Linux diversity and ibuprofen

When you get around to trying the other distros I would love a comparo. I've got an ancient ThinkPad that really doesn't run XP that well so I was thinking of converting it into a Linux box. But I am no admin, I need one that can install and detect the wireless PCMCIA card and all that stuff.

the xserver?
then, did you use startx?
or change default runlevel to 5?
( debian's default is 3 which is console mode )
runlevel 5 is graphics mode.

I reinstalled Mandrake 10.1 over Kubuntu last night, and Mandrake's harddrake (when I try to configure the Ralink RT2500 card) tells me that DrakX errored in configuring it.

I'm not sure why. I tried putting two different RT2500 drivers (one from RaLink, one from sourceforge) on the thing by using the typical command line stuff from the su account:
depmod, modprove, insmod, ifconfig, iwconfig, etc.

I even put the kernel source onto the machine and did the ndiswrapper stuff that worked for my ADMTek 802.11b card, but when I do ndiswrapper -l, it says "rt2500 Invalid driver!"

I am going to get a different driver I saw last night and the actual source code (if available) and try installing that driver and if that fails , I'll compile the source myself for the driver and try to get it working through the kernel again

OK...here is the definitive install stuff...if you're installing Mandrake 10.1 kernel 2.6.8.1 with an Encore ENLWI-F-RLAM 802.11g wireless card based on the Ralink rt2500 chipset:

1) Install Mandrake 10.1, installing the 3 CD set
2) Install the kernel source (search in System-Configuration-Packaging-Install Software for "2.6.8.1")
3) get the rt2500-1.1.0.b2.tar.gz file from SourceForge
4) make a subdirectory under your home
5) untar the tar file to that subdirectory
6) login as your superuser (su) account
7) CD to the subdirectory you created
8) cd to Module subdirectory
9) at the prompt, enter "make && make install"
10) go to Mandrake Control Center (System-Configuration-Configure Your Computer)
11) configure your wireless card according to your wireless router/access point

I run this system:
Biostar M7NCD-A02 Motherboard
1GB PC3200 Corsair memory
AMD Athlon XP 2800+
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 256MB video card
Lite-On DVD+/-RW

and a TON of apps (games, IRC clients, web browsers, etc)

This worked...PERFECT. Literally, the only other thing I did was install the Mozilla packages.

So...now...that I'm live and running with Mandrake, it's time to start playing :)

Next...I am going to mess with Wine, WineX, Cedega and Cygwin...i.e.- means of running Windows-based apps under Linux.

If this all pans out as well, I hope to prove one thing...which actually was possible in 1995 with IBM OS/2 Warp vs. Windows 95:

Linux can run Windows software through emulators more efficiently than Windows itself can run software written for itself. :)

Good hunting...and happy Linuxing :)

Last night/today, between all the other things I've been doing (including my b'day party last night and going drinking with five women at a bar in Ybor tonight), I came into possession of a new/old laptop (Thinkpad 600E) and wireless PCMCIA NIC (Motorola WN825G), on which I got ndiswrapper and drivers installed. The upshot is this: everything works, except that when testing at a friend's apartment where there's a wireless router, it wouldn't find a network. I'll try again here, now that I'm home, and if it doesn't find my wireless network here I'll try my next idea.

The next idea is to copy all the driver files for the NIC to a temp directory on the hard drive, start the laptop with a Knoppix 3.8 LiveCD, and get wireless working with that. Once I've got that running, I'll copy the driver configuration to the hard drive, then restart the laptop without the CD and see if that fixes the matter.

I'll report back when I know how well all this worked for me.

Although I have no suggestions to solve the problem you're currently in, if you're looking for a different operating system to experiment with, I recommend SuSE Linux. Novell purchased it not too long ago and since then it's been becoming very powerful, and driver coverage is excellent.

so, don't think I'm treating you like you're stupid, cause I know good and well you're better with Linux than me by far:

1) what version of the ndiswrapper product?
2) what driver did you get for the card?
3) what steps did you do in the install?

I will help you as much as I can...could be little stuff like that radiostate thing...could be a driver version compatibility thing...it migth be an older driver works better, or is too old and doesn't have the right encryption.

let me know

The ndiswrapper version is 0.12, for the drivers I've tried both bcmwl5 and bcmwl5a (the latter is currently installed), and I do have the radiostate set properly currently (in the other setting, the little lights on the card don't even turn on). I'm detecting access points, but I'm not getting DHCP resolution. Both driver versions I've used (and the only versions available, apparently) are encryption-capable beyond the WEP encryption types I need.

