3g sierra card install problem

seafury · 06-25-2007, 11:46 AM

Hi All Seafury here.
New to Linux and battling for two days now. But am sure will get around to it.
I installed Mandriva 2007 and am trying to install 3g card for past two days.
I looked on posts etc on how to.
few things to go over.
1. I am not connected to internet via Mandriva thus cant download directly.
2. I saved the Aircard Linux .tar on cd and copied it to home on mandriva.
3. went to konsole and just cant get it to unzip.
4. get following error cant find file failed to open excecute etc.
5. also get access denial says i dont have right permission
5. I am logged in as administrator.

OK how do i cd to get to right directory and what is correct tar command.

I an close to tears from frustration.

Please can you guys help.

thanks for time.

b0uncer · 06-26-2007, 07:30 AM

Hi

A .tar file is not a compressed package like .zip files are, it's simply an archive (several files made into one file, but it's not compressed itself). If it ends with .gz (GZip) or .bz2 (Bzip2), then it's compressed (just two examples). Often packages are both archived and compressed, so they end with .tar.gz or .tar.bz2. The reason is that many compression programs only compress one file, but people want several files compressed into one archive. So they archive the files first with tar, then compress that archive with some other program (tar can use compress, gzip and bzip2 in the same command, so it's really simple).

To uncompress a .gz file and a .bz2 file

Code:

gunzip file.gz
bunzip2 file.bz2

to untar a .tar archive (add -v so it becomes -xvf to get verbose output)

Code:

tar -xf file.tar

..and to do these two steps (uncompress, unarchive) with one command,

Code:

tar -xzf file.tar.gz
tar -xjf file.tar.bz2

Note there are different letters depending on how the file was compressed (gz or bz2).

You can navigate trough directories in command line with these commands:
show current dir contents

Code:

ls

move to some directory under current directory

Code:

cd otherdirectory

move to the upper directory (inside which this current dir is):

Code:

cd ..

move to a specific dir:

Code:

cd /path/to/the/place

move directly to your home directory (usually /home/username):

Code:

cd

show the current directory path you're in (Parent Working Directory)

Code:

pwd

If you're using Mandriva, why not do this all in the graphical environment? Double-click the (compressed?) archive and it should open in a window more or less similar to WinZip.

If you don't have enough permissions, you may have to use root account. Don't use it if you don't have to, since it's a security risk and you could accidentally do something destructive (

) but here's how it works:

To become the superuser (root) for a while (asks root password, won't display on screen when you're typing so be careful):

Code:

su

to do something as root, without actually logging in as root, and if sudo is configured to allow you to do this (asks for your own password):

Code:

sudo somecommand

..or simply log in as root in a text console (CTRL+ALT+F1 trough F6 usually, back to graphical CTRL+ALT+F7 usually).

More: www.linuxcommand.org

seafury · 06-27-2007, 05:30 AM

Hi b0uncer,
Thanks for the very helpfull reply.
Ok the tar story is sorted thanks.

But when i wanted to move the file on the graphical interphase to the following lib/firmware the following error came up
access denied could not write to /lib/firmware/sw8xxser.cis

so still at square one.

I someone has a work around on aircard 850 on acer 4050 laptop
please don't hold back.

Thanks