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The_Great_Sephiroth
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 15, 2014 8:26 pm    Post subject: Compaq515 laptop, nothing works Reply with quote

Alright, I expect to be told that my problems stem from this sorry AMD system (seriously, I cannot even see the wireless NIC, video controller, or anything using lspci because it is behind some stupid AMD bus), but I have a bad problem here. After building the kernel and everything, I have nothing when I boot into my system. No wireless or wired interfaces. When in the live CD lspci reveals nothing. Just a bunch of "AMD this" and "AMD that". I am guessing everything is hiding behind some proprietary AMD bus, kind of like how nVidia will hide the NIC and other things behind some enumerator. My problem however, is that I have done this system twice now, and still cannot do anything with it.

With that said, is there anybody who has this system or knows anything about it that can tell me what to do to get it up? I was supposed to deliver it today and I now have five days and five reinstalls, all with no progress. I actually got it to boot this time (hey, we love DOS at HP! We love it so much you are required by the law of man, God, and everything else to use ONLY an MSDOS partition table and you MUST make a partition bootable! No GPT for YOU!) after realizing the system, despite having UEFI support, will only boot an MSDOS partition table with one partition marked "boot".

Sorry if I seem bitter, I just have an avid hatred for HP and stuff like whatever bus is hiding my common devices, like the video card and the NIC. I wasted my weekend at home trying to get this thing up and I am very bitter towards it now. Never had issues like this, but I also don't buy the cheapest pieces of crap on sale at Walmart either, unlike the owner of this system...

*EDIT*

By the way, I have put the NIC driver into my kernel that my wireless and wired NICs need. I am assuming I need to do something else to allow the Linux kernel to see into this AMD bus to actually use the hardware. This is what I need help with.

Oh and here's some more fun that I wasted some time on with this pile of junk! The system can boot from CD/DVD. However, if you reboot or boot it with a bootable CD/DVD inside the drive, it locks slam up, the DVD-ROM light starts flashing, the caps-lock light starts flashing, and the system freezes. To actually boot a disc on this thing, you must press F9 and wait until you can highlight the optical drive option, THEN insert a disc. Worst BIOS/UEFI on the planet...
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b0nafide
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 15, 2014 8:56 pm    Post subject: Re: Compaq515 laptop, nothing works Reply with quote

The_Great_Sephiroth wrote:
... I was supposed to deliver it today...
what can you see with lspci on a AMD RS780MN chipset?

Edit: Also http://www.linlap.com/hp-compaq_515 and http://community.linuxmint.com/hardware/view/3385 seem to suggest linux is possible.
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NeddySeagoon
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 15, 2014 10:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The_Great_Sephiroth,

It will boot GPT but you must set the bootable flag on the 'protective' MSDOS partition table you get for free.
Thats got more difficult to do now that fdisk can work with GPT.
grub legacy will work, I suspect grub2 will too.

Building the WiFi driver into the kernel is a bad idea until you make it work as a module and know what firmware it needs.
The wired NIC should be fine.

Please post the output of lspic and lspci -n.
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The_Great_Sephiroth
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 12:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I will post the output once I get back to the laptop. I made a goof on the NIC. I selected Yukon by accident instead of Yukon2. Got wired, but lspci, lspci -k, and lspci-n do not show my wireless NIC at all. It is a Broadcom that uses the older b43 stuff. I already installed the linux-firmware package, but no go. As of now I can boot into the shell (no packages emerged yet) and get my wired NIC up, but the wireless is crucial. I did build the R600_xxx.bin and RS780_uvd.bin into my kernel for the video card as directed to on the wiki page. I also followed a guide as best I could for the 515 on the Gentoo wiki, but it was for kernel 2.6.35, not 3.x.

I will try to get the output tonight or tomorrow morning. Again, thanks for your help. This is one of the most helpful Linux communities out there, and I appreciate it. I hope I didn't come across too badly earlier. I really needed to vent. I despise products which use proprietary things because it makes it harder on the IT guy no matter what OS you use.
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The_Great_Sephiroth
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 2:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Alright, here is the output. As you can see I got my video card working after compiling the firmware into the kernel. Now all that APPEARS to remain is my wireless NIC. Once it is up I am golden, I think.

lspci output
lspci -n output
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 3:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sure seems like your lspci output is missing any reference to a broadcom wireless NIC, which, if I'm not mistaken, should appear in your lspci output regardless of whether specific firmware has been loaded. Has that wireless NIC ever worked at all? Can you swap it out?
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The_Great_Sephiroth
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 3:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It works flawlessly... in Debian. I literally zeroed the disk and loaded Gentoo. That is the odd part. I can put in any other live CD and use it. Not blaming Gentoo here, since we're using the same kernel, but this is very odd.

