just want to get this started as I hope it will motivate me to finish it, since I have done a LOT of things on my computer since my last post, and obviously I have posted none of it.
So, I got a little impatient about not having my PC functioning, so I I installed Fedora 12 x64 on the rest of my FreeBSD boot drive and I have about 80% of the things on my list done and working. I’ll reference them by numbers here, and you can go read what they were by clicking on “my list” above. I am still hoping to get FreeBSD as my host OS; however everything is working right now with Fedora (except that stupid wireless NIC), although I am still having my “system reached critical temp” error from ACPI, yet the system resource monitor I have running shows a nice pleasant 30C CONSTANT temp. maybe this summer I’ll pickup a liquid CPU cooler… I already have 5 exhaust fans and 2 intake fans, 2 x 240mm exhaust and a 160mm or 180mm intake, I think I have air flow covered. (talked to a friend who is more into the details of technical issues, a network engineer, and he says that an inactive CPU, like when the system shutsdown, can drop 40F in about 7-10 seconds so it might be why I cannot catch it reporting a high temp in the BIOS) The BIOS does not report any temps reaching above 45C ever, so I have no idea why this is happening, I do run widgets reporting the internal temp, but have never seen it change!!!) . most of the time when it shuts there is/has been high CPU/disk IO usage (all 4 cores over 60% sustained, multiple long term large/multiple file movements across drives and/or multiple VMs running). So it could be valid.
I have come up with a couple of things to try to resolve this issue (going with the cheapest first, even if it is not really going to help a CPU issue, it can’t hurt…)
- I could just upgrade some hardware and see if a different BIOS/MB manufacturer makes a difference. I would love a lower watt CPU (or 6 core!), more L2/L3 cache, and USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB/s, since my current system bottleneck is the SATA 3GB/s HDDs.
- Switch to liquid cooling and installing a new thermal sensor with an external readout.
- buy cute little 5cfm coolling fans to place on my NorthBridge, SouthBridge, and onboard GPU passive cooling fins (cheapest option, not necessarily attacking the actual issue though)
- purchase a pretty new Video card and disable the onboard video (the chip is within an inch or two from the CPU, so there maybe some issue with residual heat from the GPU causing my overheating).
in order from cheapest to most expensive would be 3, 2, 4/1 (really close and might be a tie or within a $20-$30)
My List of things to get working, except this one is for Fedora.
1. VirtualBox is installed, working and I have multiple VMs up and running.
2. Install VMWare Workstation, I have downloaded the newest trial version and it is good for another 3 weeks, but have not gotten around to installing it.
3. Mounting my NTFS drives, all mounted, where I want them, even went through and deleted the Windows OS system folders from all but one.
4. SSH connections, I have started this and was working on it when I decided to start this post, should be done tomorrow.
5. I am posting this from Google Chrome on my Fedora 12 installation right now, so I’d say installed and working. Java shows up in the plugins, although java.com cannot detect it in my browser.
6. Hulu works great in Firefox or Google Chrome, although is a bit spotty when I have VMs running, and the playback is laggy in Chrome… So I am trying to get the Hulu Desktop app running. will make a post after I get some work done on it and let you know how it goes.
7. So far everything is working great, going to try a couple of VM’ed games next week after I get the rest of this done.
8. Firefox is up, running, and is playing hulu; however it does not report Java as installed from the about:plugins page, even though it is and I followed all the steps to link the correct files to the correct places. I believe this is the Firefox 3.6 doesn’t support Java issue though and not an issue on my part.
9. access NTFS drives remotely via ssh and a chrooted account with links to the mounts. After I get my SSH working tomorrow I should be able to test this. I was reading something online I no longer have open and may not have bookmarked that said that I can double mount drives (mount a drive to more than one, specifically 2, locations)
10. convert my NTFS drives to a more suitable linux FS, this again is a last thing item, to be done after everything else is working.
11. convert my drives from MBR to GPT, most likely to be done at the same time as the FS change.
