Debian 5.1 : Cant get wireless working

FatRakoon

FatRakoon

FatRakoon

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Been using Ubuntu for last year or so, and I have for the most part, been happy with it, but its just getting rubbish now.

After some slagging and nagging, I hav decided to re-try Debian and so far Im 50-50

Main nag at this time is that I canopt get Wireless running.

With other Distros, it sees my wireless and it knows it needs the driver and so, I connect with ethernet and update the driver and bingo! Job done.

However, in Debian, its not doing anything. Its not even showing that there is a device anyway, so perhaps I need to install somehting to let me show my devices? - I have not got anythign that does that either? - I have tried to have a very slim install.

Anyway, I have used my laptop to do this, its an Acer Aspire 1682

Can anyone offer me any info on getting Wireless runnning and of course any other hardware.

Also, is compiz supported on Debian?

I have seen nothing at all about getting ATI Drivers in never mind having a 3D Desktop.

Thanks in advance.
 
Ahoy! Debian is an interesting distro to get working properly.

First thing is the ati drivers, debian has this thing about trying to be as open source as possible and as such ships with the readonhd drivers to do decent ati driverness (took me ages to work this one out). I think the driver comes with the kernel so its just a matter of setting you driver in your xorg.conf to readonhd (or running one of the auto config utilitys for x like xorgconfig)

compiz should be supported by now... (its almost definatally in the testing branch if nothing else) i cant remember off the top of my head how to get to it though

As for the wireless card, a bit of googling implys you have a intel 2200bg card, is this right? Hopefully it is as that should have some sort of linux driver out there. When i was doing my laptop with debian it had a grumble at me for using the intel driver as it did not have an opensource one, just a pre build linux module.

http://www.debuntu.org/2006/03/27/9...pro-wireless-2200-bg-to-work-on-debian-ubuntu

Theres the guide to getting a 2200bg working :)

Have fun!
 
How annoying.

I get knocked about using ubuntu and indeed I have grown away from it as well, but I get told to go Debian, only to find out that it will require a lopad of work to get things working in it.

Ah well, I suppose its always going to be like this and there is nothing I can do about it is there?

Ok, cheers for that, I will be giving debian its fair run and so, I will do that with the Wireles and ATI ( Both work on my laptop but with certain levels of success ) so lets see what happens?

Thanks again.
 
I'm a Debian user, and firstly let me give you a pat on the back for choosing it. It's not straight forward to get working perfectly, as has been pointed out this is mainly because they insist that any software it uses is truely open source or "libre" software. "pop" Linux distros like Ubuntu (though based on Debian) don't have the same moral standards and hence are easier to get up and running.


Wireless can be a pain - took me a while to get setup to be honest. Your best bet is to pop over to irc.debian.org and ask in the #debian channel and those guys'll get you up and running in no time.

Don't give in to the "kiddie" Linux distros and stick it out with Debian - they choose truely free software for a reason :)
 
Thanks for the Moral Support. wont say I dont need it, cos I bloody do!

MP3 playback is sorted and I am finding that Rhythmbox is fine.

Wireless is a complete bloody pain in the arse As pingwing says, its the intel and I have followed the instructions to the letter but its not happening.

I threw in the Ubuntu live Distro and once I give it my network name and key im in... Im trying to see any comparisons of them, but no!

-------

Im not having a go here, but what makes Debian so good and Ubuntu so bad?

Given that Ubuntu is debvian anyway, plus it has all teh stuff that works straight off the bat, it gets my wireless working and it does the same thing as debian does only easier to setup?
What does it mean to say that Debian is more fre than ubuntu when the software available is the same on both too?

The only difference that I can see, is that neither of them supply certain drivers, its just that ubuntu provide a fully automatic way to install them, while debian nesd to be done manually.

Like I said, Im not having a go, I just want to know.

Thanks.
 
Ah, gobuntu

This I found to be a cross of both Debian and ubuntu.

Giving you the feel of ubuntu but the difficulty of Debian

Thats my opinion anyway.

Im kind of hoping that I can stick Debian out... I mean... I had Debian "Potato" several years ago running on my Atari TT and way back then, there was no such things as installers and everythign had to be done by hand... Even formatting the HD because there is no way to create a linux partition as there was no partitioning software.

And yet I still managed it... its just that Im very impatient these days.

If I can just get the wireless sorted, it will be half the battle..

Oh, and I never could fathom the Free Beer idea... Its been used far too many times to avoid answering a question.
Much like the "God moves in mysterious ways" once a theist hits on something he cannot answer.

In the case of Debian v Ubuntu, the only thing that I can think of therefore, is the drivers... Ubuntu has them and Debian does not.
 
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Can you confirm exactly what wireless card you have? If it's an Intel 2200bg, then it's very well supported under linux with the iwlwifi project (if I remember correctly). Should be a case of either checking it's supported in the kernel or just loading the right module.

*edit* reading http://intellinuxwireless.org/ it seems that you want the ipw2200 driver for the 2200bg, but that it should be included in any recent kernel. What kernel version you using? You on deb stable?
 
