Redhat 7.0 on Sony Vaio PCG-XG18

For Starters Already a long time I tried with more or less success to install Linux on my Vaio XG18 notebook. It's a very nice machine, but when installing Linux there was always trouble. I tried Debian, RedHat 6.2, etc. and the OS itself would run, but X-Windows and PCMCIA would give problems. But now, with the coming of RedHat 7.0, I finally was successful. It still took me a weekend to get things figured out, but at the end my Vaio is humming along. So, if you are better prepared, by reading this, you should be able to do it in less than an evening. My story is fully focussed on RedHat 7.0 (the Guinness release ;-). I got it the cheap way from www.linuxcentral.com. Just 4 bucks excl. shipment, a real bargain. Harddisk The first problem to cope with is the 18GB drive the Vaio has. The PC architecture has a problem with booting an operating system that is installed on a partition higher than the 8GB boundary. Two solutions: Delete your C: Windows partition, create a partition of let's say 4GB for Linux and use the rest for you Windows stuff. This could be one or multiple partions. But, there is now a better way. Although RedHat says it is unsupported you are able to create bootable Linux partitions higher than that 8GB boundary. So, you could leave your factory-installed Windows partition as it is and install Linux in the remaining gigs. This is the solution I will describe in the rest of this page. OK, what to do! Put the RedHat CDROM in your drive and reboot your laptop. The machine will boot from the CD and after some crunching produce a boot prompt. Normally you will just press the Enter key, but now we type "linux lba32", of course followed by a return. That's all there is to get the Vaio to boot from a high partition. Next step. After a couple of other screens, the system asks for the "Install Type". Select "Custom System". After that, you get the choice between using Disk Druid and fdisk. I'm an old fashioned guy, so I use fdisk. But the end result should be that you create (above your Windows partition) one or more partitions with type 83 for your normal Linux stuff and a swap partition (type 82) of roughly the same size as your RAM. I have a partition of 128MB. Next you must edit your main Linux partition as "/" (root). And that's all there is with creating your partitions. However, lateron during the installation you get the issue of the booting proces. Here you have a couple of possibilities. I'm using Partition Magic's BootMagic. But you can also go for LILO. When using Partition Magic you should select your Linux partition for storing the boot record, but when you opt for LILO, you will go for the (default) MBR or master boot record. When you use BootMagic to select your partitions, you still need (I think) LILO to help you booting Linux, but you don't need the prompt to select your OS. To change that, press the GNOME foot-icon and select Programs > System > LinuxConf. In the "boot mode > Lilo > Configure LILO defaults" tree, you can deselect "Present the LILO boot: prompt". This will take care that you boot your Linux OS straight-away. The old-fashioned way to do this is to add a "timeout = 1" parameter to /etc/lilo.conf. This is way too many words spent on a simple issue :-). Now that I know the solution to use for the XG18, it's very easy. Put Linux "high-up" and use "linux lba32" as your boot parameters when installing. That's all there is to it. The rest is the standard Linux "you have hundred ways to do it" stuff. Mouse The Sony Vaio has mouse-pad and a USB port to attach an external mouse. I tried both, but I didn't manage to get the USB mouse to work. RedHat claims that it now supports USB devices, but I had no luck. Never mind, I can live with that. During the installation, RedHat fires "Anaconda", which detects a 3-button PS/2 mouse. Nearly correct :-) : I changed it to a PS/2 two-button mouse, but with the "emulate 3 buttons" option. I will do some more experiments with external mice connected to the docking station and such, but if someone discovers how to get a USB mouse going, please let me know. Display Getting the LCD to work in X-Windows, was so far the biggest headache. But not anymore with RedHat 7.0. The Vaio XG18 has a NeoMagic NM2380 graphics processor, which is now recognized by the installation program. Couple of important things: when the installation program asks for the frequencies of the monitor, stick with the "unprobed monitor", change the horizontal sync to "31.5-48.5 kHz" and leave the vertical sync at 60 Hz. This will enable a 768x1024 XVGA mode. Next, go for the default "NeoMagic 256" and select 4096 kB for the amount of graphics memory. The Sony has 6 MB, but that appears not to work in Linux and is anyway not an option in the RedHat installation program. Click "Test this configuration" to see if all works. You should get a 768x1024 checkboard pattern with a moving cursor (use the mouse-pad). Network The network story is specific for my own situation and will be different in your case. I have a 3COM PCMCIA card type 3C589D and a cable-modem network conncection, which uses DHCP. During the installation there is nothing to do related to the network configuration. After installation, you must reboot and then log in as root. Next start X-Windows with startx. Now you can either use linuxconf or (as I prefered) open a terminal window and start netconf. In the "Client tasks" tab, click "Basic host info" and enter at the "Host name + domain" prompt the name of your system. When you use DHCP, just type a single name and not something like "myname.mydomain". When you go for a fixed-IP network a double name is OK. Click "Adaptor 1" and choose the DHCP radio button. Furter, only select "eth0" from the "Net device" drop-down list. Don't enter data in any of the other fields. Click "accept", "quit" and "activate". To start using your cable modem, I had to remove my PCMCIA network-card and insert it again. It shoud give two beeps of the same (high) tone. When it does high-low, something went wrong. I can't explain why, but Gnome appears to like an extra line in the /etc/hosts file with the entry "127.0.0.1 <your-hostname>". You can do this either with vi or through the configuration utility. Wrap-up Main message is that the Vaio XG18 is now supported, including 768x1024 X-Windows. Next important thing is that Linux can reside in a high (> 8GB) partition. That's done with the (no guarantee :-) "linux lba32" boot-parameter. Additional feature that I discovered to be supported is power management. On the other hand support for a USB mouse would be very welcome. And if this page has been helpful, let me know, I can cope with some compliments ;-).

  Willem van Schaik, Calgary, June 2002     http://www.schaik.com/wwwillem.html