Ubuntu live cd :(

[.Maleficus.]

Well, if you have some time and will try it, I can help you get that working too lol.

You'll need 3 things.

1. ndiswrapper (downloadable program, you can put it on a flash drive and transfer if you need)
2. Driver CD for the card
3. The card.

Download and install ndiswrapper. It is a program that takes Windows drivers, and "wraps" them around your Linux hardware. I'm not sure if there is a .deb or .rpm of it, or if it's just .tar.bz2 or something. Actually, if I remember correctly, you can install it from Synaptic, but then you need internet. If you see some weird file format you've never seen, don't download and tell me what it is, and I'll help from there. If it is a .deb, I guess you can just search Google for "install .deb package ubuntu". Otherwise, if you're not sure, don't download. But anyways, then you want to plug in your card. It probably won't work, unless you have one that works out-of-the-box. Now, take your driver CD, and copy all of the files into their own directory somewhere. You don't need them for other cards, just the model you have (my driver CD has drivers for about 3 cards. Only copy the ones for your model). Now, 'cd' into the directory you made (if it was /home/jonny/pumpkins, you'd do 'cd /home/jonny/pumpkins') Now you'll use the ndiswrapper tool. the command you want to use is 'ndiswrapper -i'. You'll have copied some files with various formats (there should be like 3) and one of them is .inf. That is the important one. The command you'll use is 'ndiswrapper -i drivername.inf'. If it is successful, hooray! There should only be a few lines of code, so to check, run this command. 'ndiswrapper -l'. It will list the installed drivers. You'll know if they are installed .

[luciusad2004]

Ill check it out tomorrow, My parents were using the WiFi adapter today so i didn't get my hands on it. I did some googleing around on ndiswrapper though and i already have the source in case i need it and i bookmarked a couple of useful looking pages. Thanks! ill be back tomorrow.

[luciusad2004]

Funny thing happened today...

First of all i was sitting around last night thinking about how i could get internet access on my machine without moving it. I realized the answer was simple, Internet sharing. Ive done it before with my 360 so i should be able to do it with Linux. After my gf went to bed i took her laptop, plugged one end of an Ethernet cable in to the mac, the other end in to my machine and set it all up. Ill just be honest here and say i sort of just "stumbled" across the proper settings. After that i found the update manager and let it do some 114 updates while i went to bed. Today i followed your steps to download automatix2 and i got it all working, started it up to be greeted with a message of incompatibility. I need Ubuntu 6.10 I think i have 6.06.

Is their another version of Automatix2 or should i burn a new ISO and upgrade to 6.10? I really don't mind reinstalling but if its not necessary it would just be a waste of time. I guess my main concern is that they always warn you that the latest version of any specific distro is likely to have bugs. Thats why i didn't download it in the first place.

So question of the day: Is Ubuntu 6.10 stable enough to warrant a reinstall or should i just keep what i have.

Thanks for you continued help

Edit: forgot to mention that i have the ndiswrapper source and as soon as i can find a driver for my usb receiver i can try that as well. Ill probably try to find something i can download since i don't have any cd's for it (its my parents and if a driver CD even exists its tucked away in a box full of CDs, hidden in a closet somewhere )

Another question, were did you guys go to start learning commands and what not? Did you pick up some books or use the all mighty google? Or did you just pick it up as you went along by reading forums and what not?

[.Maleficus.]

You can run 'apt-get dist-upgrade' and it should upgrade you to Edgy. And yes, it is very stable. It's been out for a few months, and I've used it for all of them, and it's excellent. While Ubuntu still says that 6.06 is best for n00bs, not much has changed, and most of what you do in Dapper carries over to Edgy. And actually, I think if you look hard enough, you can find a tutorial for Automatix2 on Dapper.

And I mostly use Google. I have a book called "Linux Desktop Pocket Guide" made by O'Reilly, but it isn't about commands, mostly software stuff. If you want a tip for learning the Linux system, install Gentoo once. Or even read the install guide. It is so packed full of information that your head will throb when you're done. And most of Gentoo stuff carries over to Ubuntu, so you can tweak config. files in Ubuntu that you learned about with the guide (I know this, I've done it).

And it's really no problem, I enjoy giving my knowledge to people. And if you want to hear something scary, I've barely even scratched the surface .

[luciusad2004]

Awesome, ill run that tonight when i go to bed and let it work over night (net connection can be pretty slow when using internet sharing)

Maybe in the coming weeks if i find that i enjoy Ubuntu ill give Gentoo a try. I can read about something all i want but i find i learn best when i sit down and do it, so installing Gentoo could be a great learning experience for me.

Ill probably be back tomorrow then. Hopefully i can get the wireless card working, then ill take a crack at the sound issue.

Thanks
-Lucius

[luciusad2004]

Ok, sorry about the lack of updates. I wasn't all that motivated to work with this the last week or so. I upgraded to edgy, installed automatix2 and downloaded ndiswrapper.

