[Techtalk] sonypid/spicctrl

[hobbit at aloss.ukuu.org.uk]

On Sun, Aug 18, 2002 at 10:13:32AM -0700 or thereabouts, Conni wrote:
> So I'm trying to get the VGA out on my laptop (vaio sr77) to work, and I
> go to Akkana's Stupid Vaio Tricks page, since I remembered there being
> directions on getting the function keys working.  I thought I'd ask here,
> because maybe other people would have this problem, or have insight as
> well.  (I have RedHat 7.2, kernel 2.4.7-10.)
> 
> First problem:  I can't figure out how to get the files unzipped.  They're
> .bz2, and gunzip nor unzip won't work.

This part, I can answer. .bz2 is the extension (abbreviation?) for
files compressed with bzip2 instead of with gzip. It is apparently
generally a better way to compress files. 

If they're tar files, then instead of tar xvfz you probably want tar 
xvfj. (If you have a really old gnu tar, this may not work. The tar 
 --bzip2 longopt was for a while -I or something instead of -j. This 
won't apply to RH 7.2, but I mention it just for completeness.)

If they're just compressed with bzip2, then bunzip2 is what you
need. 

> Second problem:  I am not very technically inclined.  How do I find out
> what minor device my system will use?  How do I use modprobe?  (would that
> just be 'modprobe sonypi on'?)  I'm also inclined to install it as a
> module, but I can't figure out whether I have the right files already or
> whether I have to find them.

This is something I also would like an answer to. I don't understand
these major and minor things. Every so often an ls -l produces a
result with what I think are device numbers in the output, and
they baffle me. :)

Telsa