Installing Slackware Linux 13.1 on Sony Vaio VGN-C140G

Last updated: 28 August 2010
Note: No Longer Maintained, Laptop Given Away.

This is my laptop, facing open. The built-in Memory Stick Pro reader is on the right bottom.

My laptop, closed

This is my laptop, lid closed.

My various Memory
Stick hardware

My various Memory Stick related hardware. From left to right: ExpressCard 5-in-1 reader, Memory Stick Duo Adapter, and 4 GB Memory Stick Pro Duo card.

General Hardware Specifications of Sony Vaio VGN-C140G:

Hardware Components	Status under Linux	Notes
Intel Pentium Core 2 Duo 1.66GHz (each)	Works
13.3" XWGA LCD with XBRITE-ECO	Works
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950	Works	Does not like VESA modes. Do not know how to switch between external and internal monitor in Linux without restarting computer.
2GB PC4200 RAM	Works
250 GB Western Digital Scorpio 5400 rpm SATA	Works	Not original equipment: an upgrade.
Built-in Memory Stick reader	Works	Compatible with Sony Memory Sticks up to 4 GB in size.
Marvel Fast Ethernet 10/100	Works
Internal 56k Modem	Doesn't Work	I don't care. Removed it.
CD+/-RW, DVD+/-RW / DL drive	Works
Intel 3945 series Wireless Card	Works
Lithium-Ion Battery (not sure total capacity)	Works	I get about 2.5 hours life on it in Linux so far.
Texas Instruments PCIxx12 Cardbus Controller	Works
Texas Instruments PCIxx12 OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller	Works
Keyboard Media Keys	Work
Sony VGA-MCA20 5-in-1 Memory Card Adapter	Works	Reads xD, SD, MMC, and Memory Stick Pro up to 4 GB in size, and Memory Stick Pro Duo (with adapter). Not compatible with SD HC or any cards larger than 4 GB in size.

This laptop is operating under Kernel version 2.6.34.1

Basic Installation of Slackware 13.1 Linux:

I use Slackware Linux because I am familiar with it. I also like its stability, predictability, ease of use (believe it or not), and the fact that there are no disappointments with it like with other distributions. Better to promise nothing and deliver everything than to promise something you cannot deliver ("Hope deferred makes the heart sick").
I installed Slackware on a "fully" encrypted disk (everything except /boot). The instructions are available as README_CRYPT.TXT on the Slackware mirrors. I have mine set up using LUKS via one password. I also encrypted my external hard drive using LUKS. This configuration helps quite a bit because if someone steals (or I lose) my laptop or external hard drive, I do not have to worry about them stealing my information. I did not use the 256 bit encryption key size specified, however: I went with the default (128). So far I do not see much of a slow-down.
I get Slackware Linux from the Slackware Linux website.
Installing Slackware Linux is easy if you follow the directions. See below, however, for additional advice.
I do a lot of post-installation tweaks. I have a running package repository on my machine courtesy of Robby Workman, Eric Hameleers, and Slack Builds dot org. The few packages that I have compiled myself are listed here.
Most my security related tweaks are found here and my configuration items here.
I add a firewall to /etc/rc.d/rc.firewall. This is very easy, and Slackware is already programmed to run this script if it exists. Here is a link to the Easy Iptables Firewall Generator that Eric Hameleers maintains.
I did a little benchmarking. There are some raw device read times at the bottom of this page. Also, I benchmarked the various filesystems against each other using a 1GB SD Card that I had lying around. I will say that before EXT4, XFS was the best filesystem to use. It is still a very good filesystem to use due to the features such as a defragmenter and its ease of use of large files. However, I benchmarked based on actions I typically perform, such as upgrading software due to security patches, and building kernels, and EXT4 was faster than XFS. My default filesystem is now EXT4.
Just because the Slackware installer has ext4 selected doesn't mean that it is the "default" filesystem. In my opinion it is just where the cursor begins when you get to choose your filesystem.
If you are worried about the supposed "write hole" problem with EXT4 (i.e. losing files in a power outage, something I never experienced), add the auto_da_alloc, journal_checksum, and data=ordered options in your /etc/fstab per the manual page.

