Using Linux Ubuntu for the last 2 days..

[undeclared]

Well, to start with...I encountered a few problems.

Now I know 100% for sure that my wireless card is supported (wistron CM9) because of the madwifi driver that a lot of people talk about being really good..

However, my problem has been.. it can detect networks, but it refuses to connect to any..

The only way I can get internet running again is to do what I just did, boot the live DVD.

Secondly, I did an apt-get dist upgrade because I wanted the latest stuff. This caused other problems.

I had a program that would run in 6.10 and a program that refuses to run in 6.11. Also, my wireless instantly stopped working in 6.11.

Other problems.. well, why would a .deb package made for ubuntu (from the ubuntu site) after I install it say something to me like.. "error cannot read something.so", it's not smart enough to just like figure out I am lacking a library for some stuff to run..

Even after the reinstall of the package, it had the same problem.

I am reinstalling now, but I mean I've never heard of problems like this..

 

[nweaver]

1. Wifi has issues. It's more related to vendors the Linux in general. The atheros stuff works "mostly" with madwifi, but is no where near something like the Proxim, or most any other non US company. Complain to your vendor. Posting issues leads to help, posting rants leads to rebuttals.

2. You may have done the dist upgrade incorrectly, it's a very specific process. You should also make sure you change repos in your sources list, and run an apt-get update && apt-get upgrade.

3. Don't install random .deb files downloaded from the internet. Use apt and Synaptic...Ubunutu uses one of the most powerful package management systems in the OS industry for a reason.

 

[Nothinman]

Secondly, I did an apt-get dist upgrade because I wanted the latest stuff. This caused other problems.

Did a dist-upgrade to what? Normally you only do that when upgrading from one distribution to another, doing it within the same distribtution is usually harmless but can cause unexpected issues since it gives apt more power than normal (i.e. it can remove packages you might not expect it to).

Other problems.. well, why would a .deb package made for ubuntu (from the ubuntu site) after I install it say something to me like.. "error cannot read something.so", it's not smart enough to just like figure out I am lacking a library for some stuff to run..

If the package is setup right it shouldn't install directly if dependencies aren't met, dpkg is just like RPM in that respect, but if you installed it via apt (or aptitude or synaptic) it should have pulled in all of it's dependencies automatically. How did you install it and what does it say is missing?

 

[undeclared]

Let me be more clear about the dist-upgrade.

I did not do it manually.

It was more like "Updates are available, would you like to upgrade"
Click yes. (This is in the GUI part)

Restart, it's like generic-6.10 or eneric-6.11 in boot menu. I choose.

This caused so many problems.

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: xtwells
Let me be more clear about the dist-upgrade.

I did not do it manually.

It was more like "Updates are available, would you like to upgrade"
Click yes. (This is in the GUI part)

Restart, it's like generic-6.10 or eneric-6.11 in boot menu. I choose.

This caused so many problems.

why are you throwing out terms you have no clue about? The GUI update (iirc) won't do a "dist-upgrade". A dist-upgrade is something totally different. And "generic-6.10" is not even close, it's probably generic 2.6.something. What problems has it caused? I update all the freaking time, on my desktop and laptop, and only rarely does anything (even proprietary drivers from both ATI and NVIDIA) break.

 

[Nothinman]

It was more like "Updates are available, would you like to upgrade"
Click yes. (This is in the GUI part)

That's not a dist-upgrade, dist-upgrade is a specific command given to apt.

 

[xtknight]

Only GUI thing that does dist-upgrade is "gksu update-manager -c -d". Dist-upgrade is for upgrading from one distribution to another. This is not a periodic security fix-type update and it shouldn't be used unless...you are moving from one distribution [version] to another. I don't think dist-upgrade does anything more than "upgrade" anyway as long as you didn't modify sources.list (for example by replacing 'edgy' with 'feisty'). It's good you're trying things to learn (before you really know what they do), but you can't place the blame on anyone but yourself if it breaks.

The periodic thing that notifies you of updates does "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade". When you upgrade, yes there are new kernels available sometimes (2.6.17-10->2.6.17-11). But the newest is added to the top per the automagic kernel list. And, it is selected as default at the grub boot menu. Plus, booting -10 probably wouldn't damage anything so I don't know what the issue is. If you use the nvidia drivers in restricted-modules you shouldn't have to reinstall them on each kernel update.

There is no Ubuntu 6.11. Do you mean 6.06->6.10?