12. GUI package manager for KDE, done, comes with Fedora.
13. eliminate all traces of Gnome from my computer… again, have to be last thing, once all is up and working.
14. build my first kernel, normally done immediately after install, I’ll do it last after EVERYTHING else (including the other things I said I would do last)
15. Wine is installed and works. will try out some things that I have installed in VMs to see about dropping those VMs
16. install older apps, again part of a couple of other items, I will of course be installing older apps on older OS installation I have, and will try them in Wine as stated.
17. X.org port forwarding to Cygwin on a windows machine (laptop) something I might do in a week or two…
18. start regular backups… I’m getting there, I have the drive formated in ext3, I just have not started backing things up.
19. Java, I think it works in Chrome, I was able to see the animated maps on the NOAA website, which most people use to test their Java. not working in Firefox 3.5.9.2
20. Flash, Hulu is working in Firefox and Chrome, so all good here.
21. Yakuake is fully functional and working.
22. Picasa 3.6 (I think) is installed and working great, except I don’t seem to be able to find the facial recognician system.
23. No idea on this one, can not find where I posted what it was, only that it was completed on BSD.
Unfinished items for Fedora: 2, 4, 9, 10, 11, 19?
apparently Open Office will not load, for an unknown reason, looking into it at this time.
Right so first off I have to say that it is all my fault I am not currently up and running 100% in FreeBSD 8.0, I agree before anyone else can say it… I’m an idiot. I went out and bought (went out=I hit up newegg.com) a wireless card so I can stop bridging my network connection off my laptop, and I just had to buy an 802.11n dual antena (very cool looking too…) wireless PCI card, one that has a BRAND NEWish CHIPSET that is not currently supported in Linux, or BSD. So, I will gladly bend over and take what’s coming to me for that one… But, it was the same price as the 802.11g card and supports MIMO!! so I think I deserve some brownie points for that…
Well, here is a copy of what I have posted on the DesktopBSD forum (more on that later)
Ok, well I had a nice long post typed out here (twice now, but I copied most of it before I hit the stupid key this time) with lots of details and useless additives; however I hit the stupid “back” button that IBM thought would be a good idea to put on the key board of this laptop right next to the up arrow… and so it is gone.
this will have to be a quick version, minus some heavily laden with porn russian websites (oh! there was also one trying to sell an iphone x-ray vision app too!!!) I can find zero info on this chipset, I have a Encore Electronics ENLWI-NX2 802.11n PCI card, works in Win7 AFTER running their config/setup progy. Shows up in pciconf with class, card, chip, rev, and hdr hex codes, and a vendor and class listing, but nothing else. It shows up in windows as an RTL8190P, I was unsuccessful in finding it in FreeBSD 8.0 x64; but I may have forgotten to capitalize the “R” in Realtek when I grepped the “pciconf -lv” results.
manufacturer product page: http://www.encore-usa.com/product_item.php?region=us&bid=2&pgid=81_2&pid=412
I followed the ndisgen instructions posted in this forum by sqlbsd, and all went well until I tried to load the RTL8190P_sys file, then the system hangs for 3-6 seconds and finally the PC just shut off. So a bit more PC info… I tried running FreeBSD 8.0 x64 first, but did not even find the card listed in pciconf (or dmesg) when I grepped for Realtek (maybe I forgot to capitalize the “R”? but either way I didn’t see it, and although I got KDE setup and it booted to the login screen, I could not log in, the KB and mouse only worked on the console screens, so I came back to DesktopBSD). So, I have a clean DesktopBSD 1.7 x64 install on my machine, only 1 network card and it is this wireless card.
I am going to try the 32bit drivers, the win 2k drivers, and then the vista drivers that shipped with the card. I also have the setup file from the manufacturer’s website DL’d and will check that for a different version. if anyone has any ideas I’d be happy to give them a go. I may try an Ubuntu Live CD to check if it will recognize the card, also puppy linux tends to find wifi cards out of the box, so I may give that a shot and see if I can figure out which drivers they use.
