Wireless problem in Ubuntu, moving from Vista

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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. :D
Thanks in advance ;)

Hi and welcome.

Can you post the output of

Code:

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

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

Also, try

Code:

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

Code:

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

Code:

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

Code:

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

Did you say you could get a wired connection?

If you can, do so and try installing the following

Code:

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

Then restart.

Problem number 2: UPDATING

Thank you very much, reed9 :D

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 ! :D
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?

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

Can you post the output of

Code:

sudo fdisk -l df -h

Quote:

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

What programs? Are they windows software?

Quote:

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?

Problem upon problem? :S

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

Code:

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"

Code:

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"

Code:

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

Quote:

/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.

Quote:

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.