Installing Fedora Core 6 and 7 on Sony Vaio VGN-FJ170/B (v1.0)

his guide is based on my Installing Fedora Core 5 on Sony Vaio page. If you have an interest in helping to get Linux running on this laptop I encourage you to join the mailing list I've set up and help out.

Having owned several laptops I now realize there are only a couple things that are truly important. Size (small but not too small) and a great screen. Based on those two needs I chose the Sony Vaio VGN-FJ170/B (decoding the model number: FJ series with 1.7Ghz processor in Black)

Please also refer to my Fedora Core 6 Tips & Tricks or Fedora 7 Tips & Tricks. These tips work pretty much the same on both of those versions of Fedora. If you're using Fedora 8 there are some things that now "just work" such as Wifi and other things that I haven't yet figured out how to get to work such as Fn key support.

his guide is based on my Installing Fedora Core 5 on Sony Vaio page. If you have an interest in helping to get Linux running on this laptop I encourage you to join the mailing list I've set up and help out.

Having owned several laptops I now realize there are only a couple things that are truly important. Size (small but not too small) and a great screen. Based on those two needs I chose the Sony Vaio VGN-FJ170/B (decoding the model number: FJ series with 1.7Ghz processor in Black)

Please also refer to my Fedora Core 6 Tips & Tricks or Fedora 7 Tips & Tricks. These tips work pretty much the same on both of those versions of Fedora. If you're using Fedora 8 there are some things that now "just work" such as Wifi and other things that I haven't yet figured out how to get to work such as Fn key support.

Hardware Summary

* Processor: Intel Pentium M 740 @ 1.73Ghz / 533Mhz frontside / 2MB L2 cache
FJ180 has Pentium M 750 @ 1.86Ghz
* RAM: 512MB DDR RAM (1 of 2 slots populated, max 2GB)
* Hard drive: 100GB SATA
* DVD drive: Ricoh Double-Layer DVD+/-R burner
* Screen: 14.1" TFT WXGA 1280x800 with XBRITE-ECO
* Video: Intel 915GM
* Ethernet: Integrated 10/100 LAN
* Modem: unknown
* Audio: Intel 82801FB High Definition Audio Controller
* USB: Three USB 2.0 ports
* Wifi: Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG

For those interested here is the full lspci output:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/PM/GMS/910GML Express Processor to DRAM Controller (rev 03) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 03) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 03) 00:1b.0 Class 0403: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 03) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 03) 00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 03) 00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 03) 00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 03) 00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev d3) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 03) 00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) SATA Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03) 06:08.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10) 06:09.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI7420 CardBus Controller 06:09.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments PCI7x20 1394a-2000 OHCI Two-Port PHY/Link-Layer Controller 06:09.3 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments PCI7420/PCI7620 Dual Socket CardBus and Smart Card Cont. w/ 1394a-2000 OHCI Two-Port PHY/Link-Layer Cont. an 06:0a.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG (rev 05)

Fedora Core 6 Compatibility

* Audio: OK
* Video: OK
* VGA Output: NOT YET
* Touchpad: OK
* Wifi: WITH WORK
* DVD/CD: OK
* Ethernet: OK
* PCMCIA: OK
* Power Management:
o Battery Meter: OK
o Screen blanking: OK
o Suspend/Hibernate: OK (Yeah, it just works)
o CPU Frequence Scaling: NOT PERFECTLY
* Modem: PROBABLY NOT
* USB: OK
* MemoryStick: NOT YET
* Built-in Video: WITH WORK

Please note I've also created a very low volume mailing list to discuss Linux on Sony Vaio FJ series notebooks. You can sign up HERE
Preparing for the install
The system comes preconfigured with a hidden partition #1 that contains system recovery data. I don't recommend touching that. The main NTFS partition is #2 which I resized using the built-in tools in the Knoppix distribution. It was tricky but worked fine. I've used Partition Magic in the past which I find is more work because you need to boot into XP and install the software for it to work.

I'm told that Gparted available at http://gparted.sourceforge.net/ is a very easy way to resize an NTFS partition. It has a downloadable live CD which is only 22.5MB and has an easy to use interface for re-sizing partitions. I have no experience with it but other people reported it works great.

Please note this is not an easy laptop to get going with Linux and the steps outlined below are not intended for Linux novices.
Install Fedora Core 6
You should be able to install Fedora normally on this laptop. The display is configured perfectly without any tweaking necessary.