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Yes, its the IPW2200

Im running DEB 5.1

Now, every version of Linux I have tried ( Every version Recently that is ) all know the Wifi hardware and the ones that dont have drivers, know exactly where to get it, and how, so a quick update with the Ethernet will cure it.

Debian however is the one that does not seem to even know about it.

Again, I will go through some things once I have time to concentrate on it.
 
Hmmmm. IPW2200 should be in the kernel. Can you post the output of
Code: 
uname -a

Actually chuck us the output of this as well:

Code: 
lspci -v

If it's not, it shouldn't be too hard to grab the kernel sources, turn the driver on, recompile and reboot off it. Or load the module.
 
FatRakoon said:
Yes, its the IPW2200

Im running DEB 5.1

Now, every version of Linux I have tried ( Every version Recently that is ) all know the Wifi hardware and the ones that dont have drivers, know exactly where to get it, and how, so a quick update with the Ethernet will cure it.

Debian however is the one that does not seem to even know about it.

Again, I will go through some things once I have time to concentrate on it.
Click to expand...


Okay dude do
su
apt-get install firmware-ipw2x00

Make sure you have the non-free section in your sources.list:
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib non-free

HTH
 
Growse & Dangerstat.

I will look into these

uname -a
lspci -v

and I will have a check of the output both before and after I do the apt-get of the firmware, lets see if these will play ball yeah?

Thanks.
 
FatRakoon said:
Growse & Dangerstat.

I will look into these

uname -a
lspci -v

and I will have a check of the output both before and after I do the apt-get of the firmware, lets see if these will play ball yeah?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Well I just tied this on a IPW2100 based latop and it worked fine. So hopefully it'll work for you.

When you do lspci - look for a line like this:
01:0a.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless LAN 2100 3B Mini PCI Adapter (rev 04)

(though obviously yours should say 2200. If it does then the post I made really should work
 
Sorry guys... I thinkI have buggered somethign up?

I went to log back on and all it was doing was giving me a blank stare... No texts to say anything, just black!

I tried a few thigns and there is even a Recovery option in the Disk is there not, but I decided to start over.

So, as we speak, there is NOTHING in my DEBIAN 5.0.1 install. I opted for text automatic install and as of now, the only thing I have done, is set the theme and background piccy and nothing else.

Now,
uname -a gives me
Linux debian 2.6.26-2-686 #1 SMP Thu Mar 26 01:08:11 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

and looking through lspci -v I notice the wireless adapter is there
-----------------
02:04.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG [Calexico2] Network Connection (rev 05)
Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 2701
Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 10
Memory at d0208000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel modules: ipw2200
--------


Now, we are clear tha**** happy its there, however... I have noticed during the startup, thatitdid not load up the kernel driver for it... Error -2 I think? - it did go past very quickly, so I might be wrong.

So, now, what I will do, is re-try adding the source and doing the apt-get for the firmware yes?
 
AHA... Whats this?
added the source, and did the apt-get stuff, it looked and downloaded the file and then ran a textbased program whcihasked for confirmation, and then it seemed to accept it...

Might need a shutdown, but its not yet clear if its worked or not?

Cool.

I have justinstalled my first ever thingy with apt-get

Big deal for me beign an RPM fan.




---------------------------



ATTENTION ATTENTION::::

FAT BOY HAS WIRELESS

Oh god guys, thanks a lot for this... I am now online and on Wireless

Sure, ubuntu and Suse etc all do it for me, but I have had to do this manually.

I wont say I had to do it myself of course because you lot told me what to do, but for me, its a big thing.

Definitely saving these notes thats for sure.

As I said... Many many thanks everyone.

Perhaps now I can start using DEBIAN proper not instead of using ubuntu... At least play with it to get afeel of it anyway... I might not like it.

LOL
 
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Excellent :)

Apt is really useful. Having worked quite a lot with both RPM based and apt based distros, my preference is overwhelmingly for the latter. It just seems to make more sense and break a lot less.

I'm sure you know this, but if you see an error on bootup, easiest way to figure it out is to look at the dmesg. Issuing the dmesg command will dump the whole startup output to the console, so if you pipe it through less, you can page through it and find out what went wrong and where:

Code: 
dmesg | less

:)
 
dmesg
I did know about this, btu in truth I had not thought about it, plus I was only getting a black, blank screen so Im not sure where I would be able to use it anyway.

Given that it was already a fariy lfresh install, and that I have done a lot of messing about that could have done more harm than good, I decided an F&R might be a good idea anyway.

Excellent and high 5 indeed.

Thanks guys... Of course I would have done it on my own ( Lie No 1 ) so I didnt need you to help ( Lie No 2 )

Seriously it means a lot to me.

Thanks.
 
FatRakoon said:
dmesg
I did know about this, btu in truth I had not thought about it, plus I was only getting a black, blank screen so Im not sure where I would be able to use it anyway.

Given that it was already a fariy lfresh install, and that I have done a lot of messing about that could have done more harm than good, I decided an F&R might be a good idea anyway.

Excellent and high 5 indeed.

Thanks guys... Of course I would have done it on my own ( Lie No 1 ) so I didnt need you to help ( Lie No 2 )

Seriously it means a lot to me.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

No worries glad it worked for you.
 
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