Laptop Install Troubles

[dhimes]

If you've stumbled upon this thread, its purpose is to note problems I'm having with Fedora 8 on the Compaq Presario F700, in particular getting the Atheros AR5007 wifi up and running. There are posts all over the web on this, and I've worked through many to no avail.

Although it may not be obvious from the first couple of posts (they are carried over from another discussion), this thread is about figuring out what works with this system.

Update: We've also covered connecting to a Windows-based network, and using a printer on that network.

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The problem with learning Linux, as with many technical areas that are becoming mature, is that you have to know everything to be able to do anything (slightly hyperbolic, to be sure, but you see my point). Example: I am confronted with the AT5007 problem. I have been all over the lists. There is a promising one, part of whose instructions read: then I set the "pci=conf1" option in boot...

OK, great. But how? So I see some things in Grub. I add that line to the end of something that starts with "Kernel." F-8 boots, but still no wifi card seen by Network Device Control (BTW--is that the NetworkManager I keep seeing references to? If not, how can I get my hands on Network Manager?).

Ans.: No. The Network Manager is a Service that is turned on via the menus: Go to System->Administration->Services and click to turn on.

Then I discover that the list in Grub is a list, like read top-to-bottom and I can add a line. I add the line above, without the quotes, and it is unrecognized. A little more Yahoo and Google and I find there is a menu.lst file in boot/grub. Someone says they added pci=conf1 to the end of the "boot" line.

My "boot" line is commented out. Do I dare? Is this really my problem?

I have a big fat book called the "Linux Bible." I have to go through all this stuff before I can sit down and explore that book and learn Linux! It's turning out to not be such a great reference for the installation issues.

I can't wait to get going on Linux, but here it is midday of Day # 5, and I'm still trying to get the dang laptop functional.

[Thetargos]

Make a thread detailing what you have done, please when providing information from configuration files (such as menu.lst [actually grub.conf in Fedora]) or console output, use the [code] tags. I'd be glad to take a look and further help (if I can) in a separate thread.

And you have stumbled right into one of the issues I was talking about. It sounds uglier than it is, Linux ignorance. People not used to the system and not knowing at least how the system is organized are prone to bounce off stuff like this (not the what to do, but rather the how to do it). I wish there was like a centralized place where all this is detailed, and actually having this in the Fedora wiki is not such a bad a idea... Maybe when I have time I'll draft it.

[Dan]

Done deal. You now have a thread of your very own.

[Thetargos]

Thanks, Dan.

[dhimes]

Yes, thank you.

[glennzo]

Wow! A Linux user in my geographical area! And I thought I was the only one for miles around. Greetings from Salem dhimes.

[dhimes]

Hi glennzo
I've been locked in my office for days trying to get fedora 8 to work with the Compaq F700 as a dual boot. I'm a total noob @ Linux, but I used Unix many many years ago (only as a user--vi, LaTeX, Fortran). I'm anxious to get started, but trying to get the wifi working.

Per Thetargos' suggestion, I am baring my ignorance to all so that (1) I may get help, and (2) others may also.

I am currently reinstalling. I am getting very good at reinstalling!

[glennzo]

Originally Posted by dhimes

I am getting very good at reinstalling!

Don't get too good at it or we'll refer all installation questions to you.

[dhimes]

OK-- I've reinstalled. The first thing I did afterwards was get the monitor going. I simply downloaded the .run file from NVidia, ran the script per the web page's instructions, (the script had to compile something), rebooted, and voila it's beautiful!

Ethernet works out of the box. So does the USB.

I ran dmesg and captured it in a file called bootmsg.02 (there is also a .01 version, made before installing Nvidia).

