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janestarzMy laptop has been having a little problem for a while now. I've blogged about it before: the disk was just getting filled up with meaningless stuff. At some point, this causes my first partition to fill up to a point that other partitions and network cards get "lost".
After my previous fix, I managed to use the laptop for a couple of more months (of sporadic use) but the file system was still filling up quite quickly. At some point, even my previous fix of cleaning out old packages the system no longer needed didn't work anymore.
The disk was full and would remain so, it seemed.
I read reports on the internet that this happened with servers too, creating large log files and not clearing them out in time, and I suspected this might be the case, but as a Linux-newb I'm not about to start rummaging around in system processes. I decided right after the move it might be wiser to just re-install the whole thing. I downloaded an iso file, bought a pile of DVDs and re-installed Kubuntu 12.04 on the laptop.
After the re-install, which went swimmingly, I noticed that my wireless could not be switched on again -- the hardware button that should be able to switch the card on (blue) and off (orange) would just remain orange. A quick check in ifconfig told me only eth0 and lo were configured. Eth1, the wireless network card, was nowhere to be seen.
This is the point I remembered NoKey had a bloody hard time getting the wireless to work in the first place when I first installed Kubuntu on that laptop.
Not to worry, with my (then) recently installed intharwebz I could just plug a network cable into my laptop and have internet. Hurrah! I plugged the cable in and...nothing. The network manager claimed the network manager was unmanaged, and that was that. Where my desktop pc could just be plugged in and everything was dandy without setting up anything at all, my laptop refused to do anything. No wireless internet and no cabled internet either.
A quick check trying to play a dvd, mkv and avi video showed that the thing would only be as useful as a typewriter. If you could muster the patience to actually load whatever you typed into a usb stick in order to be able to get it on actual paper, you know. I'd need additional codecs to play video files, and for downloading codecs you need a working internet connection.
But, the internet provides a truly insightful solution. You can always Google it! I worked my way through several intricate search phrases and came up with what is pretty much the default answer on most of the linux help forums. (On my desktop PC.)
Q: I have a [laptop specs] with [network card specs] and internet doesn't seem to be working. I've tried [attempt at solution 1, 2, 3] but nothing seems to work. Here are [screencaps of intrinsic data of how *untu has set up the hardware configuration]. Can anyone help me?
A: You can find network settings under less /etc/[network config or some such]
Oh really! You see, "less" is actually a way to say "display the contents of this file" on your command prompt. What Answer is doing is actually saying: "Here's a file! Look at it!". It's not actually helpful. It's not actually an answer. It's just a way of pointing to something and going. "Well? There! There!"
So I'm currently trying to make a bootable USB disk with regular-flavour Ubuntu just to get the laptop to work so I can veg out on the couch because I'm down with a bit of a bug, but so far, the only thing Linux is really fucking great at is making me feel really inadequate.
ETA: There was an old installation still available from the boot menu, and it has both internet and video/DVD watching still available, so I'm all set for today.
After my previous fix, I managed to use the laptop for a couple of more months (of sporadic use) but the file system was still filling up quite quickly. At some point, even my previous fix of cleaning out old packages the system no longer needed didn't work anymore.
The disk was full and would remain so, it seemed.
I read reports on the internet that this happened with servers too, creating large log files and not clearing them out in time, and I suspected this might be the case, but as a Linux-newb I'm not about to start rummaging around in system processes. I decided right after the move it might be wiser to just re-install the whole thing. I downloaded an iso file, bought a pile of DVDs and re-installed Kubuntu 12.04 on the laptop.
After the re-install, which went swimmingly, I noticed that my wireless could not be switched on again -- the hardware button that should be able to switch the card on (blue) and off (orange) would just remain orange. A quick check in ifconfig told me only eth0 and lo were configured. Eth1, the wireless network card, was nowhere to be seen.
This is the point I remembered NoKey had a bloody hard time getting the wireless to work in the first place when I first installed Kubuntu on that laptop.
Not to worry, with my (then) recently installed intharwebz I could just plug a network cable into my laptop and have internet. Hurrah! I plugged the cable in and...nothing. The network manager claimed the network manager was unmanaged, and that was that. Where my desktop pc could just be plugged in and everything was dandy without setting up anything at all, my laptop refused to do anything. No wireless internet and no cabled internet either.
A quick check trying to play a dvd, mkv and avi video showed that the thing would only be as useful as a typewriter. If you could muster the patience to actually load whatever you typed into a usb stick in order to be able to get it on actual paper, you know. I'd need additional codecs to play video files, and for downloading codecs you need a working internet connection.
But, the internet provides a truly insightful solution. You can always Google it! I worked my way through several intricate search phrases and came up with what is pretty much the default answer on most of the linux help forums. (On my desktop PC.)
Q: I have a [laptop specs] with [network card specs] and internet doesn't seem to be working. I've tried [attempt at solution 1, 2, 3] but nothing seems to work. Here are [screencaps of intrinsic data of how *untu has set up the hardware configuration]. Can anyone help me?
A: You can find network settings under less /etc/[network config or some such]
Oh really! You see, "less" is actually a way to say "display the contents of this file" on your command prompt. What Answer is doing is actually saying: "Here's a file! Look at it!". It's not actually helpful. It's not actually an answer. It's just a way of pointing to something and going. "Well? There! There!"
So I'm currently trying to make a bootable USB disk with regular-flavour Ubuntu just to get the laptop to work so I can veg out on the couch because I'm down with a bit of a bug, but so far, the only thing Linux is really fucking great at is making me feel really inadequate.
ETA: There was an old installation still available from the boot menu, and it has both internet and video/DVD watching still available, so I'm all set for today.
