Laptop Networking Problems

[rjay]

Hello,

I just recently (2 days ago) installed Vector Linux 5.9 Standard Gold and I am incredibly impressed with it on my Old 600E Thinkpad. The only problem is that Vector does not see any of my PCMCIA NIC cards. I have 2 wireless cards and One wired card and none of them are detected in Vector.
I know the cards all work as I tested them on this laptop using DSL-N minutes before installing Vector.
My main wireless card (Belkin) lights the Link light, so it's being powered and at home it's connecting to my access point as the light is solid. Sitting on my desk here at work today it's blinking because there are no wireless signals.

I'd love to get some help so I can keep using Vector. If you need any more information let me know.

-Rjay

[bigpaws]

There is a wireless howto in the howto section

If that does not help then please include the hardware
name, model number and revision.

I am sure we can get help you get things going.

Welcome to Vector Linux!

Bigpaws

[ladman23]

I have an extremely similar problem. I've got a Toshiba Satellite laptop with a Netgear FA510 PCMCIA wired network card. After my initial install and VL boots up and I log in for the first time, the card works fine. I can browse the web, send email, all of it. Then, once I log off and then log back in, nothing. The lights are on on the card, my router can see the card, but the computer doesn't and I have no internet access.

I'm a total noob at Linux, but generally tech-savvy, and would love some help.

[Stokstaartje]

@ladman23

The good news is that it was working at least once. I have had a similar problem on my Dell Latitude C600 with a Linksys wireless card. You could try the following:

1) login as root and fire up VLwifi and configure your card.

or

2) fire up VLwifi under your own account but in the settings tick the keep password box.

I suspect that your settings were not being saved. This how I got my wifi-settings to stick...

[ladman23]

Stokstaartje

Thanks for the help. I seem to have made some progress. I found out that if I log into VASM as root, go to the INET selection in the NETWORK menu, and select "start network" item, sometimes it will work. Is there a selection I can make so this happens every time I log in?

I'm not worried about my WiFi card right now, I'm just trying to get my plain wired NIC card to work.

[JohnB316]

Ladman,

Add the commands that you used to start your network manually to the end of the /etc/rc.d/rc.local script. You must be root to edit this file. The commands in /etc/rc.d/rc.local are executed just before X is started.

When you do add the commands to the rc.local script, be sure to add the full path to each command. For example, if one of the commands that you need to use is modprobe to load some module, enter it like so:

Code:

/sbin/modprobe name_of_module

This ensures that the commands will execute. ;-)

You can use the "which commandname" command (without quotes) in a terminal to find where the commands are. Do this as root so that all the commands you need can be found.

HTH,
John