FC4 Inspiron 9300 etho trouble

George N. White III aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca
Mon Dec 26 16:22:54 UTC 2005


On Sun, 25 Dec 2005, Nick Stone wrote:

> From: John Purser <jmpurser at gmail.com>
> To: For users of Fedora Core releases <fedora-list at redhat.com>
> Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 22:04:52 -0800
>
> On 12/23/05, Nick Stone  wrote:
>> (Extreme Newbie)
>>  Need help accessing Internet on Inspiron 9300 & newly installed FC4.
>>  Used another computer to download ethernet controller source files from
>> Broadcom, but when I follow Readme instructions to use rpmbuild I get error
>> messages:
>>
>> [...]
>>  RPM build errors:
>>      Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.86824 (%build)
>>
>>  Adding injury to injury, I can't reinstall Windows XP from recovery disk,
>> so I have no means to access Internet using this expensive laptop!
>>
>>  In futile attempts to resolve the issues above, I've been ! reading posts
>> for days, most of which are far too technical for me to grasp.   Please
>> help!
>>
>>  PS, I intended to download i386 iso and driver files, so I'm not sure why
>> there is a reference in error messages to i686.

You are probably running an i686 kernel.

> Nick,
>
> Sorry to hear about your troubles.  You might want to check out:
> http://www.linux-laptop.net/
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux-dell-laptops/

For a new model, keep watching these sites/groups for your hardware to 
show up.  Often you will see posts by others with the same problem 
followed by a solution.

> For a quick fix how about downloading Knoppix and booting from the
> cd/dvd drive?  If nothing else you'll be able to see how they did it.
> Be aware that Knoppix is a Debian based distribution and the
> configuration won't be exactly the same as your FC install but it
> should tell you enough to get going.
>
> Good Luck.
>
> John Purser
>
>
> John:
>
> Thanks for prompt reply.  I explored the links you recommended, but 
> haven't resolved either issue .  I also examined Knoppix, but didn't 
> find evidence that using Knoppix would help.  Perhaps I didn't explain 
> my problem.  Specifically, (Problem #1) I'm able to log in to FC4, but 
> unable to access the Internet using FC4.  I've been unable to install 
> the Broadcom etho controller (b44).

The reason for booting knoppix is that knoppix is quite good about finding 
the right driver for a broad range of hardware.  Laptops, and Dell in 
particular, often use hardware configurations that are slightly different 
from retail packages with same basic chips, so unless the Broadcom version
you downloaded explicity mentions support for your Dell laptop, you may
need to look further.

In the unlikely event that knoppix fails, there are tools that sometimes 
allow Windows drivers to be used under linux: Linuxant's driverloader
and ndiswrapper.

> (Problem #2) I can no longer boot Windows XP, the default OS.  I 
> reformatted the hard drive and unwittingly erased the XP recovery 
> partition, and I presume I also somehow erased the MBR.

Sometimes the sink or swim approach does help focus the mind.  Many
people get by just fine without booting XP, so not everyone will agree
that your #2 is a problem.

-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>




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