Originally posted by: xtwells
Other problems.. well, why would a .deb package made for ubuntu (from the ubuntu site) after I install it say something to me like.. "error cannot read something.so", it's not smart enough to just like figure out I am lacking a library for some stuff to run..

Any debs on packages.ubuntu.com can be obtained by using apt-get. Why d/l the deb? apt-get will automatically detect dependencies. You may need to enable universe, multiverse, and backports (under Software Sources) to get all debs. If you have any further problems, #ubuntu on freenode is always happy to help.

As for the last thing I don't know. The deb should detect depends (*.so libraries or other) but you can have issues if you are installing a 32-bit deb on a 64-bit system, for example. It might think the package is installed but it needs a 32-bit .so not a 64-bit one. Of course then you would have had to type --force-all or --force-architecture for the deb to get installed in the first place.

Wifi is...well...an issue. What adapter and what chipset do you have? What is the output of the following command? sudo lshw -class network

 

[undeclared]

Well, why is it that it's NOT a dist upgrade, but I have fresh installed 3 times now for just one thing working but not the other etc (and when my internet dies, how can I get new packages heh)

Bottom line - every fresh install, it shows a [*] icon, there are updates available, click update..

A restart is required.

Starting boot manager...

Ubunutu 6.11
ubuntu 6.11-safe
ubuntu 6.10
ubuntu 6.10-safe

so tell me that's not a freaking dist upgrade

 

[DaiShan]

Originally posted by: xtwells
Well, why is it that it's NOT a dist upgrade, but I have fresh installed 3 times now for just one thing working but not the other etc (and when my internet dies, how can I get new packages heh)

Bottom line - every fresh install, it shows a [*] icon, there are updates available, click update..

A restart is required.

Starting boot manager...

Ubunutu 6.11
ubuntu 6.11-safe
ubuntu 6.10
ubuntu 6.10-safe

so tell me that's not a freaking dist upgrade

The "Updates available" refers to packages on your system, not the base system (generally) aptitude upgrade will upgrade all packages on your system that are out of date with those listed in the repositories in your sources.list. if you change your sources.list to pull feisty information then aptitude update && aptitude dist-upgrade you will upgrade all of your packages (including the base system) to the feisty release. If you do not edit sources.list Ubuntu/Debian will not be able to run a dist-upgrade to the latest distribution, but it will probably still upgrade the packages that are marked for upgrade.


/edit you see that updates available message every time because updates have been released since the LiveCD was created. It's a good thing, as you probably don't want to be running stale packages (unless you have a reason to)

 

[Nothinman]

Well, why is it that it's NOT a dist upgrade, but I have fresh installed 3 times now for just one thing working but not the other etc (and when my internet dies, how can I get new packages heh)

Becaust dist upgrade usually means using the specific "dist-upgrade" command with apt to upgrade from one distribution to another. Yes, technically dist upgrade could mean what you keep using it to mean because you are upgrading packages in your distribution but that's not the de facto use and only makes your posts confusing.

so tell me that's not a freaking dist upgrade

It's not, it probably upgraded your kernel which is what broke your wifi, but kernel updates are seperate from dist-upgrades although they are usually performed as part of one. If you started with 6.11 and you ended with 6.11 you haven't done a real dist-upgrade.

 

[undeclared]

Listen, I get the point. Dist-upgrade is different.

However, whenever I do the update thing, it upgrades my dist, am I correct in this assumption?

 

[Nothinman]

In the same respect that Windows Update updates your Windows, sure, but it's not the same as a dist-upgrade so just leave of the dist part and say upgrade or update.

But I don't have any experience with the madwifi crap so I can't comment on why it broke.

 

[nweaver]

my guess is either madwifi isn't installed, or is not compatible with that kernel version (i.e. restricted-modules package is not installed for that kernel). Could also be that the module isn't running by default. IIRC, the module is ath_pci

op, you might try opening a terminal and typing "modprobe ath_pci" and see if that helps. If that doesn't work, you might boot into the older kernel, and making sure the restricted-modules for that newer kernel (check synaptic)

 

[drag]

Well if your not doing 'dist-upgrade' and your trying to upgrade between different versions of ubuntu then that can cause problems.

Screw all the GUI borkness. Go to the command line.

do:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Just to make sure everything is up to date.


For your wireless card. The GUI stuff does not realy provide enough feedback to make it usefull to fix it.

