Re: PCMCIA Wireless Card startup problems under Debian Sid

[Alexandru Cardaniuc]

James Caldow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> >>Using a Sarge net-install disc I set about the install process again
> > Of course it is too late now, but: except for downgrades or totally
> >hosed systems, there is no need to reinstall. Upgrading to sid or
> >etch is as easy as adding the appropriate lines to your sources.list
> >and 'aptitude dist-upgrade'.
 
> If only it were that simple. I had been trying to avoid my original
> email becoming too long, but prior to installing in the manner
> described above I had tried to apt-get dist-upgrade two seperate
> machines from Sarge to Sid. 

The right way is to upgrade first from sarge to etch and then from etch
to sid. sarge -> etch -> sid. This is the recommended way. You can't
skip etch, if you do that - no wonder you encounter problems.

> In both cases it choked on things like udev, dpkg, etc. 

I did it several times already. Last time was yesterday and it went
flawlessly.

> I found plenty of info on workarounds for these issues by googling but
> they were all incredibly brute force workarounds to my way of thinking
> and I simply wanted to try installing the system cleanly using Sid
> sources from the start. 

That is strange. These upgrades should be pretty straightforward.
Another case is for downgrading that is not supported, but can be
performed using some "brutal force".

> As I said, I have installed various linux distributions over the
> years, and feel comfortable enough with the whole process that a clean
> install doesn't phase me too much.

Easy upgrade is one of the strengths of debian. It doesn't make sense
not to use it.



-- 
"We are all special cases."  
- Albert Camus 


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Re: PCMCIA Wireless Card startup problems under Debian Sid

[Ed Lawson]

On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 20:18:08 +
James Caldow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>
> As for your issues, I don't want to risk asking the obvious but
have you
> made sure that ACPI and/or APM packages are installed on your
system? 

Yes, they are installed and I finally got some time to look at
things.  Adding "apm" to the /etc/modules file did the trick and
now all is fine.

thanks in any event.

ed lawson 


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Re: PCMCIA Wireless Card startup problems under Debian Sid

[James Caldow]

Dear Ed

Many thanks for your reply. I only signed up for the lists today and
have missed the thread that you refer to. Your reply has fixed the
problem for me perfectly!

After adding the entries you mention the laptop now starts the wireless
card perfectly. I am ecstatic :-)

As for your issues, I don't want to risk asking the obvious but have you
made sure that ACPI and/or APM packages are installed on your system? I
haven't experienced any shutdown or battery issues with Debian, but I do
know that in some of the older distros ACPI/APM weren't always installed
by default and this caused the problems you mention.

Just a thought :-)

===

Jochen,

Once again I want to apologise for over-reacting to your email. After
re-reading your original email I can see that it wasn't meant as
offensively as I first thought. I'm sorry that I thought you were trying
to be offensive.
I was in the middle of a four hour session of trying to understand why
Evolution had decided to stop showing all 194 contacts in my address book!!!

Four hours later I was still none the wiser, and my sense of humour was
well and truly absent. :-(

I will endeavour not to take any future emails quite so personally,
unless they are meant that way ;-)



Ed Lawson wrote:
> On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 13:20:13 +
> James Caldow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>>The problem started after a reboot. When the laptop rebooted
> 
> the 
> 
>>Wireless card powered on but wouldn't connect. Once logged in I
> 
> had to 
> 
>>manually do "ifup eth1" as root to get connected. Not a huge
> 
> deal, but 
> 
>>annoying enough if you have to do it after every reboot!
> 
> 
> 
> There is a thread about this from a couple of days ago.
> Basically you need to edit two lines in the file
> 
> /etc/pcmica/network.opts
> 
> Go to end of the file to the lines which start with 
> : "start_fn" and "stop_fn"
> 
> replace the word "return" with "ifup $1;"  and "ifdown $1;" as
> appropriate and then the networking with the wireless card will
> be brought up automatically.
> 
> I went through the same issues with SID and you need to take care
> to watch what an upgrade will do.  Generally it manages to be a
> useful desktop system with up to date stuff.
> 
> right now I am trying to sort out why my laptop will no longer
> powers down automatically at shutdown and the battery monitor no
> longer works after a recent upgrade.  so you are not alone.
> 
> Ed Lawson
> 
> 
> 
> 


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Re: PCMCIA Wireless Card startup problems under Debian Sid

[Ed Lawson]

On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 13:20:13 +
James Caldow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


> The problem started after a reboot. When the laptop rebooted
the 
> Wireless card powered on but wouldn't connect. Once logged in I
had to 
> manually do "ifup eth1" as root to get connected. Not a huge
deal, but 
> annoying enough if you have to do it after every reboot!


