Get the beautiful ubuntu natty running on your Vaio CS laptops

Its been a week since Ubuntu natty got officially released. I was running natty since when it was alpha. Since i had issues like the touch-pad freezes, and also since i wanted try the gnome-shell and screwed the install, i decided to do a fresh install.

These are the steps i went through to get a beautiful natty 32bit running on my sony vaio CS17G.

1. Installation: Download Ubuntu natty free from the Ubuntu site, here.
                         Burn the ISO file with a ISO burning software to a CD.
                         Boot with the CD into a live session, to test it, for me i was booted to a Ubuntu classic desktop, without unity. everything worked fine.
                     
                        Go ahead and press on install Ubuntu, If you have partitioned hard disk with gparted, you may run into the issue of installation getting stuck at copying files stage, for ever.

                        So while installing to partitions done with gparted, selecting formatting option, overcomes this problem and installation proceeds without a hitch.

2. Reboot:       After the successful installation, you will be prompted to reboot. I landed in trouble again when natty refused to boot and it stops permanently with a black screen and a cursor on the top left corner. I had to boot with kernel options noacpi nolapic. This resulted in a successful boot into a natty ubuntu classic desktop with a message that unity is not possible because of driver issues.
                     
                        The fresh install without the nvidia proprietary drivers results only in Ubuntu classic Desktop without unity. But the Fn keys work very well, both for volume and brightness, and the AV Mode key brings up Banshee media player.

3. Nvidia:       If you want unity desktop you have to install nvidia drivers. Go to additional drivers option, which will search for the available nvidia drivers, install nvidia current form the available drivers, reboot.

4. Unity:       I was rebooted to a beautiful natty desktop with unity running. But i lost the Fn key for brightness after installing the nvidia drivers. Volume keys worked fine. Av key stopped working. To make brightness keys work again, i had to install nvclock.  Look here for the instructions on how to make this work.

5. Updates:  Install all the available updates. Also install some of the essentials, like ubuntu-restricted-extras from the ubuntu software center. Also install most useful apps like vlc, conky, chromium, gimp, cheese etc. Look here.

6. Conky:   To get a beautiful conky, shown in the screenshot above, look here for instructions.

7. Suspend: Suspend works well, haven't tested hibernate yet. But the problem is that when you wake from suspend you will loose the keyboard. For this i had to use atkbd.reset option to the kernel while booting. This mitigates the problem of loosing your keyboard after suspend.
                    So my kernel options while booting are i8042.nopnp noacpi nolapic atkbd.reset.
                    I found that these options make my vaio cs work reasonably well.

8. Kernel:   Without noacpi nolapic kernel options it will not boot many a times, though it boots without these options, randomly one in 5 to 6 tries.
                   i8042 option seems to help with the touchpad craziness. It seems have stopped the freezes and make touchpad more usable.
                   atkbd.reset is required for the no keyboard after suspend issues.

You might not have the touchpad at the login screen with atkbd.reset option, use keyboad to login. On reaching the desktop press alt+F2, select terminal, and from the terminal do
                  sudo modprobe psmouse.


Randomly touchpad might act weird especially after waking up from suspend, for that do
                 sudo rmmod psmouse

                 sudo modprobe psmouse

9. Camera: Webcam works only with the cheese webcam booth.

10. So now you have a beautiful, stable, working Ubuntu natty running on your Sony Vaio CS laptop.
cheers!!

Finally, got back the brightness control in windows 7 on my Vaio CS17

Had a tough time trying to get the brightness control to work after installing windows 7 on my Vaio CS17G, which came with vista originally installed.Every time i pressed the Fn+F5 or Fn+F6 the display bar moved by one block, but there was no change in the brightness. Windows mobility centre didn’t have the brightness option.

Finally got hold of the correct driver upgrade version from the Sony Australia, which did the job. 
Windows 7 Upgrade NVIDIA Graphics Driver Upgrade Version 8.15.11.8640
This program will upgrade NVIDIA Graphics Driver to version 8.15.11.8640.
Although it says that this is applicable only to VGN-CS36GJ, VGN-CS38GD, VGN-CS36TJ, VGN-CS36MJ, VGN-CS37GH, VGN-CS28GD, VGN-CS36SJ, VGN-CS27GJ: it worked without a hitch for me on my Vaio CS17G.

Now i have brightness changing with Fn keys and also on power on/off and i have brightness control from windows mobility centre as well.

Download the driver from here.

Ubuntu Natty Beta on Sony Vaio CS17

I am posting some screenshots of natty beta running on my sony vaio CS 17.

What works: Unity looks great, works after installing nvidia additional drivers.
                       Fn keys for volume work out of the box.

 Hiccups:     Brightness keys do not work, will try to tweak with nvclock.
                    Media keys do not work, pressing media keys brings up right
                    click menu.
                    Touchpad randomly stops responding and makes the box
                    unusable needing reboot.

will post in detail after i use it for a while...
                    

Fibromyalgia

Information to patients.

Up to 5% of the population suffers from fibromyalgia, which is a syndrome characterised by chronic body pain, fatigue, anxiety or depression, sleep disturbances.
Commonly seen in patients between 20 to 50, more in females than males at 9:1 ratio.
primary : not associated with other conditions.
secondary: associated with rheumatoid arthritis or SLE
Common symptoms associated with fibromyalgia with decreasing frequency are:

Condition                                % of FMS Symptoms

Muscular Pain                                         100
Fatigue                                                     96
Insomnia                                                   86
Joint Pains                                                72
Headaches                                               60
Restless Legs                                           56
Numbness and Tingling                            52
Impaired Memory                                    46
Leg Cramps                                             42
Impaired Concentration                            41
Nervousness                                            32
Depression (Major Depression)               20
can also be associated with irritable bowel syndrome, paraesthesia, genitourinary symptoms.

Diagnosis : There is no single test which can establish the diagnosis. It is more a diagnosis by exclusion. Do investigations to rule out all other rheumatological conditions.
Criteria used for diagnosis according to ACR are:

1. Wide spread presence of pain throughout the body present for more than 3 months.
2. Presence of tender spots throughout the body. At least 11 out of 18.

                           
Treatment: Mostly symptomatic treatment, options available are:

1. Medications: Tramadol, pregabalin, ketamine, gabapentin and others.
2. Exercises: Most important part of treatment. Aerobics, stretching and strengthening exercises, etc
3. Relaxation techniques to reduce the effects of stress: meditation, pranayama etc.
4. Antidepressants and muscle relaxants can also used.
5. Psychotherapy.