GRT170 Part 2

I recently battled with my PCG-GRT170 Sony Vaio with trying to bend it to my will in preferences for operating systems, hardware, working conditions, etc.
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I was running SuSE 9.0 (in addition to the XP Home that cam with it). But for various reasons wanted to change that setup.
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In this and following articles I will summarize and somewhat detail the struggles of getting XP Pro and Gentoo Linux on this GRT170 laptop. Click the Read More for the details...

As I write this article my laptop is currently running emerge kde for Gentoo 2004.0 with kernel 2.6.4 on my GRT170 Vaio. I followed the directions verbatim on the gentoo.org website manual. I did a manual (stage 1 and up) install rather than the likely les painful (and far less time consuming) method of the Stage 2 or stage 3 options.
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Though it is time consuming (matter of DAYS to install rather than hours), it was pretty straight forward if I just stuck to the directions, which for opensource, is exceptionally good documentation. ;-)
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I was stuck running XP Home because windows 2000 and XP Pro couldn't load all the drivers when I acquired this machine back in August 2003. Ironically, SuSE 8.2 (and later even better with 9.0) installed almost out of the box, except for downloading an updated nvidia driver and doing a little XFree86 config tweaking (see previous articles). As far as ease of setup and use,
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Recently Sony made drivers available for windows 2000, but they are still a bit buggy. So i ended up giving in and putting XP Pro on (at least that's better than XP Home. Much of the sony software refused to install unless some version of XP was installed. :-(
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SuSE 9.0 is sweet as far as install and usability. But I'm very disappointed with it's speed, and some stability issues. I also just learned that my chosing to use Reiserfs instead of the old tried and true ext2/3 was a BIG mistake. It ended up costing me some data, and LOT in stability.
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However my wife, kids, in-laws, and many others are now running SuSE 9.0 happily since they are not the power-user/bleeding-edge-user that I am. And they are much happier with it than windows. ;-)
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I strongly recommend staying away from reiserfs for anything important.
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Stick with ext2/3.
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The big problem I'm noticing for the last few months with SuSE 9.0 and especially with gentoo 2004.0 2.6.4 kernel, is that the system is running WAY TO HOT. It's overheating so much, that in SuSE 9.0 it would force a shutdown. Gentoo is constantly scrolling across the console:
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"CPU#0 Temperature above threshold
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CPU#0 Running in modulated clock mode.
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when I cat out /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/ATF0/temperature it keeps shooting aobe 85 degrees celsius (and much higher) way beyond the correct range for Pentium 4 2.8Ghz.
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It shold be noted, this only happens during prolonged compiling, normal use doesn't seem to be a problem.
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I have a big Vornado fan now pointing on it to try to cool it a little while continuing the emerge kde and compiling.
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One trick I did learn is that if I unplug the AC power supply and jus t run on batteries (I have two in this with the Cdrom pulled out), it drops temps down into the 70's (celsius), and stops the acpi alarm.
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I've not notivced any such problems under windows, nor when I was compiling 2.4 kernel of gentoo before deciding that wireless and  other features would work more easily under 2.6.4 (TBD).
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So, is there something wrong with the 2.6.4 kernel? ACPI? I see from this site:
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http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~rholzer/linux_on_sony_vaio_grt170.html
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that I'm not the only one seeing this. :-(
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I'm going to post on the gentoo irc and forums and see if there's any suggestions.
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meanwhile I'll post more here as I get a chance. until then. ciao.