Finally online with Slackware Live

KDSR · 01-25-2021, 11:06 AM

I am calling from deep inside a Sandisk Cruze 32 GB USB stick.
Thanks to Alien-Bob for the iso2usb.sh script. Slackware live 14.2 installed flawlessly, I used a live ISO burned to a DVD to get up and running then transfer to the USB stick....BUT I could not get wifi to work until now. I am 'old school' and have spent the better part of 3 weeks reading threads, posts and 'man' pages to figure this out... I hope this post helps others also.
My Laptop is an HP Pavilion G6, Yea you guessed it, F12 is the on/off button for wifi, as I have read, other Laptops use F2, F5 or F8 as the wifi button. There have been/are many issues about this 'wifi button' in other help forums as well as here but I believe it to be part of the 'Airplane Mode' that is built into the Laptop itself as part of the its Security features. I kept getting this..

Code:

bash-5.1# rfkill
ID TYPE DEVICE      SOFT      HARD
 0 wlan phy0   unblocked   blocked

I offer No guarantee that this Solution will work on other Mfg Laptops IE.. Asus, Lenovo, Dell etc... I tried this fix on my other computers as well, both are HP 2000 systems and both worked without problems, your mileage may vary

All I did when I got to GUI login screen was 'close the laptop screen' IE....put it to sleep. I left it closed for a minute and then open laptop back up and the F12 button went Blue.. meaning wifi was Active, YES, it was finally working... Now I get this...

Code:

bash-5.1# rfkill
ID TYPE DEVICE      SOFT      HARD
 0 wlan phy0   unblocked   unblocked

My next project is to use the iso2usb script to install Slackware live 14.2 into an external drive I have, this is a WD My Book and is 2 TB in size.... Have a Good Day and Keep Slacking.

fatmac · 01-26-2021, 05:57 AM

rfkill list

rfkill unblock all

Very handy commands, had to use them numerous times with my HP G62 for the past year, I think it started after kernel 4.19 was used in my distro of choice, but only with my HP laptop!!!

KDSR · 01-26-2021, 11:01 AM

Yes rfkill is an excellent tool, But it can only do so much... this is from the rfkill man page....

Quote:

block id|type [...]
Disable the corresponding device.

unblock id|type [...]
Enable the corresponding device. If the device is hard-blocked,
for example via a hardware switch, it will remain unavailable
though it is now soft-unblocked.

Sometimes rfkill has no effect on hard-blocked devices.

KDSR · 02-10-2021, 02:15 PM

I installed the Slackware Live into my WD external hard drive and works Great... even managed to re-size the Persistence.img without issues.... Linux is like "Gumby"... very flexible.

Does anyone remember the early days when cell phones used "M2" memory cards? I stuffed the Slackware live ISO into an 8GB M2 memory card, LOL... it was slow because the read/write speed on these card are Class 2 I believe...But it worked and booted up just fine, not much room to store anything on it, 3 gigs or so...

Keep on Slacking...

zrong · 02-25-2021, 10:46 PM

I've noticed the same issue with slackware-current, rfkill was not enough, I had to press the wifi button multiple times because was not blinking which is normal but I couldn't guess when was on/off. Hopefully this gets sorted on stable release.