It probably wouldn't hurt to do a yum -y update as soon as you get everything installed.
Configuring the audio
In my case the audio was muted by default. The easiest way is to start the audio applet in Gnome and bring up the Preferences. In my case the device was wrong, it was using the OSS driver which is not correct. Choose the HDA Intel (Alsa Mixer) and the device to track and control should be Front for the master volume. Once that's set Open Volume Control and unmute the Front and PCM sliders. If they don't show up in the master volume control hit Edit -> Preferences and choose all the tracks to be visible in the controller.
Controlling screen brightness
The main reason I chose a Sony notebook was for the incredibly bright screen. No other manufacturer was as good at the time I bought it (Dec 2005). However, once the brightness was set in Windows XP it was not possible to adjust it in Linux. Unlike other laptops that implement screen brightness in hardware Sony for some idiotic reason chose to do it with a driver. That also means that it's probably not going to work under Windows Vista when/if that ever gets released.

It is possible to get it to work but a little tricky. First, you'll want Stelian Pop's sony_acpi driver which I modified slightly as well as the fsfn-1.1-take2.tar.gz. Put the files in /usr/src and extract and compile them. You'll obviously also need kernel sources and a compiler in case you didn't install them previously.

# yum -y install kernel-devel gcc
# gtar xzvf sony_acpi-0.3.tar.gz
# cd sony_acpi-0.3
# make install
# modprobe sony_acpi

Please note that you will also have to re-install the driver when you upgrade to a newer kernel.

If that worked you should have a directory /proc/acpi/sony and it will contain three files. You can manually adjust the brightness by echoing numbers between 1 and 8 to the brightness file.

Now you need to get fsfn to handle the special Fn keys and it will then control the audio volume and screen brightness for you and will display the new value in an on screen display. You'll need the xosd and alsa libraries installed for this to work properly.

# yum -y install xosd xosd-devel alsa-lib-devel
# gtar xzvf fsfn-1.1-take2.tar.gz
# cd fsfn-1.1
# ./configure
# make install
# cp fedora/fsfn /etc/init.d

Before you start you'll probably want to read the fsfn(5) man page and create the configuration file /etc/fsfn.conf containing at least the following line to enable a special hack necessary for the VAIO FJ series of notebooks:

BRT_HACK_FJS=1
ALSA_NAME=Headphone

Setting the ALSA_NAME is a hack to make the volume work. For some reason with FC6 the main volume controller is named Headphone instead of Front so until we find a solution to the naming problem this workaround will allow the Fn buttons to control the main volume.

To get this all working you'll need to start the fsfn service at boot time (after the driver above is loaded). Rather than having it start automatically I added it to my startup file /etc/rc.d/rc.local :

service fsfn start

And finally you will need the client that handles the on screen display to start when you log in. Go to Desktop -> Preferences -> No Preferences -> Sessions. Once there go to Startup Programs and add the command fsfn -o to the list of startup programs.

Once you do all that you should be able to adjust the volume and screen brightness with the special Fn keys just like in XP.
Configuring Wifi
This laptop is based on the Centrino chipset which is well supported by Linux. However, some distributions like Fedora do not include the necessary firmware for the Wifi interface so you'll have to download it. The easiest way is to download it from the FreshRPMs repository. If you followed my Fedora Core 6 Tips & Tricks already then you can skip the first line.

# rpm -ihv http://ayo.freshrpms.net/fedora/linux/6/i386/RPMS.freshrpms/freshrpms-release-1.1-1.fc.noarch.rpm
# yum -y install ipw2200-firmware
# modprobe ipw2200

That will load the driver which will now have access to the firmware so the interface will come up automatically from now on. You can now set up your wireless interface as you would normally.
Built-in Video
This laptop has built-in video which until recently was a proprietary Windows driver only. But thanks to the wonderful work found at http://mxhaard.free.fr/ the camera can be made to work as a standard Video 4 Linux device very easily. Just download the latest gspcav1 driver from http://mxhaard.free.fr/download.html and extract it. Then you can just run the compile script.

# gtar xzvf gspcav1-20070426.tar.gz
# cd gspcav1-20070426
# ./gspca_build

That will build and install the kernel drivers. You will need to re-run that after upgrading your kernel. If you run dmesg you could make sure this driver loaded and successfully found the camera.

# dmesg
.
.
/usr/src/gspcav1-20070426/gspca_core.c: USB GSPCA camera found.(VC0321)
/usr/src/gspcav1-20070426/gspca_core.c: [spca5xx_probe:4041] Camera type YUYV
/usr/src/gspcav1-20070426/Vimicro/vc032x.h: [vc032x_probe_sensor:137] check sensor header 44
/usr/src/gspcav1-20070426/Vimicro/vc032x.h: [vc0321_config:354] Find Sensor OV7660
/usr/src/gspcav1-20070426/gspca_core.c: [spca5xx_getcapability:1198] maxw 640 maxh 480 minw 176 minh 144
usbcore: registered new interface driver gspca
/usr/src/gspcav1-20070426/gspca_core.c: gspca driver 01.00.16 registered

Then you can test to make sure the camera works by using an application such as VLC. Just open it as a local video capture device and you should then see yourself on the screen.