Setting up additional features for Slackware Linux:

If you're like me, you got annoyed when Slackware 13.1 booted up and chose your screen's maximum resolution, making the text almost unreadably small. To change this, set video= in your lilo.conf append statement to video=800x600 or whatever you wish. My eyes tend to like 800x600 on this laptop.
Slackware 13.1 ships with cryptsetup and Xfce not liking each other (not Slackware's fault: the fault exists in cryptsetup and Xfce). I suggest recompiling cryptsetup to the latest version and then upgrading Xfce to the one Robby Workman has in his repository. Also, you may need to fix udev a bit (read here for how to fix it, but only if you run into further problems).
Slackware 13.1 ships with KNotify that crashes all the time for no apparent reason. The fix is here: basically you tell it to use an external sound player. That and I disabled sound notifications altogether in KDE (because I'm not into KDE so much). Seems to have fixed the problem.
To use wicd (in /extra) to graphically select your wireless network, you must add such a user to the netdev group. Otherwise they will not be allowed to manage network devices.
This is the first release of Slackware Linux where, even when installed as a fully encrypted hard drive using the instructions in README_CRYPT.TXT, you can hibernate the machine (suspend to disk) and it works both in saving and restoring from. Just make sure you follow the directions and specify at boot "resume=/dev/cryptvg/swap". As of writing this, Slackware Linux 13.0 and higher are the ONLY Linux distribution I know that you can install completely encrypted hard drive and the system not break itself. Ubuntu didn't seem to have the option (though you can hack it and make it work), Mandriva 2010.0 Free had the option but at first system update it broke, etc.
Slackware no longer requires an xorg.conf for the Intel graphics card.
Previously you had to recompile your kernel because Slackware's default generic-smp kernel did not have the scheduler timers that PowerTop required, and was missing some laptop-friendly power-saving tweaks. However, now Patrick has included these, and PowerTop comes with Slackware, so recompiling the kernel (at least for me) is no longer required.
The touchpad on this machine works fine. It is an ALPS PS/2 touchpad. I don't bother using any enhancements. In fact, I usually specify "options psmouse proto=exps resetafter=1" in /etc/modprobe.d/psmouse.conf with good effect. This disables any fanciness I don't need while ensuring that tap-to-click, and double-tap-and-drag work properly. Previously, you had to do this to get tap-to-click and other things working. Now for some reason Xorg likes to add scroll regions to the touchpad (which annoys me) so I'm still specifying these module options, but for most of you it is no longer required.
To create a script that backs up your important information, just add the script to /etc/cron.daily/ as "backup", i.e. name the script and make it executable. From there it's very easy. You can look at my own backup script, found here. It uses rsync. I typically do not use a cron job to update my machine because it is a laptop and, due to my work schedule changing often, this can lead to lack of updates to my backups. Therefore, usually I manually run my backup script at every night via an icon on my XFCE4 desktop (see my Xfce page for more information on the stuff you can do to customize Xfce).
I used to defragment my filesystem once a week when using XFS. My defrag script is located here. The reason I run LILO afterwards is because if a kernel image is moved during resizing, the result is that your system will not boot if you did not update LILO. Personally, I prefer LILO to GRUB, for those of you thinking that GRUB would be the way to fix not having to do this.
When using the built-in Memory Stick Pro card reader, memory cards are created as /dev/mspblk0 and then partitions on them as /dev/mspblk0p1, etc. With Slackware 13.1, now these pop up on the desktop in Xfce automatically (before you had to add an /etc/fstab entry).
I noticed that Slackware specifies no options to tmpfs in /etc/fstab, meaning half your RAM becomes a tmpfs file space at /dev/shm. I have yet to meet anyone using Slackware whose tmpfs is actually being utilized. I have yet to see it get used. On my own system, I specify "size=1m" in /etc/fstab options for tmpfs so that it uses only 1 MB of RAM. So far I have yet to see any adverse effects, but change the size of tmpfs only with caution. Supposedly the Synaptics driver for Linux uses tmpfs, but since this laptop doesn't have a Synaptics touchpad. Since I prefer /tmp to get cleaned at poweroff, I sometimes set up /tmp to be tmpfs by specifying "tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,mode=1777,size=128m" in /etc/fstab.
I made a custom acpi_handler.sh script. I started off first with a logger that simply showed me what was going on by logging to /var/log/acpi. After this, I started adding features to it. I used to use it to change CPUFreq scaling governors, but now the Xfce power manager thingy does this for me. I will add features as I have the time, but for now it's at least useful so that you can see what is going on and then possibly take actions on it. My acpi_handler.sh script typically only contains some entries for tweaking the virtual machine via /proc and setting hard drive power features using hdparm.
The media keys on this keyboard work, you just need to map them. I use Xfce so I use their keyboard shortcuts thingy. As for the volume up/down, this works, because Xfce's keyboard preferences uses XF86AudioRaiseVolume to run "aumix -v+10", and XF86AudioLowerVolume to run "aumix -v-10", etc. These just tell aumix program to raise/lower the volume by 10 percent (roughly). You can therefore adjust how much raising / lowering you get by adjusting the command. As for screen brightness, now Xorg sees these buttons and already maps them so that the Xfce power manager turns up/down the LCD brightness (previously you had to map these also).
If you are using a "fully" encrypted hard drive setup, make sure you use a proper initrd (see /boot/README.initrd, the mkinitrd manual page, and README_CRYPT.TXT on the install CD/DVD for more information). Remember that -r is the root crypto device (/dev/cryptvg/root for example) and -C is the partition (/dev/sda3 for example). Note that now you can suspend to disk ("hibernate"), so be sure to put udev and set the suspend partition (/dev/cryptvg/swap) and you should be good to go.

