problem with Texas Instruments pci wireless card

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drrdf
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problem with Texas Instruments pci wireless card

#1 Post by drrdf »

I wonder whether anyone can help me with a most peculiar problem please? When running Puppy Lucid 528 from CD I am able to get my Texas Instruments based wireless card (TNET1130) to work perfectly with it using the driver provided, acx_pci (cardbus/pci/usb), and encrypted with WPA security. However as soon as I install Puppy Lucid 528 onto my hard drive, attempting to use the same driver causes the network connection utilities to hang in perpetuity; if the system is rebooted the installation then corrupts itself and will not then run. This seems very strange, since why should this driver work perfectly if Puppy is run from CD but not if installed on the hard drive?

If I attempt to use the windows XP driver with ndiswrapper then the same hanging occurs.

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Semme
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#2 Post by Semme »

Hey Doc, two tips towards what I think may be happening..

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 916#745916

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 320#769320

Maybe you'll find the correlation.
>>> Living with the immediacy of death helps you sort out your priorities. It helps you live a life less trivial <<<

drrdf
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#3 Post by drrdf »

Hi Semme; thank you for your reply. What you seem to be suggesting, if I understand it correctly, is that the driver is present on the CD, which is why it works, but then does not get carried over onto the file set at installation onto the hard drive? That it seems has been a problem noticed before in other instances with Puppy?

I am looking at this to see what I can do. I will report back when I find out anything further. Thanks for your help.

Ronald

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Semme
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#4 Post by Semme »

No. I was getting @ the driver being able to find it's firmware, due to what I'm unsure.

There is however a good chance I can help you get around this limitation.

How have you got your drive set up? Are you trying to dual-boot?
>>> Living with the immediacy of death helps you sort out your priorities. It helps you live a life less trivial <<<

drrdf
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#5 Post by drrdf »

Hi Semme, thank you for your reply. The weird thing is that the driver finds the firmware when running Puppy from the CD, in RAM, but if that is the problem not when Puppy is installed on the hard drive. I do not have a dual boot set-up. I am just running Puppy Lucid as the only OS.

The hard drive is a SATA one (500Gb); it is set up as recommended, formatted as ext4, with a swap file of 2Mb. I am using the GRUB4DOS boot utility, copied into the MBR. This all works as it should, and the only problem is setting up the wireless card to work with the hard drive installation.

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Semme
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#6 Post by Semme »

Try this.

Boot the CD, reach the desktop and let Pup work though its initial first run settings.

Now go for a shutdown and let Pup create a save file on your installed system.

Whatever size you choose is fine because this is a test to see if wifi works in this environment.

Assuming the live session provided wifi, reboot with your disk loaded and choose this save if prompted.

After reaching the desktop, is wifi still configured to reach the net?

If she works with a save, I'd say leave the rest as is, run frugal and let the rest play storage.

It takes little time to test and we'd know pretty quick.

Keep us posted..
>>> Living with the immediacy of death helps you sort out your priorities. It helps you live a life less trivial <<<

drrdf
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#7 Post by drrdf »

Hi Semme; I have carried out what you suggested now. I had a problem to start with as the particular PC suddenly developed a fault, and would not boot up after the start of the BIOS sequence. I was scratching my head with that one and eventually discovered that it was due to a usb mouse with some sort of intermittent fault which stopped the BIOS running through its sequence; never met that one before since the usb does not normally get setup until the BIOS has finished its process.

When I first tried your suggested process it did not work. I then suspected that due to all the previous corrupted attempts there might be some corrupted or stray files; I therefore did a clear out of all files and directories (folders) on the HD and then tried the suggested process again with a frugal install. Hey Presto that worked, and I could setup the wireless card again with the simple network utility having booted from the HD. However when I rebooted again I found that the system had lost the network setup although the appropriate box on the SNS was ticked to supposedly keep the setup details. On each reboot it is necessary to again now setup the networking.

So although this has resulted in partial success, it is not retaining the network setup and WPA password, and in any case I did not want the frugal installation and had previously done a full installation. BTW I have a similar situation on another older PC running Puppy with a Texas Instruments wireless card, so I will try this same process on that. I have another PC running Puppy 528 with a Marvel wireless card using the XP driver with ndiswrapper, and that worked all OK first time with none of these problems. That has a full installation to the HD.

So the question remains: how do I do a full installation with the Texas card and how can I get the system to retain the network setup parameters so that it connects automatically at boot up? Thanks for your help.

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Semme
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#8 Post by Semme »

Doc, reliable connects have been a Pup issue for years. @ this point, PeasyWiFi may be the difference.
>>> Living with the immediacy of death helps you sort out your priorities. It helps you live a life less trivial <<<

drrdf
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#9 Post by drrdf »

Thanks Somme. I will try PWF. WiFi problems have been a general Linux issue for years anyway, mainly because so many manufacturers never released Linux drivers for their wireless cards.

Thanks for all of your help.

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Semme
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#10 Post by Semme »

I'll add I wasn't able to get any of Pup's wifi managers to cooperate with my card, and so resorted to this manual method.

Which kernel is your 528 running?

Gimme the card ID too: lspci -nn | grep Network
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drrdf
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#11 Post by drrdf »

Hi Semme, I believe the kernel used is 2.6.33.2, but I have not checked. I am running this Puppy version on some older PCs, having looked at most of the Puppy versions and it is essentially excellent to salvage them. Many Linux distros, just as with MS Windows, are now suffering from ever-increasing bloat and later kernels have dispensed with supporting much of the older hardware items, including even now no longer supporting Nisdwrapper. Not everyone wants all this new stuff.

