The following relates installation of Fedora Core 3 on a Sony Vaio VGN-A170P laptop. This should work on most of the laptops from the VGN-A* series as they are basically variations on the same core.
IntroAfter acquiring one of the superb Vaio VGN series laptop, with its wondrous 17" 1920x1200 ultrabright display, I decided to install Fedora on a partition to coexist with the original WindowsXP. I'm trying to cut down on my dependency on Windows software, and as I preach for a greater use of Linux and OSS in the business world, I have to do as I say. InstallationI won't go in the details of partitioning the drive. there are a number of utilities that do that very well. I just created a 15GB partition, changed the boot sequence in the BIOS (press the F2 key when booting) and booted from a Fedora Core 3 boot CD. I generally use network installation as I have copied the full install on one of the servers on my network and shared them using NFS. If you have the FC3 DVD or set of CDs, you'll do just as well although it will be a bit slower. Just make a standard install, be carefull not to install over your existing Windows partitions and to avoid touching the first partition of your drive which contains the recovery data for your laptop.
Check that Grub will give you a choice of OS when you boot and then choose the packages you want to install. grub should be installed on the Master Boot Record (MBR) of the hard drive, UpdateThe first thing to do is to update the distribution before we start tinkering with it. Open a terminal, insert the Fedora Core installation disk and, once the CD/DVD has been mounted, type the following to ensure that the digital signatures for the verification of packages are loaded: # mount cdrecorder # rpm --import /media/cdrecorder/RPM* I also recommend to use the DAG repository as it contains a lot more intereting packages:
Create the file [dag] baseurl=http://apt.sw.be/fedora/$releasever/en/$basearch/dag gpgcheck=1 enabled=1 Get Dag's Dag's PGP key, save it and import it as we did before: # rpm --import RPM-GPG-KEY.dag.txt We are now ready to update and isntall anything we want: # yum -y update The One thing to do is to remove unnecessary services that consume resources on your machine: you can use the Services applet from the menu System Settings -> Server Settigns -> Services.
You can generally remove services such as Reboot and you're done. To install a new application, say # yum -y install mplayer It will download everything needed for mplayer to work, resolving dependencies for you. Graphic DisplayFor some reason, the Fedora tools have a hard time picking up the right display settings for the configuration, so we need to edit the Here are 2 versions:
Note: don't use the Screen Resolution or Display Config tools found in the Applications menu, they would mess up the config file. Textmode DisplayThe default textmode display used by the kernel when you boot is horrendous: doesn't cut it at all on such a beautiful machine capabable of so much more. modprobe radeonfb service gpm restart clear This will load the proper framebuffer kernel module to drive our ATI card to its fullest, and reload the textmode mouse driver to take advantage of our new whooping 240x75 resolution, that's bout 18k of screen space or 9 times the default resolution. Note: you will still boot in the default textmode until all the services are loaded. To make the kernel switch to the ATI framebuffer we would need to recompile that support into the kernel rather than being an external module. You would then be able to add a simple FontsThe stock fonts are quite horrible and look quite bad. The best thing I found was to import the True Type Fonts from my existing Windows setup and use those instead:
Open the Font Preferences dialog under Application -> Preferences -> Fonts and select the following:
Under the Font rendering section, click Details... :
Under Mozilla/Firebird, under Edit -> Preferences..., General Tab, click Fonts & Colors...:
Now all those parameters suit me most, you may find others better suited for you. I'm a bit disapointed though that fonts are still an issue to get right. The results are not so pleasing. Wireless adapterOnce you have updated your installation with yum as mentionned above, you will notice after rebooting that the wireless network adapter will have been detected and configured automatically as Note: Don't try to set up the wireless before you've up updated your system. It would be hard work for nothing. Function buttonsThose little buttons that adjust brightness, volume, eject the CD need special software to work. Fortunately, some nice people have done most of the hard work for us:
rpmbuild -tb spicctrl-X.Y.tar.bz2 rpmbuilt -tb sonypid-X.Y.tar.bz2 cd /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386 rpm -ivh spicctrl-X.Y.i386.rpm rpm -ivh sonypid-X.Y.i386.rpm Now the problem is these utilities by themselves don't do much, in particular Kevin J. Smith has a few more information on his Sony Vaio page, but doing as he said would do nothing for me, so I rolled a very quick and very dirty script to load at boot and control the basic stuff:
And that's it. The Mute button doesn't need the Anyway, just copy the following into a file #!/usr/bin/perl -w my $settingfile = '/etc/sonystuff.brightness'; #Get the last brightness setting at boot `spicctrl -b\`cat $settingfile\`` if -e $settingfile; #Awaiting events from the sonypi kernel module forever open SONYPI,"/dev/sonypi"; my $b=""; do { read(SONYPI,$b,1); $b = ord($b); if ($b==27) { `eject cdrecorder`; } elsif ($b==16 || $b==17) { my $bright = `spicctrl -B`; chomp $bright; fiatLux($bright - 20) if $b==16; fiatLux($bright + 20) if $b==17 } } while(1); #Change the brightness setting and save it sub fiatLux { my $lux = shift; $lux = 0 unless $lux > 0; $lux = 255 unless $lux < 255; `spicctrl -b$lux; echo $lux > $settingfile`; } I told you, this is very quick and dirty, but it will work and save the brightness setting accross reboots. chmod 755 sonystuff mv sonystuff /usr/bin Then call our script from modprobe sonypi /usr/bin/sonystuff > /dev/null & Note: Don't forget the Not particularly elegant, but effective for now. If I have more time and the incentive to to better, I'll post it here in a future update. Bits and Tips
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Comments FuzieFriday 21 June 2013, at 11:22 GMT+8 [X] I am also facing the same issue..Even after criaetng this symlink and adding the -Dorg option in my eclipse.ini file also my Eclipse is crashing for every simple content assist.I also tried starting my Eclipse as super user. Still the error exists..Please let me know if any other thing needs to be done to get this resolved.Eclipse 3.5( Galileio) on Fedora 16Thanks,Ravi MakibulFriday 21 June 2013, at 18:25 GMT+8 [X] Any ideas on how to apply this to SSMS 2012? I'm not seeing the resgrtiy key. This color scheme is awesome would love to use it in 2012. Any ideas on the font, colors etc might have to manually edit it for the time being.Thanks! WimpySaturday 22 June 2013, at 01:38 GMT+8 [X] There is a third method just set the parssowd for the root user!neo:/home/neo> sudo passwd rootEnter new UNIX parssowd:Retype new UNIX parssowd:passwd: parssowd updated successfullyneo:/home/neo>It might also be necessary to set up root's home directory in /etc/passwd, a trivial task for an experienced admin.Of course, this method sort of defeats the whole purpose of disabling the root user, but IMHO that's just stuff and nonsense. The root user has the power to destroy the entire system. The Ubuntu default strategy is to put 5 keystrokes between an inexperienced admin and Armageddon.sudo rm -rf /usr/bin(seen it happen)s.u.d.o.space, 5 keystrokes. There's some safety. That's like using toy balloons for airbags. So long as you don't drive into a tree, they work fine. |