Re: my new Inspiron - WAS: OT: laptop recomendations

On Sun, 11 Jan 2009 01:58:49 +0100
Bernard <bdebreil@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Micha Feigin wrote:

[...]



Hi Micha, Hi to Everyone,

Thanks for your help. I have not gone very far, in spite of much time
spent. I thought I ought to tell some details, especially since it might
help someone else, or, maybe, convince someone else to step in and tell
his/her own experience.

At first, I have worked at my "sudo" problem on Ubunto. I briefly recall
what happened : after about one day, any call to "sudo ...", generated
the following reply :

sudo: unable to resolve host dell-desktop




You need to set dell-desktop in /etc/hosts. Add a line
127.0.1.1 dell-desktop.local dell-desktop

otherwise look in /etc/hosts to see what you machine expects you hostname to
be. You can change the hostname to localhost by running hostname localhost

It's strange that it's not setup properly.



So, I no longer had any possibility to intervene at tasks normally
acessible to root or superuser... except if this could be done in Gnome
environment, where my pasword still worked... but nothing accessible
from an Xterm. Sudo worked all right at the beginning, but it no longer
did. I spent a lot of time trying to overcome this, and, in the end, I
decided to try ... re-installing Ubuntu from the built-in installation
shell. Indeed, I have not felt sorry for having done so, since it was
very fast (less that 30 minutes or so, with no questions except in the
five last minutes). In the end, I got my system as it was a few days
ago, when unpacking. So the "sudo" fonction did work again... but not
for long ! This time, I know what I did just before it failed :

Manual network configuration => General

Host parameters

Hostname : dell- desktop
Domain name : blank space here

Since I could not find a way to get my WiFi connexion working, I
wondered if I should write a domain name. On one of my other computers,
the domain name is "localdomain"... so, I wrote the same thing in the
blank space. Needless to say that this did not change anything in my
connections. But, ever since then, any call to "sudo", gave the same
answer as previously mentioned, that is :

sudo: unable to resolve host dell-desktop

Problem is that, once I removed that "domain name" from the host
parameters box,it did not change anything to my problem with sudo... I
maybe forced to re-re-install again ! But then, chances are great that
this bug or another one will force me to re-install quite often :) I
expect not to have to go through that once I have programs and data
installed on this system :(

Now, as far as WiFi connexions are concerned, I spent a lot of time,
with absolutely no result or quite nearly so. Indeed, I have succeeded
in a real normal connection, with my Livebox set to "no encryption", and
after I disabled the MAC authentification. Then I set my machine to WEP
encryption, and then, after a thousand and one trials (well, maybe a
little less than that), I got ONE connexion ONCE, it was a real one
(82%), and workable one (I tried web pages using Hardy Heron
(Firefox)... but it did work no longer that 2 or 3 minutes, after that
time the icon stayed there and kept telling "82%", but I could no longer
access the web, and a "ping 192.168.1.1" resulted in "Network
Unreachable". I was unable to re-connect, even once. I haven't retried
WPA, since there are no reasons that it would work any better than before.




what is the output of ifconfig and iwconfig?



Yes, I do have wpa_supplicant... but with no config file. In any case,
you should not need to fiddle with that on a system that is supposed to
be especially installed for that purpose ; you should be able to connect
out of the box. I recall that I can't go fiddling with
"/etc/network/interfaces" or launch "ifup wlan0", since sudo is not



You don't need to play with it if you are using network-manager or wcid, if
you are trying to connect without something that sets wpa than you will need
a config file.

