Slackware newbie, how do I config mouse and sound prolems

blastradius · 07-09-2006, 01:02 PM

Hi

I'm running Ubuntu at the moment and i've ran Mandrake and Red Hat in the past. I decided to have a go with Slackware as a means of learning more about Linux and because it seems a lot of people think of Slackware as the best distro.

So, I've burnt my disks and installed onto my spare drive, then re-booted. I hit the prompt and just pressed enter which seemed to suffice for the password (I did accidently press enter twice at the end of the installation which I think was the password bit so maybe that's what happened).

I selected the default mouse setting during setup but now as it's installed the mouse doesn't work! this is a problem i've never encountered with any other distro i've used. My mouse is a standard Dell optical mouse. How do i re-configure this from the command line? and any guesses as to the correct settings would be helpful.

Also, when i typed startx and KDE booted (I'll have to get Gnome installed as well) there didn't seem to be any sound. I've got onboard sound Via 8233 (I think) on my Asus K8V motherboard, any advice would be appreciated.

Also, if my broadband connection doesn't work, what do i use to configure it? hopefully it'll be ok as I've never had to sort it before.

Thanks in advance

Tuttle · 07-09-2006, 01:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by blastradius

So, I've burnt my disks and installed onto my spare drive, then re-booted. I hit the prompt and just pressed enter which seemed to suffice for the password (I did accidently press enter twice at the end of the installation which I think was the password bit so maybe that's what happened).

If I were you I'd setup the root password properly using passwd root command.

Quote:

I selected the default mouse setting during setup but now as it's installed the mouse doesn't work! this is a problem i've never encountered with any other distro i've used. My mouse is a standard Dell optical mouse. How do i re-configure this from the command line? and any guesses as to the correct settings would be helpful.

Do you mean the doesn't work in the console or in X or both? gpm controls the mouse in the console and X controls the mouse in... er... X!

Quote:

Also, when i typed startx and KDE booted (I'll have to get Gnome installed as well) there didn't seem to be any sound. I've got onboard sound Via 8233 (I think) on my Asus K8V motherboard, any advice would be appreciated.

Have you tried running alsaconf as root?
Also, a good start point for setting up X is to run X -configure while in runlevel 3 (telinit 3) and follow the instructions. Once that is run, you can copy the config from /root/xorg.conf.new to /etc/X11/xorg.conf, it's my favourite trick!

Quote:

Also, if my broadband connection doesn't work, what do i use to configure it? hopefully it'll be ok as I've never had to sort it before.

Try using the net setup tool in pkgtool for this. Use dhcp (if using an ethernet to modem connection, usb broadband modems require a little more knowledge.

blastradius · 07-09-2006, 02:43 PM

Thanks for your quick reply, I now have a working mouse and sound, I haven't got internet though.

I connect via ethernet with BT, I tried running the 'netconfig' tool in pkgtool which asked me for hostname ( I guessed at 'BT') then it asked for domain name (I typed btinternet.com, again a guess), then it wanted my machine number (no idea if I have one so I hit return), it then let me pick DHCP but sadly, still no connection.

Any more help would be appreciated. When I've sorted this I've just got 3D acceleration for my ATI Radeon 9600 to sort out, (not so subtle plea for more help

Thanks again

cwwilson721 · 07-09-2006, 02:54 PM

Urm....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tuttle

Also, a good start point for setting up X is to run X -configure while in runlevel 3 (telinit 3)

PLEASE before you give advise in Slackware, know what the ACTUAL commands are. The whole world is not Redhat, no matter what RH thinks..

Slackware is different.

For the xorg, run

Code:

xorgsetup

That should auto detect your hardware.
If thats no good, use

Code:

xorgconfig

If using xorgconfig, you need to know all your video specs, including monitor sync ranges, etc.

The cli runlevel is 3, GUI is 4 (edit /etc/initab for this). NOT 'initab3', if you want to do this from the command line, type

Code:

init 3
or
init 4

The command for getting dhcp working is

Code:

dhcpd interfacename

You can edit /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf for your particular setup.

NOTE** All the above commands should be run as root, either logged in as root, or 'su' to root.

Also, read the sticky at the top of this forum titled 'How I did it all' (Ignore the swaret area, even Shilo says it's wrong...lol)

For your ATI, read my link in my sig for DRI

Tuttle · 07-09-2006, 02:56 PM

Not sure about ati stuff, I have alwways used nvidia

When you run pkgtool -> setup -> netconfig the hostname is for internal use only. Set it to whatever youlike. DHCP should have sorted your network problems, maybe name discovery isn't working (it should automatically use sane dns ip's). Try ifconfig as root and post the output please.

