Sony Vaio VGN-FE890

From Gentoo Linux Wiki

[edit] Gentoo Linux on a Sony Vaio VGN-FE890

This Sony brand laptop works particularly well with Gentoo Linux, and possibly other distributions as well.

[edit] Current Status

• What is working
  • Sound
  • Video w/ Accelerated Graphics
  • Wireless LAN
  • Ethernet LAN
  • Modem
  • Memory Card Slots
  • Internal Webcam
  • DVD/CD Burner

• What isn't working
  • S1 & S2 keys

[edit] Sound

The sound card for this laptop is reported as an Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller. Fortunately for us, the stock ALSA driver snd_hda_intel (from either the kernel or the alsa-drivers package) will work for this card. Here's the kernel configuration option you'll need to select:

Device Drivers  --->
    Sound  --->
        Advanced Linux Sound Architechture  --->
            PCI Devices  --->
                [M] Intel HD Audio  --->

If you're not following the developer's recommendation by using the alsa-drivers package instead of the built-in kernel drivers, you'll need to add this line to your /etc/make.conf:

ALSA_CARDS="hda-intel"

Now just reboot into your new kernel, or load the required ALSA modules and you're all set!

[edit] Internal Microphone

The internal microphone required an extra bit of tweaking in order for it to work. Just open up /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base (or create it) and put the following:

options snd-hda-intel model=vaio position_fix=0

Now run # update-modules to commit the changes, and reload the sound card module.

[edit] Video

The graphics card is an nVidia GeForce Go 7400. Getting it to work was a fairly trivial operation; just follow the guide at NVIDIA drivers for the details.

[edit] WLAN

See this guide.

[edit] Ethernet LAN

The ethernet controller is reported as an Intel Corporation PRO/100 VE Network Connection. The stock kernel driver works well on this occasion:

Device Drivers  --->
    Network device support  --->
        Ethernet (10 or 100Mbit)  --->
            [*] Intel(R) PRO/100+ support  --->

Now just rebuild the kernel, install, reboot, and enjoy!

[edit] Modem

The modem is supported by the hsfmodem. See this guide.

[edit] Memory Card Slots

The memory card reader on this laptop is reported as a Texas Instruments 5-in-1 Multimedia Card Reader (SD/MMC/MS/MS PRO/xD). The in-kernel drivers don't seem to fair very well for this do-it-all card reader, so we'll grab some (Experimental!) third party drivers instead. Open up a terminal so we can grab the drivers from their subversion repository:

# svn checkout svn://svn.berlios.de/tifmxx/trunk tifmxx

Now enter the tifmxx/driver directory and execute a # make to build the drivers and # sudo make install to install them.

[edit] MS/MS PRO/MS PRO DUO Support

The following patch file will enable the building of the tifmxx MemoryStick drivers. Just save the following text as Makefile.patch in your tifmxx/driver directory and execute # patch -p0 < Makefile.patch to apply.

--- Makefile    2007-09-17 10:17:25.000000000 -0400
+++ Makefile    2007-09-16 11:53:26.000000000 -0400
@@ -19,8 +19,12 @@
        mkdir -p $(MODULE_INSTALLDIR)
        rm -f $(MODULE_INSTALLDIR)/kernel/drivers/misc/tifm_core.ko
        rm -f $(MODULE_INSTALLDIR)/kernel/drivers/misc/tifm_7xx1.ko
+       rm -f $(MODULE_INSTALLDIR)/kernel/drivers/misc/tifm_ms.ko
+       rm -f $(MODULE_INSTALLDIR)/kernel/drivers/misc/memstick.ko
+       rm -f $(MODULE_INSTALLDIR)/kernel/drivers/misc/ms_block.ko
+       rm -f $(MODULE_INSTALLDIR)/kernel/drivers/misc/mspro_block.ko
        rm -f $(MODULE_INSTALLDIR)/kernel/drivers/mmc/tifm_sd.ko
 
-       install -c -m 644 tifm_core.ko tifm_7xx1.ko $(MODULE_INSTALLDIR)/kernel/drivers/misc/
+       install -c -m 644 tifm_core.ko tifm_7xx1.ko tifm_ms.ko memstick.ko ms_block.ko mspro_block.ko $(MODULE_INSTALLDIR)/kernel/drivers/misc/
        install -c -m 644 tifm_sd.ko $(MODULE_INSTALLDIR)/kernel/drivers/mmc/
        /sbin/depmod -ae

Now execute # make to build the drivers, and # sudo make install to install. To load the drivers at each boot, I put the following in my /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6:

tifm_ms
mspro_block

[edit] Internal Webcam

The internal MotionEye webcam is reported by # lsusb as being manufactured by Ricoh Co., Ltd. The drivers for this webcam are located here. Download and extract the drivers to a directory of your choosing, then execute # make to build and # sudo make install to install.

The module is called r5u870, and can be loaded with the requisite call to modprobe; # sudo modprobe r5u870.

Further information about this driver can be obtained from the r5u870 website