Sony VAIO FZ240E and Slackware 12.0 problems...
 

Hi all. This is my (obviously) first post on linuxquestions... I only am posting because I have run out of ideas for installing slackware 12.0 on my new laptop. I have slackware on my desktop pc and love it, but I just got a shiny new laptop... Anyway- when I install slackware w/ all packages from the DVD, I can startx and get into KDE just fine. My resolution won't go to 1280x1024 even after editing xorg.conf several times and trying different suggestions from the net. Also, my wireless lan won't work. I read somewhere to modprobe iwl4956 (or is it iwl4965?) and that won't work. My speakers don't work either. I loaded ubuntu on a live CD to see what I might be missing... and I found out (via dmesg) ubuntu was using iwl4956 (or iwl4965... whichever...) for wireless. Why won't this work in slackware? Am I forgetting something somewhere? Can someone set me on the right path to this fix at least? I'm up for anything! Help!

:)

-randall

hoo boy. you're in for a rough ride (i know i was with with my thinkpad x61t).

i can't help you with the video, but i can definitely help you with the wireless.

start with these 2 things:

http://intellinuxwireless.org/iwlwif...ifi-1.2.23.tgz

and

http://intellinuxwireless.org/iwlwif...-4.44.1.20.tgz

become root.

unzip and untar these. copy the ucode file from iwlwifi-4965-ucode-4.44.1.20 into /lib/firmware.

cd into the iwlwifi-1.2.23 directory and do ./configure, make, and make install.

now type ./load

reboot.

after rebooting, do this command as root: lsmod | less

see if something referencing 4965 is in there.

now, use a text editor to edit /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf

there's a section about wlan0 in there, find it.

uncomment and add info so that it looks like this:

## 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]="WEP_test"
#DHCP_KEEPRESOLV[4]="yes"
#DHCP_KEEPNTP[4]="yes"
#DHCP_KEEPGW[4]="yes"
#DHCP_IPADDR[4]=""
WLAN_ESSID[4]="HELLO"
#WLAN_MODE[4]=Managed
##WLAN_RATE[4]="54M auto"
WLAN_CHANNEL[4]="auto"
WLAN_KEY[4]="YOURPASS"
#WLAN_IWPRIV[4]="AuthMode=WPAPSK EncrypType=TKIP WPAPSK=example TxRate=0"
#WLAN_WPA[4]="wpa_supplicant"
#WLAN_WPADRIVER[4]="ndiswrapper"

change HELLO to the ssid of your wireless lan. keep it inside quotes. change YOURPASS to your WEP key, keep it inside the quotes. make sure your router is set to use WEP first, so we can at least see if the wirelss is working. WPA will come later.

now, reboot and see if you can get online. let me know how it goes! if it fails, we will try installing the mac80211 stuff from intel's site and possibly skipping WEP altogether and just hoping WPA works (i can explain getting WPA to work better than getting WEP to work).

hang in there, it might be a long road.

What video card does your laptop have ? You may need to to run 'xorgsetup' as root when xserver is not up to better configure xorg. Or you may need to install proprietary drivers for nvidia and sometimes ATI cards.

For the speaker problem, try running 'alsaconf' as root, it'll setup the speakers properly. Then run 'alsactl store' to keep the volume levels, otherwise they will be muted next time you boot.

For your wireless card, can you post the output of '/sbin/lspci', it will give more info on what kind of card it might be. It would also help if you knew what card it has.

as an aside, if you were to use alsamixer to unmute your sound, the way to do it is to use arrow keys to move around and then press "m" to unmute the speakers and other channels. btw, speakers are all the way at the end, you'll have to press the arrow key about 8 times.

i don't think lspci shows my wireless info, but it seems very likely that he's using the new intel abgn chip.

Yes, I have the new Intel a/b/g/n wireless chip. Working on that right now. I followed your instructions and got an error when trying to 'make' the iwlwifi-1.2.23. It said I needed the mac80211 subsystem, so I went to the intellinuxwireless website and am currently following their instructions on setup. Hopefully this will work!

As for video/audio problems, I'll update once I finish w/ this. Thanks for all the help!

-randall

Ugh! After installing the mac80211 subsystem and waiting about 20 mins for the kernal 'make all' command, my computer won't boot now. >.>

Reinstalling... (?)