You could also try ping google.com and ping 64.233.167.99
If the latter command works but the former doesn't then you aren't resolving ip's from names. To resolve ip addresses from names you may need to edit (or make a new file) /etc/resolve.conf like so:

Code:

#/etc/resolve.conf
nameserver 194.168.8.100
nameserver 194.168.4.100

mc is a brilliant program for beginners to edit files and traverse directories, try it.

blastradius · 07-10-2006, 01:35 AM

Stll no luck. This is the ouput from 'ifconfig'. I've manually typed it as Slack doesn't pick up my ram stick yet, so hopefully no errors.

lo link encap:Local Loopback
inet address:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric
RX packets:873 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:873 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:79248 (77.3kb) TX bytes:79248 (77.3kb)

Neither ping worked. DHCP seems to say everthing is sorted though, but i just get 'cannot resolve hostname' or 'not found' e.t.c.

Thanks

Old_Fogie · 07-10-2006, 02:20 AM

re-run your netconfig one more time, then reboot.

type "ifconfig" again, and you should be looking for , in addition to the "lo" device, another device called "eth0" usually.

If it's not there, try typing "ifconfig eth0 up" and then type "ifconfig" again and see if the "eth0" came up.

if it did, try doing a quick "ping 192.16x.xxx.xxx" to another computer on your lan, or a web-site you know replies, like your ISP's dns servers usually reply and hit "control + c" to cancel the pinging you should see response times in milliseconds, this means your good.

sometimes slackware get's confused for you gateway with the 2.4.31 kernel. so you may want to also try "route add default gw xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the ip address of your router, or ISP's gateway.

sometimes I found I had to go into my /etc/resolve.conf and actually key in my dns server's ip address and actually remove the line that says "search ..."

your settings for your network card are actually stored in your /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf file. that is where the netconfig of the pkgtool writes too, except for the dns server which goes in /etc/resolv.conf as i mentioned before.

if your using a DHCP protocol...after you typed "ifconfig eth0 up" try typing "dhcpcd eth0" and give it a few seconds, then try the ping I told you about.

if all this fails, maybe post your network cards manufacturer, model number and give us the output of "cat /proc/modules" that you can run in "konsole" of KDE..you can highlight the lines there and paste them here for us.

hope this helps, it's late...and I'm feeling old...

gl

Tuttle · 07-10-2006, 10:43 AM

Yeah, like Old_Fogie says, I don't think your network card is being detected properly. Old_Fogie also mentions issues with the (old) 2.4 kernel.
You may want to try the 2.6 kernel in the testing folder on slack disk2. There is plenty of help online and on the disk itself concerning upgrading the kernel, but if you want to do it we can walk you through the process

edit: oh yeah, forgot to say, if you want to re-start your network without rebooting, do this:

Code:

/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 restart

This applies to most of the startup scripts in /etc/rc.d, they are mostly human readable so, given a little time, you can see what they do and how to start/stop/restart a service.
good luck!

blastradius · 07-10-2006, 10:59 AM

Still no luck. I'm not on a lan network I'm just trying to get my broadband working. Do i need some info from BT?

I'm quite happy to give the new kernel a go as this is my test hard drive anyway, question is (yes, i know I'm full of them!) how do I do it?

Once again thanks for all the help, I'm even exasperating myself!

Tuttle · 07-10-2006, 11:18 AM

Okay, slap disk 2 in the drive, mount it and cd to the testing folder, it contains these four files:

alsa-driver-1.0.9b_2.6.13-i486-1.tgz
kernel-modules-2.6.13-i486-1.tgz
kernel-generic-2.6.13-i486-1.tgz
kernel-source-2.6.13-noarch-1.tgz

use the command installpkg to install these files. Once installed your old kernel (or a link to it) will be overwritten so don't reboot!

cd to /boot and carefully read the README.initrd file.
Using reiserfs? then just issue the command on line 60:

Quote:

mkinitrd -c -k 2.6.13 -m reiserfs

Lastly, you will need to edit your /etc/lilo.conf (as mentioned in the README.initrd) like so:

Code:

# Linux bootable partition config begins
image = /boot/vmlinuz-generic-2.6.13
  initrd = /boot/initrd.gz
  root = /dev/hda1
  label = Linux-2.6.13
  read-only
# Linux bootable partition config ends

Take care to get this bit right then make sure you run lilo and see that it adds the new entry correctly and exits without error messages.

Before rebooting, go over each step you took with a fine tooth comb, make an effort to understand what each step has done to your system then.... reboot!

Again, good luck, any more questions, just ask.

blastradius · 07-10-2006, 01:02 PM

Loading the new kernel worked like a charm, I'm typing this using Slackware, thank you very much for all the help!

Old_Fogie · 07-10-2006, 05:38 PM

yep, the old 2.4.31 kernel issue rears it's ugly head again.

I'm glad you got it.

Tuttle · 07-10-2006, 05:52 PM

hehe nice one blastradius.