[Soporose]

My apologies for the length of this post but I believe all the information is relevant to my problem.

Following the failure of the SSD drive in my Mini-9, and since I can't afford to replace it just yet, I followed a suggestion from another forum section and installed "Ubuntu NetBook Remix 9.10" onto a 2GB thumb drive.

For the most part that works fine, and just confirms that the HDD is kaput. Anyway, I decided I might as well try to introduce myself to Linux in the meantime.

But getting wireless working and connecting to my Linksys WRT54GL router is proving to be a real problem for this Linux-ignorant novice. Connectivity is very important because until I can afford to replace the SSD my main practical uses for the Mini-9 will be Web Browsing and e-mail .

Looking at wireless-related forum messages I gather I need to separately install a driver for the Mini-9's Broadcom modem, but it's unclear to me how I can implement this, because I keep running into the same problem.

Here's what I've done...

- Hovering over the Network icon in Title bar displays "No network connection".
- Select the icon for "Restricted drivers available" (always takes a while for this icon to appear).
- From the list of available drivers select the "Broadcom STA Wireless driver".
- click activate.
- Progress bar appears with a screen message that reads "Downloading and installing driver..."
- Then I get the message "You need to restart the computer to activate this driver".
- Click the Close button on that Hardware Drivers dialog.
- From the title bar icon select Restart.

Sadly everything will usually stop at some point during the restart process, requiring me to manually power off/on; e.g.
[711.215325] ACPI Error: No installed handler for fixed event [00000000] 20090521 evevent-306
The USB thumb drive has a power/activity LED which indicates that it has been powered off at this point.

I have also tried Shutdown instead of Restart. The unit then powers off and can be manually restarted without any apparent problems. However the end result is still the same, which is...

- When Linux is running again a check shows that the "Broadcom STA Wireless driver" is again showing "this driver is not activated".

If I need to be installing some driver derived from somewhere else...

1. Exactly what driver do I need and where do I get it? NOTE: I do not have a Ubuntu CD.

2. Is it possible to implement the driver by downloading it on another computer and copying it to the USB thumb drive that holds the installation of UNR9.1?

Or have I just gone wrong somewhere in the process described above?

Can you help?

Thanks very much for reading.

[reflex]

Try connecting via wired Ethernet and running all the updates and installing the driver.

The name of the exact driver file you need is "wl.ko", but it needs to be matched to the exact OS version. So, you can't just use the wl.ko I have on my Mini 9 running Debian.

You can download Ubuntu software packages over the web from packages.ubuntu.com (they have a .deb extension). I think this is the most important package: http://packages.ubuntu.com/karmic/bcmwl-kernel-source. Be aware that when you download individual .deb files, you don't get the other .deb files it might depend on. So, the single .deb might not work, depending on whether you have the other packages installed. You can download them too, but your list of downloads can rapidly spiral out of control (that's why package management software is nice, it knows what's needed and what's installed and what's not).

[Soporose]

Thanks for the advice Reflex. I thought I was going OK for a while but then the wheels fell off.

Following your advice I made a CAT-5 connection between the Mini-9 and the router, and I subsequently had "Wired network connection 'Auto eth0' active". Started Firefox and confirmed that I was connected to the Internet.

But then I got a bit confused with packages, version numbers etc, so after doing some searching I fired up Terminal and ran the command "sudo apt-get upgrade", and a lot of stuff happened, which took quite a while.

After about five minutes or so of all that stuff happening the following came up and the process stopped at the Terminal prompt:

dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting:
unable to flush /var/lib/dpkg/updates/tmp.i after padding: No space left on device
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)
Ubuntu@Ubuntu:~$

Did I follow the right steps?

The USB thumb drive I'm using is 2GB, the biggest I have. Am I going to have to go out and buy a bigger one? Unfortunately large thumb drives aren't cheap down here in Oz.

AFTERTHOUGHT: Maybe I could delete all those games if I knew how?

TIA

[reflex]

First off, just to be sure, you do have Ubuntu actually "installed" to the flash drive, right? Not just the LiveCD/USB copied to it. This boot menu shouldn't appear if you actually have it installed. Or what does "mount" list as the root filesystem (the line with "something on / ..."), on a fully installed system, I expect something like "/dev/sda1 on / ...".

If you do have it installed completely and properly, then continue reading...

