Wireless problem in Ubuntu, moving from Vista

[Oveee]

Ok, so I have been a windows user up till now, but ive read some impressive and convincing articles about Linux. Because of this, I made a live CD for Ubuntu. (I am a COMPLETE newbie in Linux, and almost helpless when it comes to settings for internet and wireless, so no weird names or acronyms please ).

I came to realise there was no internet available, and I googled it. Some pages suggested that wireless would work much better if I had Linux installed. So I decided to do this. But, after spending time and space to install it in addition to vista, I sat there with the same problem... Internet wouldn't show.

Now, I highly susppect this has all to do with my computer, which seems to be vistas favourite student (-___-). There is only one way to activate my wireless card and that is via the "Wireless Status Option", which can only be opened with Fn+F1 (at least from what I could google out in 2 hours). There is supposed to be another way, you can log into vista, activate internet, turn off the (shut down network card upon restart) thing, and log back to Ubuntu. But seriously, I don't want vista to be there at all, nor do I want to spend 5-10 minutes extra because of turning on internet... When going into Linux, clicking the network Icon, I can see that the three first wireless options are gray, unselectable (They read Wired Network; disconnected; Wireless Network, respectively). Does this mean that the Wireless card is off? Any way around this?

Judging by my Console Management, my network cards are
1. Atheros AR5007EG Wireless Network Adapter
2. Realtek RTL 8101E Family PCI-E Fast Ethernet NIC (NDIS 6.0)
I guess im supposed to look at the first one. I dont know if its built in or PCI or USB or whatever, but I bought it complete, its a laptop, and I havent added anything to it.
I typed uname -r and got this as a result: 2.6.28-11-generic

I tried to post the results I got from the terminal, but I failed. (Somehow I couldnt post the lspci, lsmod and dmesg files because apparently they contained URLs :S )
I tried to put them up as *.txt attachments, but dmesg was too big, so I had to compress it :/

But all three files are in the attachment, each of them named after the command I used to get them.

I hope this was everything needed, tell me if you need to know more.
Thanks in advance

[reed9]

Hi and welcome.

Can you post the output of

cat /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill*/state

It will just return a number. 0=off 1=on

Also, try

sudo ifconfig wlan0 down
sudo modprobe -r ath5k
sudo modprobe acer_wmi
sudo modprobe ath5
sudo ifconfig wlan0 up

and check your wireless again.

For anyone else looking at this thread, the pertinent bits of the output

10.805104] ath5k_pci 0000:08:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
[   10.805120] ath5k_pci 0000:08:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
[   10.805217] ath5k_pci 0000:08:00.0: registered as 'phy0'
[   10.846459] phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'pid'
[   11.069084] ath5k phy0: Atheros AR2425 chip found (MAC: 0xe2, PHY: 0x70)
[   11.159430] HDA Intel 0000:00:1b.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 22
[   11.159527] HDA Intel 0000:00:1b.0: setting latency timer to 64
[   11.190247] hda_codec: Unknown model for ALC268, trying auto-probe from BIOS...
[   11.390378] lp: driver loaded but no devices found
[   11.479426] Adding 176672k swap on /dev/sda6.  Priority:-1 extents:1 across:176672k
[   11.637245] Synaptics Touchpad, model: 1, fw: 6.3, id: 0x1280b1, caps: 0xa04711/0xa04000
[   11.691624] input: SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad as /devices/platform/i8042/serio2/input/input7
[   12.024923] EXT3 FS on sda5, internal journal
[   13.101838] type=1505 audit(1254522588.128:2): operation="profile_load" name="/usr/share/gdm/guest-session/Xsession" name2="default" pid=2008
[   13.162909] type=1505 audit(1254522588.188:3): operation="profile_load" name="/sbin/dhclient-script" name2="default" pid=2012
[   13.163057] type=1505 audit(1254522588.188:4): operation="profile_load" name="/sbin/dhclient3" name2="default" pid=2012
[   13.163102] type=1505 audit(1254522588.188:5): operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-client.action" name2="default" pid=2012
[   13.163148] type=1505 audit(1254522588.188:6): operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/connman/scripts/dhclient-script" name2="default" pid=2012
[   13.311517] type=1505 audit(1254522588.335:7): operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf" name2="default" pid=2017
[   13.311734] type=1505 audit(1254522588.335:8): operation="profile_load" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" name2="default" pid=2017
[   13.343805] type=1505 audit(1254522588.367:9): operation="profile_load" name="/usr/sbin/tcpdump" name2="default" pid=2021
[   15.216985] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
[   15.216989] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast
[   15.240452] Bridge firewalling registered
[   16.611580] ppdev: user-space parallel port driver
[   18.314373] [drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
[   18.320198] pci 0000:00:02.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
[   18.320205] pci 0000:00:02.0: setting latency timer to 64
[   18.320334] pci 0000:00:02.0: irq 2298 for MSI/MSI-X
[   18.320448] [drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20080730 on minor 0
[   18.322980] [drm:i915_setparam] *ERROR* unknown parameter 4
[   20.972626] r8169: eth0: link down
[   20.972866] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready
[   20.999497] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready

