wireless&sound not working on an acer aspire 5520

Valkyrie_of_valhalla · 03-26-2008, 05:56 PM

I'm running OpenSUSE 10.3 (64 bit version) on an acer aspire 5520, and I managed to get everything working except the wireless card and sound card. (kernel version 2.6.22.17-0.1-default)

Problems and what i did so far:

1) Wireless card

Reported by lspci as

Code:

05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5006EG 802.11 b/g Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

I tried playing with both madwifi and ndiswrapper modules...

The madwifi modules are present:

Code:

# lsmod | grep ath
ath_pci               111664  0
wlan                  218648  1 ath_pci
ath_hal               234864  1 ath_pci

But the device doesn't seem to be loaded by the kernel although the device is present:

Code:

# iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth22     no wireless extensions.

Same interfaces with an ifconfig -a.

(interesting problem with the ethernet card too, it's driver number increases after every reboot, that's how it got to 22, but it's working fine besides that...)

In yast, it just says it's not connected and "Unable to configure the network card because the kernel device is not present".
Tried adding a new card from there, using the module ath_pci, but it is reported as not connected... (I did select load at boot time and rebooted after)

And with ndiswrapper, dmesg either reports unresolved symbols or that the card didn't respond as expected...

2) Sound

lspci:

Code:

00:07.0 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP67 High Definition Audio (rev a1)

Tested that:
- Sound is unmuted (with both kmix and alsamix)
- Modules are loaded (should work with snd_hda_intel)
- have run alsaconf, which ran without any errors... just no sound,...

So... any tips on what I should try next?
Thanks for reading. Any suggestions are welcomed.

Simon Bridge · 03-26-2008, 06:20 PM

Sound.. another LQ thread for completeness.

But I'd also make sure that card is the default.

http://forum.paldo.org/index.php?act...rds=a:0:%7B%7D
hda-intel driver confirmed.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=583920
... for ubuntu - suggests you need a more recent kernel.

The only openSUSE ones I found were for different HW (same model laptop).

Wireless...
http://help.lockergnome.com/linux/Ma...ict488960.html

Valkyrie_of_valhalla · 03-26-2008, 06:38 PM

Thanks for your fast reply.

The sound card is the main card, and the only one:

Code:

 # cat /proc/asound/cards
 0 [NVidia         ]: HDA-Intel - HDA NVidia
                      HDA NVidia at 0xf0880000 irq 21

Alsamixer confirms this too.

I thought about compiling from source the most recent kernel version and see how that works out... Suse already has the latest rpm-kernel. If I can't find another qucik and easy fix, I'll add a second Linux (probably Slackware), compile everything from source and see how that works out... although my hopes aren't too high...

Simon Bridge · 03-26-2008, 07:12 PM

asoundconf list

I've knows modems and cameras to end up set as the default soundcard. But that looks unlikely in your case.

BTW: what are you doing running as root?

Valkyrie_of_valhalla · 03-27-2008, 12:42 AM

Hmm seems I don't have asoundconf installed. I'll get the rpm later today and see what it says. Although I bet it reads it's info from /proc too...

Oh, and I just su'd in a user account, because I was playing around with loading/unloading modules as suggested by various tutorials found with google (of course none of them seem to work...)

What's most ironic is that this laptop theoretically came with a Linux pre-installed... it was called Linpus and had absolutely none of the main drivers installed, not even a graphical interface... and Acer offers no drivers for it...

Simon Bridge · 03-27-2008, 10:22 PM

Quote:

What's most ironic is that this laptop theoretically came with a Linux pre-installed... it was called Linpus and had absolutely none of the main drivers installed, not even a graphical interface... and Acer offers no drivers for it...

Cute. We are having a similar issue in NZ over the Aspire 4315 + Gutsy on offer with some hardware non functional out of the box. Not this bad though.

In NZ there are saws against this. Perhaps you can just take the computer back to the store and get a more compatible one?

Valkyrie_of_valhalla · 03-28-2008, 03:04 PM

Well I don't think they would change it... it has no hardware problem, it does work ok with Vista... And a laptop this cheap and this good is hard to find...

Anyway, I'm a computer geek... I'll make it work even if I have to write my own kernel modules (will probably take a few years, but...)

Besides, I have a few ideas with ndiswrapper that I haven't tried yet... I'll play with it more in the next few days and I'll post how I did it here if it works...

Until then, if anybody has any more suggestions, I'm always willing to try out ideas

Simon Bridge · 03-28-2008, 08:33 PM

Quote:

Well I don't think they would change it... it has no hardware problem, it does work ok with Vista...

Doesn't matter that it works with Vista, they installed linuux without the required software to make it go. If they'd installed Vista without the restricted driver it needs, you could take that back right?

Vendor supplies it as working, it should be working.

[/quote] And a laptop this cheap and this good is hard to find...[/quote]
Second that.

For that reason, they can be a trap.

Valkyrie_of_valhalla · 03-29-2008, 09:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Simon Bridge

Doesn't matter that it works with Vista, they installed linuux without the required software to make it go. If they'd installed Vista without the restricted driver it needs, you could take that back right?

I live in Romania... so no, I probably couldn't take it back...
And if I could, I probably should have done it before formatting it and reinstalling my own OSs.

Valkyrie_of_valhalla · 04-27-2008, 09:15 AM

FIXED!!! Wohooo I did it

Well, I still haven't found a fix for 64-bit OSs, but it should work on most 32-bit ones by installing this madwifi release: http://madwifi.org/ticket/1679 . (if anybody wants me to explain exactly how to install it, feel free to ask).

Also, the sound works out of the box in Ubuntu 8.04. (madwifi was also tested here).

Simon Bridge · 04-28-2008, 06:49 AM

I had the same thing with my acer 4315 - most all problems went away with Hardy.