About to smash my AA0 to pieces...

After persuasion from my Dad I bought the AA0 with linpus (8GB Flash Drive), and am about to smash it and go and buy a new XP model, unless anyone can help solve the problems I'm having... (bear in mind, I am a linux virgin, so please try and keep it idiot-friendly!)

My AA0 worked fine out of the box, with both the wireless and ethernet connections flying along, good stuff. But I turned on my machine a few days ago and it no longer seems to recognise that it has a wireless card installed (although when I flip the wifi switch the led works and the "you have turned on your wifi card" pic still comes up on screen) and it doesn't recognise the ethernet connection either. When I try to access the network center in preferences it thinks about loading it for a tenth of a second then does nothing. The connection icon has dissapeared from my taskbar as well.

The only thing I have installed on the machine is Vuze, which worked A-OK. Apart from that I booted puppy on it once which worked although it wouldn't mount my flash drive. Since the network problems developed I have tried booting from a puppy USB drive, which worked before but now comes up with a "boot error" message after I go through the F12 boot menu, and also the linux4one distribution which encounters the same problem using several different USB drives.

I know that the AA0 doesn't work well with certain types of USB drives, but does anyone know why my internet is not working? Unless I can get this sorted I'm going back to Windows as all I've had is hassle with Linux so far and am about to reach breaking point with this piece of cr*p!

 

Don't smash it - if you really want rid of it send it to me instead (I'd quite like to have two!)

Sounds like the network manager service and/or despatcher service are not running correctly. Let's do a few diagnostics: you'll need a terminal.

Code:

ps ax | grep Network

This will tell you whether there are processes running for the Network Manager; there should be two, one for NetworkManager and one for NetworkManagerDispatcher. I suspect one or both will be missing.

If one or both of them is running, kill them. For each of the process numbers (the numbers at the start of the line in the last response) do (without the brackets)

Code:

sudo kill -9 (number)

Then we'll try restarting them. This is where we may well get error messages; if so post the results back here (since the One isn't connecting at all, you may have to copy the results into mousepad, save the file to a USB key, and get it onto a computer which will connect that way).

Code:

sudo service NetworkManager start
sudo service NetworkManagerDispatcher start

As I say, I think by now you will have error messages from one or more of these commands - post them back here and we'll see what they mean. If you haven't any errors, you should theoretically have your network available - if it's still not there we'll have to try something else.

 

That little switch on the front can really turn off a connection...

 

Keep with it brother!!

I was in your shoes (wanting to practice my hammer action on it), I could'nt install XP, did'nt know what the hell I was doing with all these terminals etc (total noob), lost internet, but after spending time on here I finally feel I'm where I want to be with it. Whatever I posted was always answered in the end and I finally got sorted. Stick with it, it's a great piece of kit with a great forum to back you up!!

Good Luck!

 

Hope you will take Daldred's advice... he knows what he is talking about and if you report back to him... he will get you through.
I had a hard time at the beginning too, especially with Linpus.. and i'm not a Linux virgin. Have to admit I ditched linpus and changed to Linux4One; the most rewarding distro yet.
N.b. verson 1.0 will be released Thursday (tomorrow)

Installing any flavor of linux never caused any problems for me so i can't help you there. My USB's are Corsair Flash Voyager they are rather fast and inexpensive.

@ daldred:
Not for the first time, thanks for the info.. learned another good bit of linux by reading this post

 

I am having the same problem: All of a sudden my network is gone on my AA. When I do "sudo service NetworkManager start" resp. "sudo service NetworkManagerDispatcher start" like Daldred adviced to, the daemons are started, but it says: "touch: cannot touch '/var/lock/subsys/NetworkManager': no such file or directory. What can I do now?

 

@cogitum: That error message seesm a little odd - 'touch' changes the datestamp on a file or creates if it doesn't exist, so I'm not clear why it should think it can't work if the file isn't there!

Let's check first that the directory and the file both exist: can you do this in a terminal and post the results:

Code:

cd /var/lock/subsys
ls -la

 

Thank you very much, Daldred, but I already re-installed my OS on my AA, now i will mod it and when I the problems comes back, I will tell you. Thanks again! Bernhard

 

Hi guys, thanks for the advice so far. Trying to master the art of zen like patience and get this sorted...

I've tried Daldreds suggestion to close and re-open the Network Manager and Network Manager Dispatcher through a terminal. I got no error messages and both of the programmes were showing as running once I checked, but still no luck. Same problem as before with trying to access Network Center on the desktop...

*puzzled*

 

If both services are running, then we need to look elsewhere! Problem is to think which is the best place to start looking...

Perhaps best start by checking whether there's anything odd in your startup messages. Although quite a bit of Linux' usual logging is switched off (presumably to save a lot of writing to SDD on the SDD models), the basic kernel logging still wroks without any fiddling about!

Reboot the machine, and once it's going type

Code:

dmesg

in a terminal: it will produce quite a bit of output. Do a copy & paste job and post it here; it may or may not get us anywhere, but it's a starting point!

 

Hi all,

just my 2 bits but it might be worth to check out if your dhcp-service/demon is up and running.
After issuing the: "ps ax | grep Network" command it should be listed along with Network Manager and Network Manager Dispatcher

for those that are worried that the WiFi has gone/died
try: "lspci | grep 802.11"
the output should list the WiFI Atheros Ethernet controller

all the bits in between "" are entered in terminal, to open a terminal: press Alt + F2-key, type terminal, click run

hope you guys get this nasty problem solved