Module                  Size  Used by
i915                   65540  2 
drm                    96296  3 i915
binfmt_misc            16776  1 
ppdev                  15620  0 
bridge                 56340  0 
stp                    10500  1 bridge
bnep                   20224  2 
input_polldev          11912  0 
joydev                 18368  0 
lp                     17156  0 
parport                42220  2 ppdev,lp
snd_hda_intel         435636  3 
snd_pcm_oss            46336  0 
snd_mixer_oss          22656  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm                82948  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss
snd_seq_dummy          10756  0 
snd_seq_oss            37760  0 
arc4                    9856  2 
snd_seq_midi           14336  0 
ecb                    10752  2 
snd_rawmidi            29696  1 snd_seq_midi
snd_seq_midi_event     15104  2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi
snd_seq                56880  6 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event
ath5k                 107008  0 
snd_timer              29704  2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd_seq_device         14988  5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq
psmouse                61972  0 
mac80211              217208  1 ath5k
serio_raw              13316  0 
snd                    62628  15 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_seq_oss,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
soundcore              15200  1 snd
pcspkr                 10496  0 
led_class              12036  1 ath5k
intel_agp              34108  1 
snd_page_alloc         16904  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
agpgart                42696  3 drm,intel_agp
cfg80211               38032  2 ath5k,mac80211
iTCO_wdt               19108  0 
iTCO_vendor_support    11652  1 iTCO_wdt
video                  25360  0 
output                 11008  1 video
r8169                  40836  0 
mii                    13312  1 r8169
fbcon                  46112  0 
tileblit               10752  1 fbcon
font                   16384  1 fbcon
bitblit                13824  1 fbcon
softcursor              9984  1 bitblit

02:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller [10ec:8136] (rev 01)
	Kernel driver in use: r8169
	Kernel modules: r8169
08:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter [168c:001c] (rev 04)
	Kernel driver in use: ath5k_pci
	Kernel modules: ath_pci, ath5k

[reed9]

Did you say you could get a wired connection?

If you can, do so and try installing the following

sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-jaunty

Then restart.

[Oveee]

Thank you very much, reed9

the cat /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill*/state didnt seem to work before I tried the series of commands you listed, but after that, it worked !
Im on linux right now, actually ; D


But now, I met another problem... A window popped up with a lot of updates, and when I press "update", it tells me that I dont have enough disc space... (400 something mb). And I just got it ;S

I have 2 harddisks, one with some 35-40 GB free and another with more than 250 GB free...
I might have been stupid when installing Linux to my drive. I couldnt choose which harddisk to put it in, but I think I put it in the 35-40 GB one ( C: ).
Then, I as good as skipped the step with the space slider thing... should I not have done this? I think the slider way waay up, taking all of the space(?).
I hope its not what I think, that I spent the entire thing on the linux system, and nothing for the data... Explain please
EDIT: I can't install custom programs either :O !!
EDIT 2: My FileSystem harddisk (this must be where linux is installed, partition or something, ive never seen it before) has 0 bytes of free space available... out of 20 + GB

Later, I will want to get rid of vista and put Linux as the main OS on the C drive... To do this, should I reformat and reinstall Linux?

[reed9]

It sounds like you didn't allocate enough space to the root directory.

Can you post the output of

sudo fdisk -l
df -h

EDIT: I can't install custom programs either :O !!

What programs? Are they windows software?

Later, I will want to get rid of vista and put Linux as the main OS on the C drive... To do this, should I reformat and reinstall Linux?

That would probably be the best way to go.

Can you also post which thing solved the wireless problem, for anyone else with a similar problem looking for a solution?

[Oveee]

To solve it, I wrote this code into the terminal:

sudo ifconfig wlan0 down
sudo modprobe -r ath5K
sudo modprobe acer_wmi
sudo modprobe ath5
sudo ifconfig wlan0 up

After I had done that, the wireless card was on, and the light on my computer indicating wireless activation was on.

Output for "sudo fdisk -l"

Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xeb5b211b

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1        1148     9216000   27  Unknown
/dev/sda2   *        1148       10197    72685568    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3           10197       38588   228049240    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4           38589       38913     2610562+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5           38589       38891     2433816   83  Linux
/dev/sda6           38892       38913      176683+  82  Linux swap / Solaris

Output for "df -h"

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5             2.3G  2.3G     0 100% /
tmpfs                 1.5G     0  1.5G   0% /lib/init/rw
varrun                1.5G  100K  1.5G   1% /var/run
varlock               1.5G     0  1.5G   0% /var/lock
udev                  1.5G  152K  1.5G   1% /dev
tmpfs                 1.5G  496K  1.5G   1% /dev/shm
lrm                   1.5G  2.4M  1.5G   1% /lib/modules/2.6.28-11-generic/volatile
overflow              1.0M   16K 1008K   2% /tmp
/dev/sda2              70G   35G   35G  51% /media/SYSTEM

The softwares I tried downloading all supported Linux. The problem was that there wasnt enough space to download... The softwares were Blender 3D Linux version, Alchemy (cross-platform) and wxMaxima, Linux version. None worked.

I tried opening other built-in programs...
Tomboy notes didnt respond at all.
OpenOffice programs responded with "The application cannot be started. An internal error occured".
Gimp couldnt open either, because it had to create a folder ".gimp-2.6", and there was no space for it.

Other problems I noticed when starting Ubuntu today was that the sound, network and Date + Time buttons were all gone from the top right corner, as well as the workspace switch buttons in the bottom right. So I couldnt connect to the internet, but the hotkey for sound worked and I dont know about the workspace switching, because I forgot the shortcut.

Whats happening? :S

[reed9]

/dev/sda5 2.3G 2.3G 0 100% /

This is what's happening. Your root partition, which contains all the system files and the cache of downloaded packages, is only 2.3 GB. It's simply not big enough.

Then, I as good as skipped the step with the space slider thing... should I not have done this? I think the slider way waay up, taking all of the space(?).

This is where the mistake occurred, I'd wager, as you suspected.

You may be able to resize the partition. I like to use Parted Magic for partitioning. You can also boot the Ubuntu live CD up, I believe it includes gparted.
GPARTED DOCUMENTATION - RESIZING

All in all, it may be easier to reinstall, though.