/sigh


edit: now that I think about it... is there a quick/easy way to create a backup for my slack install once I get everything exactly how I like it?

edit2: got my video straightened out and it looks great! also ran alsaconf and got that set up. woohoo. now to tackle this wireless ordeal. :\

You shouldn't always resort to re-install just because the system won't boot. It's quite fixable you know. It's usually that you forgot to edit '/etc/lilo.conf' and then run '/sbin/lilo' after installing a new kernel. Typically you should also keep your old kernel just in case the new one fails to boot, which is quite common.

Yeah, I figured there was a way to fix it... I just don't know my way around linux that well yet.

So how do I go about keeping/making a backup of my old kernel when trying to update? Thanks for all your help btw!

-randall

heh, i should have noted to stay away from the instructions on that site like the plague. they are too generic, and potentially harmful.

consider upgrading to the hugesmp.s kernel and modules from slackware-current, as this makes the mac80211 package from intel superfluous.

for backing up your kernel, simply cp it to something else... for example, before you cat the new bzImage to /boot/vmlinuz, do cp /boot/vmlinuz /boot/vmlinuz.old do the same with the /boot/System.map file. remember to make a new entry in /etc/lilo.conf. simply copy your current "Linux" section and paste it, then edit the section to call the choice something else, and point to /boot/vmlinuz.old. after editing, remember to run the command lilo again before rebooting!

So how do I update to the current kernel from the net? Sorry for so many questions. :)

edit: figured out how to upgrade. working on that now. woohoo. will post again when I finish. thanks for all the help guys!

www.slackware.com/getslack pick a mirror

go to the slackware-current directory

and download, for example:

ftp://carroll.cac.psu.edu/pub/linux/...smp-i686-1.tgz

ftp://carroll.cac.psu.edu/pub/linux/...smp-i686-1.tgz

ftp://carroll.cac.psu.edu/pub/linux/...p-noarch-1.tgz

and install them with the command installpkg

run lilo and reboot, should give you the latest kernel

don't worry about your questions. these are great questions, and i hope someone will try to document these sorts of things in a language understandable by a newbie. it's too difficult to google a topic and find a stepwise instruction that assumes very little. i find a lot of "newbie" guides either assume a lot of knowledge or are for uncommon problems or obsolete hardware.

That's the biggest problem for me! Most of the questions I google around for are answered for ppl running slackware 8 or 9 or go straight to the ubuntu support forums. Go figure. Haha. Updating my kernel now. :)

Okay... I just got through updating with installpkg and now my mouse won't work at all when I startx. I tried xorgsetup and ran through it and reset and I still get nothing.

Going to try the suggested method from the UPGRADE.txt file in the ftp. Maybe that will get me up to date and get everything working. Any suggestions?

not sure why the mouse would stop working... when dealing with brand new (which in linux terms means less than a year old, you'll find) hardware i typically try to use slackware-current, that is, the whole distro from -current. this is actually pretty easy to do if you have a dvd writer working under linux. download the whole slackware-current directory, and follow the directions in the isolinux dir to make a bootable iso. those directions are newbie friendly.

Thats what I was just figuring out how to do. How do I download the entire -current directory? I tried wget and ftp and it wouldn't let me download directories... >.<

try using ncftp to connect to a slackware mirror

cd into the slackware-current directory

and then issue:

get -R -T

that should download everything in the current directory, including folders and subfolders (i think)

Okay. Gonna give it a go. I just downgraded back to the old kernel/modules/source and my mouse works again. ROFL. This is a rollercoaster.

EDIT: I tried "get -R -T slackware" to get just the packages, and that didn't work... It grabbed the top level files and made the subfolders, but didn't go any deeper. :(

you need the whole deal (all the files) but that's a seperate issue from your ftp problems. got a windows box? download on that, burn the whole directory tree to a dvd, move it to your linux laptop, copy the contents of your cd to the hd, read the commands in the isolinux dir, and you should be able to make a dvd bootable iso no problem.

goin to bed, we can continue tomorrow night!

Lol. Nice... Thanks for all of your help! I hope to have this thing working sometime soon!

UPDATE...

I have the new slackware-current installed and my video is okay looking and my sound works. I followed your instructions for my wireless, duhwhat, and I have the 4965 info in lsmod and I edited the rc.inet1.conf file and updated everything to my correct info. I made sure my essid was correct and in quotes, my WEP key is correct and such. I still cannot connect to my wireless for some reason. I can iwconfig and it shows the wlan0 info, just no signal strength, connection, or ESSID. Any help?