Sorry. Telling you to run all the updates at once was bad advice on such a small device. It ran out of space during the process.

A 4 or 8GB drive would be more comfortable, but I think it's possible to have Ubuntu on a 2GB flash drive with effort. You need to avoid bloated software, and you need to update in small bites.

Now, on the 2GB drive, try running "du -sh /var/cache/apt" to check the "disk usage" of the "/var/cache/apt" directory, which is where packages get downloaded prior to installation. If it's large, run "sudo apt-get clean" to free up some space. Then try just running "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source" to update the package listing, then install the latest version of the Broadcom wireless driver (along with any packages it needs).

Good luck.

[Soporose]

To put Linux on the thumb drive I used "universal USB installer" from Universal USB Installer – Easy as 1 2 3 | USB Pen Drive Linux

That should have actually installed it, right?

I will try following your advice this evening and let you know how I get on.

[reflex]

I suspect you didn't actually "install" Ubuntu to the flash drive, instead you just installed the installer. I suspect that because:

• your username is "Ubuntu", a normal install would've asked you for a username
• it sounds like you only have one large (1GB+) flash drive, while Ubuntu requires two drives for a normal install, the source (usually a CD/USB) and the target (usually a hard drive, but could be another USB drive)
• and 2GB is tight for a "proper" install (probably too small for a default install)

The installer is a LiveCD/USB, so it's a functioning system. And if you made it "persistent" at creation time, you can save files and run system updates (never tried applying updates to a persistent LiveUSB, but I expect it'll work).

There are disadvantages to running off a LiveCD/USB with persistence instead of running off a "proper" install. But I think if you run few updates, it might work well for you.

[ubuntufanXD]

it is tough to work with a full install on such a small space. 4gb would be infinitely bigger and easier to install on.

The problem you are having is a well documented bug that ubuntu has trying to install the broadcom wifi drivers. To get functioning drivers you need to install the package bcmwl-kernel-source.

1. goto System--->Administration--->Software Sources
2. click the box that says source code
3. close the window
4. either go to the terminal and type "sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source" (without quotes)
or goto System-->Administration-->Synaptic and search for bcmwl-kernel-source and install it
5. go to the restricted driver manager and install the STA drivers

step 6. Complain to ubuntu devs for not fixing this catastrophic problem afflicting nearly all netbooks launchpad.net

[Soporose]

OK, I bit the bullet and bought a 4GB thumb drive and started again.

I use the "Universal USB Installer" referred to in earlier messages to install the Ubuntu Netbook Remix distro on the USB drive.

Starting with a wired connection, the upgrade and driver installation was painless, and configuring the wireless connection was then also very easy.

I can now at least browse and check e-mail from my Netbook until I can afford to replace the SDD.

For anyone else needing to try this here is the process I'd suggest, gleaned from the helpful people above:

--------------------------------------
1. You need at least a 4 GB flash drive.
2. Allocate 1 GB of persistent storage on a 4 GB drive, more if you wish on a bigger device. The "Universal USB Installer" allows you to set the persistence.
3. Start with a wired Internet connection, which Linux always seems to detect immediately without any assistance from you.
4. Open Linux's Terminal application and execute this command line:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source
5. That may take a while to complete, but when it's finished close the Terminal application by typing the command: exit {enter}
6. Remove the Ethernet cable.
6. Do a restart.
--------------------------------------

That's what worked for me.

Thank you all for your assistance -- very much appreciated.

PS Still VERY UNHAPPY about my SDD crashing just a few weeks after the warranty expired. Not good Dell.

[darrylw]

Originally Posted by ubuntufanXD

it is tough to work with a full install on such a small space. 4gb would be infinitely bigger and easier to install on.

The problem you are having is a well documented bug that ubuntu has trying to install the broadcom wifi drivers. To get functioning drivers you need to install the package bcmwl-kernel-source.

1. goto System--->Administration--->Software Sources
2. click the box that says source code
3. close the window
4. either go to the terminal and type "sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source" (without quotes)
or goto System-->Administration-->Synaptic and search for bcmwl-kernel-source and install it
5. go to the restricted driver manager and install the STA drivers

step 6. Complain to ubuntu devs for not fixing this catastrophic problem afflicting nearly all netbooks launchpad.net

Thanks for the info it worked perfect!