Installing Ubuntu on my Sony Vaio Notebook
Filed Under (Linux) by cranst on 20-08-2006
In the past, I’ve always run into trouble running Linux Live CDs or install CDs because my Sony PCG-R505DL Notebook’s optical drive is in a docking station, which connects internally via IEEE1394. When these CDs would load Linux, they would boot, but as soon as the kernel was loading, the necessary IEEE1394 drivers were disabled, which killed the installs. The newest version of Ubuntu had no issues with this, so they must have addressed the issue. However, the Live CD was very slow to load and when I finally got it loaded, I chose the Install option, which took 4 minutes to even acknowledge the command. Once it started, I was greeted with a screen that told me to select the language to be used on the system, but the list hadn’t been completely rendered. Another 3 minutes passed before the list appeared. English was selected as the default, so I clicked on Forward, but it is taking a long time for this ‘click’ to execute. Very very slow so far. Oddly enough, I can hear the CD cranking, but the screen hasn’t changed yet. In fact, the screen ironically says I will need to answer a few questions and the install will begin from the HDD rather than the CD to speed things along. Here I am waiting for the first question to go away, so I can answer the others and get started. Also, the screen says, ‘Answering the questions should only take a few minutes,’ but I think in reality the questions only take a few seconds to answer while the loading of the answers is going on 45 minutes now. Why is the process so slow? Installing on a desktop machine only takes about 40 minutes from start to finish, so this is beyond me.
What happened?!?!?! Don’t leave me hangin, bro!
Well, I left it going through the night and it made absolutely no progress at all. I’m wondering if my hardware is giving out or if I have some ‘special needs’ configuration. I’ll probably try to do some sort of net install or something.
Trey, awesome! I am doing the EXACT same thing (trying to install Ubuntu 6.06.1 Desktop on to my Sony PCG-R505DL) and encountering the EXACT same situation (slow as snail up to language selection, then nothing). I’m on night-shift and am going to be trying some different options. I was thinking I had an impending optical drive failure until I read your post, or if I had burnt a bad disc, although it passed the check media test at the very beginning. Let me know if you’ve had any other insight since your post last Sunday.
I ended up installing using the ‘Alternate Install CD’ which gave me a text-based install. Everything seemed to have worked, but the performance was rather slower than I expected. When I took the notebook home, It failed to start. I’m wondering if it is the install or the drive I’m installing on. I may try to install again using the same disk. If it starts the install, then I know my drive is okay.
Okay, another reboot seems to have resolved this issue. Now everything is working fine and the wireless is even working great. I only needed to Activate my eth1 from Network settings and configure it to use my WEP settings. Now my next steps are just getting the other stuff configured such as Flash plugins.
Wow… shortly after my comment above, my hard drive did, indeed, fail. I guess I was getting early warning signs. I purchased a new Western Digital drive that should perform a lot better than previous drives and installed Ubuntu from the Alternate Install CD. Everything is working fabulous and my drive no longer makes noise as it reads and writes. I’m guessing that has more to do with the features of the drive.