I knew I should have just bought the 802.11g card… but I had to go with the 802.11n just cuz it was the same price… and had MIMO support…
****edit 10 minutes later****
I did notice that the Encore ENLWI-G is listed on the FreeBSD 7.2 Hardware list, so there is hope…****update 8:12pm EST****
So, the newly downloaded drivers from the website were slightly more generic (RTL819xP drivers) but they are 7 months newer, so I tried them. The Win64 failed to convert invalid syntax line 2355 or so, the the winxp2k drivers loaded fine, but failed to create the .ko file. The vista x64 drivers converted with no errors and loaded without crashing the PC; however the system still does not recognize the wireless card. so I guess I move on to something else?
Right, well then… now you know… and we all know what happens after that… (right, if anyone can’t find those russian sites (I searched for “RTL8190 FreeBSD”) I’ll be happy to email you the links… j/k 
) so on to a little more explaining…
As stated in the post I failed to find the wireless card even listed in the installed hardware listing, I am 90% sure at this point I did not capitalize the “R” as that just makes no sense. After which I just dumped the FreeBSD install and went to Desktop BSD, as I have installed DBSD 1.6 previously on this hardware and it had KDE working in under 50 mins with no manual configuring and I was unable to type on the login screen currently in FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE. So I booted up of my newly minted Desktop BSD disc and away it went. I learned that if you create more than one UFS partition during install that when you reboot you get a “Invalid Partition Table” message instead of your OS. easy fix, don’t make multiple partitions. The OS is up and running at this very second, but without inet access.
So I am off to try an Ubuntu live CD, Fedora Live CD, and a Puppy and or Slax USB bootable File System. In an attempt to find out if any non-windows OS can auto configure or even load the Windows drivers to get that wifi working (I believe I have a post around here somewhere about my HP laptop running Puppy and it finding th ewifi adapter and being able to locate networks, but not able to connect, and Ubuntu 8.x on that same laptop working perfectly with wifi, so we shall see what happens…)
*****quick update, before I even post it… HA! *****
after reading the reviews on the NewEgg site (specifically one from feb 28th), I decided to DL the RTL8192E drivers from the Realtek website, will give them a shot before the other OS’s.
*****update March 12th*****
So, I went ahead and added the lines to /boot/loader.conf to automate the loading of the driver during startup, but I have also been getting the same results with all driver versions. (XP drivers fail to convert, and Vista and 7 drivers convert fine, but the system still refuses to acknowledge the existence of the hardware device after using kldload or even restarting.) I currently have a KUbuntu live CD loaded and an lspci from a terminal screen shows the network controller, states it is a realtek and gives a device of 8190. however, the control panel does not acknowledge a wireless adapter as being present nor does ifconfig show the wireless adapter as being present.
I tried installing ndiswrapper from the cd and attempted to load the windows drivers from there. First I tried running ndiswrapper and it told me it was not installed and to run ndiswrapper-common, when I installed it and tried to run it it told me to install a bunch of other things. All were available except ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 which replied back that it was missing, obsolete, or no longer available, then that it had been replaced by ndiswrapper-common. so I could not run ndiswrapper because I did not have ndiswrapper-utils and could not install it because it was replaced by what I already had? got me, without doing an actual install, the good news is that it completely recognized it, I’ll have to check with an installation if it is already in the newest linux kernel, I have just moved on to Fedora since I do not intend on doind an Ubuntu install if I do not have to.
I booted up the Fedora 12 disc I have and it failed to bring up the KDE GUI. The Vterms were available, and an lspci -v showed the full information on the wireless card, so I am going to try a reboot and see what happens.
Everything came up fine with a reboot, not sure what happend the first time. it is not working; however an lspci -v shows no kernel driver in use. I will need to do some research to find out how to add the driver while running off the Live CD, probably get to that later. been working all day in front of a computer, need to relax my eyes some now.
*************Update 3-17-2010**************
just found this website and I think this is a linux driver for the rtl8190p 802.11n chipset
http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/drivers/staging/rtl8192e/r8190_rtl8256.c
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