(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

@ tempestuous, it appears that we have a wifi hardware problem since puppy dingo4 on certain machines with inbuilt cards.
In my own case a Toshiba Portege, no builds since the dingo release will connect from boot after initial pupsave. I have to switch the modem off then on before the system sees it, then i can search for an available connection and connect ok. Then on the next boot i have to go through the same procedure to connect.
I have checked that the working connection had been saved for the next boot and all is ok but it will not do so as the system says the modem may be switched off.
I have now tried all official releases since Dingo and all have the same problem.
If it helps i can pm you the pmodem diag .gz for dingo and 430.

tubby wrote:it appears that we have a wifi hardware problem since puppy dingo4 on certain machines with inbuilt cards.

tubby wrote:I have to switch the modem off then on before the system sees it
...
the system says the modem may be switched off.

tubby,
your information is unclear. You interchange the word "wifi" and "modem" too freely.
Be aware that I was referring to wifi adaptors; these create standard network interfaces in Linux.
Modems (including wireless modems) are completely different devices.

Sorry to confuse you i am refering to the inbuilt wireless transceiver that connects to my wireless router and then to the internet. This connects as eth1 when it connects via network settings.

tubby wrote:i am refering to the inbuilt wireless transceiver that connects to my wireless router ...

OK, that's a wifi adaptor, not a modem. Are you sure the wifi device is inbuilt? I'm not aware of any old Portege's with inbuilt wifi. What model Portege do you have?

You also have a SmartLink-compatible modem built into your Portege ... as reported by rerwin -
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 971#350971
This is a dialup modem, it has nothing to do with wifi.

If you need to turn the modem off/on to get wifi working, this may be due to some form of hardware conflict between the two devices, but I'm just trying to make it clear that you are dealing with two distinctly separate devices: a dial-up modem, and a wifi adaptor.

Thanks for clearing the confusion i had over the two interfaces, i had forgotten that there is also an inbuilt 56k modem( it is tucked away under pull down flap along with the ethernet and external monitor connectors).
The wifi interface is listed as MPC13A-20 the FCC ID:CJ6PA3070WL, the model is PP400E also known as P4000.
If you can shed some light on why it is detected and initialized ok in Dingo but no other 4series it would no doubt help other puppy users who have the same interfaces.

regards

John

John

/aside, a bit

don't know where you are....?

One on ebay for 99p

http://preview.tinyurl.com/yf72s7s

Aitch

Now that we have cleared up the separate issues of tubby's modem problem, we can move on to wifi.

tubby wrote:The wifi interface is listed as MPC13A-20 the FCC ID:CJ6PA3070WL

I just Googled for details about that wifi device, and apparently it's a miniPCI wifi card with an Agere/Orinoco chipset. Puppy should probably support this device with either the orinoco_pci driver or hostap_pci driver.

tubby wrote:If you can shed some light on why it is detected and initialized ok in Dingo but no other 4series it would no doubt help other puppy users who have the same interfaces.

Well you could help diagnose the problem by running this command immediately after boot up - and paste the results here.

Now activate the switch that you referred to earlier, off, then on, and run the same command again.
This is almost certainly a wifi switch, not a modem switch as you first reported!
Paste the second set of results here.

Hopefully we will see the wifi device listed ... if not in both sets of results, at least in the second set of results.

Tempestuous, here is the result, hope it helps.


00:00.0 Class 0600: 10b9:1644 (rev 01)
00:01.0 Class 0604: 10b9:5247
00:02.0 Class 0c03: 10b9:5237 (rev 03)
00:04.0 Class 0101: 10b9:5229 (rev c3)
00:06.0 Class 0401: 10b9:5451 (rev 01)
00:07.0 Class 0601: 10b9:1533
00:08.0 Class 0680: 10b9:7101
00:0a.0 Class 0200: 8086:1229 (rev 08)
00:10.0 Class 0607: 104c:ac50 (rev 01)
00:11.0 Class 0607: 1179:0617 (rev 32)
00:11.1 Class 0607: 1179:0617 (rev 32)
00:12.0 Class 0880: 1179:0805 (rev 03)
01:00.0 Class 0300: 1023:8820 (rev 82)
The above is lspci -n before switching.
00:00.0 Class 0600: 10b9:1644 (rev 01)
00:01.0 Class 0604: 10b9:5247
00:02.0 Class 0c03: 10b9:5237 (rev 03)
00:04.0 Class 0101: 10b9:5229 (rev c3)
00:06.0 Class 0401: 10b9:5451 (rev 01)
00:07.0 Class 0601: 10b9:1533
00:08.0 Class 0680: 10b9:7101
00:0a.0 Class 0200: 8086:1229 (rev 08)
00:10.0 Class 0607: 104c:ac50 (rev 01)
00:11.0 Class 0607: 1179:0617 (rev 32)
00:11.1 Class 0607: 1179:0617 (rev 32)
00:12.0 Class 0880: 1179:0805 (rev 03)
01:00.0 Class 0300: 1023:8820 (rev 82)
The above is lspci -n after switching.