There is a thread about this from a couple of days ago.
Basically you need to edit two lines in the file

/etc/pcmica/network.opts

Go to end of the file to the lines which start with 
: "start_fn" and "stop_fn"

replace the word "return" with "ifup $1;"  and "ifdown $1;" as
appropriate and then the networking with the wireless card will
be brought up automatically.

I went through the same issues with SID and you need to take care
to watch what an upgrade will do.  Generally it manages to be a
useful desktop system with up to date stuff.

right now I am trying to sort out why my laptop will no longer
powers down automatically at shutdown and the battery monitor no
longer works after a recent upgrade.  so you are not alone.

Ed Lawson


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Re: PCMCIA Wireless Card startup problems under Debian Sid

[Jochen Schulz]

Hi James!

A few words in advance: I am very sorry that you read my previous mail
as a collection of insults. That was not my intention. Actually I tried
to make fun of myself with the  tags. Please bear with me,
probably I just don't manage to communicate subtle humour in any other
language than my mother tongue (some might say I fail doing that in my
mother tongue just as well).

I didn't mean to imply that you are whining or unable to search for help
yourself. My intention was to give you some advice which should
*prevent* you from being flamed, but obviously you didn't need that in
the first place. Sorry again.

James Caldow:
> Jochen Schulz:
> 
>> Of course it is too late now, but: except for downgrades or totally
>> hosed systems, there is no need to reinstall. Upgrading to sid or etch
>> is as easy as adding the appropriate lines to your sources.list and
>> 'aptitude dist-upgrade'.
> 
> If only it were that simple. I had been trying to avoid my original 
> email becoming too long, but prior to installing in the manner described 
> above I had tried to apt-get dist-upgrade two seperate machines from 
> Sarge to Sid. In both cases it choked on things like udev, dpkg, etc.

Good to know! It's been some time that I did that and there were quite
some drastic changes after sarge's release.

>> That may be related to the current transition to OpenOffice.org 2.0 in
>> sid.  Many of the older extra packages for OOo aren't necessary anymore,
>> but probably the tasks (which were designed for sarge) haven't been
>> updated.
>> 
> Again, that's pretty much what I expected. Going down the Sid route I 
> wasn't expecting to be held by the hand and allowed to use things like 
> tasksel without a hitch.

That's a good attitude for sid. :-)

> >If all you need is to ifup the device, you are probably just missing an
> >'auto ethX' line in your /etc/network/interfaces. man 5 interfaces.
> 
> And now the crux of the question. When I get home I will try what you 
> suggest and I thank you for taking the time to answer. I just hope that 
> if I run into any more serious problems in the future I can find the 
> solution elsewhere. I dread to think what abuse I will bring upon myself 
> if I decide to ask for help here.

Again: I am very sorry if you think I was rude. It was not my intention.
And please note that this list is very big and even if you prefer not to
read my mails anymore, there is a lot to learn for everybody.

I am CC'ing you directly because I don't know whether you already
cancelled your subscribtion. There's no need to CC me, I generally read
all answers to my mails.

J.
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Re: PCMCIA Wireless Card startup problems under Debian Sid

[James Caldow]

Jochen Schulz wrote:

James Caldow:

I was happy like this for a while and was loving everything about 
Debian. Then I began to get adventurous. I wanted to see what I was 
missing with Debian Sid. I liked the idea of more up to date software 
and a more current development environment to play with.



If you plan to stay with sid, please install apt-listbugs and
apt-listchanges. They can display bugreports, changelogs and news items
when installing or upgrading packages.


Please note that using sid sometimes requires you to work around minor
or major problems yourself. By using sid you implicitly agree not to
whine about broken software and to report problems to the bts
(bugs.debian.org).


