Sunday, February 20, 2011

omg Ubuntu- adventures with installation and wireless

this one is gonna get edited a lot.. I'm planning on going through the madness as it happened, and how I came to the epiphany that Win7 was enforcing a "feature", and how stupid I was for not thinking of it well ahead of time. more than likely this is going to take some time to get organized for the way this should have been done, with the other commentary after.

What I Should Have Done:
I started here: http://lifehacker.com/#!5403100/dual+boot-windows-7-and-ubuntu-in-perfect-harmony 
which was perfect for everything I wanted to do- resize partitions, correct formats, etc. I followed the directions for fresh installs, went grocery shopping while Win7Pro did its thing, and installed Ubuntu from a live cd to the prepared partition.

filed needed:
compat-wireless-2.6.tar.bz2
iwlwifi-6050-ucode-41.28.5.1.tgz
ndiswrapper-1.56.tar.gz

I knew from previous experience that I needed the compat-wireless installed to get eth0 working. from what I've read, this fix works for both newer Broadcom and Atheros Ethernet adapters.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=9446984&postcount=6

one thing I did notice: when you install and run the compat-wireless to get your eth0 going and you're finally online and Ubuntu updates, you have to run compat-wireless again upon reboot to get eth0 working again, especially if the kernel changed.

my laptop has the pesky Intel 6250 AGN WiMAX/WiFi adapter
http://www1.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1508183
I had the same issue as the OP, followed everything, still disabled. Is Windows being a jerk, I finally asked myself... and low and behold, the wireless adapter had certain power management features that allowed Win to power it off. I changed the setting to NOT do that, rebooted into Ubuntu, and wireless worked.

The Ridiculousness and Rambling:
right now I'm in Win7 transferring all my stuff back from the 1TB drive attached to the Mac mini. for some reason, the mini has to be connected through Ethernet for it to talk to the laptop and tower (both wireless), the laptop has to have its wireless adapter set to g only to get through the firewall on the router, and I'm hoping to GAWD the "wireless" Canon printer sets up easily tomorrow. last time, it made me cry.. I've been dropping files on the Mac and printing from there since, and not only should I not have to do this, I don't f'n want to.

when I first got this laptop, I wanted a triple-boot system- Win7Pro, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, OS X. never got to the mac part of it... technically, my onboard graphics shouldn't be able to handle it, but fer f's sake, if someone got OS X going on an HP mini thingo, then I should be able to get somewhat decent results on my laptop.

the last time I tried the bootable partitions, Ubuntu pissed me off to no end with the difficulty of getting online. I searched, joined and posted in the Ubuntu forums, and I have found that in some instances, Linux people are douche-bags in the sense that they come across, to me, sometimes, that they think they are better than the rest of us cuz they know Linux, and they expect those of us who are asking beginner questions to not have our eyes cross when we try to comprehend the suggestions they respond with. the folks over at XDA, on the other hand, will actually take the time to help out a newbie; perhaps I was expecting too much from that particular forum site. BUT I can say with only 4 weeks of a Linux course, I am understanding, and modifying on my own, more than I ever was before. super awesome. (seriously, the more I get into it, the more I want to stay in it)

I should have started at installing compat-wireless, going through the updates, and grinding my teeth from there, but I gave it the chance that perhaps, just perhaps, on this method of install, it would do it on it's own. and it did not, and I still didn't do what I knew I should have. I like to make my life difficult sometimes, apparently.
forward through the hours of google searches and reading forum posts.. it's really all so ridiculous what I did and the amount of time I spent doing it.. and I couldn't even tell you at this point wtf it was, other than changing shit on the Win7 side, that actually made the wireless card work. I'm using my notes and textbook and the wireless existed, it was simply disabled. this was the *same* issue I had before, I couldn't find an answer, no linux drivers for the card yet, blah blah ppffttt... but there are drivers now, and they were installed, and I ran through all the instructions and commands and omg..
so then I thought, "if Windows was cock-blocking internet access only through wireless, how would it be doing it?" I'm not always that smart... or it can take me a while to get there. power management on the adapter lets Windows shut it off. when Windows isn't running, of course it's there and unable to be used, aka disabled.

I knew what I should have done, I could have saved myself a lot of time.. but I had fun doing it, I learned some schtuff, I put to practical use what I have learned in class. I think this is another instance where procrastination is my friend.

now that I'm through this, I'm working on my official-ongoing-Nook-Color-awesomeness post. short version for now:  stock rooted, Clockwork Mod Recovery, google-syncing doesn't quite work, but Market is decent. HoneyComb from SD is AWESOME but buggy- want stable so bad, it seriously rocks. hated nookie froyo without CM. on the lookout for CM7. rooted stock is what I want, HC on SD is what I want. access to internal storage and SD is what I want. so far, I get it without HC on SD, and that's ok. this thing is sweet. glad I got it for soo many reasons.

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