If you are using these you will need to make sure that the interfaces don't
appear in /etc/network/interfaces (which means that ifup wlan0 won't work
anyway)



accessible ; however, at the time when this was still possible, the
trials that I carried with "interfaces" did not lead to anywhere on this
system. In the meantime, so as to check if my Livebox was still
operating, I restarted my old Thinkpad 600 under Debian Lenny, and I
could wifi wep connect right away using ifup wlan0 ; the connection is
still up after more than one hour.




sounds like there is something wrong since from my experience ubuntu should
work out of the box with this (it will probably ask you to install the
firmware for the iwl3945 since it's in non-free though)



Thanks in advance for more hints








Thanks for your help. I have succeeded in overcoming my sudo problem,
once I had added

127.0.1.1 dell-desktop.local dell-desktop

in my /etc/host file. I had to add this from the recovery mode. Sudo now
works.

As for WiFi... I am very confused, since it DOES work now, even though I
can't tell why. Indeed, I was prepared to the worst. A Google search lead me
to a person who stated that, ever since he had upgraded his Ubuntu to Hardy
Heron,his wifi was out... He had been 19 days without, so he just bought
cable extensions, he had gone through hundred of doc pages, tried a lot of
things and nothing worked. Other people did reply to that forum, saying that
the software iwl3945 did not work on Ubuntu 8.04, unless you de-install and
reinstall, and even then... As for me, it was even better : iwl3945 was
nowhere to be found on my system, and not available for install. I tried to

The package is firmware-iwlwifi not iwl3945. My guess is that once you added
non-free ubuntu found the package and installed it (it was the case for me some
time ago)

modify my /etc/apt/sources.list so as to include "non-free", but it did not
work (sudo apt-get update said it couldnt find those non-free). Later on, I
learnt that, with Ubuntu, you can't access "non-free" unless you install a
specific module for this. In any case, I was ready to quit and try something

should work once you the upgrade. I don't think that it knows that the software
is non-free.

else, like installing Debian Etch or Lenny instead of Ubuntu, even if it was
to take two weeks before the video was properly setup. So, as for my Livebox
(my DSL modem router), I decided to reset it to "wpa" encryption, as it was
before, since it did not operate even in WEP mode. Once this was done, and
before I remove that DELL failure from my desk, I opted for a last trial.
Right away I was prompted for the WPA passphrase, which I copied/pasted from
a file. Almost right away, say, within four seconds, 4 bars replaced the
turning laemurian. I couldn't believe it, and tried the pointer on it :
82% ! The connexion was sane and operative, and it did not quit after a
while. At first, I did suppose that this was due to the fact that, at that
specific time, my desktop PC was also wifi connected (while cable connected
most other times), and I started to think that this might have helped. So, I
disconnected that other connection and stop/start/stop/start my Ubuntu
connection : it kept working at all times ! I went downstairs in other
rooms, and, although the gain went down to 56% at one weird place, it still
worked perfectly, and started all right after a stop. I just can't understand
what happened. So, it now operates so neatly, even though I don't have the
iwl3945 driver. From a cold stop, WPA wifi connection intervenes about 4
seconds after system boot. On my Desktop with Debian Sarge, using "ifup ra0",
it takes longer than that, and I often have to retry several times before
WiFi connection starts.

If it keeps working that way, I will then not bother installing another
Debian distro, since there is no warranty that WPA WiFi will then work so
smoothly. I don't like that Gnome environment, but I'll get used to,
especially since this laptop is going to fulfill only maybe 5% of my needs,
WiFi connections at congresses and seminaries or in hotels being most of that
purpose.


You can always install something else. I'm sure ubuntu has packages for kde,
xfce etc.

Now that it seems to work, I must consider that this DELL Inspiron was not a
bad bet for the price I paid. The "Ubuntu" OS does not seem so bad, even for
a person who would not be familiar to computers.

Oh, by the way... Sound does not seem to work... even though the icon says
that it is set to 80% volume... To be honest, I must admit that I don't
really intend to use sound on that laptop... However, it would be nice to
know that it worked :)


Open the audio panel and look for select controls (don't know where it's
hiding in gnome, I use xfce). There may be controls for switches. After you
choose that you should have somewhere checkboxes. On my machine besides the
volume it has switches for mic and speakers which you can enable/disable
separately.

Thanks to everyone for your help


Bernard





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