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#1 2011-08-17 17:24:49

lastchancetosee
Member
From: Berlin
Registered: 2009-02-19
Posts: 131

Installation on Lenovo X121e: No network interfaces

Hi,
I'm trying to install Arch on my Lenovo X121e, but I'm running into problems:

Using 2010.05 both the LAN and WLAN adapters have their firmware missing, i.e. I end up with only a loopback device and am thus unable to install.
I tried the archboot 2011.08 image for it's newer packages, with that at least the LAN adapter is working, but when I try to install, all config files are missing (rc.conf etc) and I end up with an installed but unbootable system.

The LAN card is an Atheros Communications device [1969:1083] (rev c0), the WLAN card is a Realtek RTL8188CE (listed in lspci as [10ec:9176], 2010.05 doesn't know it to be an 8188CE.

Any easy way to get LAN working in 2010.05?


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#2 2011-08-17 17:44:23

Inxsible
Forum Fellow
From: Chicago
Registered: 2008-06-09
Posts: 9,183

Re: Installation on Lenovo X121e: No network interfaces

how do you know that the config files are missing?

There are also releng isos that you might want to try.

http://releng.archlinux.org


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There's no such thing as a stupid question, but there sure are a lot of inquisitive idiots !

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#3 2011-08-17 22:54:31

lastchancetosee
Member
From: Berlin
Registered: 2009-02-19
Posts: 131

Re: Installation on Lenovo X121e: No network interfaces

how do you know that the config files are missing?

Either that or the installer on that iso is messed up: Where it would normally open these files for me to edit/inspect, nano opens a new empty file instead. I just proceeded with the installer at that point, to see what would happen, and I indeed ended up with a system without these files.
I'll try the releng ones, thanks.


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#4 2011-08-18 06:09:41

tpowa
Developer
From: Lauingen , Germany
Registered: 2004-04-05
Posts: 2,322

Re: Installation on Lenovo X121e: No network interfaces

Which steps have you done with archboot setup, that it fails?
I can only fix this issue that happens sometimes if i have all steps. Noone provided details on this yet.
greetings
tpowa

Last edited by tpowa (2011-08-18 06:09:58)

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#5 2011-08-18 17:05:47

lastchancetosee
Member
From: Berlin
Registered: 2009-02-19
Posts: 131

Re: Installation on Lenovo X121e: No network interfaces

a) the releng image worked flawlessly.
b) Archboot:

Full setup process:
I used this image: http://mirrors.kernel.org/archlinux/iso … chboot.iso, entered setup as usual, set up the internet connection without the installer, chose the automatic partitioning scheme, a gpt partition table, installed base, base-devel, xorg and xorg-drivers group, xfce4 and a bunch of other packages.
Everything worked fine right up to the point where you would normally edit the config files, however here, after choosing nano as my editor, nano opened with an empty file because there were no config files at whatever path nano was pointed at. Since there weren't many changes to make, I decided to just go ahead and hope for the best.
I used syslinux as a boot loader, finished the installation without further problems, but upon trying to boot the BIOS found no operating system, so apparently the syslinux-setup messed up as well.

Looking at the harddrive via the live system I found that indeed all relevant config files were missing on the harddrive (does the installer simply not install them if you don't open them during setup? Because then this would of course be unrelated to the error). There was an additional small partition before the /boot partition. Is that something to do with either GPT or syslinux?

That's it. Do you need any further details (Hoping I remember them)? I could always make a new partition on my laptop and run the installer again, see what happens.


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#6 2011-08-19 06:28:12

tpowa
Developer
From: Lauingen , Germany
Registered: 2004-04-05
Posts: 2,322

Re: Installation on Lenovo X121e: No network interfaces

Which values did you enter on automatic partition scheme?
Was anything mounted on /tmp/install before installing packages and after installing packages?
Thanks for helping me on this. This bug is there since ages but I never was able to reproduce it myself.

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#7 2011-08-19 12:26:07

lastchancetosee
Member
From: Berlin
Registered: 2009-02-19
Posts: 131

Re: Installation on Lenovo X121e: No network interfaces

100MB /boot, 4GB swap, 15GB /, rest of 320GB /home.

/tmp/install: I didn't check. I didn't mount anything manually.

Last edited by lastchancetosee (2011-08-19 12:27:44)


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#8 2011-08-19 16:56:18

lastchancetosee
Member
From: Berlin
Registered: 2009-02-19
Posts: 131

Re: Installation on Lenovo X121e: No network interfaces

Something is still messed up (or maybe I messed up smile )

- netcfg was installed but not installed, i.e. pacman said it was installed, the binary was there but no manpages etc., only the netfg binary. Reinstalling helped, but I think other packages might have the same problem
- I have a /dev/sdb device that really shouldn't be there.
- my X session do not pick up the system keyboard layout. E.g. in xfce4, even though I selected "System default" in the keyboard settings, I still get a US layout. Virtual consoles do it right.

Edit: Oh, and sound does not work, I only get one control in alsamixer, for spdif output. But i haven't yet looked into that, so maybe the problem is trivial ...

Edit2: After another reboot xfce's keyboard is fine, awesome still uses the US keymap.

Last edited by lastchancetosee (2011-08-19 17:13:05)


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#9 2011-08-20 07:22:59

tpowa
Developer
From: Lauingen , Germany
Registered: 2004-04-05
Posts: 2,322

Re: Installation on Lenovo X121e: No network interfaces

lastchancetosee wrote:

100MB /boot, 4GB swap, 15GB /, rest of 320GB /home.

/tmp/install: I didn't check. I didn't mount anything manually.

Ok 4GB swap cannot work because of broken mkswap 2GB is the limit at the moment.
Is it still broken if you use a smaller swap then?
You can watch mount status on an other console typing mount.

Any other bug with xorg etc. are not archboot specific, you need to configure this always on your own.

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#10 2011-08-20 12:02:36

lastchancetosee
Member
From: Berlin
Registered: 2009-02-19
Posts: 131

Re: Installation on Lenovo X121e: No network interfaces

Ok 4GB swap cannot work because of broken mkswap 2GB is the limit at the moment.
Is it still broken if you use a smaller swap then?
You can watch mount status on an other console typing mount.

I'll try that, however it will take some time, I'll be at a conference all next week and need my laptop in a non-work-in-progress state wink .
I'll report back afterwards.


My ship don't crash! She crashes, you crashed her!

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#11 2011-08-23 14:39:21

tpowa
Developer
From: Lauingen , Germany
Registered: 2004-04-05
Posts: 2,322

Re: Installation on Lenovo X121e: No network interfaces

Also does this happen with cdrom install too, or is only ftp install affected?
Did the FTP routine install the packages successfully or did it interrupt with an error?

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