help with setting up ubuntu on dell vostro 1310

[Vikas Rawal]

I just got myself a dell vostro 1310. It came with windows vista but I
promptly removed it and installed ubuntu.

Among the basic things that are not working yet, the three most important
ones are

1. Wired network
2. Wireless network (broadcom card, will need ndiswrapper)
3. Sound

Ubuntu recognised the ethernet device (wired) but strangely is unable to
connect using it.

I am writing this e-mail from another machine. This old machine can connect
to the network using dhcp or a static ip. At this moment, on this old
machine my /etc/network/interfaces file reads as follows.


*********
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.0.4
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.0.1

auto eth0
*********

The same configuration on the new dell vostro machine does not connect me to
the network. If I set it to connect using dhcp, it says "No DHCPOFFERS
received".

Could someone point me to what I may be missing? I will of course be happy
to provide any further information you may want.

Vikas
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[Vikas Rawal]

Post by Vikas Rawal
Ubuntu recognised the ethernet device (wired) but strangely is unable to
connect using it.

lspci tells me

06:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom corporation BCM4310 USB controller (rev
01)
07:00.0 Ethernet contoller: Realtek Semiconductor Co.,Ltd. RTL8111/81688 PCI
Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev ff)
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[Vikas Rawal]

When I try to ping an ip address (of the router) on the network, dmesg says
no IPV6 routers present
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[Naresh Narang]

Post by Vikas Rawal
When I try to ping an ip address (of the router) on the
network, dmesg says
no IPV6 routers present

Seems as if you have IPV6 enabled and IPV4 disabled.

--Naresh Narang




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[Vikas Rawal]

Post by Vikas Rawal
When I try to ping an ip address (of the router) on the

Post by Vikas Rawal
network, dmesg says
no IPV6 routers present

Seems as if you have IPV6 enabled and IPV4 disabled.

Could you please also say what does one do to enable ipv4. It would be odd
if ipv4 was disabled by default.

Thanks,

Vikas
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[Ashish Shukla आशीष शुक्ल]

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Post by Naresh Narang

Post by Vikas Rawal
When I try to ping an ip address (of the router) on the
network, dmesg says
no IPV6 routers present

Seems as if you have IPV6 enabled and IPV4 disabled.

That message implies that no RAs[1] received on that interface. It has
nothing to do with IPv4 being disabled. I've never seen any kernel with
IPv4 support excluded. And it can't be disabled at runtime, AFAIK.

References:
[1] - http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4861#section-4.2

Ashish
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[Arun Khan]

Post by Vikas Rawal
When I try to ping an ip address (of the router) on the network,
dmesg says no IPV6 routers present

What is your networking parameters set to? Tell us what you get from
the following commands:

1. /sbin/ifconfig
2. /sbin/route -n
3. cat /etc/resolv.conf

[Raj Mathur]

Post by Vikas Rawal
lspci tells me
06:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom corporation BCM4310 USB
controller (rev 01)
07:00.0 Ethernet contoller: Realtek Semiconductor Co.,Ltd.
RTL8111/81688 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev ff)

I have the same ethernet card on my new motherboard, and it's recognised
and configured out of the box in the newer Linux kernel (2.6.26).

Regards,

-- Raju

[Vikas Rawal]

Post by Raj Mathur

Post by Vikas Rawal
lspci tells me
06:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom corporation BCM4310 USB
controller (rev 01)
07:00.0 Ethernet contoller: Realtek Semiconductor Co.,Ltd.
RTL8111/81688 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev ff)

I have the same ethernet card on my new motherboard, and it's recognised
and configured out of the box in the newer Linux kernel (2.6.26).

The latest kernel on ubuntu hardy is 2.6.24 !!

Vikas
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[Raj Mathur]

Post by Vikas Rawal

Post by Raj Mathur
I have the same ethernet card on my new motherboard, and it's
recognised and configured out of the box in the newer Linux kernel
(2.6.26).