Perhaps importantly, that file shows

[root@localhost ~]# cat bootmsg.02 | grep 03:00.0
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:03:00.0[A] -> Link [LK4E] -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:03:00.0 to 64
ath5k_pci 0000:03:00.0: registered as 'phy0'
ACPI: PCI interrupt for device 0000:03:00.0 disabled
ath5k_pci: probe of 0000:03:00.0 failed with error -5

I also made file lspci.01 from lspci > lspci.01:

[root@localhost ~]# cat lspci.01 | grep Atheros
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5006EG 802.11 b/g Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

Now, I believe that the device id is wrong here. I think it's AR5007EG. And that may be part of the problem.

When I look at my System -> Administration -> Network Device Control, I see

Status - Device -- Nickname
Active --- eth0 ---- eth0
Inactive - wlan0 -- wlan0.bak

I click on "Configure" and I see

Status - Device - Nickname ------Type
Active --- eth0 ---- eth0 -------- Ethernet
Inactive - wlan0 - wlan0.bak -- Wireless

The "Hardware" tab shows
Description -------------------------------------------Type ---- Device --- Status
nVidia Corporation Unknown (0x054c) ------- Ethernet --- eth0 --- system

So, the hardware isn't being seen at all by this tool. (BTW--is the the NetworkManager I've seen reference to?)

[dhimes]

So, as I search the net for the meaning of error code -5, I have to decide: do I go for madwifi, or ndiswrapper? Hmmm. The incorrect choice will certainly mean another reinstall...

[Thetargos]

Wow, you do LOVE reinstalling, don't you?

Not NDISWrapper nor MadWifi have the appropriate driver for the Atheros5007G. The Open Source driver will get there eventually (I do believe that in 2.6.24 it is already merged), and in oder to get it to work in Fedora, you will have to build the driver youself, but AFAIK currently the patch to add this support requires an older model kernel (in that it forces the use of 8K stacks instead of 4K, or at least that was the last I heard of it). So for all intents and purposes, this adapter is not supported. Aleternatively you could build a custom kernel with 8K stacks and try to build the module for that kernel and see if it will work (8K stack kernels are a bit slower than 4K)

Oh, and why on earth would you break your new installation with the .run driver from nVidia, when you can simply install using YUM from Livna?

But this is actually very insightful, as the nvidia autoexecutable requires you to have the kernel-devel package installed as well as some development tools which means you can at least attempt to build the Atheros5007G driver and see how it goes.

[dhimes]

Is that what I'm doing when I use a command like "make"?
This thread gave me hope originally
http://madwifi.org/ticket/1679
It worked on Debian, but nothing else did (ethernet, monitor...). So I switched to fedora.
It requires the 386 build; but that didn't work either with 386 build of f-8 (torrent is my friend). I found the win-xp driver for the chip, and thought maybe NDISWrapper would do it. Is that what you mean by "building" the driver?

[Thetargos]

What I meant by "building the driver" is to compile the driver. Yes, issuing 'make' builds stuff (through the use of Makefiles). Is much less glamorous than you think, though. Actually the nVidia installer does it as well, but presented in such a way that you don't see what it's actually doing. There are no precompiled kernel modules for the nVidia driver for Fedora

At any rate, it is indeed very interesting that you got it working on Debian... The important bit being that you will have to take note of the exact procedure you followed. What did you exactly do. If you got it in Debian, chances are you will be able to get it in Fedora.

[dhimes]

I followed the instructions on ticket 1679 above (madwifi) (with great pain, downloading to a USB on another machine, copying it over, etc.). The point is, Debian saw the hardware. I can't tell if Fedora does or not--as I posted above, it's not appearing in the Network Device Control window.

What determines whether or not something that shows with lspci appears in the Network Device Control window, anyway?

[dhimes]

Oh, yeah--forgot to answer your question: I followed the exact same procedure with the 386 build of f-8, and it didn't work. f-8 never sees the device, as far as I can tell. So I switched to the x_64 build, thinking it may see the device (I'm blindly groping here), and that didn't work.

If I can't point to something simple that magically compiles a driver, I have no idea how to do it. I'm on the NDISwrapper wiki page...

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/j...,installation/