. . . and no need to worry about me feeling insulted. I'd take advice from a chimp if it worked: I'll certainly take it from someone with the perspicacity and determination to pursue a steep learning curve with Linux rather than going the easy route automatically with something like Lycoris.

I think ndiswrapper didn't institute stuff like WEP til 0.7. If ndiswrapper doesn't support it, that could be your issue. I saw the same problem at one point.

I was using 0.9, I think with my 11b card.

Check this page out on sourceforge. It might help. I will look for the link when I get home that tells what latest version is compatible with WEP and what not.

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/index.php/Distributions

But I'd say for sure, use something newer than 0.12...I think 1.1 is the last released "stable" version from sourceforge and it will have WEP built in (it worked with my 11b card). I think it also supports WPA now as well.

If you need the newest version, go here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ndiswrapper

they have the 1.1 release, and the pre-release version as well. And their card list said yours should be supported.

0.12 is newer than 0.9. I've been annoyed for some time with the fact that they use the format of decimal fractions to indicate version numbering, but don't follow its rules for determining the order in which numbers apply. For instance, 0.12 is not zero point one two, it's zero point twelve, and twelve comes after nine.

0.12 is about the point when ndiswrapper started fully supporting the 2.6 kernels, I think. The laptop in question is running kernel 2.6.8, so that's probably a good thing. Heh. 0.12, by the way, is the current Debian Sarge/Testing standard ndiswrapper version.

In fact, I think 0.12 is also known as 1.0rc2.

I was just going by the versions they have for download in the sourceforge site. It's numbered as "ndiswrapper-1.1".

hm...so:

- ifconfig shows your wlan0
- iwconfig shows that you're ethernet and all

if you do a modprobe ndiswrapper, it reports that it's loaded and doesn't tell you it's invalid or anything?

and you've done the iwconfig up thing to bring it up, probably.

you've got the encryption key in for the wireless net you're trying to access? (assuming it is encrypted)

just to make sure...what version are you using again of Linux?

I have indeed done all of that. The encryption key has been entered, I have the radio device active, iwconfig is detecting access points, modprobe loads the ndiswrapper module without errors, the ndiswrapper version is newer than 0.9, and so on.

I'm using Debian Sarge/Testing with kernel 2.6.8 on this machine.

ifconfig is showing an IPv6 address, but no IPv4 address for the machine. It's detecting the MAC address just fine.

iwconfig doesn't drop the ESSID, it shows the MAC address of the access point, and power management is turned off so the thing won't shut down without telling me to conserve battery power (since it's plugged into the wall anyway, that's hardly an issue).

Both the iwconfig settings and the access point are using channel 11 (2.462GHz).

I had issues with the new 11g card, but it had a linux driver so I'm not too worried with ndiswrapper now.

um...check this URL out...the guy step by steps the ndiswrapper install with 0.12.

To help ya anymore, I'd have to be sitting at home looking at my lspci and lsmod to see what's loaded and what my machine detects.

I pretty much assume you know off-hand what's supposed to be loaded, and I knew you'd know what tools to use.

heck...I should have just met up with you somewhere on US19 yesterday and looked at it.

Of course, it probably is just an issue with the driver or something or something new in 0.12 that made it incompatible all of the sudden.

About all I could mention is to maybe step through the sourceforge site for ndiswrapper install. That's what I had to do with my 11b card because there was some step I had to do that other sites didn't show.

If:

lspci shows your device (I think that's where the PCM card will show too?)
lsmod shows ndiswrapper loaded
ifconfig shows it exists
ndiswrapper -l shows you have the Windows driver loaded successfully

then I'm not sure...I'll keep lookin for stuff for you

here's what one article I found said:
--------------------------------------
Install the following packages (with apt-get)

module-assistant
ndiswrapper-source
ndiswrapper-utils
wpasupplicant

# module-assistant auto-install ndiswrapper
# ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf (copied, together with .sys file from SWSETUP directory of windows partition)

Created the following file as /etc/network/wpa_supplicant.conf:

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant # for wpa_cli support
network={
ssid="MY-SSID"
psk="MY-PASSPHRASE"
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
proto=WPA
}

Added the following to /etc/network/interfaces :

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid MY-SSID
pre-up modprobe ndiswrapper
pre-up wpa_supplicant -wB -i wlan0 -c /etc/network/wpa_supplicant.conf -D ndiswrapper
pre-up sleep 3
down killall wpa_supplicant

The sleep is unfortunate but seems to be needed to give wpa_supplicant time to start correctly.
After which you can do "ifup wlan0" and all should work.
-----------------------

Let me know if that helps any

If you're anywhere near 19 today, you might want to attend the St. Pete SLUG (Suncoast LUG) meeting. It's taking place at a Panera Bread on 4th Street in St. Pete. If I recall correctly, it's near 38th Ave.