*EDIT*

Being the genius I am, I checked to see that the card was seated properly. Then I realized that had it NOT been seated properly, it would not work in PartEd Magic or Debian. I must need sleep. Anyway, I snapped a picture of it, but HP covered the manufacturer sticker with their own. However, you CAN see "BCM94312HMGL". BCM is Broadcom, no clue what the 9 is, and 4312 is what I have enabled in my kernel.

Wireless NIC
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 1:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I made slight progress, but not much. I booted the live CD again and checked my kernel configuration. Still nothing. I tried "rfkill list" and it shows 0 as hp-wifi and being soft-blocked. It also shows 1 as a gps device which is hard and soft blocked. No clue what that is since the laptop does NOT have a gps device. I tried "rfkill unblock 0" and the wifi light went from orange to blue, but still does not show up with lspci. I am lost at this point. All kernel options are correct, but both the Gentoo live CD AND the OS itself fail to see this device. I can pop in any other Linux OS and it works. This has to mean something is configured differently here, but what?
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 3:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

According to https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/broadcom_wireless#Wi-Fi_card_does_not_seem_to_even_exist:

Quote:
Some users with newer cards like the Broadcom BCM43241 will experience an issue where lspci or lsusb will not show any trace of the card. A solution to this will be posted when found.

Wi-Fi card does not work or show up after kernel upgrade (brcmsmac)

This is caused by the kernel using the bcma module instead of the brcmsmac module. The solution is to blacklist the bcma module. For instructions, see Kernel_modules#Blacklisting.
Note: This affects only Linux kernels 3.0, 3.1, and 3.2. Since kernel 3.3, the brcmsmac module actually uses bcma, so bcma needs to be unblacklisted or the Wi-Fi interface will not appear.
Wi-Fi card does not work/show up (broadcom-wl)

Check if you are loading the correct modules. You may need to blacklist the brcm80211, b43, and ssb kernel modules to prevent them from loading automatically. For instructions, see Kernel_modules#Blacklisting.
Note: You may not have to blacklist the brcm80211 driver; although as of 2011-06-20, it will still default to loading the brcm80211 module before the wl driver, which prevents wl from being used.


So it's not just gentoo! Good luck, by now I would have installed an Atheros.
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The_Great_Sephiroth
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 3:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That costs money and needs to be ordered. Odd thing though, after booting and proceeding to start my install, the wireless light is blue now. I am going to go ahead and get into KDE and see if it is usable. Seems very odd. Never have cared for Broadcom, personally. I have an Intel in my Dell Latitude systems and they're awesome, but I did have Atheros cards in my older Acer laptops, and I could crack WEP/WPA with those. Don't know if I can crack using my Intel cards.
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 4:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Did you see this one https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=168255? Someone got it working by resetting the BIOS
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 5:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The_Great_Sephiroth,

mini PCI, like your wireless card, also provides USB connectivity. Its quite possible that your BCM94312 is actually USB, in which case it won't show in lspci.
Boot whatever distro it works with, run lspci and lsusb and make a post showing it appearing.

Google says that the b43 open driver should work for you but it will also need the supporting kernel infrastructure things and possibly firmware.
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The_Great_Sephiroth
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 8:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Firmware for it is installed as are the kernel components and driver. I believe it will work once I get the system installed. I do not need it for installing since I use a gigabit cable for that. We will know tomorrow. It just finished X, and I am about to emerge KDE with the things they need. After that I emerge LibreOffice and it is golden.
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The_Great_Sephiroth
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 1:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Alright, the system is up, but still no wireless. It is not on the USB bus, it shows up with lspci under Debian-based distros. Using lsusb only shows the hubs and the integrated webcam. What can I check next? This one has me stumped. Even if I chose the wrong driver it should show up on the PCI device list. I do have PCI-E compiled into the kernel.
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 5:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The_Great_Sephiroth,

Show us the debian and gentoo lspci ounputs.

You dan't need any drivers to get lspci output. The system queries all the devices for the vendor and device IDs. That has to work without device drivrs, or PCI plug and pray could not work.
Once we know where the device is, we can tell the kernel to try harder to find it.
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The_Great_Sephiroth
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 10:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I figured it out. The card just happened to be dying. It no longer shows up in anything. I'll be replacing it with an Atheros soon. Everything else works and the system is already in use, just wired.
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