VectorLinux 7 Beta2 bugs and observations

[stretchedthin]

Sorry to be the bringer of bad news and all that but you did ask for problems! Also, a couple of apps I've come to rely on in Vector are apparently no longer present; Chestnut Dialer for PPP dialup, and K3B for burning data and ISOs to CD and DVD. Is this intentional?

Chestnut dialer is in the testing repo, (you will need to enable it on a fresh install) and k3b is in the works.

If you want k3b now and 70 other applications, you could try the MMBD for vl7.0
http://www.opensourcebistro.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=30&osCsid=ccb591d06058b985f37d1adfa97e7050

[Colonel Panic]

Thanks for your reply and the info,

CP .

[Pita]

Floppy cannot be mounted since there is no /dev/fd0:

@~:$ mount /mnt/floppy
mount: special device /dev/fd0 does not exist

l$ ls /dev/f*         
/dev/fb0  /dev/full  /dev/fuse

Further: category LC_ALL is not supported. That is for Zeroinstall of Rox.

[sledgehammer]

Well, I bought a Samsung 511, the only laptop I could find with a sunlight readable lcd (I couldn't find a lenovo laptop with a sunlight readable screen). 

VL 6.0 would not load. It either didn't find the media or didn't find the hard-drive, depending on whether I used the regular or the old installer (linux).  So I tried VL 7 Beta 2 and it loaded fine with the modern installer, but WICD did not find the wireless card.  So, figuring my computer might not have a working wireless card in it (though the box said otherwise) I loaded mint and the wireless worked flawlessly.  So I then tried VL 7 Beta 2 with the old installer (install) and it loaded fine but did not install xfce4 and wicd (via fluxbox) could not find any wireless extensions. Ifconfig didn't show any wireless at all.  That is where I am now.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how I can access the wireless card?  I'm sure mint is fine and all that but don't want to fool with a new operating system.

I am going to hook it up to the wire now and update everything.  I will report if that works.

john

[uelsk8s]

John,
Post the id of your wireless card.
it should be in the output of lspci or possibly lsusb

[GrannyGeek]

I hope you installed VL7 beta 2.1 and not VL7 beta 2. Beta 2.1 fixed some fatal problems I had with beta 2.

Someone else will have to help with your wireless, since that's something I had to flail about with to get it working on my VL6 Light laptop, my only computer with wireless.
--GrannyGeek

[j.a.watson]

Regarding the Samsung 511, although I am not familiar with that specific model I have two other Samsung netbooks (N150 and NF310), and I suspect that the 511 most likely has a Broadcom 4313 wireless adapter.  That requires the brcm80211 driver, which as far as I know is still not included in the VL7B2 distribution.

If it is any consolation, I have tested both of my Samsung sytems with a variety of other Linux distributions which do include the brcm80211 driver, and they work very well.  So hopefully all will be well once the driver makes it into VL.

While it is possible to get the 4313 adapter working with the older "wl" or "broadcom-wl" driver (aka "STA" on Ubuntu), there are serious performance problems with it, and the throughput very low.

jw

[stretchedthin]

@sledgehammer.  Just want you to check one thing. As of the more recent release 2.1 I believe amount them. WICD is not completely configured at install.
You may simply need to click the wicd icon on the panel, click preferences in that window then in the resulting window from that enter
wlan0         
in the Wireless interface box.

if that does not work try
wlan1
To find out for sure as root, in the terminal, type
iwconfig
If it gives you a wlan#, than use that.  If it does not give you a number for wlan then, indeed you have a different problem.

[sledgehammer]

Thanks.   Got model wrong.  Its a Samsung RF511.  Nothing on iwconfig, Stretchedthin.  Yes, j.a.watson, everything but wireless seems to be working.  Not too sure though as I won't bother loading my programs and date til I get wireless working.  My son might do me a favor and load the driver.

john

[Andy Price]

With development moving at a good pace I wonder how near VL7 is to freezing features? There are a few things I've noticed and would like to mention. Please forgive any repeats!

The text installer doesn't have an option to check the disk for integrity any more, nor does it allow you to choose which packages to install. It uses LILO by default and there's no option to install GRUB, unlike the GUI installer.

VASM has the option to save the user password but Gslapt, which I use much more, doesn't.

One other thought:
At present the GUI installer offers three options which are (roughly) "everything", "choose not to install some apps" and "minimal system plus X". I tried the latter and is was just a bit too stark (for me) and difficult to build upon. How about an option for "minimal install plus X plus XFCE base"? This would give a nice lean installation with an easy-to-use GUI, to which you could add your own choice of apps. It's not really my idea; I tried Salix recently and this was one of the installation options which I really liked. It's seems far preferable to removing all the stuff that you don't want.

Cheers
Andy

[sledgehammer]

I hope you installed VL7 beta 2.1 and not VL7 beta 2. Beta 2.1 fixed some fatal problems I had with beta 2.

Grannygeek,

How do I know which version I installed?

Thanks

John

[nightflier]

cat /etc/vector-version

[j.a.watson]

One simple way to find out what kind of wireless adapter you have is "lspci" as root.  If you see "Broadcom 4313" in the list, that's what you have, and you need the brcm80211 driver.  If it is some other Broadcom model, or something else entirely (Atheros, Intel or some such), you might have a bit more luck.

jw

[sledgehammer]

I now have VL7 Beta 2.1 installed on the Samsung.  Still had trouble getting xfce4 to run.  Removed the installed xfce4, update and reinstall xfce4.

j.a.watson, I think this may be it (I am typing this on the T42 so am copying from the RF511 lspci)

02:00.0 Network controller:  Intel Corporation WiFi Link 1000 series

Not too sure where to go from here.

John

[j.a.watson]

Yes, that appears to be it.  I'm afraid I can't be of much more specific help here, because I don't have anything with that adapter in it.  From what I can find with a quick search, it should use the iwlagn driver, which is the same one that the Intel 5300 adapter in my Fujitsu laptop uses.  You can find out if the driver is being loaded with "lspci -v", if there is a driver attached to it it will be listed on the last line of information for that device.  It apparently also needs the firmware from the package "firmware-iwlwifi".  But even with that much information, I can't tell you clearly how to get it working, because I don't have one.  Hopefully someone more expert here that I can help you further.  Good luck.