Sony Vaio Pro SVP-1x21

This document will guide you through the process of installing Arch Linux on the 2013 Sony Vaio Pro.

Pre-installation

BIOS Configuration

Get into the BIOS by pushing the assist button when the system is shut off and then hitting Start BIOS Setup. Do not try to boot from your usb key using recovery mode, instead change the boot order in the BIOS. Make the following changes:

Intel(R) AT Support System	[Disabled]
Secure Boot			[Disabled]
External Device Boot		[Enabled]
Select 1st Boot Priority	[External Device]

If you want to use the legacy boot (non-EFI), change:

Boot Mode			[Legacy]

Install media

• When installing via UEFI from USB create an UEFI bootable USB from ISO
• When booting from USB you might need to append libata.force=noncq to the kernel parameters to avoid problems with the SSD. You may even need to make this a persistent kernel parameter when booting from the SSD after installation.
• Some users were not able to boot when using the rear USB port labelled with a lightning bolt. so use the other one in that case.

Installation

Dual-boot

Windows fast boot mode overwrites your EFI variables. To keep your bootloader in working order, fast boot needs to be disabled. See Dual boot with Windows#Windows settings.

The laptop firmware seems to have a preference to boot Windows even when other bootmanagers are present.

A solution is to move your bootloader to a recognized location such as /EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi [1]

It is important to add the EFI entry with the label "Windows Boot Manager" and /EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi as path, else Sony firmware does not load it.

Add the EFI entry for your bootmanager with:

# efibootmgr -c -g -d /dev/sda -p 1 -w -L "Windows Boot Manager" -l '\EFI\Boot\Bootx64.efi'

Verify that your bootloader is in the first position of the boot order with:

$ efibootmgr -v

Reboot and see if your bootloader is loaded. If it does not work you can try to delete the windows boot entries with the -B -b 000X flags where X is the number of the windows efi entry.

If you cannot boot anymore to windows with this error message:

The boot configuration data for your PC is missing or contains errors.
File :\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD
Error code: 0xc000000f

then follow these repair steps: http://woshub.com/how-to-repair-uefi-bootloader-in-windows-8/

Post-installation

For a faster boot, do not forget to undo these BIOS settings:

External Device Boot		[Disabled]
Select 1st Boot Priority	[Internal Drive]

Hardware support

Sound

As the Installation guide suggests, install alsa-utils and follow this guide to get started. Works out of the box, although main sound card may have index 1, making it non-default (index 0 is taken by Intel HDMI). To fix this, edit /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf (near line 68):

/usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf

defaults.ctl.card 1
defaults.pcm.card 1

Touch screen

Tapping works out of the box. Multitouch gestures work after installing the driver Multitouch displays#eGalax and using touchegg Multitouch displays#Gestures.

Note: touchegg is no longer required in Gnome 3.14 for multitouch gestures.

Keyboard backlight

Works out of the box. Enables in low amblient light and a key press, turns off after about 20s. Can be customized by modifying kbd_backlight and kbd_backlight_timeout found in:

/sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/

A simple shell script for toggling the backlight, bind to a keyboard shortcut for easy use:

#!/bin/sh
path="/sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/kbd_backlight"
if [ $(<$path) -eq 1 ]
then
	newval=0
else
	newval=1
fi
echo "$newval" > $path

Make sure that you can write to this file without root privileges:

# chmod +w /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/kbd_backlight

Monitor backlight control

Works out of the box with xorg-xbacklight. By default the backlight is only adjusted by 1% per button press. This can easily be fixed by binding those keys to a xorg-xbacklight command. Desktop environments like Xfce do take larger steps by default.

With KDE 1% adjustment can be fixed by the kernel parameter video.brightness_switch_enabled=0. This will disable kernel driver 1% adjustment, then KDE PowerDevil correctly adjust brightness by 10% and shows gauge window. There is no need to bind keys.

Trackpad

Works great with the xf86-input-synaptics driver. A good base config can be found here.

Toggle TouchPad via Fn+F1

The hotkey that toggles the TouchPad can be configured using acpid. Create the following two files to do so:

/etc/acpi/events/toggle-touchpad

event=button.fnf1 FNF1
action=/etc/acpi/actions/toggle-touchpad.sh "%e"

Note: This file must be marked as executable.

/etc/acpi/actions/toggle-touchpad.sh

#! /bin/sh
PATH="/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin"

# Modern method, for Linux 3.11 or later.
sys_enable_file=/sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/touchpad
if [ -r "$sys_enable_file" ]; then
  read -r is_currently_enabled < "$sys_enable_file"
  echo > "$sys_enable_file" $((1 - $is_currently_enabled))
else

# Older method: have the X11 driver do it
  export DISPLAY=:0
  USER=`who | grep ':0' | grep -o '^\w*' | head -n1`

  if [ "$(su "$USER" -c "synclient -l" | grep TouchpadOff | awk '{print $3}')" == "0" ]; then
      su "$USER" -c "synclient TouchpadOff=1"
  else
      su "$USER" -c "synclient TouchpadOff=0"
  fi
fi

Note: Restart acpid.service after adding the files.

Fan control

Works well out of the box. It stays quiet during normal load. Change profile by editing thermal_control found in /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/. Available profiles can be found in thermal_profiles in the same directory.

Charging

Set the maximum charge to 50/80/100% by modifying battery_care_limiter found in /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/.

In order for changes to take effect, it may be necessary to execute:

# echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/battery_care_limiter

USB ports

Some users are having issues with the usb port labeled with a lightning bolt not working for anything but charging. This is a known issue for many Sony laptops.