.75" Option "AccelFactor" "0.015" Option "EdgeMotionMinSpeed" "200" Option "EdgeMotionMaxSpeed" "200" Option "UpDownScrolling" "1" Option "CircularScrolling" "1" Option "CircScrollDelta" "0.1" Option "CircScrollTrigger" "2" # SHMConfig is needed by syndaemon Option "SHMConfig" "on" # Option "Repeater" "/dev/ps2mouse" EndSection Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Configured Mouse" Driver "mouse" # Option "CorePointer" Option "Device" "/dev/psaux" Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2" Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true" Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "InternalMonitor" VendorName "Monitor Vendor" ModelName "Monitor Model" HorizSync 28-50 VertRefresh 43-75 Option "DPMS" EndSection Section "Device" (ignore the "</i>", they are because wiki takes them as html formating... do not ignore the - i don't know what they mean!) ### Available Driver options are:- ### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False", ### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz" ### [arg]: arg optional
#Option "NoAccel" # [<bool>] #Option "SWcursor" # [<bool>] #Option "ColorKey" # #Option "CacheLines" # #Option "Dac6Bit" # [<bool>] #Option "DRI" # [<bool>] #Option "NoDDC" # [<bool>] #Option "ShowCache" # [<bool>] #Option "XvMCSurfaces" # #Option "PageFlip" # [<bool>] Identifier "Card0" #Driver "i810" Driver "intel" # The i810 driver has been replaced with intel VendorName "Intel Corp." BoardName "82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device" BusID "PCI:0:2:0" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Internal Screen" Device "Card0" Monitor "InternalMonitor" DefaultColorDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Depth 16 Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" EndSubSection SubSection "Display" Depth 24 Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" EndSubSection EndSection Section "DRI" Mode 0666 EndSection
Please note that the keyboard and fonts sections are for my configuration (greek characters). The standby time is for shuting off your screen (at least that's what it does until now to my laptop). I don't know what all the above options do, some are marked out as you can see. I leave them all here, if anybody knows more than me he's welcomed to change the settings. For the mouse you will need the synaptics driver, so keep on reading!
Synaptics Mouse Driver
Your Vaio is using a synaptics touchpad, although it works in X wihout drivers it is better to add them, after all they are installable through pacman. After that you should be able to scroll down by simply rolling your finger in the right area of the touchpad (like the windows driver)
pacman -S synaptics
LCD Screen Dimming
By lowering your LCD's brightness you can gain battery life and reduce eye fatigue. There are many sites on the internet explaining how to dim the brightness on your Vaio, however most of the sites mention info for older laptops, and not for the VGN series.
Simply add the sony_laptop module to the list of modules in /etc/rc.conf, and then reboot. Screen dimming applets (such as the LCD Brightness applet for Gnome Panel) should then work correctly.
OLD CONFIGURATION INSTRUCTIONS
To be able to change the brightness you need the sony_acpi module. You can get it from Stelian Pop's website (get the sony_acpi.tar.gz). To install it do the following:
tar xvf sony_acpi.tar.gz cd sony_acpi make (ignore the error messages) cp sony_acpi.ko /lib/modules/2.6.15-ARCH/kernel/drivers/acpi (replace 2.6.15-ARCH with your kernel version) depmod -a modprobe sony_acpi
Now you will find an entry in /proc/acpi/sony/brightness The value of /proc/acpi/sony/brightness may be between 1 (relatively dark) and 8 (bright). Use the following command to dim the lcd to your liking (replace the number with any number from 1 to 8)
echo "4" > /proc/acpi/sony/brightness
Info taken from this site
Audio
Install the following packages:
pacman -S alsa-oss alsa-lib alsa-utils
For your card to work correctly you must mute the External Amplifier. To do so run alsamixer. Find the "EXTERNAL" option and mute it. Also unmute and give a setting in "Master" and "PCM" (give something not to loud, just an option to have after every boot, values about 40 will do fine) now run
alsactl store
to store the current settings (with the external muted), and edit /etc/rc.local and add the following line in it
alsactl restore
now everytime your computer boots the stored values will be automatically restored to your Vaio.
Wireless Network
The wireless network seems to be working fine once I installed the ipw2200 package:
pacman -S ipw2200
now by an iwconfig I can se its settings, if the wireless switch is ON it says unassociated and if not it returns "radio off"
Laptop Mode Tools
The Linux kernel, starting from version 2.6.6, contains a feature called laptop mode. This feature is also present in the Linux 2.4 series starting from version 2.4.23. When you enable this feature, Linux allows your hard drive to spin down more often, resulting in significant power savings. To make laptop mode work, you need to install some scripts and configure some things. The Laptop Mode Tools package contains everything you need to make laptop mode work. (taken from Laptop Mode Tools Website)
To install laptop-mode-tools:
pacman -S laptop-mode-tools
to be continued
Uknown if they work
I can't test the following, so as to find out if they work:
- PCMCIA Slot
- MemoryStick Reader
you are welcomed to help of course :)
To-Do List
- laptop-mode-tools
- Suspend to disk/ram (once I find out how to do it)
- Fn-Keys (if I manage to get them working)
- S keys
- External VGA (I will try to find this out)
To Check List
- http://web.tagus.ist.utl.pt/~ricardo.cruz/sonyDebianHowTo/debian-vaio-fs215s.htm#Section_VIII
- http://web.tagus.ist.utl.pt/~ricardo.cruz/sonyDebianHowTo/set-brightness
- http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-2674579.html#2674579
Links
- http://sousmonlit.dyndns.org/~niol/playa/oss:debhowto:vaio_vgn-b1vp
- http://www.seismo.ethz.ch/linux/sony_vaio_t1xp_linux.html
- http://www.popies.net/sonypi/
- http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsamwel/laptop_mode/tools/
Mandos 23:30, 25 January 2006 (EST)
Other
For More Info about Linux & Laptops:
- This report is listed at the TuxMobil: Linux Laptop and Notebook Installation Guides Survey: Sony.
- http://www.linux-on-laptops.com