BTW I still have a top of the range 100 MHz 486 running Windows 95, with two HDs and a CD writer, which I use solely for word processing. Previously I was using Linux Mint mostly and still have it on my main PC, but Mint is now suffering from bloat and a later kernel not supporting older hardware and even not supporting Ndiswrapper. It is all focussed on recent or new hardware.

If all else fails I will try the manual method for Puppy. Thanks. Ronald

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#12 Post by bigpup »

First, for Lucid Puppy make sure you are using version 5.2.8.005.

There is also Lucid Puppy 5.2.8.7.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=90461

You say you had possible corruption on hard drive.

Run Puppy so the hard drive is not used or mounted.
From CD with no save is one way.

Gparted cannot work with hard drive mounted.

Use Gparted.
Do a complete fresh format of the entire hard drive. and use ext3 format.
After formatting the partition(s)
Run Gparted partition check, to make sure everything is good.
Right click on partition.
Select check.
If it finds anything.
Keep checking until it finds no errors.

Why ext3?
Because Lucid 528 has some older support files/programs for ext formats. Ext4 support was still new to those files/programs and are not up to date with latest bug fix support for ext4.

Now do a fresh clean install of Lucid.

Puppy is really designed to work best as a frugal install.
Some of it's features only work in a frugal install.

So, do not think a full install is better.
It is just an option, because this is Linux and Linux has options.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
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drrdf
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#13 Post by drrdf »

Hi Bigpup, Thanks for your tips. I am running Puppy 5.2.8.005. The main reason for that is that I tried 5.2.8.7 and that does not have the driver included for this particular wireless card any longer. (which I have in two PCs). I did wonder about ext4, but nothing seemed to prohibit it. I will try with ext3 as you point out.

As I have explained, running Puppy from the CD there are no problems; the wireless card is immediately recognized and set up easily. The problem occurs only when installing Puppy onto the hard drive.

I thought that due to the successive failures with trying to get the wireless card to work with the driver provided on the CD there may have been some corruption in the files on the hard drive, and so all I had done was to delete them all. Clearly this was partially correct because I was then able to install the wireless card again when running from the hard drive after a Frugal install. I will try a complete reformat to ext3 as you suggest.

Interesting what you say about Frugal and Full install. What is the advantage, if any, of a Full install then, and why have it as an option? There is also the problem with installing Libre Office, which Puppy 528 for some reason will not do, although there is a supposed option there for this. Thanks, Ronald.

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#14 Post by bigpup »

Frugal installs:

Can be put on any partition any format, any type storage device.

They load more of Puppy into RAM.

Easier to backup, because all changes, settings are in the save. The core Puppy files never change. Only what is in the save changes. All you have to do is copy the save to have a backup.
If Puppy really gets messed up. Just delete the save and replace it with the backup save.

You can easily load or unload SFS program packages.
This lets you use a program without actually installing it to Puppy. You will have to use this option to fully understand it.

All of Puppy is placed in a directory (folder).
You can have many Puppies on one partition.
All completely separate from the other.
All in different directories (Linux term for folder).

Full installs:
Must be installed to a Linux formatted partition.
Uses the entire partition.
Main advantage is it uses less memory to boot to desktop.
Does not use layered file system.
Works best for compiling.
Does not run into size limit that a save file has on a fat32 format.

This was a popular option, back in the early days of Puppy, when people had really low memory computers.
Last edited by bigpup on Fri 24 Mar 2017, 21:50, edited 2 times in total.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

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#15 Post by bigpup »

installing Libre Office
That is the subject of a new topic.
So make a new topic on this.

Try searching first using this search:
http://puppylinux.us/psearch.html
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

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#16 Post by rcrsn51 »

drrdf wrote:how can I get the system to retain the network setup parameters so that it connects automatically at boot up?
Did you ever resolve this problem?

drrdf
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problem with Texas Instruments pci wireless card

#17 Post by drrdf »

Hi

Thanks to the advice of bigpup I did manage to resolve this problem a few days ago. I have been abroad for several months and so was unable to do any more until I returned. I discovered that the advice of bigpup was absolutely correct. You cannot use ext4 with this combination as I had done previously, and Frugal install is the best option. So, the problem was solved by using ext3 and a Frugal install. Then using the network wizard the WPA logon key is now correctly saved and Puppy logs on at each new boot-up. The Texas wireless card now works fine with the Puppy driver (as it did only from from CD boot-up previously with the Puppy driver using ext4).

It is not possible to use the Texas windows driver supplied with ndiswrapper if you are using WPA, because that does not support WPA; the driver provided within Puppy does however support WPA. I now have this set-up running correctly on 2 PCs.

drrdf
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Joined: Sat 15 Aug 2009, 11:50

problem with Texas Instruments pci wireless card

#18 Post by drrdf »

Hi bigpup,

I can report back now that thanks to your advice I was able to solve this problem. I managed to resolve this a few days ago. I have been abroad for several months and so was unable to do any more until I returned. I discovered that your advice was absolutely correct. You cannot use ext4 with this combination as I had done previously, and Frugal install is the best option. So, the problem was solved by using ext3 and a Frugal install. Then using the network wizard the WPA logon key is now correctly saved and Puppy logs on at each new boot-up. The Texas wireless card now works fine with the Puppy driver (as it did only from from CD boot-up previously with the Puppy driver using ext4).

It is not possible to use the Texas windows driver supplied with the card and using ndiswrapper if you are using WPA, because that does not support WPA; the driver provided within Puppy does however support WPA. I now have this set-up running correctly on 2 PCs.

So thank you so much for your help. Hopefully this solution may also help others who might have similar problems.

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