I am one of the many frustrated, fed up Vista users looking to get rid of Vista ASAP and I am looking for a Linux distro to write over Vista with on my laptop. I d/l'ed and am currently using the Ubuntu live CD and am generally happy with its performance and functionality but have a couple of unresolved issues. I have an integrated media card reader on my laptop and Ubuntu doesn't seem to find it. When I insert a media card into it the 'activity' light on the card reader comes on briefly and then turns off. I go to look for the media card reader and it doesn't seem to be mounted anywhere in the file system. Also, how do I get my wireless card to search for networks? It seems like on this live CD all I can do is set up a new wireless network but I can't view available wireless networks to connect to. Is there a utility somewhere where I can do this? Here's a quick rundown of my laptop's specs:

Model: HP Pavilion dv6000t
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo T5600 1.8 GHz
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400
Ethernet Card: Intel/Pro (integrated)
Wireless Card: Broadcom (integrated)
Media Card Reader: HP model that comes with laptop (integrated)

If anyone needs any more info to help solve this problem please let me know and I will be happy to provide it.

EDIT: I forgot to mention this, but when trying to install a driver for my wireless card Ubuntu says something to the effect of 'you also need the firmware for this component which you can only get from the manufacturer' or something of the sort. I THINK I can just d/l that from HP but is that maybe the only reason I'm having problems with my wireless card?

Some suggestions:

Media card:
Plug something in. Then read the last few lines of /var/log/messages to see what it says about the card. The 'buntus usually mount media devices under /media/

Some integrated media card readers do not work, external USB ones generally do, if you first plug the card into the reader and then the reader into USB.

In a terminal: sudo iwlist scan
Maybe it is trying to use ndiswrapper to drive your wireless. In which case it'll need some of the windows files - these might be somewhere on your windows partition, or on the manufacturer's website.

Try searching for ndiswrapper and your chipset - "Broadcom (integrated)" doesn't tell us much. What does lspci say about your wireless?

Tredegar,

Thanks for your reply. Here's what I've found so far:


sudo iwlist scan:

lo Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

wmaster0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

wlan0 No scan results


ndiswrapper is not installed on my machine; typing it at the terminal tells you that it isn't installed and directs you on how to do so. Should I try to install it?


Chipset for this laptop is Intel 945GM.


lspci says the following:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G72M [GeForce Go 7400] (rev a1)
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN (rev 01)
05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82573L Gigabit Ethernet Controller
07:05.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller
07:05.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 19)
07:05.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller (rev 0a)
07:05.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 05)
07:05.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev ff)


As for my media card reader, I am going to look into that later. I'm more concerned about having wireless connectivity and don't really need the media card reader right off the bat. I have read on Ubuntu's site that for similar laptops to what I have (HP Pavilion series) that the media card reader reads SD in Ubuntu even though it's designed to read multiple formats. I'm going to look into this further before asking any more questions as I may just be out of luck with the media card reader. What are your thoughts on my wireless card? Please respond when you get a chance.

Linux has a driver for the Broadcom wireless gizmo: bcm43xx
To see if it's loaded: lsmod|grep bcm

The binary firmware blob may be an issue; the safest way is to get a copy of the WinDuhs driver and extract the firmware using the "bcm43xx-fwcutter":

apt-cache search bcm43xx-fwcutter

Instructions for using the fwcutter and installing the binary can be found here:

http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43

You'll also find a lot more info on the drivers etc in that link.


Now for the SD/MMC cards - see if any SD drivers have been loaded; post the results of:

lsmod|grep tifm
lsmod|grep sd

I will try that and post what I find when I get a chance.

Pinniped,

Trying the commands below yielded no output by the terminal:
lsmod|grep bcm
lsmod|grep tifm


Using the following command got me the following terminal output:
lsmod|grep sd

sdhci 19076 0
mmc_core 51460 1 sdhci
sd_mod 30720 4
scsi_mod 151436 5 sbp2,sr_mod,sg,sd_mod,libata

To all who posted on this thread,

I got my wireless card up and running finally........I got the firmware installed and whatever other packages Ubuntu needed and then just left-clicked on the network icon to connect to a wireless network. As far as the card reader goes, I can read SD format cards but not other formats. This is a known problem with this type of integrated card reader on HP laptops so I think I'm just stuck with it for now. Thanks for all your help!