Ubuntu Linux on a Sony Vaio PCG-Z600NE

Today I installed the Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty) preview release on a Z600 NE Sony Vaio laptop. (This page also contains a few notes made when using later releases).

The Ubuntu install process is pretty slick. I had to enter just one or two keystrokes during the install process, and ended up at a perfectly-configured gdm login prompt, with lovely fonts and all the rest. I highly recommend giving Ubuntu a try (especially if you already like Debian).

One or two things I had to tweak by hand:

Fix corrupted mouse pointer

Ubuntu correctly sets up the neomagic driver for graphics. But I needed to add the line
Option "SWCursor" "true"
in the Section "Device" section of /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 to get rid of some slight screen corruption around the mouse pointer.

Hardware clock in local time

During the install I did Ubuntu seemed to assume I wanted my hardware clock to keep UTC rather than local time. Since I sometimes boot into Windows, I need the latter. The fix is to change UTC=yes to UTC=no in /etc/default/rcS , set the clock to the correct time (with date --set), and then run /etc/init.d/hwclock.sh restart.

The default behaviour may well have changed for the final "warty" release. I'm hoping something got added to the Ubuntu installer so it asks you if you want your hardware clock in local time (perhaps only if it sees you have another OS installed).

Automatic ifup

I doubt this is needed on more recent Ubuntu versions... Just a note here that to get the ethernet interface for the PCMCIA wifi card to ifup automatically when the card is inserted (and during bootup if the card is present), I needed to change NET_AGENT_POLICY to auto in /etc/default/hotplug and make sure the interface is listed as 'auto' in /etc/network/interfaces.

Irda (infra-red) port

I got this working with Ubuntu Dapper (didn't really try before now). Here's how:
  1. Install irda-utils, ircp, obexftp

    2. Update: actually, turns out irda-utils is cleverer than I thought. Just doing /etc/init.d/irda-setup restart ; /etc/init.d/irda-utils restart, or rebooting, should get it working! Looks like it will do (or avoid the need for) all of the following manual steps:

  2. Add these lines to the bottom of /etc/modprobe.d/irda-utils: 

    alias irda0 nsc-ircc
options nsc-ircc dongle_id=0x09 io=0x3e8,0x3e8,0x3e8,0x3e8 irq=10,10,10,10
  3. Make sure setserial /dev/ttyS2 uart none is invoked now and at each startup (perhaps after resuming too?). I did this (untested) by creating /etc/serial.conf containing these two lines: 

    /dev/ttyS0 uart 16550A port 0x03f8 irq 4 baud_base 115200 spd_normal skip_test
/dev/ttyS2 uart none
    (I copied the first line from /var/lib/setserial/autoserial.conf)
  4. (probably not necessary) modprobe irda0
  5. irattach irda0 -s - I guess this needs to be done after each reboot or before each use of the irda port
  6. echo 115200 > /proc/sys/net/irda/max_baud_rate (without this, transfers fail with the message "IrLAP: No activity on link" in the logs as it tries to run too fast for the device/mode I was using). This presumably needs to be done each session, too.
The port should then be ready to use. I transferred files to and from my mobile phone using ircp. To hotsync with my Palm Tungsten I had to also load the modules irtty_sir and ircomm_tty.

Seb Wills, 10th October 2004 (irda info added 27th October 2006)