I was in the device manager and i discovered that my wireless adapter shows up as MN510 802.11b Adapter.I found it odd that Ubuntu recognized the adapter yet it would not show up as an option when i tried to edit my network settings. I decided that before i went messing around with Ndiswrapper I would at least check the networking utility one more time. Like magic there was another option that wasn't there before. I honestly don't know were it came from. Maybe those updates i installed before getting started.

My wireless adapter shows up here as "Wired connection (wlan0)"

I don't know why it is calling it a wired connection (maybe because its a usb adapter???) Either way... It doesn't work. It may very well work, but i don't know how to connect to my network. I really don't know. It is a secured network so i imagine i have to find somewhere that it will let me select what network i want to connect to and then let me enter the password.

I went online today and got some drivers (thinking maybe some drivers would sort all of this out) and then had to install them on my windows machine to actually find the specific files i need.

I transfered them to the Linux box and I just installed ever driver file i had via ndiswrapper. (whatever it was that i downloaded had a bunch of drivers in it) While in Ndiswrapper, it does tell me that there is hardware present for one of the drivers. I don't know what to do. I was thinking it could be something as simple as just getting it connected to the network, but i don't know how to do that.


On the other side of things. Last time i searched on google i found a lot of things about people having sound trouble with the chip set i have. I however did not find anything pertaining to a possible fix. If i feel up to it i might later post a question about it up on the Ubuntu forums.

Thanks

-Lucius

[.Maleficus.]

So the drivers installed correctly, no errors? The output of 'ndiswrapper -l' is good? Then I think you might just have to go into the Networking tool, select the device (wlan0) and click 'Configure' (I think that's what it's called). It will give you some options to enter, and then activate the device.

One thing. What sound and wireless devices are you running?

[luciusad2004]

I ran that command you asked about and i got this.

charles@charles-desktop:~$ ndiswrapper -l
Installed drivers:
mn110           driver installed 
mn120           driver installed 
mn130           driver installed 
mn510           driver installed 
mn520   invalid driver!
mn710           driver installed 
mn720           driver installed 
charles@charles-desktop:~$

After that i uninstalled mn520.

The wireless chip set i am using is mn510 or at least thats what it tells me in the device manager. I can get more info on that tomorrow, right now my mom is using it with her laptop.

I tried clicking configure in the networking utility and it just takes me to a window were i can choose from automatic configuration via DHCP or Manual configuration via a Static IP. I don't however get an option to connect to my network.

The sound chipset is VT8233/a/8235/8237 AC97 audio controller.

Edit: forgot to mention that after installing and running ndiswrapper i have had some kernel panics when booting... I don't even know what that means but thats what it said. It fixes itself with a simple reboot though so im not worried about it just yet. Maybe deleting that bad driver will have taken care of it.

Edit v1.2: Ill try to be back tomorrow my gf is making me go to bed.

[Airbozo]

..................

Another question, were did you guys go to start learning commands and what not? Did you pick up some books or use the all mighty google? Or did you just pick it up as you went along by reading forums and what not?

I actually took a beginning UNIX class at my local community college. I also picked up a beginning to intermediate UNIX book to read through. UNIX Unleashed, by SAMS publishing is a good book to start with. Pick up an older copy to save some $$ since most everything is the same.

RTFM!

Also learn the "man" command. It is your friend and has helped me out of some tight situations at 2:30 in the morning ("man cpio" for an idea...). Create a dummy account (no root privilege), then play away. You will not be able to harm anything, and if you happen to dork that account up, delete it and create another. Learn vi. I know it is just a simple text editor, but it is _very_ powerful! You will hate me for suggesting it until you get good with it, then you will hate other "normal" text editors. "man vi" or "man vim" (not sure what comes with ubuntu). You can also try emacs although I am not that good at it.

More useful commands;

cd
ls
less
more
find
df
du
rm
cp
mv
chmod
chgrp
tar
cpio


Couple of notes: If you find that you need to edit a critical file, use the following procedure:

mv filename filename.original
cp filename.original filename
edit filename (use your favorite editor in place of "edit")

This preserves the creation dates and ownership of the original file and leaves a copy on your system in case something goes wrong.

cd /usr/bin
ls | more

This will show you a list of commands (not all of them) that are available to most users. Look at some of the commands and, you guessed it "man" them.

Use the cd command to work your way around the filesystem to see where things are. Some of the system commands and config files are under the /etc directory.

Have fun, and post if you have any questions about any command.

NEVER EVER use; "rm -r *" as root. you will have to reload _everything_!

[SgtM]

One that I'm finding very useful on Unix and AIX boxes is
ps -ef | grep xxx

where xxx equals whatever you're looking for. Haven't tried it in Ubuntu or Fedora yet though. I'm getting a crash course in Unix at work, on live production servers at that. Of course we have procedures for EVERYTHING we do, so it's really easy to follow a document and type the commands listed in that document. Let say we get an alarm that a process isn't running on a server. I would go in and do a ps -ef | grep process_name to look at it. If it's really not running (could have just been restarted by another admin) we just start whatever it is and log out. I now find myself wondering why I didn't start using linux few years ago. Then I remember.. I didn't have an over abundance of computers a few years ago.