DesktopBSD on Inspiron 1525

(if it doesn't blatantly show - I'm 100% new to BSD - not entirely new to Linux - but I really wanna get to know it...)

I just got an Inspiron 1525, and I had planned to put DesktopBSD or PC-BSD on it. Then I got it and started using Vista out of the box. Now I'm desperate to put BSD on it! So I've got DesktopBSD running on a partition and I'm dual-booting right now - BSD isn't recognizing any network devices at all (there's also a sound issue - but I'll deal with that later) I've been looking around and I've found good instructions on using NDISulator to use windows drivers in BSD. The problem is - I can't for the life of me find the *.sys file and the *.inf file. I have the drivers CD that came with the PC, but they're all packaged up, and I've looked through the .sys files on Vista and can't figure out which one it is (oh and finding the search feature on Vista was a REAL treat!)

Anybody got any ideas? Are there alternatives to wrapping the windows driver?

It's a Dell 1395 Minicard (I think they just renamed Broadcom's card...)

You could try using one of those driver/file sites to locate the file you need.

Well... assuming the 1390 driver works... I found one that narrows it down. I've got 2 .sys files and a .inf file. I'll try them out... While I'm doing that - is there anybody who's done the same transfer? In case these don't work, it'd be nice to have driver files we know work...

Well those particular files had a problem converting... I'll try some other options and see if I have any luck with those. DesktopBSD doesn't let you log in as root... what's up with that? Do you have to pick "single-user" mode from the boot-screen for that?

You have Windows Vista, but http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/...G-NETWORK-NDIS says to use XP binaries. So go to the Dell website and download the drivers for XP, extract the x64 drivers, and enjoy.

By the way, I got my wireless working today too, under Gentoo. I had been tethered for quite a while. ;)

edit:

This site, although concerning ndiswrapper, says to use unzip to extract the files from the driver package. Presumably, it's a self-extracting exe.

http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php..._for_your_card

Okay - I'm pretty sure I have the right files. I got the XP driver for my card and machine, unzipped it, there was a .inf file and a .sys file by the same name - copied them over to DesktopBSD, and followed the instructions on their site - It fails when trying to convert the files, citing "permission denied" when opening windrv.h

Now the site says to run the commands from the command-line as "root", but when you do a normal boot and try to log in as root, DesktopBSD says you can't. So... I booted in "System Mode" (option 4) assuming that that would put me in as root. It has the # prompt, which is promising, but it doesn't recognize any of the commans. I need use sysinstall... Am I looking in the wrong directories, or what? I thought that'd be a global command....

I got the above error trying to do it from my user account

Try booting into single-user mode and changing the root password

passwd root

and then reboot into regular mode. I'm pretty sure that booting up into system mode or whatever it is only gives you /sbin and not userland, in case userland is messed up.

"passwd not found"

Hmm... it's not recognizing any utilities... The only command I've gotten it to accept is cd, and even then it won't let me in some directories.

try the full path, wherever that is. (`which passwd`, which might not be a builtin, so it might only work in regular mode) Also try root as the root password, and if that doesn't work, go on DesktopBSD's IRC channel and ask them what is up not having root.

I'll try all those... Someone on the D-BSD forum suggested I use su. I'm not sure if he was serious... even sadder - I don't know if you can su into root... I really need to get better at UNIX cli...

Anyway - also just an update - so long as I'm not doing anything useful on that partition - I'm trying out PC-BSD as well. Maybe'll it fix the problem - it's a much more recent release. And it can't hurt to try 'em both. Anybody have any CONSTRUCTIVE comparisons between the two?

> I don't know if you can su into root

su without arguments su's to root. It doesn't work on my system because I'm not a group of wheel, I think.

Well su worked! I've made a lot of progress

The driver conversion worked! It was producing the kernel driver module, when it gave me an error. Fortunately, this problem is described in detail here:

http://www.desktopbsd.net/wiki/doku....reless_support

under the heading, "Using Windows drivers via NDIS with DesktopBSD 1.6". The CD I installed Desktop-BSD from is "not an official disk" - I guess Desktop-BSD isn't "an official distro" according to their website. So I'll download a CD from FreeBSD.org and use that.

Since I can't do it until tomorrow, and I don't wanna waste disks - does anyone know if I can just download disk 1? Or another disk? I'd hate to download all 3 (or worse, all 5)

edit: My PC-BSD disks are corrupted I guess, what a waste! Hard to tell when they got corrupted, but I reinstalled DesktopBSD, and occasionally it now prompts me for a system password, whereas before it just told me I didn't have the permissions.