HELP HP Pavilion dv6 Wirless Driver Installation
 

I have just bought a HP Pavilion dv6 while the graphics driver installed just fine from the additional driver application, but the wireless driver is missing. I have looked for instructions on how to enable the wireless card on my computer, but I have been unlucky in locating the proper instruction. Could someone please help my get Ubuntu to fully work. Thank you In advance for you assistance.

Open a console, and run the command '/sbin/lspci' just what between the single quote marks, not the quotes. Post the results.

We need to know what the wireless card is. Then we look for the driver. Then you configure your connection.

I instqlld Ubuntu using wibi that I got from the Ubuntu web sit. I have been unable to install Ubuntu from USB. I couldn't run the command that yu asked for. The installation process paused for awhile at the Ubuntu logo at start up and then said failed to find system file. This is a link to the laptop that I bought if that helps any
http://m.bestbuy.com/m/e/product/detail.jsp;jsessionid=CD1654ADD98D9CBB7FFC341D101D5E51.bbmdotp-app31-43?skuId=3441067&pid=1218402870055&catId=abcat0502000&ev=prodView#product-overview

Do you mean Wubi ? This is the installer for a windoze system. I have no idea what 'wibi' is. Could you clarify?

I have several questions here.

Did you get Ubuntu installed with Wubi? Yes or no ?

How did you try to install from USB ? There are several things that have to be done here. You need a boot loader and the image on the USB memory stick. Or do you have a USB hard drive?

Why don't you install from the optical drive ?

Did you re-partition the hard drive? From what I could find out on HP's site and the link to BestBuy, the HD is 640 gig. I also know that HP ship systems with 4 primary partitions, making it more difficult for noobs to re-partiton. I found this out on my HP NetBook.

We started out here to fix a wireless adapter. I downloaded the Maintenance Manual from HP for your model. It does not identify the wireless card you have, and neither does BestBuy. Fom the MM, it lists four possible wireless cards.

They are: 1. Antheros 8285G or 2. Antheros AR8002WB or 3. Realtek RLT81915E or 4. Realtek 8188BC8.

That gets us a little closer, however, to help, we need to know which one is in your system. From what I could find out from the MM, two cards provide Bluetooth, two do not. Did you buy one with BlueTooth, or not???

The easy way to answer these questions on wireless, is to run the command I asked for; '/sbin/lspci'.

So, please take your time, and answer the questions where you can. I need to know; have you got an installed Ubuntu system you can boot into? Without that we are no where.

I installed Ubuntu using Wubi. When trying to install Ubuntu from a flash drive, option menu came up with install/try/memory test. I have used a few different methods to create the boot-able flash drive. There is a main and recovery partition on my computer. I have found the exact computer on HP's website that is mine and it says my wireless cared is a 802.11b/g/n WLAN

I don't think you understand some things. This I knew from your first post. It tells me very little. In order to get your wireless card going, I have to know the 'chip set' the card is made from. I need the information from the '/sbin/lspci' command. Then we identify the driver you need. We'll look to see if it came with your distribution, most often they do. It may already be loaded. It may not be, however, to go further, I need the output of that command.

Here is what it will look like, this is from my system, so it shows my hardware.

If you go to HP's site, find the hardware manual for your system, there is a long list of cards they install in the model of system you bought. The four I listed above are used in systems with AMD cpu's.

Open a command prompt in your Ubuntu install, you may need to use 'sudo' to get the command to run. ie 'sudo /sbin/lspci' press enter, you will be prompted for the root password you set during installation, enter it, copy and paste the output here. Then I can help further.

If, for any reason it does not work, copy and paste the results.

From what you said on the HD's, I can only assume you have not done any partitioning. You can not install from a bootable stick unless you run the partitioning tools that come with Ubuntu. The possibility to do that all depends on the HD's partitioning scheme HP shipped the system with. On new systems they have lately been shipping them with 4 primary partitions. Some are hidden so you can not see them from windoze. Believe me, they are there.

Here is how to find out what you really have. From Ubuntu, and a command line, run the command 'sudo fdisk -l' you will be asked again for the root password, provide it, press enter. This will list all your partitions, and the type. Here is a sample.

Notice the Id field. This tells us what type of partition, you will have more that 2. This is from my system, I have 2 HD's. If you decide you want to do a full install from USB, or any where else, post the output of the fdisk command. Then I can advise what steps would be necessary to do a full install.

Wubi creates a file on your windows system. It allows you to run the code, however, windoze is still operating the system. Its there so new users can become somewhat familiar with linux without the pain of partitioning, installing etc.

Thank you, and I am sorry for being so difficult lol, but I now know what to do. I was unable to fully install Ubuntu onto my system, but I found a post somewhere that suggested installing the latest long term build of Ubuntu (10.04). I did that and now the system is currently working. Later on today when I'm home I will post the results for the wireless card. Thank you again and for being so patient with me.

No problem, I know it takes time for new users to learn. I'll await your post.

I have tried the command 'sudo /sbin/lspci' and I get the message -> command not found

I hope this helps you to help me. Good luck

Well, we are half way to there to knowing what your wireless card is. This is the information from lshw that is relevant.

UNCLAIMED indicates there is no driver loaded. The hot plugging system could does not know what the card is. It is a RealTek card, and that is all I can tell so far.

In short, we need the output from lspci.

It appears the lspci binary is not in /sbin on your system, hence the 'command not found' message. I just looked on my Ubuntu 10.04 system. The binary on that system is in /usr/bin/ directory.

So, you can try 'sudo /usr/bin/lspci' ( without the quotes ) and see if you get output. If yes, please cut and paste it here.

If no, we need to know if it is installed, or not. If not, install it, if installed, find it so we can run it.

These commands should locate it.

'sudo updatedb' ( all commands without quotes ). This command will build a slocate data base of all files on your system. If you have never run this command it may take some time to complete. Wait for the command prompt to return before proceeding.

'locate lspci' no need to be root for this command once the database is built. The locate command looks in the database for the string lspci, and lists all occurrences of that string. The executable will show up as just lspci nothing else attached to it. You may see a man.lspci.tz or something like that. That is the man ( manual page ), not binary.

If you get no output, that indicates some package is not installed we need. It will be a case of finding what package is missing, and installing.

If lspci is there ( it should be ), note the path to it. ie /usr/sbin/ or what ever, put that before the lspci, and run the command; cut and paste the output. Then we can go looking for what driver you need.

Post back the results...

Well third time is the charm and hopefully this gives you what you need.

That output came from my computer while running Ubuntu 11.04, but I am currently upgrading to Ubuntu 11.10.

This is your wireless card. It is very new. A lot of users are having trouble getting it going.
Now that you are changing OS's again, test the card on the new install. There are fixes in the pipe line for this card.

Please read through this link -->http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1751685&page=2

Pay attention on posts 14 to 17, the user gets it going by compiling the driver from RalinkTek. The user didn't have the headers installed. They are not installed on Ubuntu by default. You can not compile anything without them.

I'm going to see if I can find a link for the driver download. I'll post it when (if) I find it. In the mean time, test the new install and post where you are with it.

It appears the name of the card is RT5390BC8. I went to this link -->http://www.ralinktech.com/en/index.php however, I can not find the driver. The support section has downloads for linux, could not figure out what to download. This is not a friendly site.

There is a download for RT539x PCIe, not sure if that is it or not.

Downloaded the file RT539x, that appears to be the source file to compile the driver from. There are instructions in the file, once you extract the contents.