Installing linux on the Sony vaio pcg-u1 over the network

be sure to check out the running linux page once you've gotten off the ground with this info

Here's a screenshot to whet your appetities

As of 2002/08/17 sony's vaio pcg-u1 is one of the smallest complete laptops on the market (unfortunately it's only available in the japanese market). Much like its bigger brother the picturebook c1 series, the u1 has no internal removable media. If you shelled out the extra cash for the bootable floppy or cd/dvd drive, then installing a new os is mostly straightfowrard.

But what do you do if you dont have the floppy or dvd? well, theres actually a lot you could do. my first attempts of just booting a debian installation via loadlin failed horribly. looking around showed loadlin and winxp not playing well together. i found some references to how winxp bootloader worked for multibooting and very carefully proceeded to make drive d: into a dos bootdisk. after i had things up and running, i found just how much work and worry i went through for nothing.

in the bios (hit f2 while the sony logo is coming up) there is an option to enable network booting. what now? the u1 has a built in realtek 8139 10/100 nic with PXE booting support. Wonderful! I wish i could have known before delicately playing with partitiions. Booting via PXE allows great failsafe, as if i mess up i can at least start the system from scratch and wont have the one of the smallest super high tech paperweights.

so before you go any further, enable network booting in the bios and read on. i'll be updating this page whenever anything new pops up.

here you'll find everything i used to install linux on the u1 via the network. i've archived the tftpboot directory i used to install linux:

• tftpboot.tar.bz2 (dl my tftpboot)
• tftpboot/ (browse my tftpboot)

aside from these files, you'll need:

• dhcp server (example tftpboot/dhcp.conf is for ISC dhcpd v3)
• tftpd-hpa (needed by pxelinux.0, any tftpd supported by pxelinux works)
  **NOTE** i had problems with tftpd-hpa running via inetd. i just ran it standalone: /usr/sbin/in.tftpd -l -s /tftpboot

that's it really, then just install as normal.

• keyboard type is jp106 , works wonders
• i used the experimental xfree 4.2.x packages for sid, 4.1.x wont recognize the display with the ati driver (although the vesa driver works)

what else did i do while playing around:

• deleted the second partition (hda5) and replaced it with:
  • 1gb fat32, hda5 (for sharing between linux and xp)
  • 500mb swap, hda6
  • 500mb spare, hda7
  • 8gb linux partition, hda8
• made an image of the first partition over the network with dd and ssh in case i mess something up real bad
• voided my non-existant warranty to check out what the harddrive looked like: it's a toshiba model, slightly smaller than a pcmcia type 3 card with a modified compact flash connector (modified in that there's a round and an oval socket flanking the cf socket, to make sure the drive isn't plugged into the ribbon cable the wrong way )
• dual booted as described http://www.xminc.com/linux/WindowsXPGrubMandrake82.html
  • installing lilo into /dev/hda8 instead of /dev/hda
  • dd if=/dev/hda8 of=bb-lilo.lnx bs=512 count=1
  • copied that file onto /dev/hda5 (new smaller drive d:)
  • rebooted into windows, copy d:\bb-lilo.lnx c:\bb-lilo.lnx, added c:\bb-lilo.lnx="Debian" to c:\boot.ini (you may need to attrib -s -h -r c:\boot.ini first, be sure to +s +h +r when done)
  • be sure to update bb-lilo.lnx when installing a new kernel
• dual booted with GRUB, boots xp without hitch

TODO

• sjog likes to stop working on me randomly, without errors
• sjog mouse events don't work like real mouse events, namely holding down the back button registers a click same as tapping the back button
• i get very different results when compiling a -y4 kernel. by different, i mean broken. whatever the reason, i am no longer having difficulty compiling with the patches AND getting a functional result. currently using kernel 2.4.18 found here
• wmacpi doesnt report battery stats
  it appears the -y4 kernel and wmacpi don't agree on what /proc/acpi/battery/ should look like. here you'll find my binary and source debian packages
• acpi sees the battery as type non-rechargeable, seems cosmetic
• need to work on suspend and hibernate modes
• 3d is slow, do the gatos drm and drivers work? should try them out

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