Installing Linux on Sony R505EL laptop

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Two Redhat installs, 20+ kernel recompiles, 2 XFree86 compiles, and much hacking.
That's what it took to finally get linux working on my laptop. But it was worth it. :)
I've made this help page so that if you have an R505 (or similar model), hopefully you won't have to spend so much time on liberating your computer from Micro$oft.

This assumes you know how to compile a kernel and patch stuff. Also, to do most of the stuff on this page you have to be logged in as root.

Install redhat 7.3. (hard drive install)

Boot and then execute the i830-16bit program to get X to start in 24bit mode. (To use the i830-16bit program, compile it with gcc i830-16bit.C -o i830-16bit).

X will most likely start, but will have a strange distorted stripe across the middle.

Compile kernel 2.4.18:

patch with Sam's megapatch (patch -p0 < vaio-2.4.18.patch). Copy his config file to .config in your linux source folder.

patch with agpgart patch (patch -p0 < agpgart-I845G-fix-2.4.19-pre9.diff.txt)

Compile kernel: make clean, make xconfig (I just loaded it and then quit), make dep, make, make bzImage, make modules, make install, make modules_install, /sbin/lilo

Reboot with new kernel.

See if X works (must execute i830-16bit first - add this to /etc/rc.local to get it to load automatically on boot).

X probably won't work. (will have the weird stripe across screen).

Recompile and patch XFree86:

I used X 4.2.0 source: X420src-1.tgz X420src-2.tgz X420src-3.tgz

Extract the 3 source files
mv xc xc.orig (just so the patch will work)
patch -p0 < 1mb-stolen-fix.diff.txt
make World
stand on your head for half an hour, or eat caramels *
make install

Restart X.
Pray that it's fixed. (it should be).

If you have trouble configuring X (Xconfigurator might help), you can look at (or try out) my X config files: XF86Config XF86Config-4
(I think only XF86Config-4 is used in current X versions, but I'm providing the other file anyway).

Miscellaneous:

Install sjog-0.5-1.i686.rpm to get jog dial working.
do modprobe -d sonypi. (sonypi was probably compiled as a kernel module, and you'll want to add it to /etc/modules.conf to get it to load auto on boot).
now, dmesg | grep sonypi and check what the minor number for sonypi is. execute mknod /dev/sonypi c 10 *minor #*
My minor number was 63, your's will probably be the same if you have the same hardware.

Sound:

Should work after compiling the kernel with Sam's megapatch. Use the OSS driver in xmms. You may need to adjust volume levels with aumix. If sound doesn't work, make sure the audio modules are loaded. (lsmod... try modprobe i810_audio if they're not in there).

IEEE CDRW/DVD:

Using the ACPI and IEEE drivers from the patched kernel, everything should be set up to use the cdrom drive. I just needed to do modprobe ohci1394; modprobe raw1394 and then mount /dev/scd0 /mnt/cdrom However, cd audio does not appear to work. I've only tested with kscd.

Wireless card:

I was setting up a Linksys WPC11 PCMCIA card. If you are using a PCMCIA wireless card also, you should be able to do the same thing. (But if you have the Lucent cards, Lucent provides their own linux software).

Extract pcmcia-cs-3.1.32 (or more current version) to /usr/src/
make config (give default answers)
make all; make install

Extract linux-wlan-ng-0.1.14-pre1.tgz
make config (give default answers)
make all; make install

Setup /etc/pcmcia/wlan-ng.opts and wireless.opts to your network's settings (SSID, WEP if applicable)

References

Much thanks to Jon Gans and Sam Revitch's pages on installing linux on laptops. Gans provides the patchs to X to get the display working, and Revitch provides the megapatch to the kernel.

Jon Gans' page: http://www.jongans.com/gateway1450.html
Sam Revitch's page: http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/samr7/upl/
Sjog homepage: http://sjog.sourceforge.net/

* When you think about it, it's just as arbitrary as coffee. (-Good Will Hunting)