The latest kernel on ubuntu hardy is 2.6.24 !!

Time to switch to a more current distribution like Debian then? :)

I'm a bit surprised that you, well-informed about the dangers of
unsupported cards, still went ahead and bought a laptop without first
checking whether all the hardware was supported or not. How come?

Regards,

-- Raju

[Vikas Rawal]

Post by Raj Mathur
Time to switch to a more current distribution like Debian then? :)

I agree. This machine, however, is for someone else who has is somewhat
familiar with ubuntu and would not want to try other distributions. And my
take is, the jump from windows to ubuntu has been a big one for someone with
a long experience of having used only windows. Let him stick to whatever
distribution the person is okay with until all temptations of shifting to
windows are gone.

I'm a bit surprised that you, well-informed about the dangers of

Post by Raj Mathur
unsupported cards, still went ahead and bought a laptop without first
checking whether all the hardware was supported or not. How come?

Well, purchasing the computer is a complex decision. First, most of what you
get in the market is bundled with some hardware that comes with proprietary
drivers for windows only. And, by and large, on linux, there are ways of
handling most of these hardware problems. So you have ndiswrapper for
wireless cards and things like that. True the performance is not as great as
it would be if you had proper drivers. But then it works okay. Do you think
that this confidence is misplaced? Second, the decision to purchase also
depends on cost, assessment of problems with service and repairs, and a lot
of other things. :)

Vikas
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[Vikas Rawal]

Post by Raj Mathur
Time to switch to a more current distribution like Debian then? :)

[snipped]

Post by Raj Mathur
-- Raju

I actually took Raju's bait and installed debian testing on the
laptop. And this mail is to thank him and record the preliminary
results of the shift.

1. Debian (testing/lenny) installed without any issue.

2. As Raj had pointed out, the ethernet card worked once the latest
kernel was used.

3. Wireless card worked with ndiswrapper. I had only the first dvd of
the lenny distribution. Thoughtfully, ndiswrapper was provided on it
so I did not have to connect to the internet to install it.

4. Interestingly, the internal mic did not work with ubuntu despite
all sorts of tweaking. The webcam worked after some work. Quite a few
people have written on the internet about problems with getting ubuntu
to use internal mic on Del vostro laptops. These did not work with
even the latest (2.6.27) kernel on ubuntu. With debian lenny (2.6.26
kernel), internal mic and the webcam worked straight out of box!!

5. I have both ubuntu 8.04 and debian lenny installed on the
system. They share /home, and therefore, much of the gnome
configuration files. With the same configuration, Debian's default
appearance seems ugly in comparison with ubuntu. In particular, the
fonts are too large and made the desktop and some applications look
ugly. Both ubuntu and debian have the same screen resolution
(1280x800) and it does not look like either has a problem with my
graphics card (intel). My present solution is to shift to a smaller
size, but that does not solve all the problems. For example, emacs
still has HUGE fonts.

6. Running compiz on debian required some tweaking of xorg.conf.

To sum, so far, debian lenny has worked much better on this machine
than ubuntu 8.04 did. There are a few minor issues with the debian
installation but it recognised all the hardware so much better than
ubuntu did.

Vikas

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[Raj Mathur]

[snip]
5. I have both ubuntu 8.04 and debian lenny installed on the
system. They share /home, and therefore, much of the gnome
configuration files. With the same configuration, Debian's default
appearance seems ugly in comparison with ubuntu. In particular, the
fonts are too large and made the desktop and some applications look
ugly. Both ubuntu and debian have the same screen resolution
(1280x800) and it does not look like either has a problem with my
graphics card (intel). My present solution is to shift to a smaller
size, but that does not solve all the problems. For example, emacs
still has HUGE fonts.

You could try changing the screen resolution and see if that helps. If
your resolution is set to 120 dpi you will get huge fonts.

[snip]
To sum, so far, debian lenny has worked much better on this machine
than ubuntu 8.04 did. There are a few minor issues with the debian
installation but it recognised all the hardware so much better than
ubuntu did.

