Installed Ubuntu 12.10 - what went wrong?

[Todd33]

The setup saw and used my wi-fi with no issues. After the installed the OS has no idea about my wi-fi or wired adapter. The OS thinks there are no devices. I tried a few things I found on Google, but this is getting old. I think I might just install 12.04 and hope for better results.

Any opinions?

 

[KillerBee]

does lspci show anything?

lspci | grep Eth

 

[Nothinman]

You probably need to install the package containing the firmware for the adapter since most ship blank these days and rely on the driver to load it on startup. I bet if you look in your logs you'll see references to a file not being found.

I don't know the package names, but if you search Synaptic for firmware it'll probably show up.

 

[Todd33]

lspci shows both devices, with no driver info. I turned 'managed=true' in NetworkManager and restarted the service, but no go.

I just don't understand why this happened, I've installed numerous distros before and never saw such an epic failure. The wi-fi worked during the install, so it can't be some proprietary driver issue.

Is there any reason to stick with 12.10 over 12.04?

 

[Nothinman]

Again, it's the firmware. The installer has the firmware available so it can get to the Internet for updates and such but the firmware is technically non-free so it's not installed by default.

 

[KillerBee]

what does this show?

sudo lshw -class network | grep driver
and is it the same when you boot off the install disk?

 

[Todd33]

Laptop is at home, I'll look into the firmware thing. How do I get it if I cannot get to the net? Can I use the setup disc?

 

[Crusty]

Download the driver package using another machine, transfer via USB flash drive then run dpkg -i name_of_downloaded_package.deb

 

[Nothinman]

Laptop is at home, I'll look into the firmware thing. How do I get it if I cannot get to the net? Can I use the setup disc?

It may be on there, I always just make sure I have a wired connection during the initial setup to work around things like this.

 

[lxskllr]

If it worked during the live session, it would have to be on the disc. Not sure how you do it with Ubuntu's default package tools, but there should be a way to use the cd as a source for updates. Poke around, and see how to make that happen.

 

[MrColin]

It may be on there, I always just make sure I have a wired connection during the initial setup to work around things like this.

I think the package name is "linux-firmware."

If Ubuntu's installer offers package selection, it could be selected then at install time.

Once you get a wired connection on the laptop you can start the jockey driver installer with the command "jockey-gtk" if it hasn't started by itself already.

 

[VinDSL]

Any opinions?

Don't know how old your hardware is, but...

I had a similar problem, with >= Linux 3.2 not recognizing the pseudo, southbridge-driven, onboard LAN device(s) on this computer.

The intermediate fix was to uninstall network-manager, and install Wicd.*

* You cannot run two network managers at the same time!

The long-term fix, was to install a NIC that's supported... in my case, I installed a Netgear PCI Ethernet card with a real DEC "Tulip" chipset, e.g. none of this cheapskate, pseudo device nonsense.

Network-manager has worked fine, ever since!

I suspect they recently removed support for many older LAN devices...

Any, if it was me, I would run Wicd instead of network-manager, see if that fixes the problem, and go from there.

EDIT

BTW, here's the link: https://launchpad.net/wicd

 

[Todd33]

It may be on there, I always just make sure I have a wired connection during the initial setup to work around things like this.

The wireless was connected during the install, I even check the update and 3rd party options.

It can't mount the install CD (??), so I'm doing the thumb drive with drivers-common

Edit: It can't mount the thumb drive either (vfat unknown)

 

[Nothinman]

The wireless was connected during the install, I even check the update and 3rd party options.

I believe you.

 

[Todd33]

I re-installed from the CD. Did all the same options, same partitions, etc. works like a charm. The only thing I can think of there was a delay from when I connected to the wireless in the install and then the check box became un-greyed out for the connect to the net during install option. Maybe I hit 'Continue' too quickly thus not choosing the option as I had in mind.

Seems strange still that if someone cannot connect during setup they will get no drivers for network or be able to mount any Fat32 drive? That kind of leaves them up a river.

Thanks for the help guys.