/usr/sbin/net-setup.sh: line 1672: /sys/class/net/eth1/device/device: No such file or directory
/usr/sbin/net-setup.sh: line 1674: /sys/class/net/eth1/device/vendor: No such file or directory
/usr/sbin/net-setup.sh: line 991: 12806 Terminated gtkdialog3 --program NETWIZ_Connecting_DIALOG
sed: can't read /etc/network-wizard/wireless/profiles/00:1F:9F:88:BC:7D.Open.conf: No such file or directory

The above is xerrs.log after connecting via setup wizard,after switching off then on. Even with the above message i now have an internet connection.

@Aitch, thanks for that but the computor on ebay is a sattelite not a portege. Still a good starting price for p3.

regards

John

Well in both cases no wifi device is listed.
So this is low-level problem, related to how the kernel interacts with your laptop's bios.
I suggest you first check your bios and see if there is an option for "Pnp OS = YES/NO". If so, set it for "NO". This is a well-known and important setting to run Linux on older hardware.
Now run "lspci -n" again and hopefully you will see a new listing for the wifi device.

If there is no such bios setting, then you should try the following boot options, one at a time:
pci=biosirq
acpi=noirq
acpi=strict
pci=nosort
irqpoll routeirq

But I see on the web that your Agere/Orinoco wifi device is known to create resource conflicts under Windows 2000, too. I suggest that a thorough solution would be to replace this miniPCI device with a more modern wifi device, one with G-mode or even N-mode wifi support. My own preference would be for a Ralink-based device.

Thank you for your ideas and comments Tempestuous, i will try what you suggest and post results.
I am still a bit concerned that the hardware is detected and initallised in Dingo4 at boot but not in any of the later distros, there must have been a change in the way hardware is detected at boot surely?.

Well, yes, the underlying technical foundations have changed with recent Puppies, especially with "pupevent"; a modified version of udev.

But I don't think the startup scripts have changed significantly in terms of hardware detection. And even if they have, the "lspci" command is the final determinant of what hardware Puppy recognises.

So as I said earlier, I highly suspect that the difference comes down to the modern kernel ... and if I'm right, then the only fix is to add boot options which affect the kernel's behaviour.

But I just thought of a good test - download the 2.6.25.16 kernel version of Puppy 4.3 and give it a try. It's called
pup-431-k2.6.25.16-intel_modems.iso
and you can find it here -
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/dis ... l-puppies/

Thanks again for your reply Tempestuous, i had already suspected it might be the kernel so i will download your suggestion and try it.

It looks like it was the kernel, i am using the pup-431-k2.6.25.16-intel_modems.iso on a live cd and it connected without any problem.
I am now going to do a frugal install to see if it still connects ok.
Many thanks for your help Tempestuous and i hope this helps other puppy users.

regards and thanks again

John

HI,
I'm very happy with 4.30 full version. I even got my cheap ($8.95) ebay wireless card to work!

I have an annoyance with the sound though.
I am happy that ALSA finds my sound card, and assigns to it, driver snd_es1968. When I run ALSA, it always picks it up, and it works, with all the bells and whistles. BUT, as soon as I reboot, it's gone, and I have to re-run ALSA. I never hear a bark on bootup (I noticed that with Lighthouse, I would always hear "hello". I really like Lighthouse, but my puppypc would not behave with it).

I am using kernel 2.6.30.5, along with the zp430305.sfs. I only see one intel driver in /lib/module/2.6.30.5/intelmodem: Intel536.ko.

This in my trusty Micron Trek 2, with PII, 256RAM, 10G hd. Oh, the sound-card is an ESS Maestro 2.

I've seen a few threads on similar issues, and have tried some of the fixes, but no luck. I'm not sure if this can be considered a BUG, though.

Thanks for listening.

I use an nvidia GeForce FX 5200 PCI graphics card on my main system The card is 32 bit and clock: 66MHz. My mainboard is MSI with an Intel 64 Bit CPU and 2 gigs of memory. Monitor is HP w1907 connected with DVI cable.

Puppy 4.2 and earlier was a no brainer to select xvesa and set my resolution, yet with 4.3 (haven't tried 4.3.1 yet) any resolution I choose does not show JWM tray. I can get by this way but it is inconvenient. Ideas? Opinions? Am I an idiot? I know the answer to '3'.

With thanks in advance.

Hi Tempestuous, i have now done a frugal install and network settings are saved and blinky loads in the tray, however there is still no connection.
I have solved the issue by installing dhcp and dhclient, then placing a symlink to dhclient in the startup folder.
This method does not work on the later kernel.

double posted
sorry !

Hi,
on pup431k2.6.30.5 frugal

rAndMLemnT wrote:I use an nvidia GeForce FX 5200 PCI graphics card ....
with 4.3 (haven't tried 4.3.1 yet) ....

Could this be an answer...?
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=44388
and
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=46686
I installed gray's nvidia driver (thanks gray!)for my Ge6 6200SE...and it works fine !
Though be carefull ! Try first on a fresh pupsave.2fs ...one never knows what could happen.

Hope this helps !
cheers, charlie

rAndMLemnT

I'd also try using xorg instead of xvesa

also see

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=341732

and try this driver [177]

http://files.wildspad.com/afecelis/linu ... .25.16.pet

or get link for the 185 here

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=46686

Aitch