Installation of Linux on the Sony VAIO 505G

---

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

The Sony VAIO 505FX as I received it, has a 4.3GB drive, 64 MB RAM, a
VERY nice active matrix 800x600 screen, an internal 33.6/K56Flex modem,
USB port, external floppy, ONE PCMCIA slot, and port expander that
gives you the normal complement of ports. I also purchased the 14x
external CD ROM which comes with a PCMCIA ATA card.


As it came out of the box, the drive had two partitions on it.
Partition 1 had Win 98 with lots of apps on it, and Partition 4 is the
Hibernation partition, where the machine puts RAM and video data when
you put the book to sleep.  Partition 4 was something like 130MB, which
seemed like overkill to me.  I did some research, and found that the
size of Partition 4 only needs to be the size of your RAM plus about 3
MB for Video memory.  Run phdisk.exe (it's in the SonySys directory) to
resize it.  I got the partition down to about 35 MB.  fdisk reports the
parition id type as 'a0'.

Make a Win98 boot floppy, and make sure to include the atacdrom.sys
driver (in the sonysys\realmode cdrom directory).  Also copy over
fdisk, format, and xcopy32.  I actually found the easiest thing to do
was from within Win 98 to put the Application Recovery CD in and from
the "System" folder inside the recovery program, choose the middle
option....er something like SRCD?  It makes a recovery floppy for you,
but doesn't copy the driver over...go figure.  Anyway, use the recovery
utility to make the floppy, then copy atacdrom.sys to the floppy along
with XCOPY and/or xcopy32.

  Add the line: device=atacdrom.sys /D:MSCD001

to the config.sys file

  Make sure that autoexec.bat has a line that says:

	LH A:\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD001 /M:12 /L:Z

Now, you can boot from the floppy, press C to cancel, and get a minimal
system with access to the CD, which is on Z:


Use fdisk, select "Large disk support" to make a FAT32 partition of
about 900MB on partition 1.  Reboot with an old DOS boot floppy
(easiest to use a DOS 6 installation floppy), and use DOS fdisk.  It
won't recognize the FAT32 partition, so it will let you create a second
DOS partition with a "Primary Number".  Make this FAT16 partition on
Partition 2, and about 1000MB.  That leaves about 125MB of unused space
between Partition 2 and 4 for your swap.

Okay. Reboot with your Win98 boot disk. Your FAT32 partition will be
seen as C: and the FAT16 (partition 2) as D:.

Format Partition 2 D: (Since my linux installer wouldn't mount a FAT32
partition.)  In my case, with Redhat, use xcopy /s z:\redhat\ d:\redhat

(With Slackware, the directory on the CD is z:\slakware, etc.  You get
the idea...)


to copy the redhat distribution directory to the FAT16 partition.


At this point, I plugged in the Port Replicator, and connected my
parallel Zip drive.


I rebooted with the Redhat 5.0 CD in the drive and fed the notebook the
Supplemental Diskette when it asked. I gave it the info on my Zip, and
selected Hard Drive for installation method.  Use fdisk to change hda1
from FAT32 to Linux Native (type 83) and create a Linux swap partition
on hda3.


Point the installer to hda2/ for the installation files.

Cross your fingers and install!


I went ahead and answered questions about X with Generic VGA and
Generic Monitor settings, but this didn't work.  After installation,
the machine rebooted, and I was able to log in as root.

I installed pcmcia-cs-3.0.5

This is available at sunsite.unc.edu.

copy the tar.gz file into /usr/src, gunzip and untar it.

cd to the pcmcia-cs-3.0.5 directory

make config

make all

make install


Reboot, and you have access to your CD ROM on /dev/hdc

Redhat 5.0 came with XFree86 3.3.1, the XBF-Neomagic server available
at ftp.redhat.com requires XFree86 3.3.2 or higher.

So, I got the Xfree86 3.3.2 rpm, and had to force it to install.

rpm -U --force Xfree86....


Then I installed the XBF-neomagic-glibc-1.0.0-1.i386.rpm.

Change the symbolic link to "X" with:

ln -sf /usr/X11R6/bin/XBF_Neomagic /etc/X11/X


Copy your old /etc/X11/XF86Config, if you want to XF86Config.bak or
something similar.


Copy /etc/X11/XF86Config.neomagic to /etc/X11/XF86Config


startx for 8 bpp

or

startx -- -bpp 16 for 16 bit color


Voila!

Okay, so I figured out how to use the CD-ROM directly to install:

You need to feed the kernel parameters when you initially boot with LILO.

So, throw your (in my case) RedHat CD in the drive, and when you are
presented with the boot: prompt, enter:

	linux ide2=0x180,0x386

Then follow the prompts, and select CD ROM as your install method.

I've also had good results using a 3COM Etherlink III PCMCIA card,
and exporting the CD ROM drive on my desktop machine via NFS, and installing
over my BAN [Basement Area Network ;)].

There is a conflict with the IRQ for the PCMCIA slot and the internal modem.
They both want IRQ3.  I have tried editing the /etc/pcmcia/config.opts file to
"exclude irq3", but that gives me all sorts of errors, and basically makes the
PCMCIA slot unusable.

So, the biggest problem is that I cannot use the CD ROM and the modem 
simultaneously.  Ditto for a network card and the modem.
Actually, the CD ROM is even more of a pain, because once you eject it
physically or with "cardctl eject" it won't work again until you reboot.
The network card is less annoying, and I use a stupid little script
called "nickill" to temporarily kill the card. 

#!/bin/sh
 
ifconfig eth0 down
cardctl eject

You could of course, as easily make this an alias.

Another option is to use a multifunction card that has a NIC and modem in it.
Then you can use both.

I have recently upgraded to RedHat 6.0, and have lost use of my ZIP drive.  I
can't even recompile support back in...the compiler errors out when it gets
to that point of compiling the ZIP support...

06/20/99:  Okay, I've come up with a temporary solution to the ZIP drive
	problem.  There is something going on with the way the modules were
	implemented in RedHat 6.0.  I made an alias to insert the appropriate
	modules manually:
	
	alias addzip='insmod parport; insmod parport_pc; insmod ppa'

Please, bear in mind that I am a relative newcomer to the Linux/UNIX world,
and realize that I know next to nothing.  
If any Linux gurus out there have suggestions or just flat out better
methods, please let me know!

GOOD LUCK!