Sony Vaio VGN-CS21S

This is a work in-progress howto guide for installing Gentoo on a Sony Vaio VGN-CS21S (and familiar). Please feel free to update this page. Of course all editors of this page do not give any guarantees.

The basic installation of gentoo is the same as described in the Handbook. Detail for some specialties follow later in this article.

Hardware
CPU unit : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU    T6400  @ 2.00GHz RAM : 4Gb DDR2 SDRAM (2x2Gb; 400Mhz) Harddisk : Sata Hardisk of 320Gb Optical media : DVD player/burner (all types including dual layer) Screen : LCD 14.1 inch (1280x800 32bits 50Hz) Display adapter : NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS GPU (external RGB connector) Wiredlan LAN : Marvell Technology, 88E8040 (RJ45) Wireless LAN : Intel Wifi Link 5100 TouchPad : PS/2 Synaptics TouchPad Bluetooth : Modem : USB : 3 ports (version 2.0) Firewire : 1 port, Ricoh, R5C832 Card readers : 2 types (SD and Magic Gate pro) Soundcard : Intel HD Audio Controller (1 mic in; 1 headphones out; stereo speakers) Webcam : Motion eye webcam (usb; Ricoh)

The official list can be found on the Sony Website.

Below is a detailed summary generated by listing all PCI devices (with lspci)


 * 1) lspci

The below listing shows the details on the CPU unit:


 * 1) cat /proc/cpuinfo

Stage and make.conf
The core 2 processor is an x64 cpu, so get an amd64 stage. The march setting is nocona.

Kernel configuration
You can simply use gentoo-sources for this machine. For a reported working vanilla-sources configuration, see (32bit). (64bit)

Processor settings
The Core 2 Duo is a processor family type which can be selected. You also need SMP and multi core scheduler support.

IDE controller
The laptop has a SATA controller for it's HD and DVD-recorder. The following options are needed in the kernel. The manufacture and type of the SATA controller is: Intel Corporation ICH9M/M-E SATA AHCI Controller.

When correctly configured the following information about the devices can be found here: cat /proc/scsi/scsi

USB support
To enable usb for this machine activate the following options in the kernel config.

Power management
To use power management functions activate the ACPI support in the kernel config.

Wired network adapter
For the Marvell Technology, 88E8040 ethernet adapter you needed the following driver. This driver suggest that the adapter support 1Gbit although the Sony website states 100Mbit.

Wireless network adapter
For the Intel Wireless WiFi Link 5100 you need the following stuff in your kernel. Enable the "mac80211" WLAN stack and crypto options for WEP, WPA and WPA2 support.

Besides the kernel options you need to emerge a firmware package. The command to do this is:

TouchPad (PS/2)
The following option should be enabled for enabling the TouchPad.

It has been reported that the TouchPad on this keyboard reports message like this in dmesg: dmesg

It has been reported that this can be solved by providing the following option to the kernel: kernel boot option /etc/conf.d/modules

Internal Ricoh R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Card Reader
The internal Ricoh card reader is supported by the in-kernel (tested on: 3.4.0) module called MMC_SDHCI_PCI. Follow the guide at: SD_and_MMC_card_readers and enable the sdhci part. Besides the options mentioned there also enable the following kernel options:

To enable this kernel support select the following options.

Bluetooth
Bluetooth can be configured by following the comprehensive instructions in the Gentoo Blutooth Guide. Bellow is the bluetooth kernel-configuration for this laptop

Sound card
The chipset used is an Intel HDA one. The kernel-driver you need to enable is Intel HD Audio:

Emerge for the ALSA init-script.

Also see the ALSA guide for further instruction.

Videocard
You best use the binary nvidia drivers with this laptop.

Note that brightness control does not work either with the Sony laptop module or the standard video ACPI module.

Brightness can be controlled using the nvclock utility.

To install nvclock, issue the following command:

The brightness can the be set with:

Or:

See:

for more details.

These commands can be mapped to hotkeys in KDE using khotkeys in Control Centre.

You can also place an entry in rc.local to set the default brightness on boot to (eg 80%).

KDE4 users might also be interested in: kdedimmer (on sf.net). There is an (beta) ebuild file for this you can find it here:.

Webcam
The webcam in this sony vaio is called "motion eye". Unfortunately this name is used for several types of webcams. The webcam in this computer is an usb device which can easily be detected using lsusb (part of ). It is a Ricoh.


 * 1) lsusb

This webcam is supported by the in-kernel uvcvideo driver by enabling the following kernel options:

There is a simple console tool to test the webcam. Install it using this command:

Run the tool by executing:

Also see webcam.

Sony Vaio VGN-CS21S