Gentoo and Sony Vaio VGN-FZ180E – part 2: Video

This vaio comes with a Nvidia GeForce 8400M GT and is listed this way under gentoo:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0426 (rev a1)

It works nice with gentoo 2.6.24-r3 (latest stable kernel) by emerging nvidia-drivers. Since the most recent driver is still masked in portage, it’s need to add to file /etc/portage/package.keywords:

x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers

and then “emerge nvidia-drivers”. The version 169.2 will be installed.

WARNING: be sure that your kernel has the flags CONFIG_SYSVIPC=Y and CONFIG_UNIX=Y (Support for Unix domain socket. I don’t know why this two options are disable by default in the 2.6.24-r3 kernel)

To load the driver, “modprobe nvidia”

To instruct the X server to use nvidia libraries, use the command “eselect opengl set nvidia”. After that it’s needed to change Xorg.conf. Relevant parts is show below:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "true"
Option "UseEvents" "false"
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
Option "TripleBuffer" "true"
EndSection


Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "extmod"
Load "type1"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx"
EndSection

The emerge that installed the drivers also installed a nice utility under gnome, the Ndivia X Server Settings, that allow to change the brightness of the screen:

Gentoo and Sony Vaio VGN-FZ180E – part 1: Sound

This laptop comes with a sound card listed this way under Gentoo:

# lspci | grep -i audio
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)


Latest kernel 2.6.24.3 comes with Alsa 1.0.15, that works just fine to support this card.
So what is need is to enter kernel config and select the following choices:

Device Drivers ---> Sound ---> <M> Sound Card Support

Inside “Advanced Linux Sound Architecture” select the following modules:

<M> Advanced Linux Sound Architecture
<M>Sequencer Support
<M>OSS Mixer API
<M> OSS PCM

Inside “PCI Devices” select:

<M> Intel HD Audio
[ ] Build hwdep interface for HD-audio driver
[*] Build Realtek HD-audio codec support
[*] Build Analog Device HD-audio codec support
[*] Build IDT/Sigmatel HD-audio codec support
[*] Build VIA HD-audio codec support
[*] Build ATI HDMI HD-audio codec support
[*] Build Conexant HD-audio codec support
[*] Build C-Media HD-audio codec support
[*] Build Silicon Labs 3054 HD-modem codec support
[*] Enable generic HD-audio codec parser

That’s it for the kernel. After recompiling your kerner and reboot, edit file /etc/modprobe.d/alsa and add the following line:

options snd_hda_intel model=vaio

Load the module as “/etc/init.d/alsasound start”. Here are the modules loaded to me:

# lsmod
Module Size Used by
snd_hda_intel 269724 1
snd_pcm 61704 1 snd_hda_intel
snd_timer 19716 1 snd_pcm
snd 46948 5 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore 7264 1 snd
snd_page_alloc 10120 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm


In order to change sound levels, one option is to use alsamixer, that comes with “emerge alsa-utils”. Here’s a screenshot:

After all that, the sound works nice from the main speaker, the earphone jack correctly mutes the main speaker when plugged, and the internal microphone that comes with this vaio also works well. You can test-it using Skype echo test.