And there realy is no need to reinstall stuff all the time. If you get to the point were you can't connect to a network then you can use chroot trick from the live dvd to fix your installation. But it probably would be easier to just have a ethernet cable were you can connect to your router when your wireless stuff f-s up.

It's much better just to sit and figure out why something is not working then to reinstall. It's not Windows, unless you delete some files or do somethign that is massive, like change the permissions on all your files in your OS, it's always possible and almost always worth it to just fix it. It's almost always quicker and easier then doing a reinstall. Plus if you didn't figure out what went wrong then when it does it again then you won't know what to do.


I don't realy have time to go into it right now, but I am going to install Ubuntu and see what sort of disaster they've setup for themselves. It's probably diverged enough from Debian were I don't know what is realy going on all the time with it.


A important troubleshooting technique is to view kernel logging output when trying to connect to a wireless network.

You do this by using this command:
dmesg

So run:
dmesg
to see what it says.
The try to connect to a network, run the command afterwards, and then see what the differences are.

That will help considurably when figuring out what is wrong.

 

[xtknight]

Once again, there is no Ubuntu 6.11. You should be seeing, "Ubuntu 6.10, kernel 2.6.17-11" or something similar.

You are referring to a kernel version. A kernel update is not a distribution upgrade. It it is part of the normal upgrades. The minor version (2.6.17) is frozen for Ubuntu Edgy, although the revision (-10 or -11) is not. The newer (-11) typically contains security or other fixes backported from a newer kernel.

Do you have the output of the command I listed above? This will help in fixing your wireless problem.

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

It was more like "Updates are available, would you like to upgrade"
Click yes. (This is in the GUI part)

That's not a dist-upgrade, dist-upgrade is a specific command given to apt.

That's not entirely accurate. There can be package conflicts which ask for a distribution upgrade.

I know I have a few on my system. I open the update manager and it says "Not all packages can be installed. Run a distribution upgrade to install as many updates as possible."

You can then click yes and it'll run a distribution upgrade. I'm on Edgy btw.

It happens when you install some 3rd party packages sometimes.


So without any further clarification from the OP, it sounds like he MIGHT have done this type of thing, but it's more likely he upgraded the kernel and needs to recompile some kernel modules maybe.

 

[Nothinman]

That's not entirely accurate. There can be package conflicts which ask for a distribution upgrade.

I know I have a few on my system. I open the update manager and it says "Not all packages can be installed. Run a distribution upgrade to install as many updates as possible."

You can then click yes and it'll run a distribution upgrade. I'm on Edgy btw.

It happens when you install some 3rd party packages sometimes.

Frankly, I would consider that a bug in whatever package causes the issue. That shouldn't happen during normal updates.

 

[blackangst1]

wow Linux is so user friendly!

/sarcasm off

hehe no Im not trying to threadcrap lol

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: blackangst1
wow Linux is so user friendly!

/sarcasm off

hehe no Im not trying to threadcrap lol

It is once you get a basic understanding and learn how things work. I'm guessing if you hand a WinXP CD and blank system to someone who has never installed or worked with Windows before they'd have trouble getting it working too. In fact, I bet the Ubuntu install would be more 'complete' than the XP install. When I install the latest version of Ubuntu I don't need to provide a driver CD or download them manually. Granted, XP is years old while Ubuntu is updated every 6 months but that's one of the advantages to going with a frequently updated OS.

 

[undeclared]

hehe regardless of all this stuff, I tanked and installed *GASP* Windows XP

I wanna play C&C 3 with my bro anyway!

 

[Robor]

For gaming I'd stick with Windows. I don't game much more though. If you want to learn more Linux maybe dual boot or install VMWare Server or MS Virtual Server and run a Linux distro in a virtual machine to get used to it and then give it another try again later.

 

[Nothinman]

hehe no Im not trying to threadcrap lol

If that were true you would have posted something relevant and/or useful to the thread.

 

[undeclared]

Robor: I'm actually very knowledgeable about unix-based operating systems, just not from a GUI point of view, moreso from an ssh to my server point of view..

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: xtwells
Robor: I'm actually very knowledgeable about unix-based operating systems, just not from a GUI point of view, moreso from an ssh to my server point of view..

Ah, I guess that explains the 'Penguin' avatar. Seemed strange you'd pick that one if you were new to Linux.

 

[xtknight]

Sounds like Windows is for you then. If you don't have the patience to understand the update manager I know you won't have the patience to setup wine to play video games on Linux. (I still haven't gotten that level of patience.)