New Laptop. Installing 12.2, ATI and wireless question

Daedra · 01-30-2009, 01:32 AM

I bought a new laptop yesterday and now that I have downgraded to winxp (not a fan of vista) I am ready to throw slack on it. Every is ready but I have to questions.

1) It has an ATI integrated graphics and I have never installed the ATI drivers before since I have always used nvidia. Can anyone point me to a howto or guide to get it working.

2) The laptop has a atheros wireless card which I believe is supported my the madwifi driver but I have never setup wireless before and I know there a lot of post about doing it but it but if anyone can point me in the right direction I would appreciate it.

Thanks in Advance

tronayne · 01-30-2009, 07:45 AM

The ATI drivers are dirt simple; you download the driver software, download or just print the document, and run it.

Before you do, though, I recommend that you first use xorgsetup to get /etc/X11/xorg.conf is reasonable shape (xorgsetup queries your hardware and generates a good xorg.conf file for you). Start or restart X then proceed with the ATI drivers installation. Be sure you get the correct drivers for your hardware; this example is for my hardware and, well, your mileage may vary:

Code:

su - or log in as root and have X running
sh ati-driver-installer-8-12-x86.x86_64.run
keep clicking <continue> till it's done
aticonfig --initial

I'm no expert with wireless but I do know that wicd works well and might be worth a look-see at http://slackbuilds.org.

[EDIT]

Forgot to mention, sorry, you get the drivers at http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html

markush · 01-30-2009, 08:15 AM

Hello Daedra,

I've an atheros wireless card as well, it works out of the box (full installation of Slackware-12.2). I had to modify my /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf and my /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf. in the rc.inet1.conf make the same entries as for a eth0 and additional uncomment the wpa_supplicant line. Here's my example:

Code:

## Example config information for wlan0.  Uncomment the lines you need and fill
## in your info.  (You may not need all of these for your wireless network)
IFNAME[4]="wlan0"
IPADDR[4]=""
NETMASK[4]=""
USE_DHCP[4]="yes"
#DHCP_HOSTNAME[4]="icculus-wireless"
#DHCP_KEEPRESOLV[4]="yes"
#DHCP_KEEPNTP[4]="yes"
#DHCP_KEEPGW[4]="yes"
#DHCP_IPADDR[4]=""
#WLAN_ESSID[4]=BARRIER05
WLAN_MODE[4]=Managed
##WLAN_RATE[4]="54M auto"
##WLAN_CHANNEL[4]="auto"
##WLAN_KEY[4]="D5AD1F04ACF048EC2D0B1C80C7"
##WLAN_IWPRIV[4]="set AuthMode=WPAPSK | set EncrypType=TKIP | set WPAPSK=96389dc66eaf7e6efd5b5523ae43c7925ff4df2f8b7099495192d44a774fda16"
WLAN_WPA[4]="wpa_supplicant"
#WLAN_WPADRIVER[4]="ndiswrapper"

In the wpa_supplicant file you insert the data of your network. Afterwards you do a /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 wlan0_restart and it will work.

Code:

# WPA protected network, supply your own ESSID and WPAPSK here:
network={
  scan_ssid=0
  ssid="your network name"
  proto=WPA
  key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
  pairwise=CCMP TKIP
  group=CCMP TKIP WEP104 WEP40
  psk="your psk"
}

The ati-issue is like described above, I have an ati radeon hd 3470 which works without any problems. But it is necessary to install the ati driver to get X11 working.

Markus

Daedra · 01-31-2009, 10:39 PM

Thanks for the help. I got everything working now except for some reason after I installed the ATI driver now when ever I log in if I log out of KDE and try to restart KDE my computer freezes. I am working on finding a solution but its on the back burner for now.

markush · 02-01-2009, 02:56 AM

Hello,

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daedra

...if I log out of KDE and try to restart KDE my computer freezes. I am working on finding a solution but its on the back burner for now.

could you please post which kde version and which ati chip exactly you are using? I had this freezing issue using an old ati card with a generic driver and kde4.

Markus

Daedra · 02-01-2009, 05:04 AM

Just for testing I tried the newest ATI catalyist driver but it failed during compile, I did some research and read something about the stock slackware kernels causing the problem, so then I compiled my own custom kernel and it compiled fine. However I was then getting lock ups half the time when i exited KDE-3.1.0 and then when it didn't crash when I tried to restart KDE it would cause a kernel panic hardlock, I read even more and the only solution I found was to downgrade to catalyist 8.11. Now everything is working fine. The only other thing I also discovered was that my particular atheros chipset (AR5007 I think it was) didn't work with the 2.6.27 kernel atheros driver, I either had to upgrade to the 2.6.28 kernel or use the current madwifi drivers, Alienbob recently posted a slackbuild for them so I used that and it worked fine with your advice.

you asked my setup, it is Radeon 3100 with KDE-3.1.0 Slack 12.2 custom kernel 2.6.27.9