Unresolved issues:

This graphics card does not like VESA modes in Slackware 13.1. Be sure you use "vga=normal" in your lilo.conf statement, at least for now. As of Slackware 13.1, the inteldrmfb module / driver automatically loads at boot and sets up framebuffer. I do not know how to control what mode it switches to as of right now because it appears not to honor vga=normal entry in lilo.conf.
I cannot figure out how to switch between local LCD and external VGA monitors at will on Slackware 13.1. Basically, restart your computer with the external monitor plugged in and hope it doesn't look like garbage. I've ran the church slide projector from my laptop using that method.

Configuration Files:

xorg.conf (no longer needed due to new Xorg in Slackware 13.0 and higher)
If you really want my kernel config, here it is for kernel 2.6.34.1.
lilo.conf

Detailed Specifications:

lspci
hdparm test of local Western Digital Scorpio WD2500BEVS-00UST0 Hard Drive (firmware: 01.01A01): cached reads: 834.99 MB/sec, buffered disk reads: 56.95 MB/sec.
hdparm test of local optical drive (PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-K16M, DL): cached reads: 896.02 MB/sec, buffered disk reads: 2.93 MB/sec.
hdparm test of local card reader: Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo 4GB: cached reads: 748.36 MB/sec, buffered disk reads: 6.80 MB/sec.
hdparm test of a Sandisk Cruzer Titanium 4GB USB stick: cached reads: 862 MB/sec, buffered disk reads: 18.44 MB/sec.
hdparm test of a 512MB SD Card in the Sony Memory Card Adapter: cached reads: 768.23 MB/sec, buffered disk reads: 8.04 MB/sec.
In a real world read test of Slackware 12.2's packages (i.e. slackware-12.2/slackware/*/*.tgz), I got the following for sustained read performance: it took 1 minute 45 seconds to read all those from my USB Sandisk Cruzer 4GB drive, 2 minutes 45 seconds to read from my onboard Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo reader, and 4 minutes 30 seconds to read from my onboard DVD drive. However, since installation of Slackware takes about 12 minutes, due to writing to the onboard hard drive, installation media speed may not be much of an issue. Note that if your install media is the same as your install target (like installing from one partition on the hard drive to another partition on that same hard drive) your install and upgrade speed will be slower than using a separate drive.

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