Wifi TC 210 on MSI Wind

[tejjyid]

I have tried searching but can't find anything about this problem on my machine:

I'm trying to run TC 210 on an MSI Wind u100, it's fine but no wifi - which actually means not fine since i don't have ready access to an ethernet port, so no appsbrowser.

Any ideas? Seems that TC can't see the wireless adapter. Maybe there's some setup i can do?

FWIW, I have a Realtek wifi chipset.

[jur]

Have you tired the stuff in the wiki?

http://wiki.tinycorelinux.com/tiki-index.php?page=Setting+up+Wifi

[Juanito]

If you load pci-utils/usb-utils, does lspci/lsusb show your wifi adapter?

[loserguy]

Hi tejjyid,

Don't worry, I have the same netbook and wifi is working great with tinycore.

For the realtek driver you could try this extension.
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/tinycorelinux/2.x/tcz/rtl8187se_coffee.tcz

Incidentally, msi wind netbooks come with different wifi modules ...
Mine is a ralink one for which you can try this extension if the realtek driver is not the right one.
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/tinycorelinux/2.x/tcz/rt2860.tcz

You might need to download this using another distro if you have no internet connection and copy the files over to your tce/optional dir.

Also, the fn+f11 keys work on my netbook in tinycore, so make sure wifi is turned on before trying to connect. Spent 2 hours knocking my head against the wall ....

[tejjyid]

Thanks all, will get working on it. New to X-ville, so a bit slow.

Can I mount my device hard drives (the Windows one) once TC is loaded? That makes transferring the driver file pretty easy.

[maro]

@tejjyid: Yes you can.

If your Windows partition is a FAT or FAT32 type you just need to do mount /dev/hda1 This assumes that TC has correctly identified the partition. You can check this with cat /etc/fstab

For NTFS partitions you'll need the ntfs-3g.tcz extension. You can then mount with sudo ntfs-3g /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 Please use the correct device (and mount point) for your case. Furthermore, there is also a NTFS module in 'filesystems-2.6.29.1-tinycore.tcz', but this is AFAIK limited to read-only access.

[tejjyid]

Thanks to both loserguy & maro (and everybody else). TC Up & running! Very impressed so far. This is the 3rd LX distro I've tried & the 1st one to get working...


****back, with edits********
OK, now I have a few more problems. It seems everything was fine after the 1st install, but now, post shutdown & restart, it's not so clear.

When I click on the WICD icon, no window appears. I checked with netconfig; seems wlan0 isn't up/on/visible. The _coffee driver is still present.

I found a post saying you might need to run a script wlan0up, but when I run that I get a string of "Can't insert ieee8211_crypt-rtl.ko......Unknown symbol in module or unknown parameter"

Loserguy, you mentioned you had wireless running on an MSI, what's your boot setup? Off a harddrive or a pendrive? And which persistence option do you use? I'm thinking maybe the problem is the way I've got TC starting up, but guessing really.

[mwoodruff]

When I click on the WICD icon, no window appears.

Have you run wicd-start before clicking the WICD icon?  Took me a while to figure out I needed to do this.

[loserguy]

@tejjyid
I'm using norestore boot codes with confs stored in a "zzzsettings.tcz". I just added a simple script to run in the background at startup as was outlined here:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/tinycorelinux/2.x/tcz/rt2860.tcz.info

Guessing at this point, but have you checked to see if the required extensions and their dependencies are getting loaded (appsaudit)?

@ mwoodruff
Thanks! I'm going to try WICD too 

[tejjyid]

Thanks for the wicd-start tip, now wicd is operational. But it can't see wlan0 either.

This is puzzling, because immediately after installing the Rtl8187se_coffee.tcz, I could see wlan0. Now it is permanently installed, no dice. Maybe I can de-install & re-install.

Also, I'll check the appsaudit & let you know how it goes.

[tejjyid]

I played around with appsaudit, everything looks OK, so far as I am any judge.

Also checked lspci & lsusb, it can definitely see the Realtek wireless chipset. WICD apparently can't though - it says "no wireless networks available".

WICD is definitely started & the wireless adapter is definitely turned on.

more clues...thought I would try manually, bypassing WICD, so tried this;

/sbin/ifconfig wlan0 up  => no such device

So, that seems (to me) like the coffee.tcz extension hasn't installed itself at boot, even though appsaudit says it's there.

Is the fact that I'm running off a USB possibly relevant? I don't have a spare hard drive to test this on at the moment.

[Juanito]

What does "iwconfig wlan0" show?

[tejjyid]

iwconfig shows:

wlan0           no such device

[gerald_clark]

My wireless adapter is eth0.
run 'ifconfig -a' and see wha tshows up.

[tejjyid]

ifconfig results: eth0 looks like the Ethernet adapter; along with dummy0 (also Ethernet) & lo (loopback)