installfest statuses

[Mike N.]

I did not make it to the installfest, but I did install PCBSD on my
laptop this week. 

here's a link to my dmesg:
http://www.nycbug.org/?action=dmesgd&dmesgid=2516 

If anyone is willing to help, I'm having a problem getting wireless to
work. It seems that video displays well, screensaver/suspend works too.
My wireless card is Intel Centrino-N 2230 (one 'o those wifi-bt combo
cards, has "N" capability - works in Ubuntu), recognized on pci3. Wired
ethernet works fine (whew!), recognized as re0. 

I cannot change the card, since the BIOS has a whitelist -- bastards! 

to anyone willing to help, thanks! 

mike-- 

p.s. I've already tried enabling some drivers in /boot/loader.conf -
iwi_enable or something, but with low hopes since i did not install any
drivers or make packages, assuming those were already there, but would
not be surprised if anyone told me they weren't ootb. 

On 2014-01-27 23:26, Assaf Rutenberg wrote: 

> Sorry for not responding sooner, my freebsd installation is progressing nicely and my command line skills are getting a good workout. I will upload my dmesgs this week. By my laptop model is an Asus ux32vd. Thanks again to George for your patience and guidance. The installment was immensely helpful. 
> 
> Assaf
> 
> On January 27, 2014 11:15:10 PM EST, George Rosamond <george at ceetonetechnology.com> wrote: 
> 
>> No one from the installfests posted anything yet, so I thought I'd take
>> it upon myself to post...
>> 
>> First of all, we have *never* been big with installfests. There never
>> really seemed to be a need, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
>> If those who don't need installfests don't organize them, those who need
>> them can't come :)
>> 
>> We should change that. People might be running BSD on servers, but
>> putting it on a laptop, configuring wireless cards and X seem to be
>> completely different hurdles. And with the advent of UEFI and netbooks
>> that are so Windows-centric, there is certainly a case to start having
>> installfests.
>> 
>> We had one session last week. One laptop was a Thinkpad X120e, and I
>> don't remember offhand the model of the other, but I believe it was an Asus.
>> 
>> From experience, even with a hacked BIOS, FreeBSD 8.x and 9.x installs
>> but doesn't boot the x120e. Inst!
>> ead of
>> waging that battle and jumping
>> into what is likely a gpt-related issue again, we went with an OpenBSD
>> snapshot that was recent, which not only builds quickly and cleanly, but
>> also hibernates and resumes nicely.
>> 
>> The Asus also installed OpenBSD fine. FreeBSD 9.1/amd64 installed but
>> also didn't boot. The participant with that laptop should post the
>> model/make so we can look at more.
>> 
>> Tonight we dealt with an Asus S400C. This laptop is six months or so
>> old, and a full UEFI nightmare. It takes a bunch of reboots and power
>> downs to deal with UEFI and BIOS settings. That took a good hour of
>> tinkering to get things to recognize the USB with the install media, and
>> a few more reboots to get it to boot back from the disks. If this is
>> the future of laptops, then the future is grim.
>> 
>> (yes, I'm aware of the FreeBSD Foundation's grant for dealing with UEFI,
>> but don't forget it's an ugly road we're a!
>> ll being
>> forced down. . .)
>> 
>> After finally getting a recent OpenBSD snapshot to boot on the Asus
>> S400C, *no* physical network devices were listed in ifconfig. The wired
>> is an Attansic AR8161, and the wireless is Atheros AR9485, and were
>> recognized out of the message log.
>> 
>> It is useful to have multiple install medias on hand, plus a wired
>> switch. This should include the stable and most current version of the
>> particular BSD in question. And I need to figure out how to install
>> OpenBSD firmware blobs manually :)
>> 
>> We've generally thought of doing installfests on more esoteric hardware,
>> from the newer ARM SoC systems and beyond. But clearly, basic x86
>> hardware has a relevance for installfests when it comes to a lot of
>> consumer-geared laptops today.
>> 
>> On that note, I'm hoping the participants upload their dmesgs to dmesgd,
>> and we can deal with any further configuration issues they may have.
>> 
>> And we
>> should look at planning more installfests. Maybe even doing a
>> show of hands at each meeting to decide whether to have one that month,
>> and to sort out what the hardware targets are.
>> 
>> g
>> 
>> -------------------------
>> 
>> talk mailing list
>> talk at lists.nycbug.org
>> http://www.nycbug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk [1]
> 
> -- 
> Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
> 
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