Whilst I appreciate that you have specified that you are in lecture mode 
I would also point out that at no point in my email have I whined about 
the software being "broken". I encountered a problem that I could not 
resolve by myself or by searching, and instead of whining about it I 
came here to ask for help.


That also means that you are expected to fix a lot of things yourself,
at least on your own system. If you have been reading this list for some
time, you might have noticed some hostility towards (obvious) newbies
using sid when they are seeking help for "trivial" problems.


As I said in my email I am not exactly a newbie, nor do I claim to know 
everything. I am simply looking for a solution and had hoped that 
someone could help. I have used various open-source mailing lists in the 
past and continue to do so. I regularly use the mailing lists for Opie, 
Familiar, and GPE (Linux on Ipaqs) which can hardly be described as 
pedestrian or straightforward. At no time during my membership there 
have I been told that a problem was trivial, or that I shouldn't be 
asking a question in the first place.


That said, nobody expects you to know everything, but you should know
some basic Debian documentation (See http://debian.org/doc for the FAQ
and Reference) and you should follow news and announcements because some
of them directly affect sid. The mailing lists debian-announce,
debian-devel-announce and debian-news might be of interest.

Even if you don't understand everything (esp. in d-d-a), you get a good
impression of how the project works and you will be warned in advance
when sid is undergoing significant changes.



Thank you for the advice. In fact I did read through all the 
documentation available at Debian.org prior to even installing Sarge. 
That was what convinced me to give it a go. I liked what Debian stood 
for and what it had to offer. I will also give the lists you mention a look.



Using a Sarge net-install disc I set about the install process again



Of course it is too late now, but: except for downgrades or totally
hosed systems, there is no need to reinstall. Upgrading to sid or etch
is as easy as adding the appropriate lines to your sources.list and
'aptitude dist-upgrade'.


If only it were that simple. I had been trying to avoid my original 
email becoming too long, but prior to installing in the manner described 
above I had tried to apt-get dist-upgrade two seperate machines from 
Sarge to Sid. In both cases it choked on things like udev, dpkg, etc. I 
found plenty of info on workarounds for these issues by googling but 
they were all incredibly brute force workarounds to my way of thinking 
and I simply wanted to try installing the system cleanly using Sid 
sources from the start. As I said, I have installed various linux 
distributions over the years, and feel comfortable enough with the whole 
process that a clean install doesn't phase me too much.


I wish that the apt-get dist-upgrade had worked as it is supposed to, 
but I wasn't too surprised when it didn't as we are talking about a 
fairly major change going from Sarge to Sid.




and using the expert options I selected the unstable sources. After
flying through all of the initial setup tasksel choked on the desktop
environment task. It would complain incessantly about unmet
dependencies with the Openoffice.org-kde package.



That may be related to the current transition to OpenOffice.org 2.0 in
sid.  Many of the older extra packages for OOo aren't necessary anymore,
but probably the tasks (which were designed for sarge) haven't been
updated.

Again, that's pretty much what I expected. Going down the Sid route I 
wasn't expecting to be held by the hand and allowed to use things like 
tasksel without a hitch.


The problem started after a reboot. When the laptop rebooted the 
Wireless card powered on but wouldn't connect. Once logged in I had to 
manually do "ifup eth1" as root to get connected. Not a huge deal, but 
annoying enough if you have to do it after every reboot!



If all you need is to ifup the device, you are probably just missing an
'auto ethX' line in your /etc/network/interfaces. man 5 interfaces.


And now the crux of the question. When I get home I will try what you 
suggest and I thank you for taking the 

Re: PCMCIA Wireless Card startup problems under Debian Sid

[Jochen Schulz]

James Caldow:
> 
> I was happy like this for a while and was loving everything about 
> Debian. Then I began to get adventurous. I wanted to see what I was 
> missing with Debian Sid. I liked the idea of more up to date software 
> and a more current development environment to play with.

If you plan to stay with sid, please install apt-listbugs and
apt-listchanges. They can display bugreports, changelogs and news items
when installing or upgrading packages.


Please note that using sid sometimes requires you to work around minor
or major problems yourself. By using sid you implicitly agree not to
whine about broken software and to report problems to the bts
(bugs.debian.org).

