fedora.short-stack.net

so… i upgraded to fedora core 9. i love it. i got rid of windows entirely and now have 100+ gigs to devote to fedora and it’s pretty much awesome.

not so much the case anymore. i went back to fc8 after running into entirely too many bugs/general problems with f9. it might just be personal preferences but i’m happier this way. plus, i finally got vmware server running (wouldn’t work under that kernel without patching it in a million ways and even then i kept breaking shit) and my wireless is up. i am a happy camper.

although, i will say that i was surprised when i went back to fc8, my wireless setup was entirely different. i did “lspci” and instead of BCM4321AG showing up, it now says BCM4328. R151517.exe doesn’t work anymore and i had to use the drivers from R151519.exe. everything else stayed the same. at this point, i don’t care how i got there. it works, dammit.

now i just have to remember to get my copy of windows xp to put on vmware so i can get the adobe suite cs3 up and running. i’m pretty excited that i finally have everything running how i want it. i hope i don’t jinx it. and that the cat doesn’t sit on it.

i must have been drunk when i partitioned my hard drive on this stinkin’ laptop. i only allocated 6 gigs for my linux partition and i am seriously paying for it right now. i can’t run any updates because i’ve run out of room. i shrunk my drive i keep all my music/vids/pictures/files (it was 100 gigs but i shrunk it down to 70) and now my hd looks like this:

sda1: windows, 40 gigs
sda2: linux, 6 gigs
sda3: docs (aforementioned media partition), 70 gigs
unpartitioned space: 30 gigs

there are 2 gigs inbetween them all but that’s the jist of it. my question is (and i googled this for hours last night trying to find an easy/lazy way out of my dilemma): is there any easy way without having to reformat for the millionth time to merge my linux partition with my empty space? sda2 is ext3 format. i can format my empty space as ext3.

if i can’t merge them, then can i mount the second ext3 partition and somehow tell fedora to use that as space to install updates and things? i’m still looking into this frantically because I WANT QUAKE 3 BACK AND I WANT TO INSTALL UPDATES. it’s driving me nuts.

despite the fact that nothing higher than adobe photoshop 7 wants to run under wine (for me anyways, i am probably overlooking something), i will not surrender to teh gimp. i hate it. my apologies to the creator of gimp. i am very biased.

anyway, i had zero luck getting anything higher than 7.0 to install under wine without giving me errors whether they were pop-up windows or causing my whole system to freeze. it just wasn’t happening. if anyone has a suggestion, please do inform me and i will metaphorically have your babies.

i finally found a theme i like and have fedora looking SPECTACULAR! i love it. it’s so pretty and shiny. i just want to stare at it. i used this application theme and this window border theme. wallpaper is from n.design studio.

first of all… i found a solution to the xD reader problem i was having: use the camera USB cord. ;) genius, i know. heh, no luck with that one for me or anyone else that i could find.

rob suggested using xawtv for my webcam/FTP problem but i am having trouble getting that to run. still working on it.

the sound/mic deal with skype is iffy at times. mic has not worked yet and sound is a pain in the ass since it decides to randomly stop working. it’s pissy.

to be continued… o_0

to my surprise, i’ve had no problem getting my webcam to work on fedora 8. my only complaint is finding a decent webcam program that allows me to FTP my images to my server.

so far, i’ve tried camstream, webvideo, and conquercam (favorite client in windows, using it through wine, doesn’t detect webcam). actually, none of these can find my webcam. the only programs i’ve used that have detected the webcam and worked are cheese and ekiga, neither of which have FTP capabilities. i guess i’m just spoiled and have to get used to doing it manually unless anyone out there can give me a better suggestion.

anywho, this is how to get the webcam working.

the webcam specifically is a 0c45:62c0 Microdia (su – /sbin/lsusb).

to download the driver, type the following into your terminal
svn checkout svn://svn.berlios.de/linux-uvc/linux-uvc/trunk
cd trunk
make
make install
modprobe uvcvideo

“/sbin/lsmod” will show you the results. if you have gnome, you can use cheese to test it, the equivalent of apple’s photobooth program. ekiga works too… but i must say, i <3 cheese. i just wish SOME FREAKING PROGRAM WITH FTP CAPABILITIES WOULD WORK ON HERE. i’ll get it eventually… maybe.

still no luck… :-( working on it.

this was the biggest pain in the ass for me. i spent over half of my spring break trying to get these two things to work together only to find out i was using the wrong drivers. instead of using the drivers that HP gives you with your laptop, you need to use Dell’s drivers. i do not know why it works like this. i just know it worked and i slowly started regaining my sanity.

- click here to download the driver

you can extract the necessary files by using cabextract:
su -
yum install cabextract
cabextract R151517.EXE

you will need to add a line to your blacklist so using your favorite text editor (mine is vim), do the following:
vi /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

add the following line at the bottom and then save it:
blacklist bcm43xx

the .inf and .sys files from R151517.EXE should be on your desktop. if you do not already have ndiswrapper, you need to install it. also, if you update your kernel, you may have to re-install ndiswrapper:
yum install ndiswrapper
ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
ndiswrapper -l
ndiswrapper -m
modprobe ndiswrapper

this worked for me. you do not need to reboot. if you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me. :-)

i was originally going to create a wiki for this but i decided this would be more noticeable when it comes to progress and/or problems that arise.

this blog is intended to help other people who run into the same problems i’ve been having installing fedora core 8 on my HP dv6449. basically, it has been a royal pain in the ass spending hours scouring the internet for forums and help and answers so i’m going to try and make this easier for people with the same problems. hopefully.