Linux users of Sony Z1 series

[Brouard Nicolas <>]

Hi all,

Mandrake 10.1 Official is about to be distributed. Mandrake 10.1 Community, which has been released last month, was really buggy and offered too few benefits compared to a Cooker version. Official version fixes lot of bugs.

10.1 official has a 2.6.8.1 kernel (12mdk). The kernel is compiled with APIC and unfortunately the nolapic boot option makes the boot hanging. This was a known bug since 2.6.7 and we were obliged to compile the kernel without APIC in order to "power off" the Sony and some other laptops. Somebody from Intel found the bug very recently and gave a 2 lines patch (against 2.6.9rc4) but too late to be incorporated into 10.1 Official. It will probably be included in an update.

So I compiled a new kernel 2.6.8.1-13mdk and, more important, explained on the updated web page http://sauvy.ined.fr/~brouard/sony, how to add a patch in such a distribution in order not only to have a patched kernel (this is explained everywhere) but to get a new rpm which can be shared. I have had difficulties to find such information and give it back on the web page.

- The Alps touchpad patch is still not included and my patched kernel (13mdk) includes the Dmitry' Alps patch. 
- Alps touchpad works fine on Xorg which replaced XFree86. 
- Udev replaces devfs which can (has to?) be removed.
- Win4lin is working too (see the special 13w4l rpm).
- Kernel 2.6.8 merged many patches coming from software-suspend and software-suspend 2 which will be unified in the future. The command echo 4>/proc/acpi/sleep works fine now (suspend to disk) and I decided to use it, ie with the standard kernel software-suspend . We still need a script for the clock and some unsafe modules for resuming like usb-storage. But I am very satisfied until now. Swsusp2 is available in a module since version 102 but currently you can't boot without the module said Svetljo (kernel maintainer).
- Evolution 2 is included. It is an enhanced version compared to 1.4 with a better integration with Gnome. But the upgrade is risky for your databases. If you have a huge addressbook exports it a big VCF file before upgrade.
- I made an experimental rpm for Shelton's Sonyxosd-1.3. But the service has to be restarted after resuming. And Xosd doesn't work on my X server configuration because of a lack of Xshape Extension. I used sonyxosd, but without on screen display.
- ipw2200 is included in the distribution but I haven't tested it because I lost my Wifi router somewhere in a meeting...

I am back to an operational laptop but spent some hours to understand the upgrade and sending bugs to bugzilla. I hope that, for people using Mandrake, the updated web page will be useful.

Cheers,

Nicolas