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[Solved] Porteus couldn't look up my wifi

Posted: 18 Mar 2013, 09:31
by surio
Hello people.

First things first. Great and amazing distro. To begin with, I simply cannot imagine how so much of goodies can be packed into such small space.

Thanks to everybody that make this magic happen... Yes, that's you, you, you, him, her, them, and everyone else :)

I've always had monitor detection and wifi problems on 32 bit and 2.0 Final came out. So I moved to 64 bit to try it out and see how it is.

The wifi was able to connect, but was temperamental.

For example, we have frequent power outages here, and between these outages, once the connection drops, it is near impossible to regain it unless I reboot and start all over again. Annoying somewhat.

But, decided to move forward and I created the save dat file on the USB itself. After a day or two the OS stopped detecting my wifi completely, but consistently picked up some neighbours' wifi randomly on every scan. (This one and Slacko Puppy Linux were the two culprits).

OTOH, other test distros running on (live)USB could pick the wifi up (Fuduntu, opensuse, Pear, uberstudent, linux lite... even Nadia and Ubuntu on Unity ;-) I tried quite a few to confirm this). Windows can also detect my router and connect automatically. So, wifi/router problems are safely eliminated.

Over the weekend I had a quick chat with @fanthom on the forums. I was asked to file a report here and provide the system info to find ot more info. I read the forums guidelines on posting bugs and did a clean intsall to run on "fresh mode" as per guidelines. The other Laptop I have is an older Inspiron 6000 so cannot handle 64-bits OS, so I can only test on one machine.

Imagine my surprise, after booting Porteus picked up my router/modem immediately, It took a looong time to connect (much longer than other distros take anyway) but hooked up to the Internet. :shock: :o

Man, what is happening?

I want to continue testing this development. I have run a full Report and uploaded to pastebin as asked for
Here it is: http://pastebin.ca/2334788

I am going to set up a save dat on my USB and proceed with testing the distro. I will keep posting updates here as and when they happen.

Will let you know more later....

Re: Porteus couldn't look up my wifi

Posted: 18 Mar 2013, 11:47
by fanthom
hi surio,

once again - thanks for your kind words.
The wifi was able to connect, but was temperamental.
your chipset: 14e4:4727 is supported by two drivers in porteus 'wl' (default) and brcm. you may try to switch to brcm as per this HOWTO:
http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=1099
mind that you will need additional firmware from kernel-firmware module (you can download it through PPM)

from my experience i would say that 'wl' does better job but you can give it a go.
Imagine my surprise, after booting Porteus picked up my router/modem immediately, It took a looong time to connect (much longer than other distros take anyway) but hooked up to the Internet. :shock: :o
please boot with your save.dat and then delete old network manager profiles from /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections and /home/guest/.kde4/share/apps/networkmanagement/secrets.
boot once again and check if your wifi appears.

[Solved] Re: Porteus couldn't look up my wifi

Posted: 20 Mar 2013, 03:06
by surio
Hi @fanthom,
Got around to testing this.
please boot with your save.dat and then delete old network manager profiles from /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections and /home/guest/.kde4/share/apps/networkmanagement/secrets.
boot once again and check if your wifi appears.
I did the above. I can confirm that I was able to get back (super fast). Like I mentioned on chat earlier, we have power outages, and if I lose the network connection there, I need to do a log off (or mostly a reboot) before I regain my connection. This is something that surprises me! I will keep testing this and let you know.
your chipset: 14e4:4727 is supported by two drivers in porteus 'wl' (default) and brcm. you may try to switch to brcm as per this HOWTO:
Thank you for this info. I agree Broadcom and Linux has been somewhat love-hate! I will keep using wl for the moment (it is known as one of the better evils after all ;) ). If things mess up again in the future, I will activate the other driver. For the moment though, let sleeping dogs lie. :)

For the moment though, I will mark the issue as [Solved]. :)

Once again, just great work from all of the team on this super small, super fast, super friendly distro. Only one request from a hobby enthusiast... please keep things small, smooth and flowing.