Wifi works on thumbdrive but fails once installed to HDD (solved)

[tigerflag]

Hi, everybody! I hope someone can help me with a wifi problem. I have BionicPup 64 8.0 on two different USB thumbdrives. Both boot and work perfectly.

I also have two good, refurbished Lenovo Thinkpads: a T61 and a T520. When running BionicPup from the thumbdrives on these two laptops, wifi is immediately detected using Simple Network Setup.

But when I do a Puppy Frugal installation from either of the thumbdrives to either of the laptops' harddrives, wifi is lost for both of them. None of the network tools can find it. Running Puppy from the thumbdrive I have wifi. Five minutes later with Puppy installed to the HDD there is no wifi.

I solved this on the T61 by buying a Panda 300Mbps Wireless N USB Adapter. Last week I sent that laptop to a relative because her computer died. Since the dongle costs over $50 now I'd rather not have to buy another one for the T520. I'd like to fix this the right way, if it's not beyond my (abysmal) commandline skills.

Following the suggestion in another thread I did the following commands.

Code: Select all

root# lspci -nn | grep etwork  

00:19.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection (Lewisville) [8086:1502]
03:00.0 Network controller [0280}: Intel Corporation Centrino Ultimate-N6300 [8086:4328] (rev 3e)

root# dmesg | grep irmware 

Spectre V2 : Enabling Restricted Speculation for firmware calls
ACPI: [Firmware Bug]: BIOS_OSI(Linux) query ignored
acpi PNP0A08:00.0 [Firmware Info]: MMCONFIG for domain 0000 [bus 00-3f] only partially covers this bridge
iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-6000-6.ucode failed with error -2
iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-6000-5.ucode failed with error -2
iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-6000-4.ucode failed with error -2
iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: check git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git

Then I rebooted the T520 using the thumbdrive and re-ran those commands. Everything's the same except the last lines of dmesg:

root# dmesg | grep irmware

Code: Select all

Spectre V2 : Enabling Restricted Speculation for firmware calls
ACPI: [Firmware Bug]: BIOS_OSI(Linux) query ignored
acpi PNP0A08:00.0 [Firmware Info]: MMCONFIG for domain 0000 [bus 00-3f] only partially covers this bridge
iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-6000-6.ucode failed with error -2
iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-6000-5.ucode failed with error -2
iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Loaded firmware version 9.221.4.1 build 25532 op_mode iwldvm

Does this help?

Thanks!

[rcrsn51]

Check that all the SFS files that are on the thumb drive have been copied onto the hard drive install.

[tigerflag]

Check that all the SFS files that are on the thumb drive have been copied onto the hard drive install.

There's a lot of SFS files. Can you help me narrow down what I'm looking for and what part of the filesystem to look in?

[rcrsn51]

Your BionicPup64 ISO contains two SFS files - puppy_bionicpup64_8.0.sfs, zdrv_bionicpup64_8.0.sfs

Your frugal install should have copied them into a folder on your hard drive. Check that they are present.

[tigerflag]

Thanks, all the SFS files are present.

[bigpup]

Something to check.

If these laptops have a switch to turn WIFI on/off. (airplane switch)
Make sure it is switched on.

If all the needed files are in the frugal install. iIt should be working, if it worked booting from a USB install.

[bigpup]

How exactly did you do the frugal install?
Give specific details.
Maybe how you did it, what program you used to do the install, what boot loader is used to boot it.

[ozsouth]

@tigerflag - you are missing some firmware. Shouldn't have worked on usb without it, so maybe an install error?
For your harddrive, download the file attached below, remove .fake.gz from its name, then copy it into /lib/firmware.
Should then be able to connect. Will need to save upon exit to retain it.

[tigerflag]

I copied iwlwifi-6000-4.ucode.fake.gz (minus the ".fake.gz") to /lib/firmware. Nothing changed until I rebooted. Simple Network Setup sees wlan0 but can't connect. It gives me the following error:

DHCP Client failed to negotiate with wireless network 'xxxx'

But Frisbee got it working!

I'm saving this driver and your instructions on a little thumbdrive to use in future installations. Thank you so much!

[bigpup]

@ozsouth

How did you figure out this firmware was needed, even if they said it worked OK, booting from a USB install?

[ozsouth]

@bigpup - Fortunately tigerflag had run the commands we usually ask for, & since the harddrive was the issue, I ignored the puzzling situation of the thumbdrive working & looked at the first code section (hard drive output). It shows missing firmware, so adding it to the harddrive worked as I thought it would.