That also means that you are expected to fix a lot of things yourself,
at least on your own system. If you have been reading this list for some
time, you might have noticed some hostility towards (obvious) newbies
using sid when they are seeking help for "trivial" problems.

That said, nobody expects you to know everything, but you should know
some basic Debian documentation (See http://debian.org/doc for the FAQ
and Reference) and you should follow news and announcements because some
of them directly affect sid. The mailing lists debian-announce,
debian-devel-announce and debian-news might be of interest.

Even if you don't understand everything (esp. in d-d-a), you get a good
impression of how the project works and you will be warned in advance
when sid is undergoing significant changes.


> Using a Sarge net-install disc I set about the install process again

Of course it is too late now, but: except for downgrades or totally
hosed systems, there is no need to reinstall. Upgrading to sid or etch
is as easy as adding the appropriate lines to your sources.list and
'aptitude dist-upgrade'.

> and using the expert options I selected the unstable sources. After
> flying through all of the initial setup tasksel choked on the desktop
> environment task. It would complain incessantly about unmet
> dependencies with the Openoffice.org-kde package.

That may be related to the current transition to OpenOffice.org 2.0 in
sid.  Many of the older extra packages for OOo aren't necessary anymore,
but probably the tasks (which were designed for sarge) haven't been
updated.

> The problem started after a reboot. When the laptop rebooted the 
> Wireless card powered on but wouldn't connect. Once logged in I had to 
> manually do "ifup eth1" as root to get connected. Not a huge deal, but 
> annoying enough if you have to do it after every reboot!

If all you need is to ifup the device, you are probably just missing an
'auto ethX' line in your /etc/network/interfaces. man 5 interfaces.

J.
-- 
People talking a foreign language are romantic and mysterious.
[Agree]   [Disagree]
 


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PCMCIA Wireless Card startup problems under Debian Sid

[James Caldow]

Hello,

This is my first posting to the list so apologies in advance if this has 
already been asked.


I have been a linux user for 4 years now and have tried all the major 
distros at some point (Mandrake, Red Hat, Fedora, SuSe, etc). I recently 
decided I was ready to move onto the supposedly more difficult to 
install Debian. My first install of Sarge went painlessly and worked 
beautifully straight away. Everything was detected pretty well, and 
apart from a few tweaks to my XFree86-config file to get the synaptics 
touchpad working to my liking I had nothing difficult or arcane to do.


I was happy like this for a while and was loving everything about 
Debian. Then I began to get adventurous. I wanted to see what I was 
missing with Debian Sid. I liked the idea of more up to date software 
and a more current development environment to play with.


Using a Sarge net-install disc I set about the install process again and 
 using the expert options I selected the unstable sources. After flying 
through all of the initial setup tasksel choked on the desktop 
environment task. It would complain incessantly about unmet dependencies 
with the Openoffice.org-kde package. Not a problem, I simply did 
"apt-get install gnome openoffice.org kde" and off it went. Everything 
installed perfectly and after installing a few other bits and bobs, 
(xserver-xorg etc) I was into a perfect desktop environment. Everything 
was lovely and I was very happy. The laptop's monitor worked 
beautifully, Syanptics touchpad was working perfectly, and my Wireless 
connection was up and running.


The problem started after a reboot. When the laptop rebooted the 
Wireless card powered on but wouldn't connect. Once logged in I had to 
manually do "ifup eth1" as root to get connected. Not a huge deal, but 
annoying enough if you have to do it after every reboot!


I searched through google looking for an answer but couldn't find 
anything specific enough. My suspicion is that it has something to do 
with udev, since the card worked flawlessly under Sarge. I have tried 
removing the pcmcia-cs package after seeing something on google about 
this package being obsolete in conjunction with udev, but that just 
killed the card all together. Can anyone advise me what I have done 
wrong? I am at a loss as to how the new udev replaces hotplug, or how it 
interacts with the hardware. Is there a straight forward fix available?


My hardware is as follows:

HP Pavilion ZT1125 Laptop + Enterasys Roamabout (Re-badged Orinoco Gold) 
PCMCIA Wireless Card.


Any help would be greatly appreciated and apologies for the long winded 
email.



James Caldow


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