[SWLUG] Dell disappointment & no networking!

[Mark Summerfield]

On 2010-06-10, P.G. Richardson wrote:
> > On 2010-06-10, Steve Hill wrote:
> >> On Thu, 10 Jun 2010, Mark Summerfield wrote:
[snip]
> > If I could just get the wired network going that would be something...
> > 
> > Thanks!
> 
> It would seem that you do not have an ethernet controller in your laptop.

Yes, I noticed that there wasn't an ethernet entry in the lspci list.

> Maybe it has been disabled in the bios?

Spot on! It turns out that the machine has 4 settings for this,
disabled, enabled, and then two other enabled's and it was set to one of
the latter. Once I changed it to the plain enabled wired networking
worked.

Thank you v. much for pointing out what I guess was obvious to most
people on the list, but sadly not to me!
 
> The network controller you have is a broadcom driver, which seemed to be
> served by the broadcom-sta-common driver (at least according to this
> debian page -> http://wiki.debian.org/wl#SupportedDevices)
> 
> Have a look for broadcom related packages in apt, install them and see if
> a wireless device appears in networkmanager or even ifconfig.

OK, I'll try to get wireless working tomorrow:-)

> Alternatively, send the laptop back and buy a different one. It really
> becomes a trade-off between your time 'fixing' it and the lead time on a
> new laptop.

I know. I'd reached the end of the line but apart from the strange
sticky-out battery it seems such a nice machine...

Thanks!

-- 
Mark Summerfield, Qtrac Ltd, www.qtrac.eu
    C++, Python, Qt, PyQt - training and consultancy
        "Programming in Python 3" - ISBN 0321680561