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VPCS111FM Linux Install Problems (OpenSuse, Ubuntu, Gentoo)

post #1 of 13
3/31/10 at 2:36am
Thread Starter 
Hello,

So i've recently gotten a vpcs111fm as i wanted a small yet powerful notebook.
Not too long after getting it i repartitioned it so i could install a linux disto, usually opensuse. Grabbed a 64bit version of opensuse 11.2, went through the install without a hitch, the boot loader comes up (thankfully so i can still get into windows 7), but no matter which options i try to use for booting into linux, it makes it most of the way through starting then i just get a blank black screen at which i cannot ctrl alt del, ctrl alt backspace or any of the F keys, have to hard reset.
With Ubuntu and Gentoo the same thing happens but part of the way through the install.
I've been searching around on linux, sony, and general laptop forums looking for similar problems but haven't found any real solutions.
For the life of me can't guess what could be causing this, so any ideas for things to try will be welcomed.

Thanks in advance for any possible solutions!
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post #2 of 13
3/31/10 at 12:05pm
I am moving this to Linux Section. Hopefully Seablade can give you some pointers.

cheers ...
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post #3 of 13
3/31/10 at 5:48pm
If you hit ESC during the boot screen, you should see a bunch of text, what text is leading up to the part where it freezes?

Seablade
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post #4 of 13
4/1/10 at 5:48pm
Thread Starter 
Hey there,

YEah i had been watching that but it didn't make much sense to me... when booting OpenSuSe 11.2 64bit, the screen goes black and the computer becomes completely unresponsive to anything, ctrl+alt+del, ctrl+alt+backspace, alt f1 f2 etc right after i see the HAL daemon load. It would be one thing if it were just something to do with the x server and i could kill it then get into cmd line to play with it, but nothing.
Can't get other distros to even finish installing.
Only open i have in the bios is to enable or disable intel virtualization. tried installs with it on and off, no difference.

Any advice is very much appreciated. Thanks for the response!
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post #5 of 13
4/1/10 at 9:18pm
Hmm... at this point I gotta look up the switch to pass to grub to disable acpi on most distros, as that would be my next try as some manufacturers break things in nasty ways with that, but really it would be an issue of disabling as much as I could via grub and restart. Poke me in a day to remind me to get back to this, I am in the middle of a rehearsal atm and can't look it up.

Intel VT extensions probably wouldn't cause this, they really should only affect VM host abilities.

Seablade
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post #6 of 13
4/2/10 at 1:08am
Thread Starter 
Sure thing, just to let you know, the same thing happens when loading OpenSuSe 11.2 failsafe which disables a lot of things, i'll mess around with disabling acpi through grub and see what happens.
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post #7 of 13
4/2/10 at 1:18am
Thread Starter 
Alright so i had these options available for the opensuse grub loader.. pci=noacpi. acpi=oldboot, and acpi=off
tried them all, same thing still.
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post #8 of 13
4/2/10 at 3:01am
I think the laptop is too new for those distros yet... More than likely the video card is the issue, loading the video module, even in safe mode... I am not a fan of SUSE, however try the latest live CD versions and see what happens, don't install to the hard drive... Also SONY have a habit of putting the recovery partition at the front of the drive, which I have found causes issues with some distros on installation with a dual boot....

Another thing you can do is put a clean unformatted hard drive in and install your distro to that and see if the same thing happens...

The main thing I come across with new hard ware and the latest public release of a distro is wifi card compatibility, use NDISwrapper for that...
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post #9 of 13
4/2/10 at 9:59am
Oh this is a Sony laptop? Yea that can cause all sorts of fun then... Ill be back later today to look into this farther.

Seablade
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post #10 of 13
4/3/10 at 12:36am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr T View Post
I think the laptop is too new for those distros yet... More than likely the video card is the issue, loading the video module, even in safe mode... I am not a fan of SUSE, however try the latest live CD versions and see what happens, don't install to the hard drive... Also SONY have a habit of putting the recovery partition at the front of the drive, which I have found causes issues with some distros on installation with a dual boot....

Another thing you can do is put a clean unformatted hard drive in and install your distro to that and see if the same thing happens...

The main thing I come across with new hard ware and the latest public release of a distro is wifi card compatibility, use NDISwrapper for that...
Mr T is on to something here methinks.

I took a look around, it seems that the newest kernel versions seem to support booting on this laptop, earlier stuff didn't. This also means that most distributions probably won't work as they are released right now.

All that being said, try development versions of distros and see if they work. OpenSuse was recommended above, I would actually try the betas of the upcoming Ubuntu myself. There are still some issues but from what I saw with a quick Google, it looks like the betas at least boot the basic sony hardware involved.

Seablade
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post #11 of 13
4/3/10 at 2:02am
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the suggestions... i'm downloading the current ubuntu lucid and 10.04 betas, will give them a try and see what happens.
Will let you know how it goes.

Thanks again!
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post #12 of 13
4/4/10 at 6:03pm
Thread Starter 
Success!! The copy of Ubuntu 10.04 Beta 64bit is working so far without any problems.
Can't help but wonder if it is that it's newer hardware or if it's a sony issue, prehaps a combination of them both.
Either way, i'm liking this release of Ubuntu even though i'm used to OpenSuSe and Gentoo.
Thanks for all your help guys, i really appreciate it.
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post #13 of 13
4/4/10 at 6:10pm
It is likely a combination of both. Sony is pretty unfriendly to Linux on its computers(And now on its PS3 as well apparently) and has lots of issues that come up when trying to install Linux on them. Also it is new hardware so drivers have to be written or adjusted for it on that account as well.

Seablade
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