Synaptic "Mark All Upgrade" killed my wireless (broadcom)?

[mgy333]

Hi all,

I just tried installing Linux Mint 5 Elyssa RC2 (BETA 048) on my old laptop (Compaq R4000). Everything was working rather well. I got the compiz to work on the weak ATI Express 200M card. I install Japanese input with very little problem. I got wireless to work with b43-fwcutter. I did all the updates through mintUpdate. Everything was great.

Until, I decide to do upgrade through Synaptic using "Mark All Upgrades."

As soon as I did that and the installation was complete, I lost my wireless. Now I can't recover it at all. It no longer appears under restricted hardware section. It's as though the wireless card no longer exists.

Has anyone experienced this before? Is there anything I can do to recover my wireless? Is "Mark All Upgrades" something I shouldn't do under Mint?

Thanks for help...

[Tony G]

I've gotten into trouble myself with "Mark All" in Synaptic. Better in Mint is to use MintUpdate (the padlock icon in the systray). Have you followed the steps in the wiki for wireless and/or this post?

[mgy333]

If it's something that could cause some issues, I wish the "Mark All" button was either grayed out or not there...

I think I've done the most things described on those pages.

Actually I did get ndiswrapper to partially work yesterday. I could see all the wireless network available. The problem is, I was not able to connect to them.

[Tony G]

I agree about the graying out, but the danger from a mass update exists in any distro, not just Mint.

Do you get any error messages or have any other info that might be diagnostically useful?

Also, worst case, since it's a fresh install, you could just toss it, reinstall, and avoid repeating.

Best,

Anthony

[mgy333]

Well, with no quick fix in sight, I ended up starting over.

I followed some instructions I got to get ndiswrapper working, but that didn't go well. I got the wireless card to find all the network around, but always times out at step 2 out of 5 when actually connecting to one, according to the log. This is exactly what happened with Ubuntu Hardy (not surprisingly). Shame, since ndiswrapper used to work fine under Gutsy.

I guess that "Mark All Upgrades" button is off limit.

Thanks.

[rivenought]

Sorry to hear that you have had a spot of bother with some upgrades. I could really horrify you with some stories from openSUSE. I have become quite accomplished with clean installs and can do it in just under four hours. Yes, it takes that long to get an openSUSE system up and running to the peak of perfection.

Anyway, I think you might be better off sticking with the official Mint Updates. As you have seen, wholesale updates in Synaptic are most likely to bring in unwanted changes to your Mint install. I am running with what Clem and the boys have set up and am having absolutely no problems. I like to experiment as much as anyone else, yet I have found Mint to be the least amount of hassle and trouble I have ever dealt with in a Linux distro. I have to tweak very little, and even that only takes a couple of minutes.

Good luck with your new install.

[Tony G]

Trying to think here about how to fix your issue. (Mix and match from my ramblings; I'm just trying to figure out where it's borking on you).

1) Freshly install Mint Darnya or Elyssa (I'd do Darnya to test whether it's a bug in the beta [though I doubt it], but I could see trying this all first in Elyssa);
2) Shutdown;
3) Connect your computer to the Internet through a wired connection;
4) Power-up Mint;
5) Update the system through MintUpdate;
6) Shutdown;
7) Disconnect your wired connection;
8) Power-up Mint;
9) If Mint doesn't take care of your wireless by itself, follow the wireless wiki.

You may wish to post back here the results you get in a terminal from:

Code: Select all

sudo /usr/lib/linuxmint/mintWifi/mintWifi.py

(This will report back what your wireless card is, assuming it's not a USB card.)

Best,

Anthony

[mgy333]

Well, now that I have new install, I am not going to be touching THAT button any time soon...

I did run /usr/lib/linuxmint/mintWifi/mintWifi.py once when I had the system messed up. Off my memory, Broadcom 4306 was found as PCI device, but the system found no wireless device (no wlan0, only lo and eth0). I assume this is the same result I get with iwconfig.

I am guessing that Synaptic updated hal from Hardy's repo. I have access to another laptop that uses Broadcom 43xx that runs Hardy (my wife's), and that one is completely up to date, and its wireless is working fine using fwcutter, so whatever that happened to hal is conflicting with Mint, so it seems.

Broadcom wireless has always been touchy anyways, but it does make me wonder if any other hardware is affected.