Glad to hear that :)

Regards,

-- Raju

[Vikas Rawal]

Post by Raj Mathur
You could try changing the screen resolution and see if that helps. If
your resolution is set to 120 dpi you will get huge fonts.

[snip]
To sum, so far, debian lenny has worked much better on this machine
than ubuntu 8.04 did. There are a few minor issues with the debian
installation but it recognised all the hardware so much better than
ubuntu did.

Glad to hear that :)
Regards,
-- Raju

The following command on both ubuntu and debian gives identical
results.

***@panahar:~$ xdpyinfo | grep dots
resolution: 125x125 dots per inch

It is not obvious to me why the fonts should be rendered so
differently.

Should I try higher or lower dpi? The xorg version that comes with
lenny does not require font specifications in xorg.conf. I am not too
sure about how to change dpi. I read somewhere that I could give an
additional argument in gdmsetup to do it.

Thanks very much,

Vikas

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[Vikas Rawal]

Post by Raj Mathur
I have the same ethernet card on my new motherboard, and it's recognised
and configured out of the box in the newer Linux kernel (2.6.26).

You were right. I upgraded to the newer kernel (2.6.27) and the ethernet
card started working fine.

For the record, 2.6.27 kernel packages for ubuntu hardy are available at
http://kernel.ubuntu.com/pub/next/2.6.27-rc3/hardy/ . Ubuntu 8.10, due to be
released by the end of October, will have this kernel.

Vikas
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[Unknown]

Dear Vikas,

Post by Vikas Rawal

Post by Vikas Rawal
Ubuntu recognised the ethernet device (wired) but strangely is unable to
connect using it.

lspci tells me
06:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom corporation BCM4310 USB controller (rev
01)
07:00.0 Ethernet contoller: Realtek Semiconductor Co.,Ltd. RTL8111/81688 PCI
Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev ff)

I have same chipset in my desktop an with kernel version
2.6.24-18-generic I have added following kernel command line to make
it work

pci=routeirq

Please try the above and add it at boot and see if it resolves the issue.

HTH
With regards,
--
--Dinesh Shah :-)
Shah Micro System
[phone]
David Lee Roth - "I used to jog but the ice cubes kept falling out of
my glass."

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[Vikas Rawal]

Post by Unknown
I have same chipset in my desktop an with kernel version
2.6.24-18-generic I have added following kernel command line to make
it work
pci=routeirq

Please try the above and add it at boot and see if it resolves the issue.
Could you please explain what does this command do. I tried and it worked.

But only once. I updated the packages. But then I put pci=routeirq in the
menu.lst, so that it will be called at boot.
But next time it does not work!! I tried rebooting, checked the command, ...
but no luck.

This is weird. Could you please help.

Vikas
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[Unknown]

Vikas

Post by Vikas Rawal
Could you please explain what does this command do. I tried and it worked.
But only once. I updated the packages. But then I put pci=routeirq in the
menu.lst, so that it will be called at boot.
But next time it does not work!! I tried rebooting, checked the command, ...
but no luck.
This is weird. Could you please help.

Upgrade may have upgraded the kernel subversion as well. Try the above
kernel command line with kernel 2.6.24-18-generic only.

You may have to find other solution(s) for any other kernel version. :(

Post by Vikas Rawal
Vikas

HTH
With regards,
--
--Dinesh Shah :-)
Shah Micro System
[phone]
Edith Sitwell - "I wish the government would put a tax on pianos for
the incompetent."

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[Vikas Rawal]

Post by Unknown
Upgrade may have upgraded the kernel subversion as well. Try the above
kernel command line with kernel 2.6.24-18-generic only.

It was useful anyway. In that one session when your solution helped me
connect to the internet, i installed ndiswrapper. And from the drivers that
came with the machine, I found the windows driver for the broadcom wlan
card.

So, although the ethernet does not work anymore, wireless does.

So, thanks very much.

Vikas
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