Problem with WiFi Dongle

[nickh]

Hi,

I am having a problem with Porteus v1.0 32-bit with a wireless usb dongle. If I boot up my PC with the KDE desktop then plug in the dongle the only thing which responds is the mouse. Clicking on any menu or icon does nothing. If I then force-reboot the machine I have to delete my save.dat file before I can start in KDE mode again.

If I try in Always Fresh mode it is similar but I can right-click on "system tray" (sorry for the windoze analogy) I can call up a menu but clicking on anything does nothing.

I am using a vanilla 1.0 with no modules installed yet, running of a FAT32 USB pen with a save.dat in /porteus

TIA,

Nick

[edit]
I've just worked out that removing the dongle eventually brings the system back to life and all previous mouse clicks are acted on! I've opened a terminal and (I don't know if it helps) I've dumped a dmesg from when I inserted the device to when I removed it:

Code: Select all

[  290.267024] usb 1-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
[  290.386102] usb 1-5: can't set config #1, error -71
[  303.109029] usb 1-6: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
[  303.223028] usb 1-6: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[  317.107027] usb 1-6: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
[  317.617025] usb 1-6: device not accepting address 3, error -71
[  317.719029] usb 1-6: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
[  318.230026] usb 1-6: device not accepting address 3, error -71
[  318.332026] usb 1-6: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
[  341.110030] usb 1-6: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
[  341.224027] usb 1-6: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[  374.118029] usb 1-6: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
[  374.232027] usb 1-6: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[  385.108030] usb 1-6: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
[  387.107029] usb 1-6: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
[  395.107027] usb 1-6: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
[  395.221026] usb 1-6: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[  405.107028] usb 1-6: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
[  405.618022] usb 1-6: device not accepting address 3, error -71
[  405.720027] usb 1-6: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
[  405.834022] usb 1-6: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[  448.134026] usb 1-6: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
[  490.118029] usb 1-6: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
[  490.232029] usb 1-6: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[  490.447027] usb 1-6: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[  490.650022] usb 1-6: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
[  500.873024] usb 1-6: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
[  501.306024] usb 1-6: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
[  501.420024] usb 1-6: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[  501.635022] usb 1-6: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[  501.838023] usb 1-6: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
[  525.377072] usb 1-5: USB disconnect, address 4
[  533.190029] usb 1-6: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3

[/edit]

[Sitwon]

What kind of WiFi dongle is it? Do you know the chipset?

[brokenman]

Interesting behaviour. Can you please run psinfo, upload the resulting file on the desktop to pastebin and post a link here please.

[nickh]

I took the USB drive and dongle to work today and tried them on my work PC and they work fine suggesting it is a specific issue with my home PC.

Output from psinfo is here

The dongle is a ZyXEL G-202. I believe it uses the zd1211b chipset.

[fanthom]

"[ 303.223028] usb 1-6: device descriptor read/64, error -71"
"I took the USB drive and dongle to work today and tried them on my work PC and they work fine suggesting it is a specific issue with my home PC."
i'm having similar troubles on my laptop and USB mouse. plugging mouse to another usb socket usually helps (it works perfect in eSATA/usb combo socket).

does the dongle work normally on other OS (slax?) installed on this pc?

[nickh]

I don't use the dongle much at all. I used to use it with my work PC with slax and slax-remix and it was fine. I was just trying out Porteus at home to set it up for when I go travelling with my work PC (which is bolted down tighter than a duck's a**e except it allows USB booting).

I have tried the dongle again at home and I am getting very intermittent results with Porteus. Porteus does remain functioning sometimes when I insert the dongle.

It is probably best to hold off with any troubleshooting until I can pin down when it fails and when it works. I'll post back when I find out more.

In the meanwhile thanks for answering.

Posted after 23 hours 50 minutes 21 second:
I'm going to give up with Porteus with WiFi on my home PC as it appears to cause too much damage to the o/s (and anyway I have a wired connection as well). Although I eventually got the WiFi dongle working, I then converted and installed some modules (OpenVPN, kvpnc and iproute2), but it took an age to convert them and many minutes to shutdown afterwards when it was doing something to a mysql database. What I need to do is get it up on my work laptop which is my prime need and there it seems to handle module installation and the wireless dongle fine.