Some details on the meeting location and time (seven to nine in the evening, I think) are available at the suncoastlug.org website. I'm planning to attend, but whether or not that happens depends on how my day goes between now and then.

US 19 goes right behind my house (about 300 yards away, but behind.)

However, I'm about 40-50 mi north of that site. If I got off work and headed down there, I'd get there around 7:30pm...and I'd have to leave an hour later to get home by 10pm.

I'll have to wait for a later meeting somewhere closer or when I have time to make it. I'm in the middle of trying to get my parents to decide what hotel they're staying at for my niece's wedding...which is like trying to move a stick in a tank of motor oil outside in the antarctic winter.

The only LUG meetings I attend around here are the St. Pete and Tampa meetings, which means that the other option for meetings I attend is even farther from you, unfortunately. C'est la vie.

I actually live in New Port Richey, which is a pretty good distance from both those meeting locations, but I haven't had any luck with the smaller meetings closer to where I live, and pretty much everyone I know 'round here is in St. Pete or Tampa anyway (discounting relatives).

Right now, I'm in a Panera Bread at US-19 and Gulf To Bay. It turns out that the reason I wasn't getting connected all weekend at home is that the router has had MAC exclusion turned on and I didn't realize/remember that fact. Such aggravation, and all for nothing. I'll have to add the MAC address for this wireless adapter to the list of allowed NICs on the router at home when next I'm there.

Oy. I feel kinda dumb. No wonder I couldn't figure out what was wrong with my wireless setup: there wasn't anything wrong with it.

cause I had to set my router with those as well to lock it down.

hope it gets to working 100 percent.

I'll be messing with Win4Lin this weekend to see if I can get Windows games working on Linux. That way, I Can really start toward a total Linux migration. Supposedly, it supports DirectX translation.

As for the trip to St. Pete or Tampa, I could probably make it if it was on a day off or a weekend and would love to come to a LUG meeting.

Keep me up on them and I'll see when I can make one and we can finally sit back and chat in person.

SLUG has meetings in St. Pete on the last Monday of every month and in Tampa on the second Tuesday of every month. I've been attending those lately. There are good people at these meetings.

The Tampa area Perl Mongers group has pretty much died off, but one of the SLUGgers is looking to resurrect it. If he succeeds, it looks like meetings will probably occur somewhere along US-19, and if I had to make a wild guess about where exactly I'd say probably in Clearwater. If Perl interests you at all, that might become an option for you.

With evening traffic, it would take me 2 hours to get from up here to down there. I live 30 mins north of where you are, and I work 20 mins east of where I live. So, getting there in the evening after work would mean a really abbreviated trip to the LUG to get back home at a decent hour.

Hopefully there will be a holiday on a Monday that I could attend. I know that Memorial Day is on Monday, May 30th. If there is going to be a meeting that day, I'd be glad to come. But, it seems like usually no one seems to like to get together on holidays but me. Of course, everyone else has families to deal with as well.

I'll check into whether there'll be a St. Pete meeting on May 30th.

Yeah, I'm in Hernando County. Stuff out here is starting to look like central Pasco now. Plans for building more than 2000 new homes in here just came in. booming like mad.

If my house doubles in value, I'm sellin it and cashing out and building in the woods where it's quiet. I don't think the housing boom is gonna last much longer than another 5 years down here. Too many baby boomers lost their butt in 2000-2001 in the market, and as the prices climb here the separation in value between here and the NE USA diminishes.

Boomers are gonna start lookin places like KY and TN and stuff to build probably. Where you can still get an acre for $10,000.

(People are gonna think I'm a Knoppix junkie!) Try the Knoppix live CD, recognizes most hardware right away. Found my Netgear wireless USB adapter on my laptop and worked with no problem, as I recall. Has KDE, Open Office, Mozilla, Konqueror, lotsa games, debugging tools, reads/writes NTFS, FAT, you name it. Can be installed on a drive, but I like running from CD as it can't get trashed with viruses or spyware. Just a little slower from CD.

You can also get the O'Reilly Knoppix Hacks book (includes Knoppix CD) to learn how to use some of the more advanced utilities available - how to recover crashed Windoze boxes, set up emergency print/file servers, routers, firewalls, etc. It's all in there!