VL-7.2-LIGHT-RC3 Wireless issue

[black-clover]

I have just installed VL-7.2-LIGHT-RC3 on a spare partition and upon reboot it didn't recognize my wireless card.
This was also true for VL-7.2-LIGHT-RC2, which I installed minutes before on the same machine.
Now this thing is kind of strange because on the same machine I have VL-7.2-STD-RC3 and it recognizes the wireless card with no problem, as a matter of fact all the previous versions of VL did find the wireless all the time.
I removed /var/run/wicd/wicd.pid and run wicd again and it would connect through a USB wireless but would not find the wireless on the laptop.
What I would like to know is if there is any difference in the kernel or the configuration between VL-7.2-STD-RC3 and VL-7.2-LIGHT-RC3 which might cause such failure.
And also, how can I make the distro recognize my card (maybe copying the configuration files from one distro to the other)?

[nightflier]

Light and Standard use the same kernel and modules. The difference is probably because of the different network managers.

Your wireless card may not be identified as "wlan0". Open a terminal and issue command "iwconfig", it should show you the identifier which may be "eth1", "ra0" or similar.

Next click on the wicd icon in the notification area. In the window that opens, click the "down" chevron in the upper right corner and select "Preferences". Enter the name of your wireless interface in the first field and then click "OK".

If this fixes it, replace "wlan0" with the proper name in ~/.icewm/preferences to get a network indicator in the notification area.

[black-clover]

Thanks for the answer,
I thought both shipped Network Manager.
OK, done and fixed the issue.
What surprised me is that when I first installed VL-7.1-LIGHT a few weeks ago it recognized the wireless card at once.
By the way, Icewm works very well and, being a JWM fan, I  appreciated the way you set .jwmrc up.
In which way did you customize Icewm for VL LIGHT  and is the Icewm in the repository the standard or the modified version?

[roarde]

The "icewm" package is the same, whether installed as part of Light, or not. The difference is in the metapackage "icewmvmods", which installs during Light installation if IceWM installation was selected (the default). None of the application binaries have been altered. The difference lies in the config files in icewmvmods, and some from the package "VL_Theme-Light". I believe the jwm setups are only in the Light Theme package, and aren't available standalone from the repo.

You can take a look at the actual customizations by issuing less /var/log/packages/icewmvmods-<tab-complete> then looking through the files listed; same thing for VL_Theme-Light.

The "icewm" package itself is not a standard release at this time, but rather a snapshot of a recent commit to IceWM's "official unofficial" repo, https://github.com/bbidulock/icewm . It's expected that we'll return to using a standard release from that same repo sometime in the near future. No great difference is expected when the switch back is made. For now, the package version and that returned by "icewm -V" will not agree.

7.1 Light shipped with twm very lightly configured as the fallback when IceWM was not installed. For 7.2, JWM has replaced it. It's nightflier's work with putting Light and IceWM configuration on top of the simple, slim base system provided by the crew that has kept me on VL since first trying Light. And now I'm getting ideas about trying some new things with old boxen, with his JWM setup as a starting point.

[Lyn]

I am currently having issues getting VL standard 7.2 to recognise the wireless dongle I use to connect to my home wifi.... pc linux recognises it as do other distributions, when I run lsusb I get the following:
ID 148f:7601 Ralink Technology, Corp. MT7601U Wireless Adapter

any ideas on how to proceed.  I have read the how to for an earlier version of vector and am not making any progress

[nightflier]

Looks like you need the firmware "mt7601u.bin" for this hardware.

Try downloading:
http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/plain/mt7601u.bin
and put it in "/lib/firmware/"

[Lyn]

it is already there unfortunately

[nightflier]

Next thing to look for is conflicting modules. Web search indicates you may have to blacklist rt2800usb (and/or others) to avoid conflicts.

[Lyn]

Ok that is helpful, how do I do that.

[nightflier]

Edit or create /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf file and add modules:

Code: [Select]

blacklist rt2800usb
blacklist rt2870sta
blacklist rt2860sta

This list came from here: https://superuser.com/questions/738096/how-to-install-mediatek-mt7610u-rt2860-driver
I found this information by searching the web. The list of modules to blacklist is probably not correct nor complete, I don't have that hardware and can not verify any of this information. 

[roarde]

Should check to see if it's detected as wireless at the most basic level.

Code: [Select]

rfkill list
Posting the output of that, and of lsmod and lspci might be helpful. Your lsusb is already here, but I'm wondering whether a pci device may be causing problems, thus the request.

If you see more devices listed in rfkill than are actually there, or if it shows a hardware rfkill you can't get rid of, see if "hp_wmi" showed up in your lsmod. If it's there, try blacklisting it and rebooting. It would be rare (I think) for your machine to have a problem with, or even use, that module, but one never knows.

[nightflier]

Another thing to try:

Start without the USB dongle. Open a root terminal and issue command "tail -f /var/log/messages"

Plug in USB dongle and watch terminal output. Look for module names and any errors or warnings.

[Lyn]

Edit or create /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf file and add modules:

Code: [Select]

blacklist rt2800usb
blacklist rt2870sta
blacklist rt2860sta

This list came from here: https://superuser.com/questions/738096/how-to-install-mediatek-mt7610u-rt2860-driver
I found this information by searching the web. The list of modules to blacklist is probably not correct nor complete, I don't have that hardware and can not verify any of this information. 

Well that worked, thanks very helpful as ever, so posting this from VL 7.2