Hi

I just returned to Linux (after some 5+ years of using the PC provided by my employer) and have forgotten most of the basics (not all though). Of course, many things have progressed too so, therefore, I consider myself a newbie... and having heard a lot of good about Ubuntu, in terms of newbie usage, I installed Ubuntu 9.04. I've got a 5+ years old Compaq evo n410c laptop I'm using (1GHz, 1Gb).

Everything works great under the standard Ubuntu 9.04 installation and even the PCMCIA WLAN card is autodetected once I log in with GDE and use Gnome. However, looking for ways to lighten the graphics burden, I've tried IceWM, (lite too), XFCE and even KDE (*heh*)... and they all seem to work fine, except for automatically starting up the WLAN card at login.

Now, I'm sure there are commands for "recognizing" the card in my PCMCIA-slot (the only one) and starting it up manually (like in the good old days). I just haven't a clue what these are.

Furthermore, there's also a problem even with the GDE/Gnome and suspending the machine. Everything else seems to work prima but starting up the WLAN card (it's not even detected in the Networking Manager (orwhtstclld?)). I guess, I might use the same manual commands to bring up the WLAN after suspend as well...

I've serached the man-pages, howtos, LQ-archives, UF-archives as well as Googled a while for this simple thing, without success. (Though, I have noticed also other people have the same problems.) Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Antti

ifconfig eth1 up (or eth0, eth2, wifi1 or whatever Ubuntu may call your pcmcia port)

Ah, forgot to mention I of course tried the basic stuff (like this).

"sudo ifconfig wlan0 up" gives "no such device" or similar. It seems like "iwconfig" is the one to use for wireless interfaces. Additionally, it seems that when the wlan0 device is operating properly, there is a wmaster device also running. ("ifconfig" returns the info for both wlan0 and wmaster0.)

Is "cardctl" or similar required to first power up/register the PCMCIA-slot?

Thanks for the help!

-Antti

Chances are there is no driver installed for your PCMCIA card. Search Google for a Linux driver for your card, and install it. Then monitor /var/log/messages as you plug in the card -- see if it is detected and configured.

Ok - I guess the drivers for both the PCMCIA-card (as well as the slot) are installed, since the card works perfectly if I boot straight to Gnome. Monitoring the system messages is a good idea, though! Since, I think exactly what I need to know, is what does GDE or Gnome (or what ever X-client initialization script it is that gets things running) does when starting up Gnome. (Can you tell me where this script might be? Shouldn't the commands be there too?)

Further, can you give a hint on what should I expect to see with dmesg or in /var/log/messages, and what tells me whether or not the card/PCMCIA-slot is installed&running ok?

This is rather odd... since everything really works ok when I run Ubuntu from the CD or as the standard installation. (Though the graphics are dead tacky.)

Thanks if you bother to answer.

-Antti